Most Wonderful Time of the Year

... making Christmas cards is always the most wonderful time of the year....
I was over at StampNation when I saw Melissa Miller's card using the new Most Wonderful Time of the Year stamp from CP Designs as a focal point on her card.   This is what she made....

And here are the two cards that I was inspired to do.

 

Can you see where I was inspired?   First up was the shaped panel.  For mine I used the corner of a couple of different scalloped dies.  I had a pile of the stamped plaid backgrounds the day my inks and stamps arrived so I pulled a couple out.  I also used Melissa's idea of doing some ombre stamping.  For the green I used Eucalyptus and Green Tea Inks.   I did some sparkle embossing (I can never get this to emboss nicely) and then stamped the little bitty snowflake in the Green Tea.   For my Purple card, I used Flirty Fuchsia and Royal Treatment and some Silver glitter ink for the snowflakes. 

And while I had the StampNation site open, I decided to take up Erika and Ingrid's challenge... to CASE either Erika's card or Ingrid's CASE of Erika's card.... quite the "Challonge"  I chose to CASE Erika's card

 Erika's card above

And my CASE of it.  Using Spa Inks and stamps and dies from the Candy Cane Lane collection (from last year)   You can see I used the same design,. 

Hubby has arrived safely down south and today went for a warm up walk around Lake Hayes.  He sent me this photo today that he took while they were out on the walk

Stunning scenery.  

Foundations Box has arrived...plus more Christmas cards

Yes I am happy to say I got my Catherine Pooler Foundations Box on Friday.  My friend Suna and I got them together (cuts down the postage costs for us) so on my way to Stamping Group on Saturday I dropped hers off.  Hope she is having as much fun with it as I am.  The inks are AMAZING and the stamp sets are full of variety.    I've done two cards so far

this one was the first I did... and  I messed up the bottom due to the ink being so juicy, I had to adapt to a LIGHT touch... so added the extra strip of green and also added a strip of card covered in the blue ink.   These inks are incredibly juicy and very intense colours.... I did 2nd generation stamping to get the lighter blue snow flakes.

and just look at the beautiful coverage with the red ink on the solid circle.  Once again I used the ink to make my layer.  Great way to tie in your layers to the inks on your card.

Yesterday was my day stamping with my group of friends.... there were 7 of us there.. (no photos as I was soooo busy making cards!)  I really enjoy catching up with all these lovely ladies and it had been quite a while since we last got together.    I had a very productive day - thanks to some pre- prep.  I had taken all 45 of my Christmas cards to work on Thursday and sold 30 of them.... and got 12 orders...4 of one, 7 of another and 1 of a third.

  7 of the first one and 4 of the second one.   I did all the die cutting and the embossing on Thursday and Friday nights so Sat was just putting it all together.    

And here's what I did as well.

I made a red one the same as the first one.  That will give the person a choice of colours. I'm entering this into the challenge at A Blog Named Hero.

So you can see I really did work hard on Saturday.   Hubby is away for the weekend so once I got home, I just kept going... the Happy Birthday above was done then.   A bit of a rest day today!  

a big thanks if you made it this far.... so much I wanted to share.  Hope my American friends have enjoyed their Thanksgiving on Thursday and enjoyed catching up with their families.   Only 4 weeks now till Christmas.