Whimsy Stamps and Ranger Ink Christmas Hop

Hey crafty friends, we are having a fabulous Instagram Hop, our last one for the year and we are being sponsored by the lovely folks at Ranger Ink for this Hop. The whole team was pretty delighted about this as we're all huge Ranger fans. So we have a wonderful line up of DT joining us for this hop, plus we have two Guest Designers too! The lovely Annie Williams and Deborah Hellman are joining us for this hop. Both talented card designers who I greatly admire, so that's a big treat! 

I've made four cards for this hop with three different designs. These first two I've created with a fun bokeh style effect. It's not true bokeh, but certainly influenced by that look. It took a little while to achieve this effect. I started out by making a few bigger circular shapes with the smaller of the two wonky circle stencils I created a while back for the bohemian mid-century inspired cards I created. You may recall them if you've been following me for a while. Those posts here and here. 

I made those bigger circles with Lost Shadow Distress Oxide and as you'll see from the image above, I put the two card panels together (taped on the underside with looped mint tape to stop it moving on the counter), and stenciled across the two card panels. You can see on the stencil, that I used mint tape to section off different circles and sizes of circle from the fabulous Dotty Stencil to add the smaller circles. I used seven different Oxide Inks in the end, to get a fun array of similar tones for all the spots. I show some in the formal picture layout and some in my process layout above. All seven colours I used were Lost Shadow, Victorian Velvet, Milled Lavender, Dried Marigold, Kitsch Flamingo, Tattered Rose and Saltwater Taffy. Don't they work they work so well together?!

The fabulous stamp set that I've used with the striking black circular shapes is called Peekaboo Dots and made such a fun combination with the stencilling for a very striking, funky, graphic design. I absolutely LOVE how this card set turned out. Not traditional Christmas, but so very fun and celebratory. I had some Concord and 9th envelopes in my stash which paired with these so well. They're the Creamsicle colour and part of a set of envelopes I bought recently. 

The sentiments I've used for both of these cards are lovely bold designs from the Toner Card Front Pack - A2 Holiday Sentiment Frames set. These are toner printed, so they can be foiled, however, I wanted the bold black greeting to tie in with my stamping, so left it plain. I distressed the edges of the paper, which is quite a substantial weight and lovely to work with and finished the design with a very simple pink retro burst embellishment from the This Calls For Confetti sequin mix called Retro Christmas. Such a fun set, but I do often pull little elements out of my mixes to use individually or to make mixes that tone better with my makes. Sometimes I buy mixes for the elements in them rather than the mix itself and I've used these little pink retro burst shapes quite a bit lately!

Come hop with us if you can for our fun collaboration hop with Ranger Ink! We had such fun collaborating with Ranger last year for Halloween, we decided to do it again this year for Christmas! We have a wonderful $50 GC prize up for grabs from the fabulous folks at Ranger for one randomly chosen hopper and another prize from Whimsy Stamps also a $50 GC, so it's well worth hopping along with us. The inspiration from the team using their Ranger Ink products and Whimsy Stash together is quite magical! So worth the visit just for that! My post is here. Or you can start at the beginning by clicking through on the banner above. I will be back to share the other two creations I made for this hop very soon. Hugs and happy hopping, Wends xoxo

(I share thumbnails to the elements I design with in order to make your search for them easier, in case you like something I've used. I do use affiliate links where possible, which gives me a tiny commission but costs you no extra whatsoever. If you're new to Whimsy or haven't shopped there for a while, my links will give you a 10% discount. It helps the companies I design for to improve their marketing practice and track my contributions if you use these links. I am deeply grateful if you use them for these reasons. I am proud to design for the companies I do and always feel happy to share where my inspiration and where my crafty stash comes from. I am occasionally gifted products to use, but I only design for companies whose products I absolutely love and buy for myself. My opinions are always my own.)

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