Judging by the number of requests for Christmas Jumpers I am seeing popping up on our local community ‘Buy Nothing’ page, there seems to be a fair amount of Christmas in July parties going on. So I thought I would share a couple of christmas cards I have made recently using some brand new products that will be available to purchase in August. The products feature in our August – December mini catalogue – if you don’t have one (and you live in Australia) give me a shout and I will send one out to you.

As you can see from the picture – my catalogue is already looking ‘well loved’ – but there are so many cool things in there, including a super cute stamp set called Warm and Toasty. This set combines line art and sentiments and is perfect for colouring in whatever your favourite medium is. For the projects I am sharing today I have coloured using blends.

First up is this adorable Reindeer – don’t you just love him! I have teamed him up with a piece of DSP from the Heartwarming Hugs DSP pack (also in the new catalogue), plus a sentiment from another new stamp set called Banner Year. If you only buy one pack of DSP for Christmas cards this year – my pick is the Heartwarming Hugs (that is if you like the traditional colours). It combines Real Red and a couple of shades of green to bring an all round very useable pack of paper.

The next project to share is CASEd from a card shown in the new catalogue, with a few small changes. I have coloured and cut out two instances of the singing sled bunnies. I should point out that there are no coordinating dies for this stamp set, but the images are reasonably easy to cut out, or equally at home on a die cut shape. I have used some glimmer paper on this card – which I know is retired…but I couldn’t resist using it for the snow bank. I hoard for good reason!

The final project I have for you is gift tags – now I know some people don’t really do tags, some people don’t really notice gift tags, and some people just use a sharpie and write straight onto the paper….But not me! I love tags, they are the perfect accessory to really dress up a gift. There is a gift tag kit in the new catalogue if you want something you don’t need to think hard about, but honestly the tags I make are super easy. And you can use scraps.

For these ones I have die cut some DSP, then die cut a coordinating white layer. The ‘To / From’ again come from the new set Banner Year (this is an all occasions set with an awesome coordinating punch, I’ll share some projects on that one later). To top these off I have used one of our ‘Jingle Bells’ – these are in the new catalogue….but they were also in last years catalogue so you might find you have some lying around still. A bell on a gift tag has many benefits…not only do they look cute – but they also give you the heads up when someone is snooping under the tree.

I hope you have enjoyed these sneak peeks from the new catalogue. I have got quite a few more samples ready to share over the coming weeks. Let me know in the comments what you are most excited about.