Apple Cider Holiday

As you may have already heard, Stampin' Up! is cooking up an awesome special for us in November. If ever there was a time to splurge on our awesome designer papers, next month is it! That's because in November you will get a free pack of designer paper for every three you buy. Totally awesome!

I use Stampin' Up! designer papers in my cards and scrapbooks all the time. I love that the colors of the designer papers match the colors of our card stock, so that I don't have to think about what will go with what. I also love that very often the designs coordinate with one or more of our stamp sets, taking even more guesswork out of paper crafting. And the fact that the paper is double sided is awesome too, because there are so many different ways to take advantage of both sides.

In honor of the upcoming double sided designer paper sale, the theme for my techniques classes in November will be "Double Your Pleasure" and we will explore different ways to incorporate the double sided paper into cards and scrapbooks. I have so many ideas for projects for this topic that I almost don't know where to start. So tonight I decided to get a little daring and step out of my comfort zone.


I started with a piece of apple cider double sided designer paper from the holiday mini. I love the really rust and river rock design because it looks really rich and sophisticated, but I also like the reverse side print of river rock and very vanilla. And I love the way the two go together.

To showcase both sides of the paper I started with a square and used my coluzzle system to cut out a circle. I rounded the corners of the square mat and adhered it to a slightly larger mat of really rust card stock. I rounded the corners of the mat and adhered the circle I previously cut out in the center of the designer paper mat, but with the opposite side facing up.

For the center of this really cool mat I decided to use a star made out of the same designer paper. The star design came from the holiday issue of papercrafts magazine last year. it took me a year, but I finally found a way to use this pattern - LOL!

I attached the star to the card by using snail at every point of the slightly flattened star. Even though the star is flattened, as you can see in the second photo it is by no means flat. In fact, while this card will fit in a regular envelope you would definitely need extra postage to mail it and I would be very concerned about the star getting squished. I guess this is really a card you hand deliver!

I finished the card off with the Holiday Greetings sentiment form Sincere Salutations. Even though the colors of the card are not traditional Christmas colors, the star just said Christmas to me. But, of course, there is no reason whatsoever why this card could not be used for Thanksgiving, birthday or any other occasion.