A few weeks ago, E came over for some knitting by the fire. We are both beginner knitters so after only an hour or so, our hands began to cramp up. We decided to take a break from the yarn and knitting needles and go downstairs to the craft room to make some Christmas cards. We brought down our tea, a plate of freshly baked cookies, cranked the Christmas music and got straight to work.

E decided to do a forest theme for the front of her card. She used different sizes of tree stamps as well as different colors of ink layered on top of each other to give the effect of trees in a forest.

To follow the tree theme, she cut out this cute little stamp of a car carrying a Christmas tree home, which she had colored in with markers. Below is the front of the finished card.

And here is the little Christmas touch added inside… Love it!

Meanwhile, I was making a small batch of cards for myself. I began by cutting out little squares of white card stock, then stamped a pine cone in dark brown ink over a background of pine needles stamped in a lighter green ink. (Note: these stamps are from the Definately Decorative Pines set from Stampin’ Up.) I adhered each of the white squares onto a slightly larger deep brown square using double-sided tape.

Next, I prepared the red card stock by cutting each 8-1/2″ x 11″ piece in half, then scoring each of these in half and folding them. I stamped “Peace on Earth” on the inside and let this dry a little. Then I stamped the pine needles in green ink over the front and adhered the pine cone squares with thick mounting tape.

It was a fun and productive day and now we are one small step closer to being ready for the holiday season. Tomorrow I will spend some time writing a personal note in each card and will send them next week. Hmm… what’s next?