Sweater Weather
Winter Wonderland Hop - Bonus
Good day, fellow crafters. Welcome to our Winter Wonderland Cardmaking Hop’s Bonus Week. Hosted by @kellysantidesigns ❄️each Wednesday in November we created cards with a winter theme. We had such a good time that we decided to have a bonus theme. This week for our final hop the design theme is Sweater Weather or Winter at the Beach. If this theme inspires your creativity, please use #winterwonderlandcardhop2023 so that we can see what you create, personally, I went with Sweater Weather.
The trend of "ugly sweaters" as a festive and humorous fashion statement gained prominence in the 1980s and has continued to grow in popularity since then. Initially, what started as a playful and ironic embrace of overly embellished, often gaudy, holiday-themed sweaters became a cultural phenomenon. Ugly Christmas sweater parties and events further fueled the trend, turning it into a lighthearted tradition during the holiday season.
The appeal of ugly sweaters lies in their kitschy designs, featuring elements like oversized snowflakes, reindeer, Christmas trees, and other whimsical symbols. The trend has evolved over the years, with people actively seeking out or creating their own unique and intentionally "ugly" sweaters as a form of self-expression and festive fun. I hope you enjoy my submission to this challenge.
To create this card, I began by working on the background. I opted for Gina K's Sweater Weather stencil, shown on the left, to convey a warm and cozy feeling. After securing the stencil onto red cardstock, I used Ranger’s Opaque Mat Texture Paste and a pallet knife to spread some paste across the stencil. Then after allowing a brief time to dry I carefully removed the stencil and cleaned it.
While the paste was drying I moved to creating the sentiment label. For this, I used some vellum, VersaMark embossing ink, WoW! embossing ink in Black, and the Colorado Craft Company Sweater Weather stamp set, featured below right. I placed the vellum sheet into my Misti Stamping Tool, aligned my stamp, inked it, and then stamped the image. I repeated this step a couple of times to make sure I had a clean and crisp image.
I then applied the embossing powder and heat-set it with my heat tool. I then set it aside so that I could assemble the card.
The last stage was assembly. I first decided to go with a non-standard-shaped focal point so cut the background panel in an oval shape using the Hero Arts Oval Infinity die set. I followed this up by cutting a gold metallic mat just a little larger and then adhering the two together with double-sided tape. I next trimmed the sentiment label to size and wrapped it around the composite. Lastly, I adhered the composite to a pre-cut and folded A2 black card base with double-sided tape as well. With that, I called the card complete.
Note: Please be aware that I don't have any sponsorship arrangements with the suppliers mentioned in this post; I simply appreciate and frequently use their products. To support the creation of more content like this, I've included affiliate links for some of the featured supplies. Utilizing these links won't incur any additional costs for you, but it does provide a small benefit to me, allowing me to continue sharing my work with you.
