2015 Holiday Cards

Happy Day After Christmas! I hope you enjoyed, or are enjoying, a lovely Holiday Season! Hopefully you are not too conked out from too much food.

Here are the cards I made and sent out this year:

(As Always,  Click on photos for larger images.)

 This one is actually recycled wrapping paper. I was inspired by the stamp I have that is ornament shaped, and remembered that I had this paper. So I cut the ornaments from the paper and made tiny bows for them (so hard to make tiny ones, by the way!), and used decorative scissors on the edges. And Voila! These adorable cards, and a great way to recycle in one. This says "Happy Holidays" on the inside, but I forgot to get a picture of that. Oh well.  I even hand made the envelopes for these ones. 

Only problem with these: I had several of them returned because they are so small. Apparently, postage standards are 3.5x5 inches minimum. I didn't even know that was a thing! And SOME people received them and others didn't, so it's totally random. Lesson Learned: No Tiny Mail. 

So, all of you that I advised would be getting your card late...you can just pretend to be surprised when they come, OK?

I love the way the lighting in this picture makes the card look almost like stained glass.

 I didn't actually end up sending these cards out to anyone because I had enough of other varieties for people on my list. But since I made these this year, I figured I'd include them in this year's post.   I had bought a heart punch earlier this year and went totally crazy punching hearts for no reason at all (seriously, I have snack bags with heart cut outs that I need to either use or throw away) so when I thought of a tree, I tried it out of hearts and liked it. I really like that for these cards, even though it is the same shade red card stock as the base for both, that by using different reds for the poinsettia stamps and different shades of green for the trees, that they do actually look like two different cards.

 For this one, I made  the background with a snowflake stamp and embossing powder (one of my new favorite things to play with lately), then stamped the sentiment with embossing power as well and put it over coordinating ribbon. I really love the monochrome look to this one. I think it comes together really well.

 I bought a cute gingerbread stamp a few months ago, and one day, I was really just looking for an excuse to use it. I couldn't think of anything for awhile that day so set it aside and went about the rest of my day. When I came back from running errands, this idea just popped in my head and I gave it a shot. (And yes, more embossing powder.) I like the simplicity of the gingerbread men on the ginger-y colored card stock (that honestly probably wouldn't get used for anything else since I am not a huge fan of the color by itself so great way to use it for something) and just a little bit of color with the sentiment and edging.

Close up of the sparkly gingerbread men.

And lastly, we have what was probably the easiest of the cards, but that I still like. (Never mind the crooked picture. Whoops.) I really like making simple cards like this with Washi Tape. It's simplistic, but still looks really nice. I think they key is to make sure the tape is well coordinated and the sentiment in similar colors. I have made Halloween Cards in similar fashion that were liked.  Maybe not for everyone, but definitely something I like to do. :)