Never too early....

I know...but I HAVE to say it!  Christmas is coming!!!!   I remember my grandmother saying, 'the older you get, the faster time goes by'.  My young response...'yeah, yeah, yeah'.
Just like the song, 'She loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah...'   Anyway, Grandma was RIGHT!  And I for one HAVE to start thinking of Christmas now!  First, a tip that I do:  I shop all year round now for friends and loved ones, or better yet, MAKE cool projects all year round for friends and loved ones.  I've got a special place in one of my closets that gets loaded up through out the year and when it's time for the holidays, I start there first before going out and trying to find things.  The one thing that I have to remember is to label them for who I intended them to be for!  (Note to myself on this)

BUT, my real reason for today's blog is; Time to start thinking about my Christmas greeting card design!  As most of you know, I always make my own cards.  I've even gotten my partner designing and making his own cards too, ever since we met.  Well, as my world expands and my friends expand, the number of cards that I hand make are easily over 100 and growing!   So some pre-thought has to go into such an undertaking...particularly when we can really get mired down with a ton of stuff to do over the season.

I'll admit, I don't have any idea yet, but I start with looking at what color scheme I want my cards to be, possible matching color envelope, will it have a theme? (I usually put some sort of musical theme in mine) and will it have a saying?  Do I want to hand-write the saying or do I want to create a rubber stamp for it?  Clueless right now.  But I've got a couple of ideas in mind and have to first find the time to make a template or two of what might work.  What I find most interesting is that after I have created a couple of templates for ideas, I end up making something even more different and spectacular from what I had originally intended.  Love that!

So come on friends, let's start putting our heads together for Christmas card ideas.  Even hand made cards can be done easily without a lot of effort and stuff.  Keep it simple and know that your cards are a 'one of a kind' creation that you are lovingly sending out.
Your own unique 'piece of art'.

I do have a simple free 'how to' Christmas card on my web-site; www.raymecards.com
Check it out!  You can use any kind of paper you want, it's real simple and looks fantastic!  Or maybe it'll give you an idea for a better card for yourself.  If it does, let me know!  I'd love to see it!

Create my friends, CREATE!!!!  That's what we're all here for anyway!

Keep it Joy-FULL!