Keeping Christmas - March 2020 Edition

Hello and welcome to the March Edition of Keeping Christmas.  With everything in the world so chaotic right now, I decided to make only one project for this month, because I knew that what I had selected would be a very time-intensive project.  It was good, as it gave me something else to focus on other than the news.

Last December during the week between Christmas and New Year's, a lot of retailers were having sale pricing on things and I picked up this set of Thinlits Dies from the Tim Holtz Colorize Collection called Deck The Halls Thinlits.

The really cool thing about these dies is that on the back of the dies, it tells you how many to cut and in what color if you want to match the image on the package.  When I first took the dies out of the package, I was thinking, "What - No Instructions" but they are cleverly included on the back of each die.  For instance, it will say "Red - 2" which means to cut two of them from Red Cardstock.  There are 10 dies in total and each die has this information etched into the back of the die.  I haven't ever bought this kind of a die before so that was very helpful.  Plus, I just grabbed scraps from my pile in reds, greens, golds, in regular, shimmer, foil, and glitter cardstock.  I die cut how many pieces it said and then sat down for assembly.  Now I will say that I didn't follow everything to the letter, but this card turned out so cool!

While we are all busy sheltering in place to avoid contact or contamination from Corona Virus, we actually have time to sit and do things that we might not normally take the extra time to do.  This was one of those things.  If you love to assemble die-cut images, this die is totally your jam!

Knowing me, I'm sure you won't find it surprising that some of the parts, at least in my mind, just needed to be cut from gold foiled cardstock!  You knew that was coming, didn't you? 

The Merry Christmas Die is from Impression Obsession and I picked mine up at Simon Says Stamp. It's currently out of stock, but if you like it, sign up to be notified when it comes back in stock.  The Thinlits Dies are currently in stock here:  https://www.simonsaysstamp.com/product/Tim-Holtz-Sizzix-DECK-THE-HALLS-Colorize-Thinlits-Dies-664229-664229ths.

I love how glitzy this card turned out and I will add it to my stockpile for next year.  I think a lot of what made it really work well is all of the various paper finishes I used - matte, foiled, glittered and shimmered.  For example, the holly leaves are done with Moss shimmer, Pine Feather cardstock and gold foiled cardstock.  The color variations really kick it up a notch over doing all the greens the same style paper.  Heaven knows I have an extensive scrap pile!  Here is the blog roll for you, although Kelly is taking this month off since she is now homeschooling her kids.  But she does have a post up today for The Greetery if you want to check in to her blog.

Kelly Lunceford (Creator)

Vicki Finger

Claire Broadwater

Lori Tecler

Nance Salkeld

Nina Forsyth

Nancy Guse

Marybeth Lopez

Nancy Penir

Carol Hintermeier

Please be sure to stop by everyone's blog and leave a little kindness for them. We've all been working hard to make sure to bring you content in this crazy scary time.

I also wanted to mention that during this Shelter in Place time, Gina K Designs is doing a live on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. It is live on YouTube and Facebook at the same time. The Facebook Group is called Gina K Designs and Stamp TV Friends on Facebook and I included the link right there for you to click on.

Here is the schedule from Gina:

Here is the updated schedule and I also made it our banner so it's easy to find! This is all in CENTRAL TIME!

Here is time according to where you live:

• 8:00 pm eastern
• 7:00 pm central
• 6:00 pm mountain
• 5:00 pm pacific

I am so sorry, I am not sure about all over the world, however, there are time zone calculators on Google so you can easily find out.

On Monday, we will focus on Christmas Cards and projects! Wednesday, it will be wherever the wind takes us. Friday, we will go back to using older Gina K. Designs stamps, even if we have a new release. We will flashback to what we already have in our stamp rooms.

I hope you'll join us! Thanks for stopping by my blog today. Anytime we can connect with each other virtually, it's a win in my book! Thank you to all our great companies who are hanging out with us during this time.