Merry Mug & Circle Delights Holiday Cards & Ornaments with Rachel Alvarado

Hello crafty friends! It’s Rachel Alvarado from RachelAlvaradoDesigns.com. I have some fun holiday-themed cards and ornaments to share with you today featuring items from the adorable new Merry Mug & Circle Delights Collection designed by Nichol Spohr.

Festive Ornaments and Gift Tags

I absolutely love this entire collection! These cute little ornaments/tags don’t necessarily have to be used for holidays only, but rather can be used for any time of the year depending on how you decorate them! If you don’t want to use them as an ornament, you can use them as gift tags or as stationary designs on your card fronts.

To create my ornaments/tags, I die-cut my pieces using dies from the Festive Ornaments, Whimsical Winter Critters, and Santa’s Festive Circle Crew Etched Die Sets.  I then pieced all my cute little critters together with liquid adhesive using a variety of Spellbinders Paper Art’s card stock (colors listed at the bottom of this post).  I also used a Sakura Gelly Roll Pen size 10 to add some white gel accents to give my characters more life.

Gingerbread Wishes

For my second project, I made an A6-sized card (4.5” x 6.25”) featuring a cute little gingerbread duo that I had die-cut using the new Santa’s Festive Circle Crew Etched Dies.  I blended some Salvaged Patina Distress Oxide Ink onto my top panel of smooth white card stock and then layered my card background with some Waterfall Card Stock.  Prior to adding my images with some 3D foam adhesive squares, I stamped my sentiment from the Santa’s Sippin’ Sayings Clear Stamp Set with some Memento Tuxedo Black Ink.

I die-cut both of my gingerbread faces from some Kraft card stock and lightly blended the perimeter of my circles with some Gathered Twigs Distress Ink to add some subtle shading.  For my cheeks, I die-cut some pieces of Pink Sand Card Stock using the larger circle dies that come with Santa’s Festive Circle Crew Etched Dies instead of the smaller one.

Happy Holiday Wishes from Santa

For my third project, I used the Festive Ornaments Etched Die Set to die to create a simple Santa-themed A2 sized card showcasing a Santa-themed ornament sitting in some snow. For the snow area, I simply trimmed a piece of white card stock to 3.75” x 3” and used some scissors to fussy cut my snow drift.  I also added some holly and berries to the top of my ornament that I had die cut from some Neenah Solar White 110lb Card Stock and colored with yellow-green Copic Markers (YG01, YG05, YG17, YG67).

I layered my ornament and snow on top of a 3.75” x 5” piece of Kraft Card Stock.  To finish my card, I added a few snowflakes that I had die cut from white card stock using the snowflake die that is included in the Merry Mug Creations Die Set.

Merry Mugs That Warm the Heart

For my final project, I created a holiday-themed card featuring the cute little mugs from the Merry Mugs Creations Etched Die Set.  I once again created an A6 (4.5”x 6.25”) standard-sized card so that I could fit two different mugs onto my card front without overlapping too much.

I used a blend of teal and red Spellbinders card stock pieces to create my mugs and blended my background with some Peacock Feathers and Tumbled Glass Distress Oxide Inks.  Once again, I stamped my sentiment onto my card front prior to adding my images.  All my images were added with some 3D foam adhesive tape for a pop of dimension. Thank you so much for taking the time to stop by and check out my projects today!  Wishing you all a lovely day! If you liked these cards and want some more inspiration, feel free to check out my INSTAGRAM page. Rachel

Other supplies

Kraft Card Stock, Memento Tuxedo Black Ink, Salvaged Patina Distress Ink, Peacock Feathers Distress Ink