Cedar and Pine Cross Canada Blog Hop

Welcome to our December Blog Hop featuring Cedar and Pine Creations. To purchase any of the items seen in our blog hop today, contact your local consultant to place an order. This is the second of our new catalog, with the new 2 month model. If  you like these (or last month's Holly Jolly) and haven't purchased enough yet, they are only available until the end of the month!

We hope that you will take the time to leave comments on our posts, as we love to get feedback from our viewers....whether it was something that you really liked or some new technique that was used that you would like to learn how to do....by leaving us comments, we get to hear what you like, and what you want to see. Thank you… now on to our hop


If you have just hopped onto my blog, you can start here as this is a circular hop, but if you want to follow us across Canada then please start at the beginning .... OH WAIT... We miss Michelle already.. too much pressure! So if you get lost along the way, go check in with Brandi, or keep clicking until you are back here again.

I definitely wanted to have some great layouts done since both holiday packs are phenomenal. However, I have been looking for jobs, ran a bunch of card and tag classes and well, actually want to get Christmas cards out to family and friends... I didn't get them mailed last year, so since they were all blank I donated them to the Sea Cadet unit I grew up in and there are bidding wars going on, which is a nice feeling.

Long story short, you get to see the window card I did for my "Fancy Card" Class for my more advanced (and patient) customers. There are too many amazing holiday stamp sets this year, so I combined 2: the Cedar and Pine Cardmaking with the amazeballs nutcracker, and Merry Christmas Tree. I have used both for several types of cards this year, with a ton of different colour combinations. I think the favorite trick I used was colouring with shimmer brushes, especially the black. It just adds a really subtle bit of shimmer, with such deep colour. I am a glitter fiend, but am working on "less is more" since no one wants a glitter lap when they open cards. I did add some bling around the window to bring focus to the tree. This card is 5 by 7 which is a little bigger than normal, but the space was needed.

Some tips and tricks for window and stamping placement.

• Put the paper on the front of your card first (you will have to add more glue around the window most likely, but trust the process). Don't put anything else on the front yet. 
• Stamp.the inside of the window, and then position your oval thin cut (with the cut part facing up) over top. I had people use some washi to grab the front of the card when it closed up, then added some more. If you are a craftaholic and have a magnetic plate, that would be super easy too. 
• Run it through your die cutting machine with the card open, depending on how thick the front is, you may have to do a few passes.
• Now you can finish adding to the rest of your card
• If you are better at erasing pencil than I am, you could definitely just cut the oval window, mark the widest points inside, then stamp but I tend to be too heavy handed. The stamp is just a tiny little bit bigger than the window, so you can't just stamp through it in this case. 

Your next stop on the Cross Canada Hop is the lovely Rosalynd at My Stamping Room

If you get lost along the way, you can head to Brandi's blog, as she has the complete blog list.


Thanks for hopping along with us - we hope we were able to inspire you to get creative using some of the designs, products and techniques seen along the way. We hope you will join us again next month when we will be featuring projects created using the coming soon "Spruced Up" Collection. So mark January 10th on your calendars and hop along with us.