Jolly Kris Kringle And why I am starting my Christmas stamps early this year!

Helen's Craft Haven has been a favorite blogger of mine for a while, So I am entering her Christmas ABC Challenge blog Each month you make a Christmas card with two letters about Christmas, this month is J & K, I need mojo to get some Christmas cards done.

Words I came up with for J & K:

Joy & Jingle

Kris Kringle

I am also entering this into Jingle Belles and Sparkles Christmas Challenge

Did you know that there is a really cool resource for people like me that are like, I can't think about Christmas in April, let alone a letter to go off of? There's a site for that... I found a simple Christmas Vocabulary Wordlist... yup, super elementary but as soon as I saw the word J and K, I knew I could make something work. (Jolly Kris Kringle.) hah! I have the perfect stamp for that!

So for the procrastinator designer in me, I went straight to the stash of Christmas paper and found two sheets that work great for card panels. That's it, all I did was cut it to size, and then matt it to a colored paper that fit. EASY! DONE. (My type of 5-minute card.)

I couldn't stop there, I had to try some other ideas I did a watercolor piece with Kris Kringle on his sleigh, Love the results and am actually really happy how it turned out. I used an Ultra Marine color and a dioxide Violet with some Starry colors for the sky, it turned out beautiful! (and it was again an easy card to make!

Another 10 minutes passed, I had a card that was heat embossed, and then I painted on the leaves and berries for a wreath artistic look. Simple, elegant and perfect to send to a dear friend in December!  (don't' you just love those type of cards?)
~My designer tip for this card: I often chose cards that are open-ended to work on my brush handling technique. For example, painting a wreath, using your brush to make leaves, is a great exercise to do often so you can practice, why not practice on a card you want to give away!?

And Last But not least, I had to do a shaker card for Jingle.

So I would love to know, am I completely smart or crazy starting my Christmas Cards this early? 

I hope that this Helps you with your Christmas Cards!