Christmas thank yous

While I am off work this week (yea!), one of my to dos is to write my Christmas thank-you cards. I received several thoughtful and generous gifts from the families at my childcare center, and I always make sure to give them thank-you notes when we come back after break.

A little side story: I think my favorite gift this year was from one of the two-year-olds in my toddler class. He had gone shopping with his mom, probably at a dollar store, and had picked out gifts for all the teachers at the school (there are about thirteen of us). They wrapped them up and put them in a big basket with a card, and each teacher selected one gift to open -- with the warning from his mom to "Choose wisely." They were the completely random things you would expect from a toddler: I got a container with a lid shaped like a puppy face (which actually will be useful for bringing lunches to work), and some of the other gifts were a can of pineapple rings, a package of leis, a water bottle and a package of paper cups with hearts on them. It was absolutely hysterical, and all day long the teachers asked each other what gift they had opened. (I found out later that he had also picked out gifts for his family -- bubble bath for his grandpa and a lint roller for one of his cousins. Hee.) It was a great idea, and it was nice knowing that he had helped choose the gifts.

Anyway, back to my original post ... typically I use store-bought cards for my Christmas thank yous (shocking, I know), but this year I decided I wanted to make the cards. I thought I would just make something quick and simple, but of course what I plan to make isn't always what I end up with. Here is the design I settled on:

Supplies (all Stampin' Up!^®, unless otherwise noted):
Stamps: Very Versatile, Snow Much Fun
Paper: Designer Series Paper (DSP) Patterns Stack - Brights Collection; card stock: Whisper White, Real Red, Cool Caribbean; aqua card base (Gartner Studios)
Ink: Jet Black StazOn, Basic Gray, Real Red, Cool Caribbean, Old Olive, Pumpkin Pie
Accessories: Blender Pen, 1/8" Real Red taffeta ribbon, basic rhinestones, corner rounder, Word Window punch, Modern Label punch, Dimensionals

I wanted to use some pre-folded cards I've had for awhile, and the aqua color is almost a perfect match to Cool Caribbean, so I used that color, along with Real Red, Old Olive, Pumpkin Pie and Going Gray to color the snowman image. (As you can see, I still can't decide whether the snowman's boots should be red or gray; when I made them red, I thought they looked better gray, and vice versa. Maybe I'll do some of each.) I layered him on a piece of Real Red card stock, and a piece of striped DSP, some red ribbon, a greeting and a few rhinestones finish off the cards. The layout of the card is still pretty simple, but coloring the images for ten cards (I also stamped a snowman inside the cards) is a little more time-consuming than I was planning. But I've got several days to finish making them and filling them out, so nothing to stress about.

I hope you're enjoying the holidays. Thanks for stopping by!