🎄 Heart of Christmas - Week 8

 Welcome to Week 8 of our Annual Heart of Christmas Blog Hop! A group of creative friends from the Art With Heart team are back sharing Christmas inspiration every Monday night through until the end of November. We hope you enjoy following along and finding plenty of festive inspiration for your Christmas crafting.

For this week's project, I've created a fun Christmas card featuring a pop-out element at the bottom of the design. I couldn't resist using the adorable A Little Christmas Suite Collection, and I decided to step away from traditional Christmas colours by combining Barely Blush, Misty Moonlight, and Cherry Cobbler for a softer festive palette.

The card is slightly larger than our standard card size, so it will require a 160mm x 160mm square envelope. I always keep envelopes from cards I've received and love finding ways to upcycle them. If my name is already on the envelope, I'll simply decorate over it and give it a new life!

The card base is Barely Blush, layered with one of the beautiful scenic images from the A Little Christmas Designer Series Paper. This cosy fireplace scene immediately caught my eye and became the focal point for the entire design.

To create the interactive feature, I constructed a cylinder-style pop-out box along the bottom of the card and covered it with coordinating DSP. This allowed me to attach the festive mice and bubbles, creating a playful dimensional scene. The best part is that the card folds completely flat for posting, although I must admit I'm very tempted to keep it as a Christmas decoration!

The mice were coloured with Stampin' Blends 400, 500 and 600, with Barely Blush added to their ears, feet and tails. I also added a touch of Gold Foil for the star, along with the Multicolor Christmas Baker's Twine and Christmas Epoxy Shapes from the suite.

Several elements were fussy cut directly from the Designer Series Paper, including the mouse carrying the Christmas lights, the bubbles and the little bubble box. One of my favourite features of the coordinating dies is how they cut around the mice's paws, making it easy to tuck images behind them so they appear to be carrying them. It's such a clever detail!

The Christmas tree was die cut from Two-Tone Garden Green Cardstock. I used the lighter side to help it stand out against the darker background scene. The present, bubbles that the mice are holding and Santa hat were coloured with Misty Moonlight, Cherry Cobbler and Barely Blush Stampin' Blends.

To finish the card, I added some festive sparkle with Golden Glow Shimmer Mist and Wink of Stella on the bubbles, Santa hat and presents. Unfortunately, the shimmer is difficult to capture in photographs, but it adds a beautiful touch in real life.

📸Photos

Full card.

Close-up of the back scene featuring the Designer Series Paper.

 Side angle showing the pop-out box mechanism and dimensional elements.

Back of the card with space to write your Christmas message.

I hope this project inspires you to step outside traditional Christmas colours and try something a little different. Interactive cards are always fun to create and even more fun to receive!

Happy Stamping,
Hx 🧡

Measurements

Card Base (Barely Blush)
140mm x 153mm

Pop-Out Box Cylinder

(Barely Blush – I ran low on Barely Blush and substituted Very Vanilla where it would be covered)

140mm x _____mm
Score at 10mm and 30mm

Pop-Out Strips

(Barely Blush – Very Vanilla can be substituted where hidden)

• 20mm x 138mm, score at 10mm, 50mm, 88mm, 128mm
• 20mm x 108mm, score at 10mm, 35mm, 73mm, 98mm
• 20mm x 118mm, score at 10mm, 40mm, 78mm, 108mm

Designer Series Paper

• Fireplace scene: 133mm x 108mm
• Present strip: 140mm x 38mm
• Small pop-out present strip: 20mm x 38mm

Additional Supplies

• Scraps of Basic White
• Garden Green Two-Tone Cardstock
• Barely Blush Cardstock
• Cherry Cobbler Cardstock
• Gold Foil

🔗 Next Up

Next up we are visiting Judy May to see what she has created this week.

Click here to visit Judy's blog, or simply click on the next-blog graphic below.

If you happen to get lost along the way, head over to Judy May's blog, where you'll find the complete list of participants for this week's Heart of Christmas hop.

Be sure to continue around the hop and enjoy all the wonderful Christmas inspiration from our talented Art With Heart team members! 🎄✨