Special Delivery Santa Mail

As much as I look forward to the release of each month's new My Monthly Hero kit, I'm equally anxious to see the month's optional add-on products. I think that this month's set of Tag Frames Infinity Dies is a wonderful collection of decorative shaped dies that I'll be using again and again, throughout the year, to create sentiment or background panels, shaker windows, and gift tags in many sizes. I also love the assortment of delightful sentiment stamps in the new Holiday Labels set for creating fun, seasonal cards and tags. I've used both of these new sets to create the pair of "jolly" holiday cards that I'm sharing today.

For my first card, I repeatedly stamped one sentiment from the Holiday Labels set, with Pale Tomato ink, across a panel of white cardstock, periodically changing the direction of the sentiment as I stamped. I matted the stamped panel with pine cardstock and then secured the panel to a gray card base with foam tape. Next, I die cut three, decorative labels with one of the Tag Frames Infinity Dies from pine and grass cardstock. After embossing different sentiments from the Holiday Labels set onto each die cut, I trimmed the outer edges from the left and right labels and then secured all three of the labels across the card with foam tape.

I stamped two additional sentiments from the Holiday Labels set, with Pine and Green Hills inks, on white cardstock. I used a Circle Infinity Die to trim around the circular sentiment and then secured them both, to the top right corner of the card, with foam tape. Then, to finish the card, I added a baby penguin (be sure to check out Yana's fabulous Color Layering Baby Penguin video from yesterday), stamped with the Ink & Emboss Penguin set, and a trio of small, black pearls.

For my second card, I created many of the same elements that I did on my first card, I simply used them differently. This time, I used the largest Tag Frames Infinity Die to cut a shaped tag from the stamped background panel. I secured the tag, with foam tape, to a divided pine and punch background that I previously secured to a gray card base, also with foam tape. To enhance the appearance of a tag, I added a black bow to the top.

Next, I secured three of the embossed and stamped sentiment labels around the edges of the tag and then added a baby penguin at the tag's center, slightly overlapping each sentiment to create an interesting and happy cluster of holiday cheer! I added a final sentiment strip below the decorated tag and then finished the card similarly with three black pearls.

Wishing you a wonderful and crafty week,