Heartfelt Rejoicing!

Good morning all. I hope your Christmas was a merry one. We are celebrating all week as family trickles in and later today we are having another gathering. I am cooking dinner for 14. A good old German feast of pork roast, red cabbage and spaetzle. Yummers...I can't wait.

My DH and DS both got me some new accessories for my Cuttlebug and last night I was able to do some stamping. I spent a good portion of the afternoon cleaning my stamp room and unearthed a pile of unfinished pieces of card stock that were left over from a Christmas card stamp a stack in November. Now that Christmas is done I didn't want to use the pieces as they were designed so I came up with something new.

The truly thyme card base was cut 4.25"x11" and folded so the fold is at the bottom. There is 1.5" cut off the top of the front. The smaller card front fit perfectly sideways into my new Textile embossing folder and then I ran it through the Cuttlebug. The pads to the Cuttlebug just fit into the machine sideways in case you ever needed to try it. I then rubbed my very vanilla craft pad over the embossing to highlight the design.
The cranberry crisp panel is 3x4 inches and I used the ticket corner punch on that. The naturals ivory card stock is 2.75"x3.75". The flower from Heartfelt Thanks is inked in cranberry and thyme and the outline flower is inked in close to cocoa. I used an aqua painter to add a touch more of the cranberry and thyme to the flowers and marigold morning to the centers. I inked up the words from Graceful Words with a chocolate chip marker leaving the long ends off. My DH put a stack of Making Memories snaps in my stocking so I used my Crop o dile to set the snaps. I am such a dork because I am having the worst time using that tool, I have yet to successfully set an eyelet! The snaps were a bit better but not much. I think I need a personal, hands on tutorial on it! Anyway, the flower panels are adhered to the front with dimensionals and then a slit punch is used on the back part of the card to receive the panels as a closure. Actually, the best way to do it is to punch the slit first and then slide the panel under the slit before adhering it to the card front, that way you don't need to measure or fiddle to get the slit to fit. One tip is to make sure you only add adhesive to the lower 2/3's of your panel. Ask me how I know that??

How are you at sending cards?? I am great at making them but actually very bad about sending them. One of the reasons I got into stamping was the idea that I could send cards out as a ministry to people, just a way to send a smile or note of encouragement. That is one of my hopes for the new year. I often sit in church and make mental note of people I should send a card to...familiar names on the prayer list, those having new babies, those I haven't seen much of lately, ect. Then once I leave church it all goes into some black hole of good intentions. So, I am going to make a bunch of generic cards that I can pack in my church bag and write in between service and Sunday school. A new habit takes 30 days to set in, so I am going to try to set this new habit in January. If you have any other ideas I welcome them. All these wonderful cards need a purpose other than sitting in a basket in my stamp studio.
Have a wonderful day!