He's Baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaack....

Wow.  Whew.  This is tougher than I expected.  Getting back into the groove after being away for so long is NOT an easy thing.   But, I'm back, I'm creating, and I hope that I will finally have something interesting to say, now that we are WELL into the new year!

So!  Where have I been?  I am back to work now, and I have one of those changing from week-to-week schedules.  It has taken me a while to get into the groove of that, while trying to do the house and laundry and groceries, etc.  It's the first of this that I have had to do since moving back to MI, and while it's no different than all the things we ALL do every day, I needed some time to "re-groove" myself, since it's been almost two years without work.

I think I (vaguely) remember promising Christmas cards when last we met.  Too late?  Well, you can pin them to your Pinterest boards and look at them next year, I guess.....
Without further ado, here we go--

I made about 60-something cards, all in all.  Some of them are in past posts, so please browse round the blog to see some of them. 
I went (or TRIED to go) really simple for the most part. 

 

I bought Paper Smooches' Christmas Words and Snowflakes dies this year, as well as a Sizzix snowflakes die set whose name I don't remember. 

 

I made these--



The washi tape is some past year's Martha Stewart Christmas tapes, as well as other stuff in my collection (mostly Queen & Co.). 
The letters were cut from this crazy vinyl stuff I found at JoAnn's, but it was so had to cut, I abandoned the idea pretty quickly.  It's wicked shiny, though, so I really wish it had been easier to work with.  I REALLY need to get one of those metal shims, I think, and all will be better.
Oh, and my fave parts are the white dots.  Those are done with Enamel Accents.  I LOVE that stuff!  I have the black kind, too, so watch out for some of that to appear in the future.

I really liked these cards. 
They led me to different versions on that theme--

 
 So , clearly, more color, and more "shtuff" going on. 
Those led me to another variation of my "words at the bottom" theme--

The "merry" die is Papertrey Ink, Wonderful Words, Christmas, and the stamped sentiment is from the coordinating stamp set.  Charlie found the hounds tooth stamp for me at an art store, and the dotted background stamp is from Amuse Studio.  The blue snowflake is an SU punch, and the little branch is a Martha punch.

 Letting the paper do most of the work here....Just adding a few die cut snowflakes and some bling finishes it all off.

Then I went a little wild.  I liked these next ones a LOT, but they were a bit of a time suck...

One of the first stamp sets I ever bought was this one by Stampendous, called "Holiday Home."  I LURVE this stamp set.  The images are amazing, and so crisp and tiny, the sentiments are perfect, and I use this set all year round.  The houses are great, the snowman is adorable....I could go on and on.  This is the set I grab during the craft room fire, for sure (craft gods forbid!).

ANYWAY--I used this set on this card, but I only used the sentiment on the front. 
Wait, you say?  You can see images, you say? 

But they're not ON the front of the card--I did some fancy junk with my square punch....
They're on the inside! 

That looks like this--

Is that sentiment not GORGEOUS?  I so love it.  great fonts, great semi-vertical orientation...I swoon.
I love the way a light blue copic marker makes the images come alive.

I made others like this one, I loved it so much--

These made me so happy, but they do take a long time to put together.
This one also took a good while (but I had SO much fun doing it)--

Same stamp set.  *Sigh*......
Oh, and then I did this. 

I really don't think this one turned out the way I had it in my brain.  Sometimes they do, sometimes they don't.....Oh, and yes, the same stamp set.  Could you just DIE?  There's a second house, too...


Well, that's enough.  There are more cards, but it's a long year, and I will work VERY hard at finding the time to get my blog posts in at LEAST once a week.  Promise!

Thanks SO much for stopping by!
You make it all worth while.

All Best-
Richard