Christmas in July

Why am I making Christmas cards in July? Reason #1: I signed up for a Stampin' Up! demonstrator swap where we were supposed to make 20 identical cardfronts using product from the upcoming Holiday Mini catalogue. The organizer of the swap made it very clear that our work should be exceptional and she highlighted that things should be straight, even, contain at least 3 layers and have at least one embellishment. Talk about pressure! There were so many things I liked from the upcoming mini catalogue but I couldn't imagine inventing a card with a stamp set I didn't even own yet. So I cleverly choose a sentiment set so that I could start playing now with my only Christmas set (Snow Swirled) and just sub in the sentiment set when I order it Aug. 1st. Well, this was my first attempt; a card CASE'd from splitcoast, but I realized that I can't use it for the swap because the ornament strings are not straight and even. It's very hard to make it perfect with such small snips of paper. It also doesn't have an embellishment but I figured if it turned out okay I could find some ribbon or brads to put in somewhere. I love how the card turned out and will probably make more for my Christmas cards. I stamped the Christmas tree image in Rich Razzleberry and punched it out with the 1 3/8" circle punch. I then rubbed it in versamark and poured iridescent ice embossing powder and heat embossed. I used a portion of the word window punch to make the top of the ornament and cut little strips for the string. I did the dry embossing lines with my scoring tool.
Reason #2 for starting my Christmas cards: when I delivered an order to someone last week, she showed me that she had finished all 50 of her Christmas cards. I figured if she was already finished, I should at least be thinking what to do for mine!
It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas...! Ha!