Today is the Stamping Around the World Blog Hop!! And you are in for a treat, as you will get inspired by the amazing group of demonstrators in this design team!! Make sure you go thru all the blogs participating, as I am sure you will enjoy seeing all the projects included in this blog hop! – All links are at the bottom of the post! so make sure to check them out 🙂

So for today I want to share with you some tips to help you get ready for your Holiday cards!!! If you like sending cards around the holidays then continue reading today’s post as I will be sharing some of my tips to get ready for this task. 😉

How to make your Christmas cards in time and still enjoy it!

You see usually making cards for Christmas can easily overwhelm you as typically one makes a lot of cards, some years I have made as many as 150 cards, and it can get overwhelming, so starting sooner rather than later is always a good thing, but also trying to have a beautiful card that it is easy to make can make a difference.

How to decide how many designs to make?

I remember a few years ago, I was making multiples of cards with a friend and while these were gorgeous, I am not going to lie, it was so time consuming that I didn’t enjoy making that many of the same card, I resented the last few ones and it was so tiring and boring, so I decided that it was best to break it down into multiple designs. This not only helped me to do the task but would excite me again as I knew I was making different designs.

Now, you do want to make multiple of several designs rather than one of’s, and the reason is that sometimes it can be as well very overwhelming trying to do a different card for each recipient.. it gets tiring trying to figure out that many designs, unless you are making a few of them, like 5-10 cards, but if you are making 60-100 cards you can clearly see that you would get really overwhelmed, right?

My rule of thumb is about 20-25 cards per design, that seems to be the magic range for me between enjoying making multiples of the same versus getting bored or tired of the same design over and over.  So divide the number of total cards you want to create by 20 or 25 and that would give you the number of designs that you would need.  So if I were making 60 cards, I would design 3 cards and then do 20 of each. Hope this helps you in figuring out how many cards to design. 

What is next after deciding how many designs

The next thing I would do after deciding how many designs I need to have, is to look for designs that might use kind of the same tools or paper, that way I can batch produce as much as possible, for instance on  the cards I am showcasing today, you can easily break down some of the elements and do them in batches, like die cutting or punching in one day, cutting all the card bases as well as any designer series paper in another day, embossing in another session, making bows in another day, etc. you get the picture? 

 

 

 

 

 

In the cards I am showing above, you can see I used the Perfectly Plaid suite, so I could easily prepare for 60 cards without any trouble, as a lot of the elements are the same. 

Another thing that I could do to add interest, is that while I am doing multiples of the same card I could change out the designer series paper pattern, I would still use the same pack but I would change the pattern, so they feel like unique cards even though I am making the same design, this always helps to keep you excited about making multiples of the same card rather than feeling bored with it.  

The Key is in the design!

As you can see the designing part is key. Having a design that you can easily break down into different steps is key, but the card design should also be beautiful and easy to make, as having a more complex card can be overwhelming. It doesn’t matter in how many steps or tasks you can break it down, it still has to be easy to put together or you will still burn out with the task at hand. 

Try to look for cards that have an easy sketch to follow, believe me less is more in a lot of instances, and when you are doing 20-25 of the same card you want to be able to enjoy putting together the cards without thinking too much about it. I know what I am telling you! a lot of the times I turned the TV on at night and just ensemble my cards, since there is not much to think about the task is easy enough that I can enjoy watching my favorite show while I am enjoying putting together the cards. 

Give it a try! I know you will enjoy the process

• Decide how many cards you want to make
• Divide this number by 20 or 25 to come up with the number of designs you need to create
• Chose a design that can be easily break down into simple tasks 
• Prepare all the elements of your cards in multiple days
• Have a date with yourself and your TV to put together your cards
• Enjoy putting together your Christmas cards!!!

I hope you have enjoyed the tips provided on this post! I would love hearing from you, share with me other tips you have when putting together your Christmas cards, do you have a process for this? if so, share it here, so we all can learn from each other!

If you want to learn how to make the cards shown above you can watch the video HERE. These cards were made during my Facebook live event, which is every Thursday at 7pm CST.  If you are interested in watching more cards you can go to my page and see the past videos or you can catch me next Thursday live!

You can see the complete list of supplies I used to make these cards. You can click on the pictures below which will take you to my online store where you can purchase any of them. 

Stamping Around the World Blog Hop Links

Do not forget to visit the rest of the blogs participating in today’s blog hop! I know you will love to see all their projects and I know that you will get tons of inspiration!! click on the below images to go to their website! 

Also if you are not aware, The Stamping Around the World Design Team puts together a bundle of tutorials each month that we give for FREE to anyone purchasing with us. If you place an order of $50 or more I will be mailing you the tutorial bundle for FREE. You can also purchase the bundle by itself for $20. If you are interested in this, please leave a message and I will send you the instructions to purchase it. 🙂 

You can see a sneak peek of the projects included in the October Tutorial Bundle below!

Thank you for visiting my blog today! let me know in the comments if this was helpful, or if you will give it a try when you are working on your Christmas cards. I love to hear from you 🙂