Holidays are coming!

There’s no hiding now – in the words of the Coca-Cola ad – Holidays are coming!
October is usually the time of year when my Christmas crafting really gets ramped up in preparation for the craziness of December. It’s also the time in the craft shopping calendar when all the new holiday releases are hitting the store! Yay!
I love this time of year. It’s no secret I have a real weakness for Christmas and winter products. {happy sigh}
For my post today I wanted to share some relatively quick and simple Christmas projects using my picks from…
The new Merry & Bright collection by Pink Paislee – a great mix of traditional Christmas reds and greens with a contemporary twist:
Pink Paislee - Merry and Bright collection
The very bright and fun Be Merry collection by American Crafts:
American Crafts - Be Merry collection
And the Good Cheer collection by Elle’s Studio which features my favourite Christmas colour schemes for a modern and fun look:
Elle's Studio - Good Cheer collection
A special shout-out also goes to my current go-to enamel dots that I’ve been using loads for my Christmas cards recently – they’re the Beautiful enamel dots from the recent Jubilee release by My Mind’s Eye:
Mint Julep - Beautiful - enamel dots
With this collection of cards I really wanted to focus on making things nice and simple – making my patterned paper and some great items from embellishment packs do all the work for me. The ephemera pack from the Merry & Bright collection is a veritable gold mine for little accents that can be used for so many different looks – traditional, clean, fun, and modern:
Merry and bright - ephemeraAnd if it’s fun and quirky ephemera you want that will work on cards, Christmas journal projects, wrapping, etc. – then look no further than the ephemera pack from the Be Merry collection. Totally adorable!
Be Merry - ephemeraSo here’s how I used these lovely items!
First up I kept it clean and simple with grey and neutral tones and red and green accents. Just the addition of a circle die to create an aperture and the stub Corner Chomper to round off the corners and of course 3D foam tape for extra pop and hey presto…
Merry & Bright cardI have a real thing for grey tones at the moment – especially when they come in this fab striped pattern!
Merry & Bright card - detailThe deer and greeting are both from the ephemera pack. So many fantastic white glittered elements in this pack and the green and red really pop against the cool winter tones.

Staying with the magical trio of grey, red and green is this card featuring one of the greeting labels from the ephemera pack plus some festive red bells from the same pack: Tis the Season cardThe grey paper this time comes from the Oh Deer collection by Fancy Pants – love that knit pattern in the dots. Tis the Season card - detailI totally loved the combo of that paper with the Pink Paislee accents, and as a finishing touch I used one of the little bows from Pink Paislee and applied red Stickles in the middle of the bow and to the bells to compliment the red glitter border on the label.



Now for a bolder number using black instead of grey. If you have any star dies or punches in your collection you can really make them pop by scoring through the centre from the point to the opposite indent and repeating for each point of the star. Then just fold fold your score lines and the dimensional star will soon come to life. I attached it to the card front using a couple of foam pads stacked on top of each other to keep the dimension.
Joy to the World card
I wanted to go for a more vintage-y look with this card so a little Distress Ink around the edges of the red striped paper to age it worked a treat and I ran a bonefolder under the edge of the black paper to the stitching to lift the edges up.
Joy to the World card - detailThe last step was to add a greeting from the ephemera pack plus a couple of gold enamel dots for some old charm sparkle.

And now for something completely different – bold, bright and definitely fun! There are some great tags in the Be Merry collection – I plan to use some of them on gifts, but there are also a few that can be used as greetings as well, like this one: Tis the Season for Cheer cardIt goes great with that big polka dot paper from the Merry & Bright collection. Tis the Season for Cheer card - detailAnd to finish it off, a sprig of holly from the Be Merry ephemera pack and a bit of red Stickles. Where would our Christmas crafting be without Stickles?



There definitely needed to be a cute factor in my Christmas cards this year – I couldn’t resist the little delivery truck being driven by one of Santa’s reindeer:
The Most Wonderful Time of the Year cardThe truck and North Pole sign are both from the Be Merry ephemera pack. I love that winter village background paper from this line too. So many possibilities for creating little winter scenes.
It's the most wonderful time of the year!The Good Cheer ephemera pack also had that great “it’s the most wonderful time of the year!” speech bubble in it, I thought it would make the perfect partner to the truck. And more Stickles here for a touch of snow on the truck and road.

And there’s a whole other level of cute when your card features a flying penguin right? Merry Christmas flying penguin card I thought he would go great with the bokeh-style dotty papers in the Good Cheer collection. Merry Christmas flying penguin card - detail Add in some clouds and snowflakes and off he flies!



Keeping with the winter scenes here’s one featuring the “Merry” banner accents from the Good Cheer ephemera pack:
Merry Christmas winter scene card
I thought they would go great with the black glittered word stickers from the Merry & Bright collection – I’ll definitely be using the rest of the words on more cards, they’re the perfect size!
Merry Christmas winter scene card - detailAnd for a pop of greenery this little tree from the Merry & Bright ephemera pack was just perfect.

And finally, there had to be snowflakes somewhere… Snowflake cheer cardAnd there are plenty of glittered snowflakes of all shapes and sizes in the Merry & Bright ephemera pack, along with that die-cut “cheer” banner. Snowflake cheer card - detailI mounted the banner on a piece of aqua paper from the Good Cheer line with some 3D foam and also cut one of the die-cuts from the Good Cheer bits and pieces so it would work as the centre of the snowflake.

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