Fifty-six Handmade Christmas Cards

Here are my Christmas Cards for this year! I apologize in advance for the quality of the photos. I did not have good lighting where the cards were and my camera is not the best.

The last few years I made a photo card, either taking my own photo or getting a professional photo and using it to create the card. This time however, I wanted to actually scrapbook a card. My mother is quite a gifted card maker and I've become more and more inspired by her handmade cards. I started working on these at the scrapbooking retreat I went to in November.

I started off with 8 & 1/2 x 11 sheets of forest green, cranberry and cream paper. I cut them in half so that they were 8 & 1/2 x 5 & 1/2. I ran them through a Cuttlebug using an embossing folder. That's what made the pretty raised pattern. It's the cutest little machine that you can use to manually cut shapes and emboss paper. Then I cut varous 12X12 sheets of beautiful patterned cream, gold, light green and flowered paper down to fit the cards (now folded in half). I used a Creative Memories decorative trimmer to give them a wavy edge. I adhered these pieces to the center of my cards. I left the flowered paper as squares (no wavy edges) and used some distressing ink to give the paper an antique look, then adhered them to the right side of the card front.

I used a wooden stamp with black ink to make the bible verse on strips of red and green paper, cut them and matted them to brown or red paper. I did the same for the little manger image with an acrylic stamp. I am new to using acrylic stamps, but I really like them. You can see exactly where you are placing your stamp. I adhered these matted stamped images to the card. I also stamped "Handmade by" on the back of each card and wrote my name underneath.

I used EK Success snowflake punches to create about 175 little snowflakes in various patterns. The EK Success snowflake punch line offers six different patterns so that you can layer them and make an endless amount of unique snowflake arrangements. I layered and glued three snowflakes to each card, and put a dot of white glitter glue in the center.

I punched out 240 tiny gold doves, using leftover gold foil label paper. All of the labels had been used, but I saved the empty sheets. I punched the doves from the leftover gold borders of the label paper! I used these to adhere a wallet sized photo of my kids to the inside of the card, over the embossed area.

I bought a couple packs of holiday stationary, and used The Enveloper to make envelopes for all of the cards. Now they are just sitting on the table waiting to be signed and mailed. That part is taking quite a while because I am writing a personalized message in all 56 of them!