A piercing glow

I made a quick card for the Less is More challenge on Saturday but piercing continued to occupy my mind and I had another idea, this time for a Christmas card. Come and have a look:

Stampin' Up do two styles of paper piercing templates, the Festive ones and the Essentials ones; they come in packs of three and both packs coordinate with lots of the punches and framelits. I've used the concentric circles on one of the Essentials templates for this card. They're designed to be used individually with the circle punches, but I love the look of all or several of the circles together (see another example here) and it made me think of the glow you get from a candle.

I've been using my Watercolour Wonder crayons with a blender pen lately (the cards will be posted soon!) and I thought the technique would work well for a flame. Can you guess how I cut the flame out? Yes, it's the wing from the 2 step bird punch! That punch will be making the tea next!

The candle is made using my Simply Scored and Stampin' Up's lovely thick vellum - I scored the candle shape, used my stylus on my squishy craft mat to 'colour it in' and make wax drips, and cut it out with my sharp paper snips. It's been in my mind since before last Christmas to see if this would work and I'm quite pleased with how it's turned out  - quite waxy-looking!

I grounded the candle with some pine branches, a gorgeous Cherry Cobbler seam binding bow, a sentiment tag and some fussy-cut holly. This probably isn't the most CAS card I've ever made but there's still plenty of breathing space so I'm hoping I'll get away with it!

Now, what's the date today? Yes, it's the 25th so that means it's Rudolph Day over at the lovely Sandra's blog and I can enter my Christmas card - how's that for planning?!

Here's what you'll need to make this card
Stamps: Beautiful Season, Lovely as a Tree, Petite Pairs
Ink: Always Artichoke, Gumball Green, Cherry Cobbler
Card stock: Very Vanilla, Vellum
Other: Essentials paper-piercing pack, Watercolour Wonder Crayons, blender pen, Real Red marker, Simply Scored, Cherry Cobbler seam binding, 2-step bird punch
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I can never look at a candle without thinking of the wonderful Two Ronnies Fork Handles sketch. One of the lovely things about having children is that you can share all your old favourite comedy moments with them and my daughter and I have just been doubled up over this one. Here it is for a bit of Monday morning viewing entertainment (well it beats hoovering!)



See you tomorrow,