Calendar Girls: Christmas in July

 My dear friend Carol was our Calendar Girl's hostess last month, and she challenged us to make Christmas cards in July...well well...well...in the recent scorchy days we've been having, making cards with a Christmas theme sort of makes you think of 'cold' and 'snow'....wishful thinking I may add! Today we reached 37 C...which I believe it to be 99 F!! OH MY!!

 I love Christmas, and yet I always seem to fall short of cards and/or stamina to make them by the time the winter season approaches. For this challenge I made two cards but never uploaded them until now...yikesss.....I knew exactly what I wanted to do for my first card , and for my second one I really wanted to ink this set that I had for a long time but never used until three weeks ago...(unfortunatly I have many of such sets...*sigh* keep telling myself that,once retire I would brush off the cobwebs and ink them one by one....*wink*
Can YOU tell what both these cards have in common????
Take a close look at their golden dry embossed panels...
Does that remind ya of something??? mmm...need more hints? awww well..lemme tell ya...
I repurposed  the bottom of a nice large golden box of Lindt chocolates!!! yupppp!! et voila'!! ♥

For the first card (Lovely as a Tree by SU) I gold embossed the tree on black card stock then cut it out and mounted in the middle of the embossed golden frame, using dimentionals. Inside I used gold embossing too, to enhance both the sentiment and the snowflakes.

For my next card I finally inked 'Gifts of Christmas' and had it mounted on double oval nesties (white c/s and old olive c/s) reposing on a dry golden embossed poinsettia's panel (from repurposed Lindt's box!) I really love the crackling that the embossing produced...it created a beautiful and unexpected vintage looking ♥ I cut out the three lil red flowers and popped them on dimentionals and added red glitter to them... A pretty satin and organdy bow plus a wee sentiment in contrasting color complete this  card. I must admit I REALLY like it when I find ways to re use, repurpose, recycle good items and obtain beautiful results!

♥ Carol also asked us to share a special Christmas memory...

For me it's the day we get to open our stockings...

As a young child I was often spending 'Stocking Day' at either my Granparents' house,where we  celebrated La Befana on Jan 6th ending the last of the Christmas Holidays for our Italian roots.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Befana

In my house, we get together as close as to January 6th as possible (usually the closest week end)

We celebrate with a great big brunch altogether as a Family and then the opening of all of the stockings that La Befana brought for all....big and small,during the night.

I like to add also a few mandarine oranges as my grandmas did too during my childhood and my grandchildren now do expect them also...although they all still believe that La Befana comes to visit Canada each year , just for them!! ;o)

After the stocking reveal,we usually play board games, especially Tombola, which is the italian version of Bingo.

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And now my Friends, are YOU going to tell me which card YOU like best??

Ya know I am curious to know...*wink* ♥

Thank YOU Carol for a fun challenge...and for the memories!

BLESSINGS TO ALL OF YOU!!!