Christmas in September?

Cardmakers around the world are gearing up for their biggest card giving season.....Christmas!  I usually start dabbling in designs by September.   With around 50 cards to make and send by December, a three month jump on the holiday relieves a lot of pressure which makes it a much more enjoyable experience for me. Sometimes I try to come up with simple designs that I can reproduce and will go through the mail easily.  Other times I just throw caution to the wind start piling stuff on for the fun of it.   If I really like a card I will make up to five in a similar design but most of the time my cards are original.

Today I'd like to share my first two Christmas cards for 2015.  First, a more traditional style card that doesn't have a lot of layers or a lot of bulk.  This is a card that I will definitely revisit when it comes time to really produce the masses.  I think I'd like to change up the colors a bit though and make them each a little different.  

 I started this card by stamping the first layer with the Diagonal Stripes Background stamp from My Favorite Things.   I used WPlus9's  awesome Woodland Wreaths stamp set to layer this wreath on a white background and then used a Lil' Inker Designs Stitched Mats Rectangles die to cut it to size.   The sentiment is from LID's Instant Camera: Christmas stamp set.  I raised the white stamped panel with some dimensional tape and then sprinkled the wreath with some diecut sequins using Mama Elephants Confetti dies and some gold foil cardstock.

This card has a few more details with less stamping and more diecuts.  I used LID's Long and Skinny Rectangles to add the stitched border on the red piece.  By the way, isn't that red fabulous?  It's Simon Says Stamp's Lipstick Red.  I love it!  Anyway, I cut the white piece with LID's Anytime Tags die and stamped it using WPlus9's Just Geometric Triangles.  I encircled one of  WPlus9's Stag Trio diecuts with a Tim Holtz's Scribbles and Splats Thinlets die cut out of gold foil cardstock.  Once again I used Mama Elephant's Confetti die for the sequins.  That awesome wide black and white striped paper on the side is from last years Heidi Swapp Believe Collection.

Well, I'm off to make some more Christmas cards.  Thank you for stopping by today.  Have a great day!