Hi everyone!

My Christmas cardmaking always tends to be a bit of a rush, especially as I like to devote my crafty time to Tracey McNeeley’s tag challenge in November. Over the past couple of years, I’ve been trying to find a way to make cards earlier in the year, but generally failing! However, I think I’ve found a better way of achieving that this year!

Christmas in July!

I actually decided to attempt Christmas in July earlier this year but then Kathy Racoosin announced her Daily Marker 30 Day Colouring Challenge, which would fall partly into July and that threw my into a bit of a quandry… but that turned out to be an added bonus! I only used wood-mounted stamps for the colouring challenge, so I was able to ink up some oft-neglected wood-mounted Christmas stamps for my cards in the first half of the month!

I LOVED devoting a whole month to Christmas cards. While I was very ready to move on from stamping/colouring at the end of the 30 day colouring challenge on  15 July, I’m not ready to move on from making Christmas cards now! I think that’s because I didn’t restrict myself to one main technique (like stamping/colouring) and also because I have some really gorgeous festive supplies! Anyway, I’ll definitely be creating more Christmas cards on and off during August.

I also enjoyed being able to create my cards without the ‘distraction’ of new stuff! In autumn, I often end up waiting for new release stamps and dies to arrive and this adds to the pressure to get my cards done quickly! By creating so many cards in July, I was able to ‘shop my stash’ and use some old favourites as well as newer stamps and dies that I didn’t have a chance to create with last year.

It was also fun to create festive cards for challenges which were not focussed on Christmas-themed cards! I ended up with cards using non-traditional colours – some challenges really stretched my creativity!

Thanks to everyone who followed along and shared kind comments with me – I really appreciate all of you!

Have a great day!

LucieG.