Christmas in July

I decided to start making a Christmas card every week or so in order for us to get a feel for what we might like to use when the holiday season is upon us... and we all know it will be here before we know it! I made this one using my new favorite set, Baroque Motifs:

I started by choosing my colors. I wanted to use the gorgeous new Purely Pomegranate, so I paired it up with Mellow Moss. Not your typical Christmas green, but a green none-the-less! It creates a more soothing Christmas palette, I think. The neutral background color is Naturals Ivory with the Baroque swirl done in River Rock ink (another beautiful new In Color). The Merry Christmas sentiment is from the new Holidays & Wishes set and it is stamped on a piece of the Brocade Background designer series paper. For the emblems, I used Mellow Moss and Purley Pomegranate inks with clear embossing powder. Here's a trick for you - I have the Mellow Moss in craft ink, so embossing was no problem. For the Pomegranate, however, it only comes in classic ink which typically doesn't stay wet long enough to get the powder to stick to it. But for some reason, this stamp pad is inky enough and if you do it quickly, it works! This means having your powder container open and ready (I use a plastic dish with a spoon), stamping the image with your right hand while your left hand already has a grip on the corner of the paper to lift it up and hold it over the powder dish. You normally don't have to heat set the powder right away, but when you're doing it with classic ink, go ahead and do it immediately. Boom, boom, boom... stamp, powder, heat. Do all three steps very quickly and you may be able to defy the stamping law that says you can't emboss with classic ink! After I broke the law myself, I used a couple of Rhinestone brads to give the card a little sparkle. For the ribbon, I had to cheat. I am still waiting on all of my new goodies to arrive (Mr. Brown should bring them TOMORROW - yippee!!) so I didn't have any of the new double stitched Purely Pomegranate ribbon. So I used a piece of Olive Organdy (now retired).

So Merry Christmas here in sunny (finally) July!

Now for some bad news... I will be signing off for a week. Maddox and I are going on a trip to Utah to visit a very dear friend of mine and I am going to close the door on my stamp room until I return. I need to prepare for the trip, and quite honestly, I need to rejuvenate my creative mind. My friend, Angela, happens to be an artistic genious, so I look forward to coming home with all sorts of new ideas to share with you! Her expertise is in scrapbooking (she is Lisa Bearnson's sister - the founder of CK magazine) and so we will be doing some scrapbooking... something I haven't done in ages! Hopefully I'll have a page or two to show you when I get back. I'm taking my Stampin' Up! Simply Scrappin' kits with me, and I'm eager to give them a test run! (So see? I'm not abandoning my job altogether!)

So goodbye for now... Happy Stamping, and I hope you'll visit again when I return!