Hey, crafty friends! For many of us it’s a holiday week for Thanksgiving (in the United States) and that means a little vacation from real life (oh, life is SO real lately!) to gather together and give thanks for the goodness that surrounds us. This year looks a little different than normal and all of us at Taylored Expressions hope that everyone remains healthy and safe. We are thankful for all of you.

A bit of extra time off hopefully means that you are able to steal some time away to get crafty! Are you still working on holiday projects? I might have a few that I need to work on yet! The TE Creative Team have been busy elves behind the scenes and whipped up additional inspiration for the upcoming holidays. Today, I have a few projects to share that are perfect for an elegant holiday look.

Let’s start off today’s inspiration with a set of cards that I (Heather Nichols) created…

One way to step up the elegance on your holiday projects is to add sparkle and shine! I added a bunch of sparkle to create the backgrounds on this set of Mini Slim cards by mixing up Metallix gel with glitter and then applying it through the Poinsettia & Pine stencil onto Honey and Toffee cardstock. It’s a technique that can definitely be a little messy, but the results are worth it in the end! Make plans to stencil up a bunch of backgrounds at one time so you have gorgeous, textured, glittered backgrounds ready to go.

To create the sentiment for this card, I clipped the ‘happy’ from the Framed Script – Happy die cut and paired it with a ‘Christmas’ banner that is created with the On Repeat – Christmas stamp embossed in white on Avocado cardstock and cut out with the On Repeat die. I layered the sentiment with a pine sprig die cut with the Pine Clippings dies, a felt flower, and several silver drip drops.

This next card is created by Gayatri Murali and her layering game is strong here! Every time I look at this card, I see something new that I didn’t notice before. All of the sparkle and shine is amazing!

Choosing colors for your project in jewel and softer pastel color tones adds an elegant look like Gayatri did here with Raspberry Sorbet and Pink Champagne. To start her layers, she stenciled snowflakes onto the card base using the Let it Snow Layered Stencil set in Sugar Cube ink. Then, Gayatri added a layer of glitter by adding a large snowflake over the background with the Winter’s Beauty stencil and glitter paste. Next, is a layer of glittered die cuts in white and gold that are cut using the Pine Clippings and Make a Snowflake die collections from our glitter cardstock.

The main feature of Gayatri’s card is the shiny gold foil cardstock reindeer from the Woodland Silhouettes 1 die collection and the ‘Merry Christmas’ sentiment from the Simply Said – Christmas stamp set. One more detail to finish things off on this beautiful cards are Bits & Pieces – White Rhinestones sprinkled throughout the design.

Finally for today is is beautifully elegant card created by Noriko Fairchild. One thing about Noriko’s projects in general, that I love, is that I usually wonder – how did she do that? I am always learning something new from her. For this card, Noriko used the Peaceful Poinsettia embossing folder like a stamp! She inked up the design with Versamark ink, pressed it like a stamp onto the Mulled Wine cardstock, and embossed the image with gold embossing powder. She also added shading around the edge of the embossed the design with Mulled Wine ink and a Blender Brush.

The sentiment in the card is from the Simple Strips – Christmas stamp and is embossed on white on Mulled Wine cardstock. Instead of cutting out the sentiment with the coordinating Simple Strips die, Noriko cut it out in a strip to go across her card front and layered it over vellum hearts that are cut out with the Heart Stacklets die collection. Noriko scattered several Bits & Pieces – Gold Drip Drops over the heart to complete the look.

Join Taylor live for “T Time” at 1pm Central today on the Taylored Expressions Facebook Page. She’ll be sharing about the sales and promotions that we have in store for you this weekend for Black Friday and more. We hope to see you there – come join in on the fun!

Thank you so much for joining me and I hope you were inspired by today’s elegant holiday cards! Stay tuned to the blog later this week for more information about the sales coming up this weekend. I’ll have more crafty inspiration for the holidays coming your way next week, so make plans to stop back!

Did you know that you can subscribe to our blog and get our posts right in your inbox? Just sign up right HERE – that’s all there is to it to make sure you don’t miss any of our crafty inspiration!