Hi friends! It's Angela here with some inspiration for your holiday cardmaking. This year I've started working on my holiday card stash much earlier than usual, and the Pinkfresh Studio holiday release last month made that very easy to get excited about! The card I'm sharing today is a stenciled design, and if you tend to find that your stenciled cards look to flat, I'll show you how you can use them and achieve plenty of dimension.

For this card, I tackled my background first. I selected the Wintry Forest layering stencil set, along with a cool-toned palette of Pinkfresh inks in Storm, Slumber and Soft Lilac. Working from the trees in the back to those in the front, I increased the intensity of the ink in the foreground, just like it would be if you were looking at trees up close and comparing to ones further away. Even though still on a single layer of cardstock, this helped to add visual depth to the scene.

I stopped blending ink just before the last stencil, which is the most detailed layer. Here, I created texture by using a palette knife to apply an even layer of embossing paste over the stencil. I could have stopped with just the embossing paste, letting it dry to create the snowy tree effect. However, I wanted to add glitter so that when the card moved, it would have some sparkle. To do this I used sparkling clear embossing powder, pouring it over the embossing paste and tapping off the excess. In the past I've found that waiting until the embossing paste is completely dry to heat set the powder seems to be more ideal for achieving a smooth texture. However, in this case, I think you could absolutely heat set the embossing powder before since the bumpiness also looks realistic. If embossing paste isn't your thing, don't worry - you can still achieve a more mildly-textured sparkly effect with white glitter embossing powder.

While the paste was drying, I rinsed my stencils and moved on to the rest of the card. Using one of the dies from the Essentials Diagonal Stitched Circles Die Set, I cut a circle to adhere my sentiment against, as well as a vellum one to layer behind. I wanted the card to say 'sending joy', so I searched through all my Pinkfresh stamp sets to find a 'sending' in just the right size. Luckily, I found it in the Blossoms and Berries Stamp Set! I snipped it from a longer sentiment, and by combining it with the word 'joy' Heather's Lower Case and Lea's Ornate Lower Case die sets, I had my own "new" sentiment. Yes, I cut the stamp, and I used to be very hesitant to do so in the past. But the thing is that it opens up so many more possibilities for creating new greetings, and I'm always looking for ways to stretch my supplies, aren't you?

Knowing that my sparkly snow-capped Wintry Forest would be the background of my card, I created a thick white frame to go on top and backed it with foam tape. It created a nice shadow box-like effect, and I also backed the sentiment circle forward with foam tape so that it popped as a focal point.

To recap, there are a number of ways you can add dimension, texture and depth to your cards. Varying ink intensity, adding frames, and incorporating supplies like foam tape, embossing pastes and powders are just a few ways of doing so. I hope you'll give them a try, and in the meantime, have a fantastic day! - Angela