Best of Christmas

Happy Monday!!!

Have you missed me??  Once again I have WANTED to post over the last 7 days but there simply aren't enough hours in the day ... I was fighting fires all week and simply didn't get a chance to post.  On the bright side, I'm determined to get 6 or 7 posts done in the next 24 hours and schedule them to pop up every morning so you have a reason to come back and see what I managed to come up with last week.  The countdown is on until I head off to Las Vegas and that means I WILL get everything on my to-do-list done before Thursday morning.  Nothing like time pressure to get my butt in hear - heck, this morning I finally managed to send in Albert Blue Cross claim forms that I *planned* to submit back in August ... AUGUST!  Yep - nothing like taking 4 days off to make you accomplish 4 months of work *lol*.

So!  First up ... this is a card I came up with for my Christmas Stamp-a-Stack that ran yesterday (it was touch-and-go as to whether or not it would go ahead thanks to the 20 cm of snow we got Saturday ... but you can't stop a stamper!!  My brave ladies made the trek and we had a great time!)

Here is my card:

Ta Da!  It's so cute!  I like to offer my stampers a variety of *feel* with my stamp-a-stacks - whimsical, traditional, religious and so on.  This was my more religious offering.  Before I give you the details of it I want to share just how it came to be.  As of last Wednesday I still hadn't designed any cards for my SAS.  I was over at my friend Wanda's house and she showed be a number of cards she had recently made.  Here is one she let me borrow ... 

I loved this card ... and the PLAN was to case it ... but in usual Tamara form once I got it home and tried it myself it morphed into the card I ultimately came up with.  So let's see ... exactly what is the same about it??  ... the circle ... that's about it *lol*  Truth be told I probably WOULD have cased it exactly but I'm hoarding my DSP from the Season of Style paper stack for my Christmas Shoe class that is coming up ... and I only had 3 sheets of Crumb Cake card stock left so it HAD to morph!

For my card I started with a Whisper White base.  I then used a Cherry Cobbler layer of 4" x 5 1/4".  Another layer of white - 3 3/4" x 5" and then a layer of the Naturals Ivory card stock (page 156 - $9.25 for 40 sheets)  I really like the sand-like color of this card stock!  For the stamps I used the manger scene from the Best of Christmas set (item #132152 - $17.95) and More Merry Messages (item 126402 - $30.95 clear; item #126400 - $40.95 wood)  Both images are stamped in Soft Suede ink.  The Natural Ivory layer was run through the Big Shot with the heart embossing folder from Adorning Accents (item 125601 - $10.95 for 3 folders).  Now - for the manger piece.  I decided to save a tree and save some card stock (that and I was losing the will to live by 9:00 pm Saturday night and really didn't want to cut more layers for the punched out image ...) SO  Here is what I did:  I took the Whisper White 3 3/4" x 5" layer of paper and stamped the image right in the middle of it:

 I then used my 2 1/2" circle punch to punch it out:

 I then adhered the white layer to the rest of the card:

 .. and then I adhered the Naturals Ivy piece on top ... hiding the hole ... and saving a tree :)  Aren't I clever?

To finish the card off I colored the little heart on the image with my Cherry Cobbler marker.  It needed just a LITTLE punch of Cherry cobbler somewhere else to tie it all together.  After spending about 45 minutes with various buttons, jewels, ribbon and heart I settled on what I think was the perfect touch ... the little teeny heart that comes from the Owl Builder Punch (page 183 - $22.95).  I find it quite interesting that although I use this punch ALL the time I have never actually made an owl with it - go figure! *lol*  I used a mini glue dot to stick it on becase life is WAY to short to do it any other way!

So there you have it!  One post down, a whole bunch to go!  Pop in again tomorrow to see some more Christmas card *CASEs*.  Thanks for looking in - until next time, have a stampy day!


Tam