Some Early Holiday Crafting Inspiration

First of all, I just want to thank each and every one of you for your comments and emails on my last post.  I was overwhelmed and might have even shed a tear or two!  Thanks so much for inspiring me to keep blogging.  You mean people actually read my blog??  The most surprising thing to me is that you like my everyday life / out-and-about posts.  When I post those, I always wonder if people just skip those posts and only read the crafting/scrapbooking posts.  I guess for the most part, that's not the case!

Last year I embarked on an overly ambitious "Handmade Christmas", where I planned out tons of handmade gifts.  You can see my Handmade Christmas board on Pinterest here.  Not all of them came to fruition, but I did make 40 handmade trifold holiday cards that took FOREVER to make (like, seriously, 25 hours), and I made several holiday papercrafting kits as well.  I thought I would revisit them again on the blog, since I still enjoy looking at them and a lot of my blog readers are new this year. 

First, the cards.  I made 40 trifold cards.  The front of the card consisted of a strip of patterned paper, a diecut scalloped circle, a punched circle with stamped character, and a stamped sentiment on the bottom.

I actually made many different ones, which was why it took me so long!

I designed a personalized paper ornament in my Silhouette Studio software and cut them out with my Silhouette SD machine.

The inside of the trifold card has a stamped sentiment on the left, our photo with a belly band greeting in the center, and the cut paper ornament on the right.

You can see more photos and explanations of the products I used, and my process, in my blog post last year:  Anatomy Of A Holiday Card.

I also created a few paper-crafting kits and gave them away to crafty friends.  I think these were a big hit.  :)  Everything was handmade by me.

You can read my post last year "Handmade Holiday Crafting Kit" for more information on what I included in the kit.  I had originally intended to make my own kit for December Daily, and made extras as gifts for my crafty friends.  But I've come to realize that December Daily might not be the best kind of project for me.  Because I work in financial analysis and accounting, December is one of the busiest months for me.  Besides the fact that we don't even put up the tree until a couple of days before Christmas, LOL.  Oh well, I think I'm not the only person who LOVES to look at Christmas papers and stamps, but doesn't actually use them that much.  :p  I hope you found some early holiday inspiration in this post.  Go forth and create some holiday cards or mini books!  :)