It's That Time Again...

You know - the time when you have cookies in the oven, your holiday lights are twinkling, your favorite Christmas songs are on the radio, and you're all settled on the couch with your Kindle, reliving the magic of A Christmas Carol.

Yeah, if any of that is going on, you have one of the following:

• Your mom living with you
• Some sort of delusional disorder
• A team of elves working around the clock doing your bidding
• Illicit stimulants you mix into your espresso

The other possibility is that you are not a stamper.

Because what time it REALLY is is the time in between when you got the lights out and when they got up, when your desk is covered with the debris from no less than 40 failed prototypes of your Christmas card, and there is more of a chance that you'll be hit on the head with pieces of the international space station when you go out to start your car than that a cookie is going to get made in this chaos any time soon.

Now is the time we must throw away our dirty clothes, put in scheduled pizza orders (you really can do that, you know) and put out bowls of kibble for any living creatures that require food and buckle down for the stampy opus of the year.

Or at least that's what time it is at my house. After trying all day yesterday to make one particular image work for my Christmas cards, I went to bed in frustration without even a hope of a design.

At 4 AM, after dreaming that a particularly crazy person from my past was piloting a Southwest flight I was on, I was suddenly and irreversibly awake with an idea in my head, finally, for a nice, colorful, simple card.

Since there's not much else to do at 4 AM, I tried it out, and I do, in fact, like it, and *think* I have everything I need to make it. I have to thank my beloved Dana for planting the idea in my subconscious, unbeknownst to her.

She also is responsible for this insanely adorable video of red pandas, which I must reshare, because I adore you that much.

Seriously - is that not the cutest thing ever? I used to think I only needed one red panda, but it should be pretty obvious after you watch that that I do, in fact, need two.

Now while I was procrastinating my own card this weekend, I made a card for the blue Christmas challenge for VSN. Come on - don't judge me - how was I supposed to resist that??

I decided to use one of my fave stampy images on a simple, watercolored background. Oddly enough, Blogger does not think either stampy or watercolored are words. Hmph.

Stamps: Come to Bethlehem Ink: Basic Black Craft, Basic Black Classic Paper: Watercolor Paper, Whisper White  

Accessories: Aqua Painter, Pentel Watercolor - Cobalt Blue & Prussian Blue

I took an awesome class on watercolor not too long ago, and the instructor had us doing salted watercolor. In order to do that, you need a lot of pigment to be sitting on the paper when you apply the salt. The best way to do this is to use the tube watercolors, rather than the pan ones. Well what I found in this class is that I liked how saturated the colors of tube watercolor are, so I just kept using them!

Someday, when I grow up, I'll do REAL watercoloring. Right after I bake those cookies.

Yeah right.