Do you want to build a snowman?

If you have a child or grandchild of a certain age you will immediately recognise the title of this blog as the title of a song from the movie Frozen which to which I know all the words which have seeped in through osmosis over time.

I realised that it has been some time since I made any cards with my beloved Framelits circle dies which are always popular whenever I take them to a demonstration or workshop because it shows what can be achieved using the simplest shape and a sprinkling of imaginative fairy dust!

Most of these cards feature complete circles but below is a diagram which shows how to unlock the creative potential of circle dies by simply placing the die back onto a die-cut circle to create two separate shapes namely a crescent and leaf. By clever positioning the die you can create thin or fat leaves and crescents depending on what you need for any particular project.

Let's get on to the fun stuff! I have combined two sets of Framelits circles to give me a little more choice, the only other die used in this project is a is a snowflake from the fabulous Thinlits Paper Snowflakes Set by Tim Holtz. I started by die-cutting two white circles and a brown snowflake.

 Next, I stamped a sentiment onto a strip of cream card before tearing along both edges. I am using a stamp set from my stash and I haven't got a clue where it comes from, believe me, I've trawled the Internet to try and find it but the good news is that there are many similar options available!

After adding the stamped strip to the top of my kraft base card I attached the larger circle in the bottom right hand corner before trimming away the over hang with a craft knife. Next I added the smaller circle using adhesive foam pads before adding a triangle of orange card cut with a pair of scissors. Can you see where this is going?

 I used my scissors to cut a couple of asymmetric strips of red spotty card (Double Dot by BoBunny) before snipping into the ends to represent the tassells on a scarf. 

Remember our die-cut snowflake? I cut away two pieces to represent the snowman's arms before gently curling both halves of the scarf to add a little dimension.

 Here is the finished card complete with a few black adhesive pearl gems strategically placed to create the eyes,mouth and buttons. Really simple but great fun!

I have been using the Framelits Holiday Knit die set quite a bit lately and today I am using it to create a stencil. I then die-cut a blue circle before cropping it using a larger Framelits circle die. I cut a couple of asymmetric rectangles of the same blue card for 'sleeves' before applying white gesso through my home made stencil using a sponge applicator.

I die-cut a white circle for the head before adding the nose and eyes as before and I used my scissors to cut a tiny tag, accuracy isn't important for this! I punched a hole in the tag, threaded it with twine and attached a red die-cut heart.

This is the final card. The background was decorated with white gesso applied through the Tim Holtz Speckles stencil and  I added the stamped sentiment near the top before assembling my snowman using the 'Snowflake' hands.

For the next card I started by die-cutting two circles to make the head and body of the snowman. To create the mouth I used the technique outlined at the start of the post. The result is this small brown crescent.

 I attached the snowman to the bottom of my base card (there is a blue strip added in the final card OOPS!) and cut a strip of blue spotty card to make the scarf. I used my tweezers to add folds to the scarf before applying under the snowman's chin.

For the sentiment I used this alphabet stamp set (Hobbycraft if I remember!) stamping onto Kraft card.

You can see where I added the blue strip before mounting the snowman. I trimmed the words to size before attaching to the base card using adhesive foam pads.

The finishing touch is the white die-cut snowflake taken from one of my all-time favourite Decorative Strip dies namely Winter Elements by my good buddy, and fellow Christmas baby Paula Pascual.

Last but not least I die-cut three different white circles and a pair of snowflake arms before assembling my snowman. I then cut a length of thin twine and curled both ends by wrapping them around my tweezers.

I added the twine to the snowman with a glue gun before die-cutting a selection of tiny stars using a Christmas Stocking die from Debi Potter's Festive Paper Arts Range. To create the mouth I made a die-cut crescent and cut away a small rectangle which when added to the die-cut snowman looks like a lone tooth!

Here is the finished card with the stars added to the twine forming a festive garland. The background is simply two stamps creating a pattern by stamping repeatedly with pale colours.

I had so much fun making these cards and if you like them I may make a few more for next weeks blog. Sadly I ran out of time before running out of ideas, I wish every day could be like that!