The Greetery TGIF{Hello....Thinking of You}

Hello friends! It's my turn for this week’s TGIF over on The Greetery Blog! Thanks for joining me today!

 I’m the type of person who enjoys “celebrating the season” no matter what it may be! I love the beauty of winter; freshly fallen snow glittering in the sunlight, cozy blankets and cups of hot cocoa, flickering candles to brighten the evenings and so much more! While it’s fun to pull out our neglected floral sets right after Christmas, I think it’s just as fun to use snowflakes and such to create winter cards as well!

To begin today’s card, I die cut some pinecones and pine boughs using the BotaniCuts Pine Bough die set. I die cut everything from Rustic White cardstock and then inked the pine boughs using Iced Spruce Distress Oxide ink and then a brighter green from a random finger dauber (sorry for that unspecific detail) LOL! I didn’t saturate the pine boughs so they would have some white areas to pick up the light. For the pinecones, I left them white with just a touch of Weathered Wood Distress Oxide ink and some colored pencil details. Betsy made a fabulous video when these pinecone dies were first released explaining how to make them look like this. I did add the ink around the edges, which is a little bit different than hers, but that video is very helpful for this look.

I set the assembled branches and pinecones aside and got to work on the background. I die cut a piece of Kraft cardstock using the Square Dance Die and added some Ground Espresso ink using the Square Dance Stencil. Once that was done, I adhered it to a top-folding A2 Rustic White card base. I added a panel of watercolor paper that was die cut with the middle size in the Nordic Frames Die collection. I adhered the branches and pinecones using foam squares for dimension and then added some white paint splatter to create the snowy look.

The snowflakes are adhered using liquid glue and are die cut from the same Rustic White cardstock die cut using the Frosty Corners Die. I die cut the “Hello” word using the Written in Ribbons die set and stamped it using Brushed Corduroy and Ground Espresso Distress Oxide inks with the Written in Ribbons stamp set. I love the dimension that this two-step stamped image gives the card! The Written in Ribbons stamp set has a nice collection of companion sentiments to finish off the phrase you have planned to use, but for this card, I decided to use the Sentiment Suite: Thinking of You stamp set to accent the “hello” portion. This particular card is headed to someone who is going through Chemo right now, so I wanted the extra depth of the “thinking of you” sentiment.

Once it was stamped, I die cut it using the Sentiment Suite Basics die collection and then tucked it under the bottom wisp of the H in “hello”. The finishing touch is a sprinkling of chunky glitter to really enhance the snowy, winter vibe I was going for! Thanks so much for joining me today! I hope you’ll take some crafty time to capture some of the things you love about winter, too! Thanks for fluttering by!