Anatomy of a Christmas Card

Just for grins, since Father Time has tipped us onto the downhill slope that spans from today till Christmas, I thought I would share a few things with you about my Christmas card, as well as a few sneak peeks at the construction.

I have made my Christmas cards for as long as I can remember - long before I was an art instructor, that's for sure.

I, like you, love creating art for people. I agonize over the design every year. Sometimes my cards are cute, sometimes funny, sometimes patriotic and sometimes very elegant and traditional. But they're always something I take very seriously. Looking back at some of the ones I've done that seems hard to believe , but it is true!!

This year, I went with a few themes:

Simplicity
Blue & White (the ultimate Christmas color scheme, if I do say so myself. Mary wore blue, after all - the star was white)
The Gospel (as an actual physical component of my card)
Me (I think you'll see what I mean when you see the card)

If you have never made your Christmas cards, I'd ask you to think about a few things before you say you can't, you don't have time, you're not creative.

1) Making your cards forces you to carve out time in the busy holiday season for a creative endeavor, which by itself brings peace. Everybody should have a little peace at the holidays.

2) It is a gift, as well as a card, to the people you can't be with. A gift of both your time (priceless) and your art (precious)

3) It is extraordinarily economical (see below)

4) It teaches you to expand your scale - which will make you more efficient, and will change your design based on the ease of repetition - always for the better, in my humble opinion

Here's what it took in consumables to make my 120 (Hope that's enough, might not be) cards. Everything else I used was something that wasn't diminished in the effort - ink pads, my sizzix, a pen etc.

1) 73 sheets white cardstock ($10.95)
2) 6 sheets Pacific Point Blue Cardstock ($1.10)
3) 240 Stampin dimensionals ($2.53)
4) A few teaspoons Diamond Dust (50 cents, maybe)
5) Glue (50 cents, maybe)

So my total cost for my cards is $15.58.

Good luck finding 120 cards for $15.58 ($18.70 if you're not a demonstrator).

Much less the peaceful artistic few hours I will spend. Or the gift of handmade.

Think about it. There's still time.

Oh yeah - and no peeking.