Christmas in July: Part 2

Christmas in July continues.  Click for Part 1, or use the search feature to find the others in the series.

1997 is a year that I enlisted many hours of help to get the cards completed.  What I thought of as an "easy" project ended up being the most labor-intensive one yet!  oops.  My husband, and my devoted sister each spent a long afternoon at the kitchen table with me, coloring after I realized I'd never be finished in time otherwise.

1997

My husband brings this design (and 1999's) up just about every year around card-making time.  "Just don't ever make me color church windows again," he'll say.  LOL.

Stamps used:  Above the Mark (angel), and Rubber Stampede (window).  While the scene includes only two stamps and one mask, lots and lots of coloring with Prismacolors was also required.

1998's card showcased a simple design.  I stamped the candy canes onto white card stock and cut them out while on a trip to visit the in-laws.  It was a great car project.  The other images were stamped directly onto the card stock, then the candy canes were attached.

Tip:  Best to color things in first, then cut them out.  That way, you can be all "wildly coloring outside the lines" to get the job done quickly and no one will be the wiser.

Stamps Used:  TooMuchFun (candy cane, ornament, teddy bear), Arizona Stamps, Too! (rocking horse), Diva Rubber (branches).

1998

1999.  This.  This is the one my husband remembers as the biggest nightmare.  I got the idea for the paper-pieced design from an article in RSM, though I think they referred to the process as "paper quilting" instead.

Honestly, I thought it was great fun to cut out all the little shapes from the many piles of colored and textured papers.  Time consuming, yes, but with another new baby in the house now (baby Laurel was born in January of that year) this was a project that I could work on in small bursts throughout the day (and night).  Perfect for a busy mom of two.

I used a very dark background for a change, which I ordered direct from The Paper Cut.  What was really fun about this batch of 70+ cards was that no formula was used to dictate which color/texture to place in each spot, so each card presented a new challenge.  It became a wonderful exercise in color theory.  That being said, the example below is one that remains in my collection because I'm not keen on the purple speckled paper, nor the excess of fuscia.  Were this one destined for a recipient, the kings would have been colored in, too.

1999

To be continued on Monday...