Christmas cards - sanded snowflakes

Spent another wonderful morning with a great bunch of ladies making Christmas cards!!

I love the look of these snowflakes - a bit shabby chic!! The look is the result of sanding embossed white core cardstock!! For these cards I thermally embossed a greeting in the top section of the cardstock layer and dry embossed the bottom section using a snowflake embossing folder (CB). Just a bit of sanding removes the printed colour to reveal the white below. Less sanding gives a more subtle look and a bit more reveals more of the white core and gives a more pronounced look!! For sanding, I used a piece of fine sandpaper over a wood block but you can use what you have.

To the sanded layer I added a snowflake border (MS) in white. a coordinating ribbon and adhered a snowflake confetti using a brad. This whole element was then glued to my card front. It was fun to create these in different colours but that left me wanting snowflakes in colours which I did not have on hand so I altered white snowflake confetti to coordinate with my cardstock by applying ink to them using my Sharpie markers and using a cotton swab dampened with alcohol to blend and/or dilute the colour. Worked perfectly!! You could use Copic markers or alcohol inks in a similar way.

THRIFTY TIP: You can make your own white core cardstock by simply painting a quarter sheet of white cardstock with acrylic paint and letting it dry thoroughly!! The great thing about making your own is that you can make it any colour you want and it is also cost effective!! You can check out my double embossed backgrounds here where I used the above technique for creating white core cardstock.

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