Back in the Groove and Gearing Up for Christmas!

Well, my hubby Lee and I arrived back home in Utah during the wee hours of Wednesday morning, after a long and tiring day of jockeying from rental car to airplane, airport to airport, concourse to concourse, gate to gate, and plane to plane . . . . .

After this most recent experience with air travel, I think both Lee and I have a much greater appreciation for the advantages of traveling by car! Thank goodness we don't have any more flying trips planned for several months.

Although Lee and I enjoyed our time with my family in Kansas, we're both glad to be home and done traveling for a while. I picked up our greyhounds, Harley and Ride, from the "doggie hotel" (shh . . . . .don't tell them it was the KENNEL!) yesterday, and they were ecstatic to see both Lee and me. And now, they're contentedly settled into their own routine and their favorite napping places here in THEIR house.

Now that I've had a little time to rest up after our trip, I find that I'm once again getting "back in the groove" of cardmaking. After over a week of not being able to work on cards, I really missed my crafting!

Although I didn't actually work on cards while I was in Kansas, I did have my sketch book with me all the time, just in case some inspiration hit me! And I actually did come up with a few ideas for new Christmas card designs this year, so I hope you'll keep an eye on my Blog and my Etsy Store for new card creations.


Today, I spent some time looking through all my Christmas papers and embellishments, and decided to start on a couple of fairly simple new card designs, using some new cardmaking materials that I'd purchased on sale a few months back.

I've never made any card designs featuring a pull-out tag before, so this was a bit of a departure for me.

For the base of the card design I worked on today, I used a pre-made tag pocket and tag (by Making Memories). The card base is constructed of archival safe papers and cardstock.







Then I added my own handmade embellishments.

I drew a tree pattern the right size to fit where I wanted it on the outside of the tag card pocket, then used the pattern to cut out a tree from white textured Bazzill cardstock.

I added a little sparkle (with crystal "Stickles") to the perimeter of the tree.

Then to add a little pizazz to the plain white write-on tag, I handpunched some holly berries and leaves, arranged them into several designs and glued them to a couple of places on the tag. I also threaded a length of silver-edged white organza ribbon through the pre-set silver tone eyelet at the top of the pull-out tag.

I was having so much fun using these "pre-fab" pocket cards that I decided to make another handcut tree, and used this second tree to create a similar card design for a second card.

I have four more of these tag pocket cards by Making Memories, so you can be expecting some new variations of this design real soon!

I listed these two new cards on Etsy this afternoon, but so far, there are very few viewers. Oh well, there's still time before Christmas.

I sure hope now that I'm "Back in the (Cardmaking) Groove, and Gearing Up for Christmas (Cards)" . . . . .all the handmade card buyers out there haven't already finished their card purchases for the season!