8 Days of Holiday Cards! Day 5: Oh Joy Ornament cut-out & tags!

Welcome back! We're five days into my 8 Days of Holiday Cards series, and I'm feeling overwhelmed with how much I have left to do in preparation for Christmas! I just purchased Christmas-themed stamps for our holiday cards, and my husband printed our photo inserts with the 2016 overview (our first year of marriage!), and have a LOT of envelope addressing to do tonight!

For today's card, I used the GORGEOUS Mama Elephant Twinkle Towns set, and was SO excited to get both holiday cards AND gift tags out of this one project! I'm providing more photos of the process since it's a bit more complicated and I found a way to create that card that works well, so I wanted to share my process in hopes of helping others! :)

I wanted to have a window in this card that would peek through to the ornament and sentiment on the inside of the card, AND would fit in seamlessly for the front of the card. I figured out how to do this in a way that made it easiest to mass produce, and I made ten total! I used Paper Source A2 Superfine White folded cards for this project.

I started by laying out my scene with the clear stamps on the card front, to determine where I would want my ornament window. I wanted to ensure that the branch extended off the page, and that the ornament would be close enough to the branch that when I added the 'string' it wouldn't hang down too low. Once I determined the appropriate placement for the ornament, I setup the cling stamp on my MISTI tool and stamped the image of the ornament on the card front for all ten cards, using Memento Tuxedo Black Ink. I left the ornament outline stamp in place on the MISTI during the next step, so I could use it again and ensure identical placement of the ornament on the inside of my card after the next step of die-cutting.

My next step was to use the coordinating die to cut out the ornament from the card front to create my window. The image on the left shows the way I ran the card through my evolution die cut tool - it's very important to do this with the card completely open, otherwise you'll end up with a window that goes through the WHOLE card! :) These die-cut ornaments will be used later as gift tags, so I set them aside for now!

Once I'd cut out my windows, I brought the cards back to my MISTI tool, and with them folded shut, I stamped the ornament again. The magnets on the MISTI held the card shut, which ensured that my ornament was stamped through the window perfectly. Once all ten cards were stamped with the ornament on the inside of the card following this process, I left the 10th card in place. I used the window of this card to position and stamp the back side of my gift tags with the ornament outline stamp, which allowed me to have a double-sided gift tag. SO EASY!! You can see the placement of my ornament gift tag in the window in the image on the right. Because the center of the ornament outline stamp is empty, I was able to use the MISTI magnet to hold the ornament in place.

Next, I finished the scene on the front of the card using the MISTI tool once again for perfect placement. With the card still shut on the MISTI tool, I stamped the green needles stamp first and heat-embossed them with clear embossing powder to give them dimension. After completing all ten, I moved on to the brown branch, which I didn't want to heat emboss since I wanted the needles to stand out more. Again, I repeated this process with all ten cards before moving on to my next step.

With the card still shut, I stamped the oh joy sentiment through the window onto the ornament, using the Hero Arts neon ombre ink pad. I decided to go with the vibrant pink-to-purple ombre, as it really popped with the rest of the card!

My last step for the card was to stamp on the string that hangs the ornament from the tree. The Mama Elephant set comes with a solid line string, but I wanted something slightly longer and with a bit more whimsy, so I used the dotted line stamp from Lawn Fawn's Deck the Halls set. Because this dotted line was longer than the length I needed, I opened up the card on my MISTI tool once again for this final step, so that the extra length of the string would stamp on the paper in the MISTI tool and not on the ornament inside my card. You can see the setup for this on the left.

Now that my cards were complete, I decided to add some of the other Twinkle Town elements to one side of each of my gift tags. Keeping one card in the MISTI tool, I was able to do the same window placement trick for this stamping to ensure proper placement. I used the ombre ink pad again for the oh joy sentiment on some of the tags, and used another Hero Arts ombre pad in blue for the NYC scene inside a few of the other tags, and plan to use these tags together for some gifts for my husband and our two close friends who LOVE NYC and travel there often. :) On the remaining tags, I stamped the little town from the set with the same green from the pine needles, and will use these on another set of gifts for my family.



Below, you can see the finished card in both a propped open fashion and completely shut, to illustrate the window effect.




I know this was a long post, but the process for making this card took less time than it seems! I loved that it ended with me having some ready-made gift tags, too, with just a few simple extra steps! The MISTI is my absolute FAVORITE tool right now, and I'm so happy with the perfect placement help, and with it's uses for windows and layered stamps like Mama Elephant's Twinkle Towns!