Christmas Cards Come Early

I am determined this year to have enough Christmas cards to send out when the season is upon us. (I'm also laughing in my head, because it never happens!) I've been shooting for at least one a week and there are some awesome Christmas challenges out there. Penny Black and I must be in sync, because their challenge this week is "Get Ahead for Christmas". 

I'm on Santa's nice list, and this Santa stamp is on my nice list so I inked it up and colored with my Spectrum Noirs, paying special attention to his rosy cheeks. To add a little shimmer, I painted the snow with Perfect Pearls Perfect White.

Retro Sketches is letting us use ANY sketch from their archive for their challenge this week. There are SO many cute layouts to choose from that I had an extremely tough time, but I chose this one:

Jingle Belles, one of my favorite Christmas challenge blogs put out the call to use three or more patterned papers in their "We Three Kings" challenge. I'm an over achiever and used four! Woot!

In the sketch, there is a place for a button, but I didn't have one. I always keep clear sticker bubbles on hand for just this purpose. I placed the clear bubble on top of the patterned paper and cut around it to make my own custom button. To add the finishing touch, (which happens to be Simon Says Stamp's Monday Challenge) I embossed the word Joy into the corner with some red sparkly powder. 

One more card to add to my growing stack. Now I'll just have to think of something to give my poor mailman! I love to read your comments and hear what you think!