Christmas Cards, Projects and Cookies…ready for Santa!🎅

Hello friends!  We’re here!  We made it to Christmas Eve!😀  My cards have been sent out, my cookies are done and delivered as well as my other little gifts.  This is quite a long post, so grab your hot cocoa or whatever your favorite beverage is and a Christmas cookie or treat and let’s see what I’ve been doing this past week:

So starting with my Christmas cards, I usually make around 40ish cards each year give-or-take and I only like to make a handful of them at a time for not only boredom of the same design, but for product depletion as well.

So back in July, I purchased this really adorable card kit from Taylored Expressions (included was the Frosty Background Cling and Clear Combo set + more.) that came with coordinated colored envelopes as well as the seals.  So I made a set of four different colored designs in two of each one.  The snowmen were popped up with foam squares over the backgrounds and I added some fun Snowflake bits that were included with the kit as well.

Next up is another set of cards I made using some more gorgeous products from Taylored Expressions.  I’ve used the Seasonal Sprig stamp and die combo along with the stencil to color them in with.  Some of these I ink blended the backgrounds, so I just used cardstock with a watermark effect and a white heat embossed sentiment.  I used the die to cut an extra frame behind the stamped one for added stability.  I made 4 of each design shown here for a total of 16.

I then made another set of four using the same products, but for these I gold heat embossed the image and sentiment and then used some watercolor for coloring it in with.  I also got some of these coordinating envelope seals to use on about 10 of the 16 cards.  (No longer available in store.)  I’ve also partially ink blended the background behind the frame on these as well.

Here are some cards that I’ve actually made a total of 8 similar designs using the large wording background dies from My Favorite Things.  I’ve used the “Sending Christmas Joy” and “I Really Miss You” dies for all eight of these, but only after I stamped the backgrounds.  I used the MFT Knitted Sweater BG stamp and the Alley Cat BG stamp for a couple of backgrounds before I die cut them.  Then I used the die cut letters to place into the other backgrounds on the cards to get that look.  So it was like creating 2 cards with one cut and filling it all in.  (For the Alley Cat background stamp, I ink blended the background and stamped it as a watermark effect over it and then took the “left over” ink from that to stamp it again to create an additional BG.) I then cut out each of the panels with the MFT Wonky Stitched Rectangle die and placed over a white A2 sized side folding card base.  The penguin image is from the MFT Holiday Penguins set and the bird on the other one is from the MFT “Tweet Holidays” (Not found in store.)

And then of course you don’t want to waste any backgrounds you’ve made, so you make more cards!  I’ve used a couple more images to personalize the design for people too.  I combined the sets Newton’s Nook Whispering Pines and the Lawn Fawn Winter Skies.  I think I took a set from them to create a sentiment to fit my cards as well. (not sure from which set.)

For the other card, I took this cute image from the Whimsy Stamps Gnome for Christmas stamp set, colored him up with my copics and cut him out with the coordinating die to pop him up over my card.

And then for these set of 4 cards, I’ve just die cut a snowflake from some glitter paper and glued in the center of the “O” on each design and popped up a sentiment over that with foam tape stamped and die cut from the Taylored Expressions Mini Strips – Holiday and Mini Strips die.

And as you remember in a previous post those “recycled Crystal Light containers” that I make, I made another set of three of them here.  This time, I’ve used this snowman stamp.  I just used my scissors to fussy cut those cute snowmen out as they were pretty simple to do and then I popped them up over an ink blended tag using the stencil over them.  I used coordinating cardstock and silver heat embossed the sentiment strip at the bottom and of course added my “snowman soup” poem on the back of the containers.  I’ve also added a layer of silver mirror cardstock behind the tags.

And I made a couple of these darling ornaments from a fairly “new to me” company that I was actually introduced to with product during my time as a {Cupcake Inspirations} sweetie DT when they sponsored a challenge a while back.  P.S.  There are a few more days left to enter their current challenge of “SNOWFLAKES” if you want to pop on over to join us too!!

But I was so taken with this darling image and kit from Inky Stampers from this Snow Much Fun Kit.  You get the snowflake ornament (with string), the stamp set and die, papers, wobbler, along with glitter to complete it too!  Well I wanted to make more than one, so I grabbed another set of Snowflake Ornaments from the store and just added my own papers and glitter from my stash to make it.  

And of course, last, but certainly not least, here’s all of the Christmas treats that I’ve made to give out to family and of course for hubby to eat up as we went along too!😋  I have made from top left on down:  Homemade caramel corn, white chocolate covered pretzels, peanut butter fudge, molasses cookies, chocolate covered caramel pecan clusters, scottish peanut butter cereal cookies, chocolate fudge, snickerdoodles and chocolate crinkles.  Of course each family member has a favorite they like me to make and there are a couple of old recipes passed down from grandparents/parents that I like to add in as well.  They’re all delicious and I enjoyed making them.

Whew!  I’m ready for that “Looong winter’s nap” now!!🥱  I hope you’ve enjoyed my post today and it has brought you some inspiration and/or a smile somehow!  I have received some beautiful Christmas cards and I so appreciate them and have them all displayed by being pinned around my garland in our pass-through in the living room/dining area.  I think after a bit of rest, I need to finish up my projects for the “Bugaboo Christmas Chaos” that I haulted in the middle for to finish up Christmas projects….so I’ll be back soon with that.

In the meantime, I wish a MERRY CHRISTMAS TO ALL AND TO ALL A GOOD NIGHT!!🎅