Peace

I must admit, I'm generally not into the whole "Christmas in July" mindset. When the big box craft stores start putting out their Fall AND Christmas decorations in late June/early July--when the temperatures are typically in the 90s (or higher) here in Texas--it tends to put me off. Having said that, I know that the early deadline for Christmas cards for Operation Write Home is October 10. And the way time seems to have been flying even faster than it used to, I know I should get started on those cards. I also will be making our Christmas cards to send to friends & family, and don't want to be rushing to do that at the end of November. So here is my very first Christmas card of 2014.

I have been participating in this year's Camp Scrap, led by May Flaum. One of the classes is on design. The first sketch/design concept May presented was the grid. So I decided to use that idea for this card. For the snowman, I used this digital stamp from Sweet 'n Sassy Stamps. I worked out the design in Photoshop, so I would know how large to make the snowman. Once I had sized him, I printed the image onto heavyweight white cardstock and colored it with colored pencils, using Gamsol to blend & smooth the colors in the larger areas.

I stamped the greeting, from the Clearly Besotted "Holiday Sentiments" set, using Hero Arts' "Navy" mid-tone shadow ink. For the small panel behind the snowflake button, I blended Tumbled Glass Distress ink over another piece of white cardstock. I chose the patterned papers from my stash. I cut the pieces based on the measurements in the sketch I'd done, and applied a small amount of glue to the back of each piece to hold them in place while I sewed.

After I machine-stitched all the pieces to the dark-green background, I glued the button down with Claudine Hellmuth's Multi Medium in matte so it wouldn't wiggle around, and stitched through the holes. Finally, I adhered the card front to an A2 size card base.

I'm entering this card in Sweet 'n Sassy Stamp's "Christmas in July" challenge.