Let's be merry!

Hello again everyone,
I am sure you are missing Kathy by now,  but you are stuck with me for a few days.  ;)  Thanks so much for your lovely compliments on my card yesterday.  I really appreciate it.

I just realized today that I forgot to make a Christmas card for each of my girls!  That is a mandatory gift and they look forward to it every year.  But I do have til Friday, when they get back from their dad's house, thank goodness.  Today's card will be for Julia.  The reason I'm giving this one to her is because she wakes up with me every morning at 6:30am to walk Daisy, our dog.  She is so sweet, but also a bit of a space cadet and every morning and evening, her hands are really cold because she forgets to put on her gloves and half way through the walk there's lots of complaining.  SO, in honor of that, hopefully this card, which will no doubt be hanging up in her room by her bed, will jog her memory each morning.  :)  There's another secret meaning to this card.  When we walk Daisy each morning and evening, it's a great time for us to have our mother-daughter talks about all the stuff going on with school and friends.  It's a learning lesson time to educate about drugs, trusting others, etc.  Over the years, I've become a bit jaded with life--not so trusting anymore, not the Pollyana I used to be (I'm sure Kathy is laughing right now because when she met me, I was Pollyana incarnate).  So I tend to be a little bit of a realist and Julia, who is 13 and hormones raging, never fails to blurt out, "Mommy--why do you have to be so negative all the time!"  SO, that's why the sentiment says, "let's be merry" so I can show her I CAN be positive.  haha.  I hope she gets a kick out of it.

There's alot going on with this card.  Do you see the sparkly paper?  It is my favorite because it's the sparkliest I've seen on the market (WOW glitter paper by American Crafts).  HOWEVER, once again I've made the wrong decision by trying to cut it with an intricate die.  So believe it or not, I spent an HOUR cutting each of these little bitty holes with an exacto knife and trying to rip it from the paper without tearing off the silver.  The paper has a sheer backing of wax paper which somehow adheres to the back of the paper and really doesn't like to get cut.  The intricate die is a Spellbinders and within it, I cut an oval (Spellbinders) and inserted white paper behind it.  Everything is propped up with foam.  The mittens are Impression Obsession which I colored with Copics (R35, R37, R39) and the intricate snowflakes are colored in with silver stickles.  This is a SPARKLY card.    The tree branches are cut out with an Impression Obsession die.  There are three of them!  One behind the silver paper and two in two different color greens on top of the silver paper so it looks like the mittens are hanging off the tree branches.  The patterned paper is Theresa Collins.   The "let's be merry" sentiment is from Technique Tuesday.

So, there you have it.  Voila!  I am pleased with how it turned out and I didn't even CASE it from anyone!  (proud of myself since I've felt I've been on a creative slump lately).  But more importantly...I hope Julia likes it.  Well, 2 days left til Christmas....though for me Christmas will be Friday afternoon once the girls are home and their squeals fill the house as they open their presents.  I will be back...enjoy, and thanks for stopping by during this busy time.  Margaret