Christmas Cards | Cardmaking

Well, Christmas has come and gone already...which I can hardly believe.  There's always so much excitement about the Christmas season, and when the actual day is here, it feels like it just flies on by quicker than you can blink.

But I still love Christmas.  Love it.

As you may or may not know, I handmake the Christmas cards that I send out every year.  Yep.  Takes a sh-- ton of time, but I think it's worth it.  This year, due to time constraints, I mass produced a few -- usually I make each one totally unique.  This year....not so much.

I saw this way cool tutorial over at Tim Holtz's blog (he is beyond creatively talented. the things this man does with ink & paper? totally amazeballs.), and decided I wanted to give it a try.  Seemed easy enough, and the result is totally awesome.

The tutorial series is all about tags, and in this case, specific to Christmas.  The pic above is all the tags I made and then distressed by inking the edges and using a paper edger to rough up the sides.  Some tags I used were kraft paper; the others were manilla.  Same technique, different look, all of it easy & awesome.  LOVE.  

Taking these tags, I then dressed up some Paper Source  card stock, and this is the end result --

They didn't all have the same patterned background paper, but they all look pretty similar to this.  I'm definitely going to be repeating this design!  Make sure you check out the original tag over at Tim's blog - so totally cool.

Next up:  glitter embossing powder.  I hate glitter.  Like, hate it.  It gets ev-a-ry-where.  You end up sneezing glitter for months, because it's so fine you breathe it in without knowing it...random specks end up all over your face...in your hair........uggggggh.  BUT....when it's embossing powder, which means you get to heat it to make it adhere to your page and never come off, then I'm all about it.

Enter watermark ink pad, awesome  Santa stamp, and red glitter embossing powder...

BOOM.  Seriously.  So awesome.  This was my favorite card that I made this year.  In fact, I may still have it.  I don't remember if I actually sent this one out....whoopsie....

Where there's red glitter, there's also green.....

It might be tough to tell, but those are gifts all lined up.  Totally super cute.   Add green glitter embossing powder, and poof!  Sparkly gifties!

I also had a little too much fun with the "quantity" function on my Cricut....so I was able to just keep repeating some of the cuts I made....

This "Noel" made quite a few appearances on my cards with different background paper.  I used the Teresa Collins "December 25th" cartridge for this image, along with "Santa" and a few others that I totally forgot to take pics of, so I can't share them :-(

So there you have it!  A little snippet of some of the cards that I sent out this year!  Maybe if you're lucky, you'll get on my card list for next year, and get one of these for your very own!  :-)

Much love ~~~