Last Minute Christmas Cards

(Click on any photo for a larger image.)

Ok, I admit it. I didn't send Christmas cards this year. Heck, I barely bought any gifts. There was just too much going on for me to sit down long enough to create my annual masterpiece to send out to everyone. To be very honest I felt a bit empty and let down about it because I really wanted to craft cards but Time is a hard task master and refused to relent in my favor.

The wee hours of Christmas morning found me feverishly throwing together some cards for the few people for whom I actually bought gifts. After all, if the card IS the gift, it should be a bit more personal than your standard store bought fare. Thank goodness for my RTU stash. It really comes through for me in a pinch. RTU stands for Ready To Use. It is the repository of all the unused bits and pieces of other projects as well as where I put the result of
any of my crafting experiments. Whenever I'm in a mad rush to throw together a card and I don't have time for my usual creative dawdling, my RTU's save my day.

The cards on this page represent all the cards I made early (like between 2AM and 6 AM early) on Christmas morning. With the exception of the curly purple tree on the top card and the hand drawn holly border on the white card to the left all of the elements used here were found in my RTU stash. A gilded border here, a rhinestone there and VOILA!, a card is born. Granted, the creativity quotient may have been somewhat lower than what I would have liked but it was preferable to a store bought card or (horrors) no card at all. Next year I'll have to start my cards earlier. Yeah, that sounds like a plan.

Ballo ergo sum
- Gitana, the Creative Diva