Light at the end of the tunnel...

I thought I would never get to the end of all this Christmas busyness, but I think I'm finally seeing the light at the end! My Secret Santa gifts are all done, and the final gift was completed tonight. I sent off all the gifts for family except for one, which will go today, and there are only 2 shortened school days left for the semester (then Christmas vacation for 2 weeks - WOOOOHOOOO!)

So, I have a few things to share today since I've been busy the last couple of days. I took the photos as I completed the projects, but didn't have time to post them until now. So without further ado...

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This little guy was a hurry-up-get-it-done-quick card. My father-in-law called to say there was a little girl in Ohio who was very sick and has had health problems her whole life. All she wants for Christmas, he said, is mail. So he asked if I could send her a card with a note about how special and sweet she is (my FIL has a soft spot for little girls - good thing since he has 4 granddaughters!). So here's what I put together. It was super simple. The base is just red cardstock. On that I affixed a Santa image and frame that I cut out from a Bitty Scrap Pad. Then I took my ZIG Millenium pen and wrote the HO HO HOs around the outside. Very simple, but it makes a cute kid's card, and I hope it will make a special little girl smile for Christmas.

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As I posted earlier this week, I finally received my High Hopes stamps, so last night I inked one of them up to make a gift card holder. I can't remember which blog I got the template from, but this one is soooooo super simple compared to some of the more elaborate ones I've seen lately. I'm so proud of how this one turned out! I'm going to enter it in the Stamp Something challenge this week: Red, Green and Gold.
I toyed with adding some other embellishments or embossing the folder, but this image took me a long time to finish. Plus, I wanted it to be the focal point without any distractions. After stamping the image, I used my ZIG ColorTwin markers to color it in, then used glitter glue to make it pop. This photo actually came out very nicely; you can see the glitter glue I applied to Santa's hat, mustache, beard and the snow around him. There was so much white space left after coloring the image that I tried to mimic snow mounds in the background and used glitter glue to emphasize them.

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This last one has an image you may remember: a snowman with a cute little birdie. This one adornes another gift card holder, but I decided to go a little more elaborate than the one above. I used this image on a Christmas card a few weeks back. There are two pictures here because I wanted you to see the glitter on this one, too (I must be glitter-crazy lately!). This first photo has the better lighting, I think.





But the second photo shows you the glitter much more clearly. I stamped the blue cardstock with white ink using the snow flurry stamp in my Inkadinkado set. There are a few stamps in this set that I haven't used yet (but with some more cards to go, I'm pretty sure I'll be using them soon).





I think that's it for me today, but keep coming back - I'll have something wonderful for you folks at the end of the week! *wink, wink* =D