My FIRST Christmas Card Stamp-A-Stack

We used so many techniques to make these Christmas cards!  I thoroughly enjoyed the afternoon with my customers, and I know they had fun as well!

Peaceful Wreath with Wonderful Wreath Framelits Dies

 Each card uses a different technique, dry embossing, heat embossing,

Embellished Ornaments

 The ornament card, we stamped in the center, die-cut the ornament, then stamped the background images.

Joyful Season

 As you might know, I LOVE all things 2-step stamping.  This cardinal was right up my alley!  It uses this technique on the branch, berries, and cardinal!

Peaceful Pines and Perfect Pines Framelits Dies

 Stamping, punching, die cutting... lots of techniques here for the trees!

All Ye Faithful

 I LOVE this card!  Gold embossing powder, gold Washi tape...  so pretty!

Wonderland

This card front starts out white, and has the ink brayered on to get the gradations in color from dark to light.  LOVE this technique!!  So very beautiful.

Christmas in July - July 14, 2015

Here you can see the car moving from the deer (in the last card from July 11) towards the bear.

Many of the same techniques on these cards..Photopolymer stamps to line up the car with the tree on top so nicely!  Watercoloring for gradients in color of the car windows and Christmas tree... and the bear.  I didn't want to make him too dark.  He's probably a Polar Bear in Smoky Slate.

Quite a dirty Polar Bear... not white at all!  :)

Christmas in July - July 13, 2015

This is another one of the long-retired Stampin' Up Christmas sets.  I really enjoy the nostalgic feel of this set.  The inside of the card features the dove that accompanies this set. 

I used quite a few techniques with this card - Watercoloring as per the week's theme, marker work for some fine detail, and Stickles.  I used the holly instead of diamond on this card for the trees.  It's a mix of Christmas green and Christmas red. 

Christmas in July - July 12, 2015

 This stamp set is long-retired from Stampin' Up.  It lent itself perfectly to some watercoloring since that seems to be the theme this week. 

Another of my favorite Christmas movies is Scrooge (1970) with Albert Finney.  It's one of the many adaptations of the Charles Dickens tale.

Christmas in July - July 11, 2015

 Here is the second of three White Christmas stamp set cards.

I have to say something about the photopolymer stamps - I LOVE them!  I hear the consensus from friends I stamp with as well.  It's so easy to line up the images with the clear stamps!  SO easy!  They also have another benefit... they're so much more cost effective (cheaper)!

I again watercolored the images.  I like the control it gives, and if you look closely at the tree on top of the car, the shading ability is GREAT!

Christmas in July - July 10, 2015

I love this stamp set.  It is so versatile, AND it's a Christmas tree - one of my very favorite things!

I left this card quite simple.  I usually emboss this one in silver.  Today, I added some rhinestones to the snowflakes on the tree.

Christmas in July - July 9

 There we go!  So much better!  I just put my itunes on Christmas Music.  It's actually raining here today.  It's actually been raining here for MONTHS, but I enjoy it.  It keeps my husband in a job he loves, and when I lived in south Texas, there just wasn't much rain.  I enjoy how it keeps everything in so many shades of green, and my flowering trees blooming!

That said,  I got caught in it today while I was out running some errands, and forgot how much I hate getting my feet wet!  :(    Oh well. 

I'm happier with Christmas music on anyway.

Today's card is a series of three I made which you'll see in the coming week.  It's a stamp set called White Christmas.  (My favorite Christmas movie!)

I stamped the images in Crumb Cake with the banner in Cherry Cobbler.  The snowmen are watercolored to help them stand out a bit.

I also added some Stickles (Diamond) because snow on the ground always sparkles!

Christmas in July 2015 - July 1st

July First!
This will be the third year I'm doing Christmas in July!  I will post one new Christmas Card I've made every day of the month.

Why?  So many reasons!  1.  I LOVE LOVE LOVE Christmas! 2.  I have so many Christmas stamps and ideas for cards I can't make enough during the year.  Yes, even with 6 cards every month, I have more Christmas stamps and material.  It's an opportunity to make use of most of it.   and 3.  I love making Christmas cards!

I always worry if I can actually make 31 Christmas cards - especially one each day.  I certainly did last year.  At this point,  I think I'll have ideas for more than 31!  Ya veremos!  (We shall see!)

Here is my July 1st Card.
This is a technique we did at my May stamp club meeting.  My upline Kathy then challenged us to make our own Spinner Cards!  This is the 2nd one I made after class.  I hope you enjoy!

Ok, so it doesn't look that impressive..... so I have THIS!

I used my circle Spellbinders to make the circle cut-outs.  I cut them at the same time using my magnetic plate to keep everything in the correct spot.  Just eyeball that all the edges are the same distance from each other to keep the spacing equal on all sides.

I then used the paper tole technique to give the poinsettia lots of dimension.

This definitely will be a hand delivered card... or at least mailed in a Priority box.

Please enjoy!  Even my grumpy husband got caught playing with this card!  Of course, he blamed in on, "I'm an engineer, I need to figure out how it works."  He'll never say he was impressed.  Never.

June 2015 Christmas Cards

I was going through my Kitchen Sink stamps looking for something, and found this hot chocolate mug!

I LOVE hot chocolate and have it occasionally when it's cold, but have switched to hot tea because I can drink so much more of it and switch to decaf/herbal tea when it gets later in the evenings.

This turned out to be an adorable set of Christmas cards...  I used Tsukeniko inks for the mug and went back to my regular Stampin' Up inks for the sentiments on the front and inside of the card.

 I used 2 of the Brilliance inks and if you look very closely, you can see the white froth glimmers in the light.

My dear friend Melissa was over the day I made these.  We had lots of fun deciding colors, and watching the layers appear.

January:  6 cards
February:  6 cards
March:  6 cards
April:  6 cards.
May:  5 cards
June:  6 cards
Total:  35 Christmas cards!

May 2015 Christmas Cards

I rarely use these two stamp sets.  This idea just came to me one afternoon when I saw these ornament stamps in my stash. (I use the word stash as my crafting stuff.  I believe most crafters/quilters/artists use this term.  I found out that 'stash' doesn't mean the same to everyone this school year.  :)  Lesson learned.)

That said,  I stamped the Post Card background in Garden Green, and the ornaments in Cherry Cobbler ink.  After some sleight of hand, I got it to work beautifully.

 I'm not sure what happened, but when I got this all finished, I had only 5.  One month I'll make 7 to catch up.

Please enjoy!

January:  6 cards
February:  6 cards
March:  6 cards
April:  6 cards.
May:  5 cards
Total:  29 Christmas cards!  YAY!  :)

March 2015 Christmas Cards

This month I've got another set of blue cards...  definitely a darker tone than February's cards!

Only 2 colors here as well - Night of Navy, and White.

 I embossed the trees from the stamp set Lovely as a Tree in White with some Iridescent Ice sprinkled along the tops of the trees.

I got out my Spellbinders Dies and played around with some shapes.  The inking on the Merry Christmas piece is done with the Stampin' Up chalks in Night of Navy to highlight the edges.