Nordic Snowflakes

I wanted to celebrate the new Mama Elephant release today and I was really excited about the Nordic Knit Die as I love a detailed background die as they add lots of easy detail to an otherwise clean and simple card. I've made a couple of Christmas cards with it in my favourite teal shades ;-)

For card one, I cut the whole die from Peacock card (Concord and 9th) and added a little striped patterned paper in the middle with a thin banner of the same paper at top and bottom of my card too. I left the card white underneath as although its meant to be a knit pattern, it really is snowflakey too. To finish it I stamped a sentiment in peacock ink from my favourite sentiment set of the year so far - Treasured Greetings from Pinkfresh Studio, cut it with the matching die and added to the centre with a vellum layer behind (fussy cut) for an extra softness. To amp up the Christmassy detail I added a few light teal gems for added sparkle.

For the second card I wanted to create a border to be the focal image on my card so I used more white card and cut the top of the die only, flipped it over and placed the snowflake openings over the bottom and cut it again so I got the pretty dotted line and scalloped edge at the top and bottom of my strip. I added it to a scrap of oceanside card (also C9th) and trimmed to a thin border. I then used the bits from the first card to fill in the diamonds in the snowflake pattern - leaving the other areas blank so the paler card showed through. Finished with more gems as I like sparkle at Christmas.

I wanted a really pale pattern for the background as I wanted the bright white to shine so I opted to stamp Kristina Werner's Snowflake Season Easy Repeat Stamp from last year's Christmas release in Mint Choc ink which is a really soft aqua from Altenew - it adds just enough interest to stop the background being plain without taking over.

I wanted a 2 part sentiment so I could have interest above and below the border so opted for a pair of sentiments again from Kristina - Merry Greetings Builder Stamp which is a great set as you can build hundreds of different combos.