WISHI WASHI TREES

Did you see the incredibly cute Bundle Stampin' Up! has on page 24 of the Holiday Catalog? The Festival of Trees stamp set combined with the Tree Punch is perfect for all your upcoming holiday needs, from cards, to gift tags, to gift bags, to decorations, to place cards, to, well, just about anything you can think up. I added the bundle to my stash as soon as I was able.

The Tree Punch is a wonderful size, 2 3/8". No wimpy Christmas tree here. The possibilities for using this punch alone are many and varied indeed.

While I haven't used the Festival of Trees stamps yet, I eagerly set to work with the combination of Washi Tape, in this case, the gold and white Watercolor Wonder set found on page 190 of the Big Catalog, and the Tree Punch.

For my first attempt, I laid strips of the Washi Tape horizontally across a piece of scrap white cardstock. Then, as you can see in the photo, I punched along the strips of tape, moving my punch a little on the design line to make each of my three trees unique:

I then attached them to an embossed piece of Pacific Point cardstock, with the two lower trees glued to the surface, and the center one raised a bit and popped up with Stampin' Dimensionals. 

After attaching a piece of the dotted Washi Tape to another thin strip of white cardstock, I used the Scallop Edge Border punch to create a cute scalloped polka dot border that I attached to the lower edge of the embossed Pacific Point piece.

The sentiment IS actually from the Festival of Trees set. The stars that grace the tops of the trees are from the set also. I stamped three of the stars in VersaMark and embossed them with gold embossing powder. After embossing the stars, I easily cut them out and adhered them to the treetops and further embellished them with Basic Rhinestones.

For the next card, I tried a different tactic. With the Tree Punch, I punched a tree from a 2 3/4" x 3 1/4" piece of Cherry Cobbler cardstock. I then ran this piece through the Big Shot inside the Fancy Fan embossing folder. Holding the punched tree piece over a 3" x 3 1/2" piece of Whisper White cardstock, I estimated where I needed to place strips of the same Washi Tape so the tape would show up perfectly through the tree punch-out.

The punched-out piece was then popped away from the taped layer with Stampin' Dimensionals. 

While I didn't take a close-up photo of the greeting itself on this card, I'm sure the photo shows it adequately. The elegantly-embossed Season's Greetings is from the fabulous Bright & Beautiful stamp set (page 25 in the Holiday Catalog). I cut out this greeting with one of the labels from the Project Life Cards & Labels Framelits set, found on page 230 of the Big Catalog. I cut a separate label from scrap Cherry Cobbler, cut it in half, and glued the halves to the back of the sentiment piece so the two ends stick out beyond the white label. Of course, it was given added importance with Stampin' Dimensionals when attaching it to the card front.

I'll probably play with the Washi Tape in combination with the Tree Punch some more. But, for now, I'm really looking forward to using the tree stamps with the punch.

Have any of you tried components of the Festival of Trees + Tree Punch Bundle? What are your thoughts?

Wishi

Washi

Smiles.