Spare Time?

It's fall break.  That means that I have a week off.  What I should be doing with my time is marking essays, reading some good books, drinking lots of tea, taking long baths, etc.  What am I doing instead?  Having classes and making stuff for ANOTHER craft fair.  This past weekend I had craft fair 2 of 3.  It went pretty well and I made enough money to not feel so bad about spending $250 on more stamps and supplies for myself.

In the past 2 weeks I've done 3 workshops, 2 kids classes, a craft fair, have more workshops tomorrow and Thursday morning, as well as my monthly stampers club on Thursday night.  And I have 4 teenagers and an 8 year old girl coming with their moms to make altered journals at my house tomorrow night.  

So this afternoon I sat down to work out what cards my monthly stampers were going to make.  I discovered that I have used up all of my white cardstock, and have a very limited amount of vanilla remaining.  Oh.  Crap.  Time for a challenge!  Who needs Connie and Mary, or Mojo Monday when I can whip up a challenge for myself anyways?  (It doesn't matter that it was out of necessity, it's still a challenge.)  How can I make 3 different Christmas cards with no neutral stamping base...  And here's what I got!

The top card is actually a piece of vellum over a layer of Bashful Blue.  You can't really tell here, but I've also added some Dazzling Diamonds to bling it up a little.

The second card makes me want white brownies with white chocolate chips and cranberries.  It's an emboss-o-rama (both the snowflakes and the greeting are heat embossed with white & Cherry Cobbler).

This final one is my favourite.  The picture in no way does it justice, so please copy it and make one for yourself so you can see how exquisite it is.  The embossed tree gives it some nice texture and looks sort of vintage.  (Learn how to selectively emboss here .)  I added some rhinestones to give it a little sparkle, and used the Winter Post set to add some lovely vintage images to match the feeling of the tree.  I worked in a Christmas store when I first moved out of the house, and there was a room with a decadent tree covered in gold and pink ornaments.  I like pink, but not enough to have a tree covered in it, but this fulfills my need.  However, I like it so much that I don't really want to give it away now.

CARD 1:
Paper:  Night of Navy, Bashful Blue, Vellum
Ink:  Bashful Blue
Stamps:  Winter Post
Extras:  Northern Flurry EF, Organza ribbon, Dazzling Diamonds

CARD 2:
Paper:  Crumb Cake, Cherry Cobbler, Chocolate Chip  (that sounds rather yummy...)
Ink:  Versamark
Stamps:  Snow Swirled, Four the Holidays
Extras:  White embossing powder, Cherry Cobbler embossing powder, Cherry Cobbler seam binding ribbon

CARD 3:
Paper:  Soft Suede, Blushing Bride, Very Vanilla
Ink:  Soft Suede, Blushing Bride
Stamps:  Winter Post
Extras:  Petals a Plenty EF