My Favorite Things | Sparkling Lights Modern Christmas Card. Video

Hello, friends! The other week I started to pull out our Christmas decor and decorate our apartment. Nothing major, just a faux poinsettia here, some LED lights there and so on. The lights I have in my home have actually inspired me to try and create a “lights only” Christmas card. So today I have a video tutorial to share showing how to create a beautiful modern looking Christmas card with lots of gorgeous sparkling lights featuring Party Lights stamp set by My Favorite Things.

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VIDEO TUTORIAL

Watch the video below or on my Youtube channel.

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CARD DETAILS

I started to work on my card by placing the 3 strings of lights stamps onto a panel of teal cardstock. I wanted to heat emboss those in Brass embossing powder so I treated the panel with anti-static powder, spreading the powder evenly on the paper and next inked the stamps up with clear embossing ink. I planned to stamp these images twice to cover the entire card front, you can also overlap them to give them a tangled look. The light strings are long enough to be stamped on a landscape card and because these are 3 separate images you can easily customize your backgrounds and make them your own.

I’ve covered the panel with Brass embossing powder and heat set it to melt it. Next, I repeated the process and completed my background with these fun strings of lights. The light bulb images are separate in this stamp set allowing you to stamp them in different ink colors. You also have a die to cut the light bulbs out from various colors of cardstock which gives you a lot more options and flexibility when using this stamp set. I personally love sets that well designed and well thought out such as this one – it’s always a pleasure to use them for my card making.

With my background ready I added some ink blending. This darkened the edges of the cardstock but kept the center light creating a glowing illusion. It is a particularly fabulous trick for Christmas cards as it somehow adds a lot of warms to them.

I used dark blue ink for the ink blending and also some black just barely around the edges. If you don’t have colored cardstock like the one I am using here you can also heat emboss the light strings on white and simply ink blend the background using various colors of ink. I find it much easier to start with colored cardstock of the color that I like as this way I have to do significantly less ink blending.

I used the light bulb dies included in this set and die cut a bunch of colorful bulbs from glitter paper in various colors. I picked white, gold and red for my card, but I also tried using teal glitter paper and magenta just for fun to see how that would look.

I used my handy Crystal Katana tool to position all of the lights on the background. I tried to alternate colors to avoid having too many red or too many white lights. That seemed to have worked really well. Next, I used a bit of glue and adhered each onto the background.

While the glue was drying I heat embossed sentiment for this card using a message from the Bitty Holiday Wishes stamp set. I heat embossed it in the same Brass embossing powder on white cardstock.

Next, to add some glossy shine to each of the lights I added a generous coat of Nuvo Drops in Morning Dew. You can use any other similar product for this, such as Glossy Accents for example. I set the background aside to dry overnight and that finished my card! I had a blast making this custom Christmas lights background and I am looking forward to creating additional backgrounds like this in the future.

Have fun stamping!

SUPPLIES

I’m listing the products I used below. Click on the link to go directly to the product. Where available I use compensated affiliate links which means if you make a purchase I receive a small commission at no extra cost to you. Thank you so much for your support!

My Favorite Things Party Lights Clear Stamps and Dies Shop at: SSS	My Favorite Things Bitty Holiday Wishes Clear Stamps Shop at: SSS	Hero Arts Hero Hues Premium Cardstock Adriatic Shop at: SSS	Neenah 110 Lb Solar White Cardstock Shop at: SSS
Simon Says Stamp Cardstock Gold Glitter Shop at: SSS	Simon Says Stamp Cardstock White Glitter Shop at: SSS	Simon Says Stamp Cardstock Crimson Glitter Shop at: SSS	Hero Arts Navy Ink Pad Shop at: SSS
Mini Misti Stamping Tool Shop at: SSS	Nuvo – Clear Mark Embossing Pad Shop at: SSS	Hero Arts Black Ink Pad Shop at: SSS	Hero Arts Heat Embossing Gun Shop at: SSS
EK Success Powder Tool Applicator Shop at: SSS	Hero Arts Brass Embossing Powder Shop at: SSS	FSJ Bloom Palette Paint Palette (2 Pack) Shop at:	Ranger Mini Round Ink Blending Tools Shop at: SSS
Spellbinders Circle Replacement Foam Shop at: SSS	Spellbinders Deep Sea Die Cutting Machine Shop at: SSS	Tonic Morning Dew Nuvo Crystal Drops Shop at: SSS	Crystal Ninja Crystal Katana Pick Up Tool Shop at: SSS
Simon Says Stamp Craft Tacky Glue Shop at: SSS	White Foam Squares Shop at: SSS	Scor-Tape 1/8 Inch Crafting Tape Shop at: SSS	Journey Craft Glue Shop at: