Color Inspiration Challenge: 3 Designers, 1 Holiday DIY Color Deck Card
Hello, Spellbinders fans! Today we’re excited to bring you a fresh and festive twist on inspiration! We invited three talented designers to share their unique takes on a single Color Deck card from the brand-new Holiday DIY Color Deck Expansion Pack.
This special pack features 12 holiday-themed DIY Color Deck cards filled with cheerful artwork, fun seasonal facts, and helpful color prompts to spark your creativity all season long. It’s a perfect companion to the original DIY Color Deck System, designed to help you explore and document your favorite color palettes in a hands-on, interactive way.

Each card in the Holiday Expansion Pack includes:
- A holiday-inspired image to jump start your creativity
- Five blank spaces to swatch your custom color combos (with help from our T-081 1” Square Punch)
- Creative prompts, color theory insights, and tidbits to keep the ideas flowing
- A sturdy satin finish so you can use and reuse these cards again and again
For this post, all three designers used the same inspiration card – but with their own spin on the colors, style, and product choices. It’s a fun reminder that even with the same starting point, creativity can take you in wildly different (and equally beautiful) directions.

Scroll down to see their projects, color palettes, and how they each interpreted the challenge. We hope this inspires you to make color your own this holiday season!
Deborah Hellman says:
When I first looked at this Holiday DIY Color Deck card, I was inspired by the blend of soft blues and pinks combined with the rusty red and charcoal black. As I studied it more, I noticed the corals and cream colors. I selected my cardstock colors by holding the petals of my swatched deck of Colorwheel Cardstock against the card to find the best color matches. For the background, instead of using bright white, I decided to use the Brushed Metallic Antique White Treasured Cardstock to give my card a softer look like the DIY Color Deck card. Next, I used the new Merry Moments Gifting Bow Etched Die Set to cut out my flowers and bows. While I was completing the card, I decided to switch up the sentiment and instead of making it a Christmas card to make it a birthday card using Yana’s Crafty Hugs Sentiment Press Plate and Die Set.
Here’s a look at Deborah’s project:
Heejung Hunsberger says:
The serene feel of the deck informed the incorporation of warm Saffron, calming deep green, and vibrant pink. A cheerful accent was then added to the overall design using the bright Sicily color. The sentiment was pressed in pink ink and comes from the Holiday Foliage Joy BetterPress Plate Set (retired).
Yana Smakula says:
I love pulling color inspiration from the DIY Color Deck cards, they simplify the color selection tremendously! For this card, I first identified the Oceanside (you can see this dark color on some of the houses) and used this colors for the background of my card. Next, I saw Seaside color as the sky and used it for the holly leaves. The Fog color substituted the white you can see on the card, I die cut some of the larger leaves from Fog. I also saw a lot of red (Poppy), pink (Dahlia and Wild Berry) and yellow (gold from the Treasured Cardstock Pack).
Here’s a look at Yana’s project:






3 Comments
Joan Bardee
wow. this blog post is one of your best. I love how you showed 3 completely different takes on one inspiration card. each card is gorgeous!!!
@craftee1 - Amy Tsuruta
LOVE this post and all the projects. So fun to see how each designer is inspired!
em
I love this post. Hope it will be a recurring one. The mood of the 3 cards is so different it surprised me. Wouldn’t a press plate of that scene of many, many houses be fun to work with!