Christmas cards - in January??!

Belated Happy New Year everyone!  I'm not one to make New Year's resolutions but last year I made a plan with my friend Heather to make 2 Christmas cards per month so it wouldn't be such a time crunch in December.  Well, I got behind right away but then I caught up and even exceeded my goal.  Still, I ended up sending a few Hallmark cards in 2014.  So this year, I decided to up my "quota" to 4 cards per month.

I'm happy to report that over the last week I have made 9, count 'em NINE, Christmas cards.  So, I'm very proud of this start to my 2015 Christmas collection.  Besides those cards, I also made 6 birthday cards, an anniversary card, and a sympathy card. Oh, and we had a Scramble over at the Hero Arts Flickr group and I made a card there too - see it here, if you're interested.

So here are my Christmas cards - sorry in advance for the long post!  To make up the 9, I did some similar cards to a few of these.  This first pair is an anniversary card and a Christmas card using the same Christmas set - Peace Joy Love - by Lawn Fawn.  To be honest, these were the cards that kicked off my Christmas card project.  I had this darling Lawn Fawn set that I'd never used and when I was looking to make an anniversary card for my aunt and uncle, I zeroed in on the Love image.  How perfect for an anniversary with those two cute birds, I thought!  Since I had the set out, I decided to do a Christmas card too (and made a second, slightly different version of it too - not photographed).

This next trio of cards uses papers from Basic Grey's Evergreen 6x6 pad - love, love, love this paper!  One of the sheets has HOLLY and JOLLY all over it.  The first thing I did was cut out some of the Js, Os, and Ys to make JOY.  After I did that a couple of times, I decided to use the whole words Holly and Jolly on a card.  The & was cut on my Silhouette.  I made a second one of the card on the upper left - had a lot of fun with that one - the birdie papers are so colorful!

I was home sick on Wednesday and after sleeping most of the day away, I had enough energy to play with a new Tim Holtz Festive stencil.  I used Distress markers on a piece of soft yellow patterned paper from Evergreen.  I trimmed the panel and cut it in two pieces so I could make two cards.  I stamped each one with a fun background by Hero Arts called Winter Sparkle.

Papers here were also from Evergreen and the background stamp used (and in the top two cards of the trio above) is called Notebook Paper from Hero Arts.  Have used that stamp in many cards this month - love it!  Hard to see in the photo, but I brushed Wink of Stella on the pine needles in my stenciled piece.

Finally, I made this doggy card this morning.  I bought this fun Inky Antics clear set last year and meant to make a 2014 Christmas card for a dog-loving friend.  Well, I didn't get it done for 2014 but now I'm ready for 2015!  The background stamp on this one is another fave from Hero Arts - the Envelope Liner Background.  Colored the doggy with Copics; the snowflake sequins are from Lawn Fawn.

So, that's my start on 2015 Christmas cards!  I'm so  impressed with myself - LOL.  What's your plan for getting your Christmas cards done?  Whatever it is, have fun with it and thanks for stopping!!