Merry Christmas!

Wishing everyone who is celebrating a calm and peaceful Christmas Eve, followed by the happiest of holidays! This card features a wreath sporting Eyelet Outlet Poinsettia and Holly Brads, and is set on a background of beautiful Holiday Garland Washi Tape.

Shopping List:

Poinsetti Brads

Holly Brads

Holiday Garland Washi Tape.

Wishing you a very Merry Christmas from everyone at Eyelet Outlet!

♥♥♥

Ornamental Mandala Monday

'Twas the Mandala Monday before Christmas, and thus it seems the perfect time for Dylusions Dyamond Boards... )Small Trees and Small Stars, to be exact) ...zen-doodled with my Letter It Fineliners, o'course! These are going to be tags on a few holiday presents; there is a possibility I will add a bit of color first, but I want to see them next to the wrapped gifts before deciding. 

In the meantime, I hope your Week Before Christmas is off to a productive and stress-free start! ♥

TREE-mendous

Christmas trees are always colorful, but their foliage is usually only available in green. Which is fine in real life, but in art life, we might like to consider a few additional options. Luckily I have a nice palette of Ranger's Perfect Pearls, which, when mixed with a bit of water become the loveliest, sparkliest sheer watercolor paints you can imagine.

These trees were inspired by an Instagram post by @andrea.nelson.art in which she painted a piece of watercolor paper with streaky colors; then added some gold acrylic. After the sheet was dry, she hand-cut triangle trees, circle ornaments and funky letters. 

I followed her lead, but used my Perfect Pearls as the paints. (Note, when mixed with water, you don't need to use Perfect Medium and the PPs do not need to be "set" afterward!) Since I knew I wanted to make a bunch, my trees are slightly larger and diecut with Memory Box's Marvelous Pine die. (It's retired... sorry ...but literally ANY tree die; or the aforementioned handcut triangles, will work really well.)

I went with four colorways: Pink (obviously!), Purple, Blue and ok yeah Green is admittedly a nice color for trees, so why not? I used multiple shades of each color and painted them in random stripey swooshes. I initially left a bit of white on each panel so that, when the colors were dry, I could come back in with Perfect Gold. (You can add the gold while your colors are wet, but I felt it stood out more when done as a separate step.) 

After all the panels were dry, I did the diecutting; and now they are ready to be used in... a couple of very cut projects I will show you later this week! ;)

PS: If you haven't seen @andrea.nelson.art in action, I insist you hop over and check out a post or two. In addition to being a fantastic artist (and a very good teacher!) she's a sunny, bubbly, sparkly person and her videos are fast, fun, colorful and inspiring. (Warning: there's a pretty good chance you'll get hooked on watercolor and want to make EVERYTHING she demos ASAP, so plan accordingly lol!)

Surfin' Santa

Santa's taking a break from all the holiday prep to enjoy a bit of surfing, and maybe a few treats, too.  Santa's tropical island has am Eyelet Outlet Tall Palm Tree Brad behind a Sandcastle; and Santa's brought a Candy Cane Brad along, just in case he needs extra energy. The background features Gingerbread Washi and Ho Ho Ho Tape, adorned with Gingerbread and Peppermint Candy Brads. Surf's up!

Surfin' Santa's Shopping List:

Tall Palm Tree Brads

Sandcastle Brads

Candy Cane Brads

Gingerbread Brads

Peppermint Candy Brads

Gingerbread Washi

Ho Ho Ho Tape

The Eyelet Outlet Store has all the embellishments you (and Santa!) need for fabulous holiday cards and decor!

SOS563: My Sweet Embossable You

This fortnight at Shopping Our Stash we'd like to see cards and projects that feature pressure embossing, heat embossing or both. The can be any size, shape, theme or color, just make sure they've got a bit of whatever sort of embossing you like!

I couldn't decide which kind of embossing to do, so I compromised by doing both! I stamped Wendy Vecchi's Perfect Plaid with Ranger's clear Emboss It Ink, sprinkled on their White Embossing Powder, and then blended some of my favorite green Distress Oxide shades (Twisted Citron, Cracked Pistachio and Evergreen Bough) in a sort of mirror-image ombre effect. I used Wendy's Flowers and Foliage 3D Embossing Folder (it's on sale at Spellbinders!) then tore a section to put on top. Since I had everything out for heat embossing, I embossed the big floral bouquet from the Garden Party Stamp, Die and Stencil set and colored it with coordinating (Spun Sugar, Kitsch Flamingo and Picked Raspberry) Oxides.

SOS563: My Sweet Embossable You runs until the evening of Monday, December 29th. Hop over to Shopping Our Stash to see what the rest of the Crew have made and to link up your own Embossed creation!

More Modrian Mandala Monday

Probably the last Mondrian Mandala Monday of 2025, so once again I'd like to thank Becca Sadler for coming up with her brilliant Mondrian Monday Journal Page thread... and not minding when I hijacked it from time to time with my own mandala-centric version! ♥

Bookmarks!

Sometimes I wonder if I like making bookmarks because it's an excuse to give books as gifts... or if I like giving books because it's an excuse to make bookmarks. But since both are true, I suppose it doesn't matter, lol.

I've made A LOT of bookmarks in the last few years, a fact which is mysteriously somehow NOT apparent by clicking the BOOKMARKS label in my blog, but there are a couple of goods ones there, made from stamping, collage or washi tape. Collaged bookmarks miiiiiight be my favorite, though, so that's what I used on these. Often I just put a plain piece of paper on the back, but these happen to be double-sided, because, as usual, I had gotten out and fussycut waaaaaaaay too many images and it seemed a pity not to use them.

I'm taking a tiny bit of extra pride in the fact that the bits of vintage map I used happen to feature places near where the two recipients have lived. Also, I broke out my vintage bus tickets and my greenstamps... both of which make any collage even better, imo!