July Christmas cards: Cheery snowman

Looking back over the Christmas cards I've made so far this year, I realized I haven't done a lot of actual stamping, other than sentiments. I have a lot of cute holiday stamps, so I decided to use one of my favorite snowman images for my July Christmas cards.

This snowman is from Endless Creations, and one of the best parts of the stamp is that you get two images: one with the scarf on the left, which I used here, and one that is the mirror image, with the scarf on the right. (The company has a lot of stamps with that feature, and I think it's great.) The sentiment, from Simon Says Stamp, is one that I would normally use on the inside of a Christmas card. But I thought the size and shape of it was perfect with the snowman, so I decided to use it on the front of these cards.

It took me a long time to get to a layout I liked, but the effort was worth it because I love how these cards turned out. And they're pretty simple in the end -- a couple of stamps, a little coloring, one die, and a strip of patterned paper. For embellishment I added a few silver sequins and a bit of red pompom trim and tinsel in the upper right corner (attached with a mini stapler). With the pompoms, these cards aren’t easy to mail, so I only made four of them to be hand delivered.

I did have a couple of leftover snowmen that didn't make the layout cut, so I trimmed them down and made them into their own cards. I matted them with black cardstock, embossed the card bases, and wrapped tinsel trim around the card fronts. And of course they needed a few sequins.

I used Frost White Shimmer Paint for the snowflakes on this card. (I use a sponge dauber to apply the paint to the stamp and then clean it off when I'm done.) I also painted some along the bottom of the panel to look like a snowbank.

I should be done with my Christmas cards now. Yippee! I may still make a few here and there if the mood strikes, but I don’t think I need to mass produce anymore. I might try to start working on my calendar pages next month because I always feel like I have to scramble to get those done in December.

Thanks for stopping by!