Christmas in July: Part 6

Christmas in July continues!

Here are links to the other posts in the series, in case you missed them:
Part 1   Part 2   Part 3   Part 4   Part 5

Christmas 2007 found us with two daughters, and now two sons.  Baby Liam joined the family in May that year.  Our growing family had many of its own traditions by this time, foremost among them the delivery of Christmas cookies to friends and neighbors.

...and baby makes four!

More on that later.

"Mary, Mother of Jesus", was the theme for 2007.  I needed something elegant, and "Santa Maria Virgo", from Postmodern Design filled the bill beautifully.  I've been searching around the web to find out what happened to this company.  I found a very few of what might be their stamps here.


In any case, below is the card that went out from us in 2007.  It required only two images, but lots of coloring.  I used four or five different-but-similar colors to evoke a feeling of richness.  The border pieces were stamped, cut out and mounted on foam tape for added dimension.

I like the architectural impression this layout gives.

2007

Stamps Used:  Postmodern Design (Virgin Mary), Unknown (spandrel).

2008 was all about the Christmas cookie.  This was the first year that I used PhotoShop Elements to do most of the coloring for me.  What a relief it was to only color something once!  The large snowman cookie was colored by hand, but the rest was done digitally.  I was a novice PSE user, and this project was a real learning experience for me.

My kids love to decorate cookies, and I admit I may be a teensy bit obsessed with them myself.  The two snowmen you see here are edited photos of actual cookies that I baked, frosted and decorated.  You can see more of our cookies here.

The biggest cookie on the card was printed onto white cardstock, colored with Prismacolors, then cut out and fixed to the card with foam mounting tape.

2008

Stamps Used:  TooMuchFun (reindeer cookie, angel cookie, gingerbread man)

2009 was a crazy, crazy year.  I had given birth (again!) to a baby boy (again) that May (again).  His name is Declan, and he and Liam are best friends.  Oh the sweetness!  Trouble was, our poor little three-bedroom home was bursting at the seams.  We moved to a bigger house when the baby was just ten weeks old (I don't recommend that, by the way).

All of my stamps and supplies had been packed away for months, so ten-year-old Laurel came to the rescue.  She drew a picture of Mary with Baby Jesus that I scanned and colored.  We sent it out for printing as a photo-postcard.  Though no stamping was involved, I've included it for historical purposes because my baby drew it.  Thanks for indulging me.

Only one more post to go in the series--see you on Monday.
Part 7 (finale)