You can go caroling with cards all year long - acrylic, pen and ink greetings by Carol

Listening to Christmas Carols and making cards. Yup. That's been me for about a week. I have made about 60 so far. Don't stop me now!

It started with the need to make a few Christmas cards.

I had a card (I now wish I had saved to show you but I made tags out of it instead.) with the red part like the one below, except it looked like nothing great but I thought if I did it again, I'd have a tree.

Trimmed with acrylics, Papermate Inkjoy Black pen, Signo Uniball White pen, and Traci Bautista's Tropical Floral Stencil.

Then it turned into gifts sets of 4 to 8 cards. I did mix and match at first.

Acrylics, white pen, and Carolyn Dube's Dance of This Life Stencil.

Acrylics, white & black pens, a bit of washi, Mary Beth Shaw's Chain Mail, Jessica Sporn's Hands, and Tracey Lyn Huskamp's Rabbits Stencils.

There are a couple of alphabet stencils that would work for this. I used Chunky Alphas by Joanne Shaper. I added washi tape (You can find it at Gwen Lafleur's store) for contrast. Next, I drew with a pen around the letters I wanted to highlight. Ps & Qs (as in mind them) worked for this one. Others I marked up "HI" and "OK".

The yellow in the chunky letters is distress crayon.

Obviously, doodling can take a lot of time:

There is pink marker work and also some white pen work that you can see if you were looking at the actual card. The stencil is from StencilClub - Jessica Sporn's Feelin' Groovy set.

Or just a little where I drew super simple butterflies:

ATC Mixup by Jennifer Evans is the stencil.

Other than the Christmas card, this one took the longest.

Pink and green markers, green gel pen, yellow distress crayon on randomly painted acrylics. StencilClub: In the Garden by Terri Stegmiller.

I made a couple of notebooks on the same theme complete with flying pigs randomly (annoyingly?) stenciled in different places on a few of the pages. The piggies are rubber stamps designed by Sandee Setliff.

I left the insides of all my cards blank except for this one that seemed to warrant something more:

Black pen traced around acrylics, stenciled with Your Thoughts by Pam Carriker.

My BIG tip: When you make a card you like, make a few more. You can always vary them a little so you don't get bored.

I got a totally different look on these 2 cards by the ways I added green and yellow paint and how I used my brown gel pen.

Mid Century Modern Rocks and Leaves Stencil by Jennifer Evans

Here's the thing about card making: You get not only better as you go but ideas will steadily begin to percolate!

I have a book of business letter samples from maybe the 70s. Perfect for card making.

I liked this round in the small of from Pam's Woman of Mystery StencilClub set. I thought about outlining the words "love" and "hope" from the circle but then I thought I would need to do all of the loopy lettering and, well, I had to call a halt somewhere.

Ink the round edges in green.

And, if you do as I did and clean up part of your office the next day (looking for circle cutter I never found) in the midst of your card making, ephemera might appear that you have no idea whence it came.

I think these are my faves. At least at the moment. I want to make some in black and white.

My BIG tip: When you make a card you like, make a few more. You can always vary them a little so you don't get bored.

I hope I have inspired you to go make a few sets of cards. I challenge you to pull out your stencils and look at ones that would suit your card-making style.

My last tip: Save some for yourself because you might need to send an actual hand-written missive to a friend or five you love in the coming year!

If you want to delve into card making in a much more 3D manner, check out Debi Adams' online course at StencilGirlStudio!