Hi everyone! Welcome to the last stop on the Stamp of Approval Holiday Magic Blog Hop! You should have came from Danielle’s (for Neat & Tangled) blog (the full lineup is at the end of the post).
When Catherine asked me to design a set with holly and flourishes in it, I came up with Holiday Flourishes. It’s such a versatile set with solid and outline images of holly leaves and berries. I also included some vintage looking flourishes and whimsical dotty flourishes in the design.
For today’s fabulous hop, I created two cards using this set. I stuck with nontraditional holiday colors (for some reason I can’t stick to the traditional red and green).
For this card, I stamped the images in black pigment ink and heat embossed them with clear embossing powder. Then I heat embossed the sentiment with gold glitter embossing powder.
It’s a graphic looking card but I really liked it because this was the image I showed Catherine when I was playing with designs (and she totally loved it!). So I wanted to go back and recreate it in a card. I finished off the card with some gold glitter washi tape at the top and bottom edges.
My next card is very clean and simple but I wanted to experiment and create grayish holly leaves. I started out by stamping the leaves and then I stamped the coordinating outline images of each leaf over the solid leaves with versa mark ink (they’re a perfect fit over each other). I heat embossed the outlines with metallic silver embossing powder. Lastly, I stamped the sentiment in a light gray pigment ink.
I heat embossed the solid berries with red glitter embossing powder (I LOVE glitter), fussy cut them and popped them up over the center of the leaves to give the card just a little bit of depth. To finish up the card I added some silver glitter washi tape to the edges of the navy card base.
If this is the first time you’re hearing about Stamp of Approval, it’s a limited and exclusive collection of custom designed products for Catherine Pooler created for her by some of her friends in the stamping industry. The first box sold out quickly so if you like what you’ve been seeing today, make sure you sign up for the wait list to get first notice of the sales link!
Two lucky/random people will have the chance to win one of these boxes and they’ll be chosen by the comments left in the blogs.
Here is the full order of the hop:
- Catherine Pooler
- Maureen Merritt
- Kristie Goulet
- Heather North
- Allison Cope
- Isha Gupta
- Laurel Beard
- Lisa Harrolle
- Kay Miller
- Jessica Frost-Ballas
- Lydia Evans
- Vanessa Mehorn
- Kelly Griglione
- Heather Pulvirenti
- Danielle Walls
- Effie Cho <—- You’re here!
I hope you all enjoyed the hop! Thank you for stopping by!
-Effie
The Season 
So pretty! The flourishes almost look like a flower. I love the clean and simple card too.
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While I really like both cards, I can’t stop looking at the first one. Very elegant!
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beautiful cards…
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Absolutely gorgeous! Love the scroll stamps and nice dies.
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SO excited to get my collection. All of the inspiration on this blog hop has been absolutely stunning!
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The top card with the black and gold is awesome. I love how it turned out. Glad you did not stick with traditional colors.
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Beautiful cards! I love your idea of embossing the outline stamp of the holly leaves – so clever!
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The black and white is so elegant looking and unexpected for a Christmas card. Genius!
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Really love the cards flack and gold card is great.
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I love the clean and simple look, it makes it look so elegant. Hugs Jane
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Thank you for the reminder to use washi tape this way! Gray…I don’t think I would have thought to use…..will have to try. I love navy and gray or silver together. If the images on your first card could speak, I think they’d say, ” Dance! Come dance with me!” I love your positioning of the flourishes and dots. What a joyful card!!!
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Love seeing these stamps used with non-traditional colors. Both of them are beautiful.
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Love your take on this! As always so elegant!
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Absolutely love the elegant look of your cards. They may be different or should I say not traditional “Christmas colors or perhaps a little out of the box (no pun intended), but they are stunning, classy and awesome!!! TFS something totally different with us. Love it!!!
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Oh my, that first card looks amazing! No wonder Catherine loved it.
Cannot wait for my box to arrive…
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Beautiful placement on the first card.
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Love the clean feeling of the cards! The glitter then really makes them sparkly and festive!
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Beautiful. I love blog hops, so much inspiration all around.
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Thank you for sharing your beautiful cards. I am especially drawn to the first card; it is so elegant and dramatic.
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