It's never too early...

When you're a member of a big family, like I am, it's never too early to start preparations for Christmas. When I worked in downtown Minneapolis, I started my Christmas shopping for the next year during the post holiday sales. Minneapolis has a skyway system which connects most of the major downtown stores. I could go shopping during my lunch hour without ever going outside--no coat, hat or scarf, even when there was a foot of snow and the temperature was below zero! Here's a photo of one of the double-decker skyways:

I learned my way all over the downtown area through these skyways and loved going for my daily walk. It was such a great way to go shopping get exercise.

I no longer work downtown, but I still believe in starting my holiday preparations as soon as I can. That is why today's card is a Christmas card.

This card was made with some pretty paper from DCWV's "The Heirloom Christmas Stack." I'm going to try to use as much of this stack for my 2013 cards as I can. I'm thinking of challenging myself to use the whole stack. Not sure I could do that--some of the papers are clearly for scrapbooking, not card making--by I'd like to give it a try and see what I can accomplish.  The sentiment was heat embossed with some Ranger red embossing powder.

The poinsettia was made with the Cheery Lynn Holly Leaves die. Love that die. It makes a great poinsettia!

The center is a self-adhesive faux glitter brad. I tried a couple of other things in the center - liquid pearls, loose glitter, etc. None of them satisfied me, but I'm okay with this faux brad. I'll keep trying other things, though, until I'm really happy. If you have any ideas for me, please leave them in the comments. I'd love some suggestions!

I stamped the sentiment on the inside with some Stazon red ink and added some green holly leaves to two of the corners. You can see that the edges of the paper on both the front and interior of the card were inked to give a bit of a vintage look to match the style of the paper.

It feels really good to get started on my Christmas cards. I'll be making lots of duplicates of some of them. Just not sure which ones yet.

Have you started on your holiday card making, gift buying, etc.?








Thanks so much for stopping by. Remember to laugh--a little or a lot--every day.
Cheryl