Year of the Santa Hats

I didn't realize this until I was sorting through photos of cards I intended to post about, but apparently, I went on a Santa hat frenzy this year, like this clean and modern card I made for the Burkarts.

I used a technique referred to as "masking", which is a way to keep out unwanted parts of an image from being stamped on the card. It involves layering duplicate stamped images; Crafty Christy has an easy-to-understand tutorial on it. If you're doing more complicated layering with a number of different images, it actually takes a bit of brainwork to figure out which parts of the image should be cut out!

I had no cotton balls on hand, so I pulled off bits of a Q-tip for the Santa hat. (Again with the making something out nothing!)
And here are the little gift tags I made for the presents I mailed to my family:

I made my parents wait until I got on the phone with them on Christmas Day to open their presents. I put a lot of thought into the gifts, and they were very appreciated!