I'll Have a Blue (and brown) Christmas

Hello crafty people.  Most people, at this time of year, are in high anticipation for spring.  Winter seems to take a long time to play out and we each look forward to longer days and warmer weather.  Most of us are busy creating projects with flowers and butterflies, and I’m certainly using plenty of those types images myself, but today, my thoughts turn back to the future…the future of the 2012 holiday season.

Experience has shown me that while we are still in the winter season, spring will come and go at lightening speed and before I can say, “Bob’s your uncle”, it will be the holiday season once again.  That’s why I take a little time each month to create a few Christmas cards for my stash.  I also host a Christmas card challenge on the Waltzingmouse Stamps forum.  We have a great group of crafters who, like me, don’t want to wait until the weather turns cold again to get started on their holiday cards.  You can find out all about the WMS Christmas Card Challenge here.

So this month, the challenge is to created projects using blue and brown, or any shade of those colors will do.  I completed 5 of this design to add to my stash of cards using several WMS images.

I created a side panel of images from Nordic Winter that I layered onto Spellbinder’s Postage Stamp dies.  These are all layered using foam dimensional pop dots holding them onto a strip of satin ribbon.

My sentiment is from the Season of Love set that I stamped and layered (again with pop dots) onto a small doily image from the Dainty Doilies Large set.  I added a self-adhesive bling to anchor it to the doily image.

To create a visual triangle, I added a row of brads along the bottom right.  This helps to balance out the heavy weight of the panel on the left and sentiment on the right.

One thing that I promised myself that when I created holiday cards this year, I would also stamp my sentiment on the inside.  So many times, I’ve had to go back later and add sentiments to the inside of my cards, and that takes time, so while I have my stamps and inks out, why not go ahead now and add the interior text!

This year, I’ve added another little special goodie on the back, using a line of text from the Make your Markset. 

That’s it for this month’s challenge.  I hope you will join me and get a jump start on your holiday cards. Thanks so much for looking in today.  Until next time, make it a great day!