Pure Innocence Christmas Cards: My October Cards

Well as always it has been insanely busy month for me and I got behind on my Christmas Cards.  I did finish them on time...Halloween Day to be exact...but I couldn't post them until now.

There's actually a funny story behind these cards.  I was trying to keep it quick and simple for myself so I started by casing THIS CARD.  I thought the design was pretty with the soft pastel colors,  I had a similar set, and most importantly it looked super quick and easy.  Well, one thing led to another and  somehow my CAS card turned into intricate Pure Innocence Christmas Scenes!  This happens quite often to me when I attempt to case another card.   Am I alone on this or does this happen to anyone else too?  Most of the time I use another artist's card as a jumping off point...it inspires me, then I start creating, and it turns into something completely different but with a remnant of the original inspiration piece.

Anyway, onto my cards.  For those of you who may be new to my blog I play the Splitcoaststampers Christmas Card Challenge where we make Christmas Cards all year long so that we are not stressed out during the busy holiday season.  I make five cards a month so that I'll have about sixty cards at the end of the year.  I make a long card, 4x8, so that I can fit a photo card and Christmas letter inside.

This month I used some pre-printed Pure Innocence digital images that I already had laying on my desk.  I made two of this card:

The tree is from a retired Stamping' Up! set called "Holiday Basics".

I stamped the tree twice:  once in light pink and once in yellow.  The pink tree was cut out and popped up on dimensional over the yellow tree which was stamped directly onto the main image panel.

I fussy cut the Pure Innocence image out and popped that up on dimensional too.  The presents are from a Crafty Secrets birthday set.  Those were also fussy cut out and glued onto the main image panel.

 Lots of little extras were added to make this card special:  Stickles on the tree and snow, Flower soft for the snow, and Liquid Appliqué and Pom Poms on the hats of the character.

I cut panels for snow by hand just using a pair of scissors and then slightly sanding the rough edges.

My next card uses a similar technique as the previous card:  fussy cutting the main image, popping it up, making a snow drift, and stamping lots of snow flakes.  I made two of these cards.

This card doesn't appear "Christmasy" on the outside, but the inside has the Christmas message "Wishing you a warm and Happy Holiday".

 And my final card was the simplest.  This one I just stamped directly onto the main image panel.  I hand stamped the snowflakes and sentiment directly onto the panel.  Then I added a snow drift panel and lots of Stickles, Flower Soft, glitter, and Liquid Appliqué.

And here are all five cards.  It took me a lot of time, more time than I wanted to spend, making all these cards.  But I love how they turned out, don't you?

Have a great day! Amy

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