Christmas Stained Glass Window

I do love a cute Christmas card, but for some of my older recipients, I like to have some more classic and traditional cards to send too.  I thought the new Window Die from Reverse Confetti fell perfectly into this category so I've dug out my alcohol inks and given it a stained glass twist.

I don't play with alcohol inks often so I am not an expert but I wanted a clear glass feel, so I thought an easy way to get lots of colour without it all mixing would be to emboss some acetate and fill the indents with colour.  The folder I used is one from my stash but there are a lot of suitable "small patterns" in the recent releases from Altenew so if you don't have a suitable folder, check out the embossing folders here https://sevenhillscrafts.co.uk/brands/altenew.html?product_type=86

Once my acetate was embossed, I drew around the outside of the die so I knew where to put my colour and started with a line of purple in the middle - I tried to just drop the colour in - it ran everywhere!  So, in the end I used a very fine paintbrush to loosely paint the colour into each diamond.  I then just worked out in rows of colour on either side using pink, dark purple, and teal but you could go wild and you could do lots of different pattern building if you didn't want lines of colour - the possibilities are endless really.

I die cut the window die twice from grey card and roughly trimmed the acetate to shape before sandwiching between the two die cuts.

To create the base, I used The Greetery's Brick Layer die with my embossing mat so it didn't cut but just left an impression in my cardstock to make it look like the outside of a church - I used the two dies in differnt places and turned them - to get a diverse look.

To complete the card I opted to use the lush new foil and die cut sentiment pair - the scripty font on Christmas is just beautiful.  I foiled it with navy foil and cut it with the matching die.  The sentiment would pair brilliantly with the new Christmas sentiment stamp from Reverse Confetti, but that didn't work on my card.  I couldn't decide if I liked it as it was, or if it needed more to make the sentiment so I tried some different merries before or wishes after, in the end I decided to go with a foiled alphabet die cut around the top of the window but took photos before and after to see what you prefer - with our without????

If you don't have a hot foil machine, then you can still add foiled elements to your projects with the simple use of a glue pen - this is how I foiled the die cut letters.   Simply take a zig two-way glue pen, coat your element in a thin layer of glue and crucially leave it to dry before adding your foil.   The glue is blue to begin with, once its clear its "dry" but still tacky so you can use it foil and its super easy.   If you've tried and failed (like I have many times) its likely because you didn't wait long enough (I have little patience!).  Add your glue - go make a cuppa - by the time you come back it will be ready to go!

Hope that's given you a couple of new techniques to try.

Happy Crafting

Tara