Favorite Christmas Card Layout of 2015 - Looking back...

I started making my Christmas cards in July. My goal was to make 85 of them. I made this decision because I signed up for my first crafting retreat and wanted a project to work on versus going there without a plan. I was so, so slow. It was embarrassing. I brought way too many options to work with, stamps, dies, uncut paper, no layouts decided, nada. I had just packed all of my holiday theme supplies and hit the road. Well, I made a meager 35 cards over 3 1/2 days, I was way, way under my goal. I had already signed up for another crafting retreat in September which was a great, it allowed me to fine tune my retreat prepping process. This time I created mini folders numbered 1 to 30. In each one I cut materials for up to 6 layouts of the same style. Bear with me as I am close to tying this in to my favorite Christmas card design of 2015. Well at the first retreat, the last morning I was determined to use some star dies provided at the retreat by one of the demonstrators. I knew when I left I would not have those stars at my disposal so I cut a bunch out of a soft mint green dsp and kraft paper and did finish one card very much like the one pictured. So when prep time came for the September retreat, I cut materials out to make 6 of these awesome star cards. That was like layout # 28 and I never did get that far in September which was so sad (I was still very slow, but was able to complete 50 cards in that 3 1/2 days). Fast forward to December and I have one horse friend who I just knew would love the one star card I had made back at the first retreat, but alas, when I slid it through my USPS mail jig, it was too thick! I'd applied a button on top of a pretty bow. ...sigh. Then I remembered folder 28! ooo where did that mini folder go. I found it, and all of the precut materials, put one card together and kept the ribbon treatment simple with no button and I was able to mail my horse friend the perfect card! Whew, that was a very long tale! Here's some details on the card. I used a paper distresser tool on the edges, tore the paper in places (it is a nice heavy DSP), aged the edges with Vintage Photo sponging. For the lettering and star on kraft paper I used white ink and again Vintage Photo, but this time in addition I used the same color distress marker to accent the letters giving them a brown edge so they would be easy to read. The top light green star is embossed and I hand rubbed two Gilder's paste colors onto it to make the embossing stand out, Patina and German Silver. I dyed the ribbon using Copic marker ink in a ziplock baggie mixed with a little alcohol (regular old rubbing alcohol) and scrunched it in the baggie then hung it to dry (alcohol ink dries super fast). Because of all the prep work done ahead of time, I made the card for my friend in short order. I still have materials to make 4 more of these and can swap out the sentiment for any occasion!