December 24th – Christmas Eve and Still More Cards!

Aloha, all!

     After all those Christmas Cards I've made this year, I decided to check out my Christmas Card mailing list to see if I needed any more.  Yikes!  What have I been thinking!  Just because we live in a lava zone that's been active of late is no excuse for totally not planning for our Christmas Cards! 

     How many more did I need?  Would you believe TWENTY!  Again, yikes! 

     So what I did was to go into a Stampin' Up! demonstrator's swap mode.  Swaps are something we do throughout the year as new catalogs and occasions come our way.  The idea is that we make 10 or 20 (more?) of the same card and swap them with other demonstrators.  The hope is that we'll end up with lots of cards using different papers, embellishments and stamp sets to show off to our customers.  Yes, every once in a while there is an "Over the Top Swap," but I can pretty well guarantee that you'll not find me in one of those.  Instead, yes, I'll use several Stampin' Up! products, but I'll make cards that are quick and easy to make.

     Today's cards took me exactly 55 minutes to make, start to finish.

     These cards all use TWELVE Stampin' Up! products, all of which are shown below in the gallery of products I share at the end of most posts these days.  So the key to this was to do these in an assembly line fashion that would hopefully allow for the fewest mistakes possible.  (Mistakes! Happens with every project I make, and this was no exception, planning aside.)

     So here are my steps in order:

1. Cut five 8-1/2" x 11" pieces of Whisper White Cardstock into four 4-1/2" x 5-1/2" pieces of cardstock using the Stampin' Trimmer.
2. Trim each of the embossed pieces of cardstock to be 4" x 5-1/4" and set them all aside.  I feel like I get a cleaner edge if I emboss then trim than the other way around.
3. Emboss each of the pieces using the Sizzix Big Shot and the On Point Textured Impressions Embossing Folder.  Don't those little triangles look like Christmas Trees to you?!
4. Stamp the sentiment, "A Merry Little Wish," from the stamp set, Festival of Trees, using Cherry Cobbler Ink on Pear Pizzazz Cardstock.  I spaced them from the edge and from each other to allow them to be punched easily.
5. Punch the stamped Pear Pizzazz using the Tree Punch.  Set these all aside.
6. Fold and crease the cards in one set of Whisper White Cut and Ready Card Bases.  OK – this was the BIG time saver with this project.  Love those ready made card bases!

At this point I stopped to take of photo of where I was (didn't take long for that, for sure!).

7. On the inside of each folded card stamp the sentiment, "For Lots of Joy at Christmas."  Note the positioning of this step.  This is where I typically make mistakes – smearing the stamped image, stamping it cooked – any number of mistakes!  So, if I make a mistake at this point, I can just take the inside of the card and make it the outside, which will be covered by the textured layer.  Happened twice today!
8. Using Stampin' Up! SNAIL Adhesive, adhere the embossed layer to the front of the card, centering it all around.
9. Apply two Stampin' Dimensionals to the back of each tree.
10. Apply a tree to the front of each card.  If you've trimmed each of the emobssed layers the same way, once you figure out where you want the tree, just place it near the same embossed tree on each card.
11. Apply one Cherry Cobbler Candy Dot (from the Regals Candy Dot collection) to the top of each tree.

     Done!  Now to get them mailed out.  They're going to be late this year, as are all our cards.  We like to write a Christmas letter about our year, and we're still struggling how to make a hurricane that knocked seven big trees down in our garden and a lava flow that kicked us out of our house sound cheerful.  Believe me, we will, as we still both have our sense of humor.  But still, it's been more work than we anticipated!

     Tomorrow I'm going to show off a couple of the cards that I received from a couple of Stampin' Up! demonstrator friends.  Then it's on to Thank You notes!  Love writing thank you notes no matter the season or the reason!

     Here are all the products I used in today's projects.  I usually only include special items that are not those you might usually have around your own craft area.  But today I was trying to keep count, so everything is in here!