Frozen Party: The Invitations

As you may have gathered, despite the May weather here finally starting to brighten up, our house is becoming a flurry of snowflake themed crafting, no I'm not getting prepared for Christmas early, we are planning a Frozen Party :) And like many Parents up and down the country I am having to work harder than usual to find theme related paraphernalia, because of the sheer demand for all things Frozen being at a pinnacle and the fact that shops everywhere seem to have the bizarre notion that snowflakes belong in winter ;)

So I am obviously making a lot of my own things for the Party..... who am I kidding - I'd have been doing that anyway! So first up (not including that Glass bottle favor post, because who makes favors before they have actually invited anyone...) is the invites. I had some idea that I could do some Anna and some Elsa, but the Elsa ones were so pretty I got a bit carried away, and if I had been thinking I would have made some Olaf ones for the boys.

Firstly I should point out that as the Elsa image is a Disney Trademark, therefore copyright, so I can not reproduce these for sale. However that's good news for all of you crafters as it does mean I can share the details of how to make it....

Essentially this card is an A4 Card blank with a 140mm x 97mm background panel, 200mm of ribbon and an embellished 'badge'.

 The Badge was achieved by simply punching out an image of Elsa with a circle punch, die cutting a decorative circle using the Spellbinders Picot Circles and embellishing with a punched out snowflake and blue star gem. In most of the cards the ribbon was the threaded thru two of the holes to pull it together (however I seem to have photographed the one card that wasn't, lol)

The background is made up in layers of heat embossing and distress inks. But to be honest any blue or snowflake motif cardstock would work well here, stay in your comfort zone and use your own talents to adapt the card to what you need. For the more experienced cardmaker I have added a breif tutorial to the end to show the exact techniques used.

 Inside I added a printed sheet with all of the party details and a few royal looking crests. Finally the back of each envelope was sealed by the Birthday girl with a snowflake stamp.

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HOW TO CREATE THE BACKGROUND

Materials:

- Good quality white cardstock

- VersaMark embossing pad

- Clear embossing powder

- Several Distress inks

(I have used Peacock Feathers, Salty Ocean & Faded Jeans but use what you have)

- Craft mat for distressing

- Blending tools or Daubers

[Warning, you will dye your own fingers blue by the end of this]

 1. Use your snowflake stamps and VersaMark to make a few watermarks on your page, try to use different sizes and space out your clusters of snowflakes so more can be added later. Cover with your embossing powder, shake off the access and use your heat tool to emboss. If is very hard to see what you are doing at this point but keep turning it towards the light while you are stamping.

2. Using your ink daubber, in small circular motions start blending a little of your lightest distress ink directly from the center (normally you start at the edge but we are covering most of this with the badge) I used 'Peacock Feathers' here to bring a little turquoise to the colour palette. You should start to see your clear stamps, which will stay white.

3. Now start at the corners and edges and work in your main colour, gently blending as you go, concentrate the ink on the corners and around the 'clear' snowflakes. There is no avoiding it, you will get very blue fingers as you turn the paper, but it can;t be helped and gloves just make your hands sweaty. I then used my darker colour to creative definition on the edges.

4. Use your snowflake stamps with your main Distress Ink colour to randomly fill in a few of the gaps, again try to use different sizes and shapes. To create lighter snowflakes, for more depth lightly press your inked stamp on scrap paper before stamping on the background.

5. I also scrunched up a plastic bag and stamped with that on some of the backgrounds to add more texture. You could also add some Perfect pearl sprays to give it a bit of a gleam!

This card really has no right or wrong way of creating it, I experimented a lot with it and used materials I already had access to (see the above, where the badge is mounted on a snowflake), adapt it however you think will work best for you and remember not to make it too complicated as you'll be making a few of these!

If you are inspired to creative your own version, post your link in the comments and link back as I would love to see your ideas :D Good luck!