The Craftroomers Blog Hop ~ Simon Says Stamp Kit

Hey crafty friends, I had a lovely invitation from Sylvie of Kaliscards to join the Craftroomers Quarterly Blog Hop this time. I was one of the winners of the last hop and received a beautiful card in the post, so I was delighted to be asked to join in with the hop this time around. The theme is Christmas or Winter, so we are working with whatever is in our craftroom and on our desks that fits that theme! 

I've been really enjoying getting a few of the Simon Says Stamp Card Kits this year and this Christmas Kit for December, is one of my absolute favourites! I had such fun with this set and it is SO my cup of tea! The rustic feel, the lino-cut like stamp designs, everything about this just so appealed to me. At to that the gorgeous tartan papers from the Tim Holtz idea-ology 2025 Christmas Backdrops and I'm in my bliss! 

I started off by inking the sweet deer image with an ombré ink approach using Simon Says Stamp Latte, Cappuccino and Mocha inks. Deeper for the deers coat and lighter up towards the sky. I love this subtle ombré effect. I added some glossy accents to the deers noses and eyes to give that 'caught in the headlights' shiny eye look. They're still a little wet in the pic above, but dry clear and shiny.

I took two approaches with the sentiments, I used kraft cardstock for two of them, which I cut from Neenah Desert Storm cardstock and then inked the edges with Walnut Stain to give a slight vignette effect to the sentiment. I distressed the torn paper edges of the image panel with the same ink. The lovely diecut sentiments are from the Sizzix Tim Holtz Vault Holiday Classic Thinlits Dies. I just think they fit these designs so beautifully. I've popped them up a mix of ways. Some I stacked several diecuts together to add the dimension needed to fit with the height of the image panel. Others I added dimension with foam. I popped each image panel up on a 1mm foam sheet for just a touch of dimension. 

There are two traditional patterns I absolutely love, one is gingham and the other is tartan. My wedding bouquet was wrapped in a tartan ribbon and our wedding cake was too. So this has been a long standing love story with tartan and it's one of my favourite paper designs to work with! I used three tartan patterns from Tim's Christmas Backdrops and the fourth pattern is a rustic distressed wood pattern, also a favourite paper design. I used a lovely red satin finish Tonic Studios specialty cardstock for two of the sentiments and decided I'd add a little May Arts Fine Ivory Twine behind those two. So this involved laying down some dimensional foam in just the right places to make this work. I added a single base layer of the sentiment in kraft directly to the card base, added the twine over this and then added the tiny foam bits in strategic places between the twine strands before adding the red decorative top layer. Worked a treat, but was a bit fussy to do. A good pair of tweezers is a must! 

I absolutely love how the Tim's diecut sentiments worked with these cards. I think they're the perfect touch to complete these designs. I ended up making a second set of four, but with solid stamping in 3 different colours. So I'll share those designs soon too. It's a subtle difference, but otherwise, very similar to these designs which I could not be happier with. I've distressed all the paper edges and kept them at the full A2 size, as I didn't really want to have a framed edge, just the cool rustic distressed paper finish. I've used the Tim Holtz Paper Distressing Tool to achieve this look, but often just use scissors if you don't have that tool, they work great too. This card has a different bow to the rest. I matched a more burgundy coloured cardstock with the colours in the wooden paper for this card. The satin finish bow was out of place on this card and I love the softer finish the chosen bow gave.

I think the little red bows are such a sweet detail on these cards. I diecut three from the same Tonic Studios specialty cardstock as the red sentiments. This is called Scarlet Organza and it's a satin effect mirror cardstock, it's so lovely and if you watch my reel or short, you can see the sheen as it shifts in the light. I kept the first two designs I made quite pared back, but when I was adding the red sentiments, I wanted the feel to still be rustic and not taken over by the more opulent cardstock, so I added the rustic twine to achieve that. 

I hope you can come and join our Instagram Hop to see what the rest of this amazing team of crafters has put together for their designs. I've just seen them all and oh my heart, they're all so fabulous! You can click through on the image above for the first stop in the hop. A big thank you to Sylvie for inviting me to join this hop, I really enjoyed creating these lovely designs for it. I will be back with the second set of these lovely designs, which I'll share shortly. I hope your lead up to Christmas is going well. Hugs and happy holiday crafting, 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, and so appreciate if you use these when shopping. They cost you no extra whatsoever. 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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