Christmas in July - Holly Swag Merry Christmas

 I made six cards using this image.  I haven't used it before, but I thought it would be good with the Merry Christmas banners I needed to finish using up... and I knew it would look amazing with some watercolor pencils.

 I took this picture below because the pic above looks muted.  I thought this card needed some sparkle so I got out my pearl Shimmer Mists and sprayed each of the 6 images.  It's not shiny like Wink of Stella or sparkly like rhinestones or Stickles... it gives the paper a glow. 

On another post I talked about options for using this embossing folder.  Here I wanted the bulk of the snow towards the bottom, and little falling flakes towards the top.  How?  Turn the paper in the embossing folder.

I really like the watercoloring effect on this image.   I think next time...a purple ribbon!
Now all 12 banners are finished.  I have a set of circles to use - stay tuned!

Christmas in July - French Horn in Watercolor

I made 12 of these Merry Christmas banners.  If you've been following my posts all month, you'll see that I used them earlier - BUT they just didn't quite work.  I've been keeping them in a safe place until I found the perfect spot for them!

 Here we go.  I stamped and watercolored the ivy and ribbon then used gold Wink of Stella to color in the french horn.  SO sparkly!

In addition to using the Merry Christmas banner, the card just needed something.  I used my Softly Falling embossing folder and added some snow.

Please enjoy!  I have a few more cards that will pop up here. 

Stop by my Stampin' Up! blog to see a card each day. 
search for: Susan Vilar Stamps!

Follow me to see my daily creations in July, and my other creations during the year.

Christmas in July - July 28, 2015

 Silhouettes of any kind remind me of a book series I read as a child...  "The Boxcar Children".  I always get that nostalgic feeling when I see them.

This verse is one of the pieces we had to memorize for our Christmas Eve program.  The younger children had little sentence verses to say, but when you got to be older, you got to say the narration pieces.  I looked forward to those for YEARS.  This is one of the verses I received one year in the program.  It has wonderful memories for me.
Please enjoy.

Christmas in July - July 8

 This is also one of my very favorite cards.  I've made many variations of it over the last few years of making Christmas Cards. 

Here I used some Stampin' Up Dies to cut the frame instead of the Spellbinders. 

I don't have much to say about this except that it's one of my favorites.

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.

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.

February 2015 Christmas Cards

I used only 2 colors for this set of cards:  Soft Sky, and Coastal Cabana.

I used Coastal Cabana to stamp the large Letterpress snowflake on the front of the flip, the Merry Christmas on the inside, and the sentiment on the inside panel.

 The snowflake Thinlits die was one I purchased so long ago, it seems... and just broke it out.
Soft Sky is the color for the background paper, the snowflake DSP, the little snowflakes I stamped on the front, and the snowflakes stamped on some of the other panels.

 I used a snowflake die to emboss the bottom of the card, and inked it with Coastal Cabana as well.

Here you can see a close-up of the layered punches I like to use.

We've had lots of snow lately, and days of school closings, so it put me in the mood to work with the snowflake die at last.

Christmas Cards 2015

I had a thought that I would give up the Christmas Cards throughout the year UNTIL I sent out my cards this past December.
I had them all prepared - signed and sealed - ready to go.  All I had to do was address them (didn't use printed labels this year), and stick on the return address labels and stamps.
After all the other work I did, it was a HUGE time saver for me!

 So, on I go, merrily making my Christmas cards all year long.  It's probably not possible that I'll stick with the 5th as I've always done, but I still plan to get 6 cards done, and I DO plan to continue with Christmas in July, and make one (a different design) for each day of the month.

Aren't those bows adorable?  It's the new bow punch available in the Spring Occasion catalog!  I used some of my old favorites, Be Of Good Cheer DSP, and my very favorite Merry Christmas stamp.

January 2015 = 6 Christmas Cards

Christmas Cards 2014

No, I haven't forgotten about making Christmas Cards!

As I said, this teaching full time really cuts into my crafting time!  I finally feel like I'm getting my head above water... so I've taken some time to get back to it (a little).  I still don't like it one little bit.

 This wreath was the first WOW I saw in the fall/Christmas Holiday catalog.  It's right at the beginning when you open up the catalog (p. 9), and I could see lots of possibilities with this. 

The wreath stamp set is bundled with the die cuts  (don't skip that!) and is a clear stamp set so you can see very clearly where to place the stamps.  I used Pear Pizzazz for the base,  Garden Green for the darker leaves, and Real Red for the berries.  I added Christmas Red Stickles to give the card a little sparkle on the berries.  Cherry Cobbler Seam binding bow, and the Decorative label punch for the Merry Christmas.
The wood grain background is stamped in Crumb Cake.

This card has some of my very favorite things...  the Merry Christmas stamp, and the double seam binding bow.  Yes, I've come around to the seam binding side!  :) 

Christmas in July - July 30, 2014

This card features a card form I've used many times - the Stampin up Card Framelits.  LOVE LOVE LOVE them!

You can make them 'short' cut at 4 1/4", or 'tall' cut at 5 7/16"... and decorate so many ways...  limitless!

 The only new piece I cut for this card was the Merry from the framelits.  I had the gingerbread men from the earlier stair-step card (made way too many!), and the Merry Christmas from a scrap I stamped and hadn't used yet.

Here you can see the card opened up to view the inside details.

Christmas in July - July 23, 2014

 OOPS!  I meant to get this card up for yesterday, but I've been very busy getting ready for this coming school year - starting out with a full classroom and all after years working peripherally - it's been a hectic summer!  That's my excuse, and I'm sticking to it!!  :)

 Today's card is a tri-fold card.  Not difficult to make, just a little time consuming, but SO worth it!

This card does fit into a regular A2 envelope, even though it doesn't look like it will.

I punched and die cut a lot more gingerbread men than I needed for this card, so you're going to see them pop up in the next few days! :)

I used the Gumball Green Coordinations cardstock  as a base, and embossed the front and back panels and sanded them to take advantage of the effect of this paper.  I didn't emboss the center panel so I could use it for the greeting, and it would be hidden when the card was closed.

Click HERE for a tutorial on how to make the cuts for this very cute, relatively simple card.

Christmas in July - July 16, 2014

As I did yesterday, here is another piece from the Work of Art stamp set we received at the catalog reveal.  I stamped off each Cherry Cobbler and Garden Green except one - near the center of the card is fully inked.

This is one of my very favorite Merry Christmas stamps!  It's old, and long retired.  I removed it from the wood block and backed with the foam mount so I'm able to keep it with a set of other Christmas stamps.  So much easier to find that way!