Best Wishes for New Year

I was blessed with many homemade cards for Christmas this year, a few from those that are blog friends and the rest from my Cardmaking groups.  Every time I went to the mail box I was so excited when there would be a card waiting for me to open.  I have been getting less and less cards as the years go on, people just aren't sending them out like they use to, so sad.  But this year I ran out of places to display them all.  After our daughter left and things calmed down I would look at the cards and I just wanted to bring that same feeling I had when opening mine to those who sent me cards so I set out trying to figure out what design to do, well we were in Michaels to get some after Christmas deals and I found these embossing folders from Martha Stewart and decided to get them and use them for the cards, two came in a pack.

Let me tell you that I could not run the folder through my cuttlebug machine like I have done all other embossing folders, it was too thick, so I got out the packaging and realized she calls them embossing plates, not folders, so I looked to see if there were any tips on the back as to what order I should put the plates in and in her directions she says to use a metal sheet and roll the embossing roller lengthwise or rub either end in a circular motion over the plate, she sells these tools I guess, well I set out to figure out how I could use my cuttlebug to do it and this is the layers I ended up using, just in case you want to try her embossing plates :

A plate
B plate
embossing plate with your cardstock inside
Anna Griffin's green embossing mat (this is a little thicker than the tan mats)
Two thick cardboard pieces

That seemed to work for me, if you have a different machine you will have to figure out what layering you will need.  Just wanted to let you know in case you wanted to try the Martha Stewart embossing plates yourself.

I did many different variations of the cards some with dark blue, light blue and pink inking of the folders.

A tip of how I added the Best Wishes die cuts, I ran a piece of 4x5 silver card stock through my Xyron Machine to add sticky adhesive onto the back of the card stock and then cut my sentiment out of that, you can just peel and stick them onto your card without having to use glue on such small letters, worked great, especially since I had 20 of them to do :)

Martha Stewart -- Snowflakes embossing plates
Poppystamps -- Valley snowflakes dies
Foam glitter sheets for snowflakes
Spellbinders -- Sentiments one die set
My Favorite things Dienamics -- Cross -stitch Rectangle dies for frames

Hope you are having a good week so far, thanks so much for taking the time to stop by, and your sweet comments, I appreciate it!

Hugs,
Connie