Red Cardinal in a Birdcage…

When I look at what stamp sets to buy, I look for versatility…my criteria is that I can use the same stamp set for more than one occasion plus I also love to think ‘outside the box’ …

With that I mind, today I decided to dig around in my stamp collection to see if I could make a holiday card from a stamp set that isn’t specifically holiday themed.

And then I found one of my favorite sets – Aviary – and realised that one of those cute birds would make a great Cardinal…

Being a holiday card, I wanted to make it a bit glitzy and so I decided to use Silver Embossing Powder on those cages – I stamped my little bird in Cherry Cobbler Ink and then used my Stamp-a-majig to position the bird cage perfectly in place on top of him…stamped it using Versamark and sprinkled on the embossing powder and set it with my Heat Tool…

How did I make the cord attached to the birdcages? It was super easy – I wanted to use something thin but more glamorous than Linen Thread – and so I grabbed my Silver Tinsel Trim that you can find on pg 21 of the Holiday Mini Catalog and simply used my sharp Paper Snips to cut off the tinsel part leaving me with a beautiful sparkly cord…I then made small holes in the top of each birdcage, threaded it through and added a Silver Brad…

My card base is Cherry Cobbler cardstock and I layered on a piece of Brushed Silver cardstock that I textured using my Big Shot and my favorite Vintage Wallpaper Embossing Folder which resulted in a beautiful patterned metallic look.

Onto this I added a piece of Cherry Cobbler Seam Binding plus a large Designer Button from the Regals collection – I tied a piece of tinsel through my button as a cute touch and added a little charm to it below.

My Merry Christmas stamp is from the set Delightful Decorations and again, I embossed it using Silver EP and added it using a Dimensional.  I finally added my birdcage & cardinals layer and used the Ticket Corner Punch to shape the corners…

And there is one cute holiday card!  Have a look in your stamp collection to see what you can come up with – it’s fun using stamps for occasions other than their obvious use and it challenges you to use what you have in a creative way.

Not sure how to use Embossing Powder? Click HERE for my printable tutorial showing you in easy steps how to create this amazing look!

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