While I shared Christmas Cards Draft v.1 {& even last year’s card} in time to be appropriately festive, the actual version wasn’t so lucky. There were grand plans of writing and scheduling the post for Christmas morn. DASHED! Dashed by the last-minute Christmas scramble of sewing & shopping, cookies & wrapping paper, festiveness & family.

So now ~ 11 days after Christmas ~ I’ve finally got my act together. I’ve still got 1 day left in the 12 days of Christmas, so I’m deeming this perfectly appropriate. It’s my blog and I say so.

Without further adieu, the 11 Pipers Piping bring you. . . . . . . . {drumroll} . . . .

THE CHRISTMAS CARDS

The cards took quite a bit of assembly but it was really the wrap-around labels that took the most time. I bought this border punch but didn’t realize until it arrived that it only punched two crests at a time. D’OH!! In the end, there were three edges to the labels ~ upper crest {laboriously punched}, zig-zag {cut with pinking shears}, & straight edged {good ‘ole paper-cutter}.

While I really love the bracket shape of the Upper Crest punch, I think the zig-zags gave us the most bang for our time. Scissors with shaped blades {like pinking shears or scalloped edges} or a rotary cutter with fun edged blade would be the way to go for future projects.

The envelopes were metallic crimson from Paper & More. The envelopes aren’t as dark as they appear on paperandmore.com; they’re more of a rosy red than deep deep crimson. But that wasn’t a huge deal for me. I’ve actually used this company several times and have always been satisfied with their service & shipping. The vellum is also from them.

 Inside the envelope was this –

A postcard wrapped with vellum. The “Merry Christmas from Brick City” is printed on the vellum in the same color red as the envelopes.

The photo was taken by Kamila Harris during our anniversary shoot and Rob wrote the copy to go along with it. I designed it in Photoshop and they were printed by VistaPrint.

Merry Christmas!! We hope everyone like them as much as we did.

And yes, the Gary Cooper stamps were intentional.