On Sunday we held our final Extravaganza event for this year. The Hamilton Christmas Extravaganza was a lovely relaxing day with loads of industrious creating and plenty of inspiration. I got very busy and only remembered late in the day to snap a photo of our activity...

Stampin' Blends - click to view

At the Creative Stamping Workshops this month, we created Bridge-Fold Cards (otherwise known as U-Fold Cards) using the fabulous Carols of Christmas stamp set and coordinating Card Front Builder Thinlits to create a lovely, peaceful diorama scene...

I used the gorgeous Year of Cheer Specialty Designer Series Paper and Caroline's Diagonal Opening Gift Box design to create these lovely Christmas boxes in gold and silver. These sweet gift boxes are 2" square and look like something small, blingy, and expensive is inside!

Going back 12-months or more, we would never add, say, gold and silver on the same project. But now, the trend in paper crafting is mixing metallics and I love it! Stampin' Up! is right on trend with their Year of Cheer Specialty Designer Series Paper. This gorgeous paper has classic foil designs with a mix of champagne, copper, gold and silver. Here's three of the four paper designs on cards inspired by a photographed image on page 36 of the Holiday Catalogue...

Autumn or Spring? Vanilla or white? Gold or silver? These two floral gift boxes are very similar, yet poles apart...

The Faux Patina Technique has a lot of wow-factor and is simple to do. Some good card stock and embossing powder colour combinations for this technique are Early Espresso, Soft Suede, Night of Navy, Cherry Cobbler, Fresh Fig, Tranquil Tide or Always Artichoke with Gold or Copper embossing powder. Basic Gray or Smoky Slate with Silver embossing powder should look good too. These dark, earthy colours definitely lend themselves to masculine cards, like this one, which is Tranquil Tide and copper...

Have you thought about your Christmas cards? Do you have some ideas? Well, to help you, I am very happy to announce that next week I will begin a 12 Weeks of Christmas email campaign.