More than words

I love typography and graphic design, sometimes it borders on the obsessive like taking pictures of bottles in the supermarket or tearing an advert out of a magazine in a doctors waiting room. As you can imagine it has been the source of great embarrassment for my long suffering wife down the years particularly my soap-boxing rants when I am offended by BAD design in the high street!

Naturally, I think that I have good taste as do we all, but we can't all have good taste, if that were the case then there would be no bad taste and as a consequence 'taste', whether it be good or bad would simply not exist!

Let's just say that I know what I like and leave it at that. 

This is a long-winded way of telling you that I am very fond of all the new dies designed by Jen Long. A great designer and a lovely lady too. Also in the collection is a fabulous pillow box/poinsettia combo which I will feature in the coming weeks no doubt but today is all about festive phrases.

The dies I am using are very detailed so I chose a simple approach because they literally speak for themselves.



I started by die-cutting the 'Merry Christmas & Happy New Year' phrase from red card. Click on the highlighted text to see the die.

 I turned the die-cut phrase over and place strips of double sided tape onto the rear as shown. Next, I die-cut the phrase from white card and removed the individual letters before placing them into the red die-cut secured by the tape. I created a base card from sand coloured card and added a Christmas stamp in the bottom right hand corner.

 I attached the assembled phrase using adhesive foam pads and rounded off the corners of the base card using a corner punch. I love the simplicity of the card, it allows the die to take centre stage without any need for fancy techniques or papers.

The 'Winter Wishes' die is a particular favourite of mine. I started by die-cutting it from white card before adding the double sided tape to the rear and inserting the red die-cut letters as before.

Next, I placed a strip of turquoise card behind the phrase and die-cut some snowflakes using the accompanying die.

I stamped my base card and attached the assembled phrase before adding my chosen snowflake decorated using a single gem in the centre. I think they make a very handsome couple?

This card is an after thought but I was desperate to see how the phrase looked cut from metallic card. I was not disappointed with the results so I had to build a card around it! I also roped in the Framelits Fancy Labels Set and a few tiny gems.