My Time To Craft Inspirational Design
Christmas Food
Good day, fellow crafters. I am thrilled to introduce my inspirational submission for the My Time To Craft Challenge Blog, challenge #522, “Christmas Food” theme. It is once again nearly that time of year so we are challenging you to come up with a new and unique Christmas-themed card.
For every challenge we, as the design team, attempt to bring you themes and ideas that will test your abilities and, ideally, ignite your enthusiasm to explore fresh ways of thinking. However, what I like most about being part of the team is seeing how we each showcase our take on the theme and sometimes just what the card means to the creator.
I hope you are inspired to enter this challenge and I can’t wait to see your creative take on this week’s theme. Be sure to tag me on your entry and/or comment below so I know to watch out for you. Remember Crafting is Happiness!
In the spirit of the holiday season, we embark on a journey down memory lane, exploring the timeless tradition of crafting gingerbread men for Christmas. As we dust off our recipe cards and gather the familiar ingredients, there's a comforting sense of nostalgia that envelops us. The ritual of mixing flour, sugar, and spices takes us back to simpler times, evoking memories of cozy kitchens filled with the warm aroma of freshly baked treats. With this card, my design theme was to bring back the nostalgia of making those fresh-baked treats and cherished fragments of festive memories that have endured the test of time.
To create this card, I began with some brown cardstock that resembled closely the color of gingerbread dough as I remember it, the stamp set from Crafters Companion’s Gingerbread House set featured left, and Simon Hurly’s dye ink in the color called Grrr!. I placed my brown cardstock into my Misti stamping tool, aligned my gingerbread man, inked the stamp, and then stamped the image. I typically stamp the image at least twice to ensure full coverage. I then moved my stamp to different areas and each time repeated the previous inking and stamping process.
For the next step I really wanted to recreate how gingerbread cookies looked when I made them with my Grammie all those years ago. To do this I used a pallet knife and a small bit of Ranger’s Texture Paste to “icing” the hands and feet of each of the stamped gingerbread men. Then to give it just a bit of sparkle and shine I used a few shakes of Distress Rock Candy Crystal Clear Glitter over top of the wet texture paste. I then set the background panel aside and allowed for the paste to dry, for me this ended up to be overnight but you can speed up the process with a heat tool if you desire. In the meantime I created the sentiment band for the card. On a piece of vellum I stamped my sentiment, from the gingerbread house set, with clear embossing ink and then added and heat set a coppery brown embossing powder over the ink.
The next stage was the card assembly. I trimmed the background panel to its final dimensions as well as a darker brown mat for added visual appeal. Next, I trimmed to size and then wrapped the sentiment around the background panel and adhered it into place. Using double-sided tape along the edges of the background panel I adhered it to the mat. Lastly, I used the same color cardstock as the background panel for the card base and adhered the composite to it with double-sided tape. With that, I called the card complete.
Have a peak at the gallery below for a close up of the “icing”.
