Freshly Made Christmas

Hello Stamping Friends!  Happy Sunday!
Today I am posting not just one, but 12 cards!  Well...it's just  one design!  Every year, I sign up for the Splitcoaststampers "Christmas Card Challenge" with the intention of making 12 cards from February to November.  I usually do some in the spring, then slough off and fall behind, so that in October & November I am scrambling!  Well, this year, I had not even started before this weekend!  Technically, I have some card stock cut for cards I meant to create last year and never finished...so I hope to wrap those up this week.  The designs were too detailed for my last minute pace in 2011.  Good grief...talk about procrastination! 

At the start of this month, the Paper Players posted a "Christmas in July" theme challenge...so at least I started thinking about my Christmas cards!  This week's Freshly Made Sketches challenge caught my eye as being perfect for some  new stamps that arrived on my doorstep this week.  It's a fabulous Clean & Simple sketch!

So here is my card...nearly everything is from Stampin' Up!  The only exception are the gold self-adhesive gems.  I have had them for years, but I don't remember the brand; I got them at a big box store.  I started with a confetti white card base.  My circles are the same size (cut with my circles die in the Big Shot), making it a slight variation on the sketch.  I used my new Midnight Muse card stock and new Lacy Brocade embossing folder (in the Holiday Catalog.)  The images are from "First Christmas" and the sentiment is from "Greetings of the Season," both in the Holiday catalog August 1st.  I got them early with my pre-order!!  I heat embossed everything with ink, to add shine and dimension.  I sponged baja breeze around the main image, anmd popped it up with dimensionals.  The gold gems were the final touch.  Took a while to make 12 of these with all of the embossing...but I am pleased with the result.