Carded

It's as if I have 65 teenagers who I've spent years raising and then all of a sudden they go off to college and make me proud, but leave me with an empty nest. Yep, my Christmas cards are like college-bound children for sure. And I must say I'm happy to see them go.

Well, I did spend a lot of time creating them [not years or anything, but still]. And then I shipped them off to their destinations across the nation. Yes, I was a little jealous of the ones going south to Texas but I told them to hold it down for their Wisco roots. Now I'm enjoying a little free time to my self in this empty nest, without crafts or projects [except Christmas gifts of course. There will always be SOMETHING to do around here]. It's nice. Very nice. I should do this 'free time' thing more often.

Would you like to see my little babies?

I could not bring myself to design them via Photoshop and have them printed using one sheet of paper. Just couldn't do it. Mostly because I need a break from computerized crafting for a while and Photoshop is taking over my brain [album design for Christmas time turned out to be quite demanding.] There is just nothing quite like the texture of real paper designs. Nothing like the feel of scissors cutting and final layered product coming together. Yes, it took about a gajillion hours longer than doing it on the computer but it was theraputic for me. I missed my old school paper crafts!

Anyway, let's see them in the making, shall we?

First you go nuts in a scrapbooking store and purchase tons of 12x12 papers.
You also find a pimp rubber stamp. Note some of my favorite paper patterns, too.
Get your paper cutter out and get to work. I used the white card stock for my base layer and cut out lots of rectangles for the fronts.

Yes it was a lot. I printed out our text [the horror, using the computer for text! But I just love fun fonts so I had to do it].
I picked our picture [it was a winner with you blog readers, too!] and used one teeny tiny digital scrapbooking embellishment for a frame. Again, I just HAD to. I printed the images at Walgreens for ungodly cheap on a 4x6 background.
Then came the worst 'traditional scrapping' moment---cutting out all the stupid pictures, with their curvy frame included. I recruited Nate for his first real crafting project on this one! At first he was all about it, like, "Ohhhh, look at me: I'm so fast with this cutting, and mine are so awesome. I can even cut 3 at once. This is easy." Then about 30 minutes later he was all, "My thumb hurts, I think I just got arthritis in it. I quit."

His crafting career was short lived, my friends. But it sure did help me out a lot on this project!
So then I took the text and cut them all out, and adhered them to some more fun papers. I had to cut those too, of course.

I didn't like the text pasted directly onto the papers so I tore them all off and added the black background. MUCH better. Now my inner OCD freak can relax a little bit because the text background matches our frame [black and black]. Sigh.

Every one was a little different, as you can see. Most of them had shades of green and reds but some were all funky with browns and blues. :)

I used my same red envelopes this year and still *heart* them.

And on the inside? Well the first half of the alphabet got lengthy personal messages. I was all inspired and feeling connected to our friends and family. Then by about the letter 'M' I lost my flare and started jotting a few words only, as seen here.
Sorry for that, last half of the alphabet. I was getting antsy!

And that, my friends, is how I made our Christmas cards this year. My babies:)

I cannot promise to produce this labor of love each year and I'm sure I'll break down and do digital cards in the near future. But for now this will do.

In other news, the forecast was right and we did get hit hard today. Some areas got up to 11 inches but I'm guessing we were only at 5-6. Please. I thought this was going to be a regular BLIZZARD but 5-6 is totally doable. Anything over a foot and I'll freak out, but I can handle 5-6 inches.

However, this is the depressing view I have during my lengthened drive to work [it sucks when the plows can't catch up to the downfall].
Patio side table at 7 am:
And at 7 pm:
Patio table at 7 am:
And at 7 pm:
It was a heavy and wet snow so I think it all compressed down on itself. Very pretty, I must admit.

Oh and wanna see something cool?


Here is the parking lot at work and THAT would be a gigantor snow pile.
Hi lady! Don't mind me sticking my camera out at you! I'm just taking photographical evidence for my blog. Happy car scraping! :)
You see the size in relation to the cars, right? Yeah. That pile will be there until May....mark my words.