Crafty Elves' Countdown to Christmas - January 2020

A New Year has begun and the Crafty Elves are back for more .. Last year. my amazingly talented friend Lisa Reynolds Bzibziak and I created a Christmas card each week and blogged about it on the 25th of each month.  We kept each other inspired and when the holidays rolled around, we had a nice stash of cards ready !! I had many friends comment that they were going to try to do the same this year along with us . And for 2020, Lisa and I have each added a Crafty Elf to our Christmas Countdown. Michael Trent is joining me from Brasil with his blog- World of Michael Trent and Lisa has asked Jessica Pickeral from Polka Dot Orchard. We are thrilled to have them for our 2020 posts !!

I learned a few things over the course of 2019. This year I will be addressing my envelopes as I make my cards.Even though I had many cards made, it still took quite a bit of time to address envelopes, stamp the insides of the cards and put my "Made By" stamp on the backs of the cards. I send many cards to the same people every year so I will be ahead on that for 2020.  Another tip I have for our Countdown is to choose your stamps, supplies at Week 1 for the entire month. I have MANY Christmas/holiday sets and I had a hard time choosing each week, especially when I was trying to work quickly on my deadline to finish a card each week. So this month, I chose 4 stamps/sets and put them in my dedicated Countdown to Christmas box, along with other supplies I thought I would use. I'm sure I'm not the only one who has plans to make a card and then when you sit down to finally get started, you can't find that 1 supply you had your heart set on !!

For  January, I gathered some holiday washi, twine, my Versafine Clair Nocturne ink pad and my favorite 3.5  x 5 watercolor Visual Journal by Strathmore. I also placed 4 stamp sets in the box and these were my main supplies for the month. Another tip is to stamp extra images and keep those in your stash so you have some ready to color or embellish for more cards . I'm starting 2020 off with one of my favorite new images from Unity Stamp Company.

• Unity Stamp Company's Pure and Simple is a favorite of mine. She was stamped on watercolor paper with Nocturne ink.
• I colored portions of the image with Red & Green and trimmed the image to fit my card base.
• A strip of red plaid washi was placed along the left side of the watercolor image, next to the torn edge.
• I popped the image up on a black A2 card base with foam tabs.

For my next 3 cards, I chose stamp sets by Flora & Fauna .I used Mini Holiday Van, Mini Reindeer Love and Mini Aviary. I love these little stamp sets and used several others last year for the Countdown. All images were stamped on Strathmore watercolor paper.

• The van was stamped with Nocturne Ink on the watercolor paper and I colored each of them with my Faber-Castell PITT Artist pens.
• I stamped the tree on top of the vans with Memento Dew Drop ink in Bamboo Leaves and the sentiment below the vans in Lady Bug.
• A strip of red glitter washi was placed below the red van and a thin strip of gold marbled washi below the blue van.
• I matted the blue van with a piece of metallic green paper.
• A piece of tree washi was placed down the side of the torn edge of the blue van . It matched the card base perfectly even though from 2 different companies !!
• I tied a piece of holiday twine along the torn edge of the red van and a piece of natural twine along the edge of the blue van.
• I used a red card base for the red van and a tree-patterned card base for the blue van.
• These stamps were so cute that I couldn't resist making 2 cards !!

• The reindeer was stamped in Nocturne ink  towards the bottom of a page of my watercolor paper.
• The sentiment was stamped with a Memento Dew Drop in Lady Bug  and the holly with Bamboo Leaves. 
• I colored the reindeer with a Tombow Dual Brush marker.
• At the top of the watercolor paper, I adhered a border made with a scrap of red snowflake patterned paper,
• Across the top of the border, I adhered a piece of red glitter washi and a piece of holly washi.
• Red rhinestones were placed on the holly leaves for berries.
• A gold glitter heart was adhered  next to the sentiment.

• The bird/branch image was stamped with Nocturne ink.
• I stamped the sentiment with a Bamboo Leaves Dew Drop by Memento.
• I colored the bird with my Faber-Castell PITT Artist pens.
• A strip of gold glitter washi was placed under the branch and a strip of pinecone washi beneat that.
• Red rhinestones were added to the branches.
• I adhered the completed watercolor panel to a piece of metallic pink paper.
• The entire completed panel was adhered to a patterned card base . 

I hope that you are inspired by my January cards !! Are you working on your stash already ?? Please take a moment to look at the other Crafty Elves' creations -

Lisa Reynolds Bzibziak @   Life of a BZScrapper

Michael Trent @ World of Michael Trent

Jessica Pickeral @ Polka Dot Orchard

Lisa and I are so glad that Michael and Jessica have joined us as Crafty Elves !! We are a veritable Santa's workshop of holiday card-making. Looking forward to seeing you next month with our February projects !!

Debra Davison/ Meticulosity