Simon Says Stamp | Mass Producing Last Minute Christmas Cards. Video

Hello and welcome back for another Yippee For Yana video! In this video, I’m talking about mass producing last-minute Christmas cards.

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VIDEO TUTORIAL

Watch the video below or on my Youtube channel.

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CARD DETAILS

I often like to test stamp my card designs on a piece of scrap paper and I did that for these cards. I stamped 2 different designs using identical products. One has less stamping, and the other one requires a bit more stamping. Probably twice as much. If you are pressed for time, you can pick the design with a single poinsettia and you’ll be able to stamp that much faster and make twice as many cards versus stamping the design with 2 poinsettias.

With design selected I moved onto selecting the paper I wanted to do my stamping on. I knew I’d stamp the majority of my cards on white cardstock. I like to use Simon’s 120lb or 130lb cardstock, but I also love to stamp on colored cardstock so I picked several very light colored cardstock sheets from my stash (see supply list below). You need to go with light colors, because your stamping won’t be visible or as prominent on dark colors of cardstock.

The next step is to set up your MISTI or whatever other stamping tool you have. The key to quick stamping here is of course using a stamping tool as that will allow you to stamp a bunch of identical panels in very little time.

Having placed my blank panel inside the MISTI I then place the test stamped design on top and I used that as a guide. I already have this beautiful design all figured out, I don’t need to re-invent it, I can use it as an exact guide for image placement. So I placed the stamps over it and aligned the stamps over the previously made impressions.

From there, I stamped away. If you plan to make say 20 cards, I would stamp a few additional panels just in case, as you might mess up some during the process (I messed 2 of my panels up). The stamps I picked are from Simon – the sentiment comes from the Inside Christmas Greetings set and the poinsettia comes from the Happy Poinsettia set.

My cards consist of only stamping. I don’t have any die cutting, there’s no foiling, no embossing, no anything else, just simple beautiful solid stamping.

The poinsettia stamp set has coordinating dies and I have shared another card on my blog where I used the dies to step my design up. For mass producing cards, and especially for cards that I plan to mail I prefer to keep them simpler, I prefer to eliminate the extra steps, if possible, such as die cutting in this case and I prefer to keep the number of layers to a minimum, most of these cards are one layer with just a handful being 2 layer cards.

The design of the poinsettia allows you to nestle the leaves in between the petals or the leaves of the poinsettia, so you don’t need to do any masking or to die-cut the elements to create a beautiful design.

Stamping on colored cardstock will give you slightly different results, the colors of ink will look different, but this gives you more options while still using the same card design. I particularly liked stamping this on gray and also on blue because this allowed me later, to use a white pen to add white accents to my cards.

To assemble the cards I used different approaches. The panels with the single poinsettias were trimmed 1/4” from each side and I foam mounted them onto A2 whit3 card bases. I used a white pen and added some snow accents to the cards stamped on colored backgrounds and added white dot highlights to the berries on each card.

The designs with the 2 poinsettias were adhered onto A2 card bases as is, I didn’t trim them. If you have extra panels by the time you are finished making your cards you can add an element of 3D decoupage to them. You need 2 identical panels – adhere one directly onto the card base, next trim the other one down about 1/4” on each side and foam mount on top This gives a beautiful dimension and a continuous design on your card front.

Lastly, you can add some gems – I decided to use gems for the poinsettia centers and I adhered gems in various sizes to create the irregular centers for my flowers.

Have fun stamping and Merry Christmas!

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!

Simon Says Clear Stamps Happy Poinsettia Shop at: SSS	Simon Says Clear Stamps Inside Christmas Greetings Shop at: SSS	Simon Says Stamp White A2 Top Fold Scored Cards Shop at: SSS	Simon Says Stamp White Cardstock 120LB Shop at: SSS
Simon Says Stamp Mega Thick White Cardstock 130LB Shop at: SSS	Simon Says Stamp Sea Glass Cardstock Shop at: SSS	Simon Says Stamp Fog Gray Cardstock Shop at: SSS	Simon Says Stamp Cream Off White Cardstock Shop at: SSS
Tonic Onyx Black Pearlescent Cardstock Shop at: SSS	Mini MISTI Stamping Tool Shop at: SSS	MISTI Stamping Tool Shop at: SSS	Simon Says Stamp Dusty Sage Dye Ink Pad Shop at: SSS
Simon Says Stamp Magnolia Dye Ink Pad Shop at: SSS	Simon Says Stamp Khaki Ink Pad Shop at: SSS	Simon Says Stamp Lipstick Red Ink Pad Shop at: SSS	Spellbinders Red Mix Color Essentials Gems Shop at: SSS
Simon Says Stamp Watermelon Dye Ink Pad Shop at: SSS	Spellbinders Gold Mix Color Essential Gems Shop at: SSS	Spellbinders Crystal Mix Color Essential Gems Shop at: SSS	Sakura Classic White Gelly Roll Pens Set of 3 Shop at: SSS
Spellbinders Jane Davenport Snow Queen Story Time Paint Pen Shop at: SSS