The Painted Glass bundle in the Annual catalog is exactly as described. “Grace and elegance with the look of stained glass.” My husband was so impressed with these projects I hated to admit how easy they were to create. The key to this bundle is the 6″x6″ Graceful Glass Designer Vellum. The vellum is printed in black on one side and it is slightly raised. This makes it easy to color and give the perfect stained glass look.
For the first project, I made a few bookmarks using the Blends markers. These panels came from one sheet of the designer vellum. I played with the background color. The middle one is light Pool Party, the right one is dark Pool Party and the left one is light Bermuda Bay. I colored the images on the back of the paper so the intensity of the color is much lighter. I mounted the panels on Thick Whisper White and used the Scalloped Tag Topper punch at the top.
I used the Black Embossing Powder to stamp the extra bird, butterfly and rose images on Whisper White. I colored the images with the Stampin Blends alcohol markers and cut them out with the corresponding dies from the Stained Glass Thinlits set.
The corners were detailed with the Detailed Trio punch. This one punch does three different things. I used the corner rounder and the little leaf detail. I’m sure there’s a better description for that – let me know. Finally a bit of ribbon and twine at the top.
For my next project, I cased a card from Jenny Hall that you can see here. 
It was such a gorgeous card that I didn’t want to stray too far from the original. The main difference between my card and hers is the coloring technique. I started by coloring the front of the paper with Stampin Blends. I found this made the images more vibrant. I didn’t worry about the streakiness as I blended light and dark shades of the colors because I decided, after examining some stained glass that I own, the glass is inherently streaky so my streaks made the project more authentic.
Next, I used sponge daubers and Flirty Flamingo, Grapefruit Grove and Pineapple punch ink pads to create the blended sunrise colors on the back of the designer vellum. I adhered the now colored on both sides vellum to an identically sized piece of Whisper White cardstock. The card base is Grapefruit Grove with butterflies from the stamp set in matching ink fluttering up the right-hand side.
I used a Pearlized Doily for more texture under the image and the sentiment banner. The sentiment is from Vertical Greetings and is also in Grapefruit Grove. For the final touch – like it needed one more – I added some of the yellow Artisan Pearls on the centers of the flowers. My thanks to Jenny for her inspiration.
My final project is a Christmas Card. I combined Call Me Clover for the primary layer over a Whisper White card base and Real Red for the die cuts. The square was cut using the Layering Squares die. I colored the bird image on the front side of the designer vellum with the Stampin Blends and mounted it to the back of the Call Me Clover layer which was embossed with the Simple Stripes folder.
I used the Stained Glass dies to cut the semi-circle detail over the “window” and the edges of the square die for the sides. A single silver pearl accented each of these panels. I did add a piece of Real Red at the bottom of the window just to finish it. Over that, I layered some silver ribbon for sparkle and the silver embossed sentiment from the soon to be released Beautiful Baubles. (Look for that bundle in the 2018 Holiday catalog. I’ll have samples up soon.) The sentiment was cut out using the Stitched Labels Framelits.
Simple but pretty. I needed a simple one after the Birthday card! Hope you’re having a creative day. If you have questions about any project you see on this site, contact me.