Hello stampers! Framed art samplers are like scrapbooking for the wall. It’s like card making taken to a different level. I love creating seasonal samplers that can be interchanged in the same frame. Let’s be real. If we kept making beautiful samplers and adding them to the walls we would soon run out of wall space and our homes would look like a scrapbooking store! This year I wanted to make a sampler using the beautiful Year of Cheer suite, but I also wanted to combine it with the stunning Santa’s Sleigh framelits. This is what I came up with.

As you can see this would also make a great gift for someone on your list. It really doesn’t take much time to make because the smaller squares are so simple; the patterned paper is so beautiful it stands up all by itself! The mats for the small squares are made of champagne foil paper and they are 2 1/4 inches square. The inside squares are 2″ square pieces of Year of Cheer specialty paper. One of the squares is made of copper foil paper embossed with the Softly Falling embossing folder. Here is a close-up:

To coordinate with the Year of Cheer paper, which is very rich and metallic, I used gold glimmer paper, dazzling diamonds glimmer paper and copper foil paper for the trees and for the deer and sleigh. I added early espresso behind the deer and one of the trees to add both depth and contrast. I also thought that the little red bow on the gold embossed wreath added just the right pop of colour. All these dies come from the Santa’s Sleigh set. I found that laying the foil sheets upside down helped for cutting them out so they would delaminate. It also made the sleigh and deer face in the right direction for what I needed. That is what is so nice about using either foil sheets or glimmer paper. If you turn them around you can have your image facing in two different directions.

This frame is 12×12″ with a matted 8×8″ opening. I found them last year at Wal-Mart and I am guessing that at this time of year they will once again have a great selection of frames. The whole thing is “built” on an 8″ square of early espresso cardstock. The biggest square is 4 3/4″ square of whisper white and 4 1/2″ square of champagne foil paper. The foil paper was first embossed with the Winter Wonder embossing folder. If you were planning on giving this away as a gift you could pair it with this beautiful card:

I used champagne foil paper with the Swirly Snowflake thinlets dies together with the Year of Cheer washi tape to make a stunning Christmas card. The sentiment is embossed with copper and I used the ever popular and useful Stitched Framelits to cut it out. The last thing I want to share is a cute little idea for using your left over Year of Cheer specialty paper. This paper is so beautiful that it makes any small gift extra special. I used it to wrap these Ferrero Rocher chocolates. I found a case of these at Costco with a dozen packages of three in a box.

I simply wrapped a 3″ by 5″ piece of paper around the chocolates and then tied a piece of metallic edge ribbon around it.

Class to Go Offer

As you might know, my house is up for sale and when Rachel is done school in June I will most likely be moving away from Chatham. I hope to continue teaching classes in person but I also realize that more of my income will depend on online sales. With that in mind I am starting to offer “classes to go”. The Christmas art sampler will be $25 including shipping to anywhere in Canada. Frame not included. Payment can be made through PayPal or etransfer. I haven’t added an online shopping feature for this yet, but if you comment below or message me we will get the job done!