Christmas Accordion

I think one of the first Karen Burniston dies I ever bought was the Fancy Label Accordion, and it has remained one of my favorites.  It has been so hot this summer that I thought a nice chilly Christmas card would be a change of pace.  Of course, I make Christmas cards all year round.

I added the snowflakes frame from the Fancy Winter Frames and used the individual houses from the House Pivot Panel to create my little winter village, adding the Merry Christmas sentiment to the second and third panels.  What I like about the Fancy Label Accordion (in fact, ALL of Karen's accordion sets) is that you can make your card as long as you want.

Thanks for stopping by today, and I hope you'll come back again.

Birthday Cupcakes

I haven't used the Charm Accordion die set from Karen Burniston for quite a while and figured it was time to bring it out again.  Karen has several new "add-on" dies in her latest release, one of which was the Cupcake Add-on.  These were made specifically to use with the Landscape Rectangle Accordion, but her dies are so clever that you can use them with others as well.

In this case, I actually cut the background piece apart and mounted the cupcakes on the individual pieces.  Also in the latest release were those cute Baking Charms which appear on the small panels at the top.

The Charm Accordion die actually cuts a card 3 1/4" x 4 1/4" when closed.  But, if you use the narrow Sizzix Strip Cutting Plate, it's possible just to cut the square holes without cutting off the bottom of the card base.

I cut two of these and hinged them together to get my 4-panel card.  I added the Baking Charms to the square panels and the charm holders and charms from the set between the panels, hanging them with metal jump rings.

Sometimes it's fun to use a die set in a completely different way.  Little hint:  next month I will have another card using another die set in a way not originally designed.  I hope you'll stop by and see what I did on that card.

Karen Burniston Designer Challenge

This month's challenge to the Karen Burniston Design Team was a little different.  Karen generously provided each team member with two 12 x 12 pads of patterned paper at the same time that the newly released dies were sent to us.  Our challenge for July was to use paper from one of the pads along with one of the new dies to create a card.

One of the pads I received was this Echo Park summer-themed paper, which contains 12 double-sided sheets of colorful summer designs and a sheet of coordinating stickers.

I used several pieces of the paper as well as some of the stickers along with my favorite die set from June's release -- the House of Cards -- to create my card.

For the front of my card, I used the Rectangles and Labels Crosshatch to create my frame for the sentiment, which was created using several different Word Sets and a sticker from the paper pad.  The sun at the bottom is actually one of the dies from the new Small Scenes Bam Box.  The background paper is one of the bold papers from the paper pad.

On the inside is that cool house of cards.  I used 110# cardstock to create the solid-color cards and back-to-back patterned paper for the other ones.  I placed stickers from the paper pad on the solid-color cards and on the card base itself.

I think my daughter will claim this card.  She grabs up almost every beach-related card I create!