Sparkling Holiday Cards

Today I'm sharing my Christmas card. And also the "reject" designs from this year.

Meghan, you can stop hit refresh now :)

I made 50 cards this year. 50!! Am I crazy?! But since I've added Matt's family and friends to this year's distribution list, the number had to increase.

I started playing with designs in early November. These were my first three cards. I like them all but for some reason or another just didn't think they were "the" design for year. I felt like I was really close on the first one (the dark green with chevron paper) though.

After building some layers, collecting ephemera and playing with placement, I finally came up with this design. Tada!

There are several layers here:

• Sheet torn from a Christmas Carol paperback
• Doily
• Stamped/Misted Christmas tree
• Star diecut
• Stamped Tag
• Banner
• Bingo marker
• Washi tape
• Brad

It ended up being a bit bulky, so for those that I had to mail (which is 98% of them) I had to eliminate the bingo marker (insert sad face here).

And this is only a stack of 30 of them! I have 20 written in, sealed and about to be posted.

I also couldn't forget the inside! This is an old Hero Art stamp that I love. I'm pretty sure I used it on the inside of some of my cards from last year. It's just so classic!

Christmas is my favorite holiday, so it's no wonder that I go crazy with my cards! I can't afford to send everyone I love a gift, but I can at least let everyone know that I'm thinking of them.

Happy Holidays yall! I'll be back to share the cover of my new Christmas album in a bit. (Hint: it's going to look fairly familiar after your having seen these cards ;)

xxbesos

Amsterdam Complete!

It's done! One more country to cross off my list. I made 11 pages for Amsterdam!

That's a lot for a 3 day trip!

I have to say, I think this is my favorite layout I've done in awhile.

It's the colors. The colors!

I love the gray/yellow/pink/blue color combo. All of it (bar the blue cardstock and bike paperclip) is from the Boardwalk kit.

I heat embossed, using white embossing powder, with the awesome map Studio Calico/Hero Arts background stamp. I seriously bought the add-on only for that stamp. And it was perfect for this page about the streets of Amsterdam.

And how can you not love this awesome bike paperclip?! I got it from Paper Source. (BTW, it's really dangerous to live within 8 min walking distance of this place...and a Sprinkles cupcake!)

And this next page was so fun and super easy to do. The paper already had the lines and all I had to do was add some tape.

I mixed and matched my letter stickers and a Sassafras border sticker to create the title. I love how it turned out! It so makes me think of the crazy lasers and things that they have going on down at da club :)

Tow more pages for my Europe pages and two more for Shimelle's challenges! And now I get to go play with the bestie as she's coming for a visit.

See yall next week!

xxbesos