Keeping Christmas {Santa Mail} + GIVEAWAY

It's the most wonderful time of the month! It's always fun when the 25th of the month rolls around and I get a chance to feel the spirit of Christmas for a day or two! Thank you for joining me and the rest of the Keeping Christmas team as we share some fresh inspiration for you to get a head start on your Christmas preparations!

I'm also doing a fun GIVEAWAY for Christmas in July!!! This giveaway is for U.S.  residents only! I will be giving away a $50.00 gift certificate to The Greetery and a brand-new, never been opened Downton Abbey movie! Every year after Christmas I re-watch the entire series, so I thought it would be fun to add this into the giveaway! I will be picking a random winner from the comments left on this post! I will leave the comments open until Tuesday, July 28th at 12 noon MDT! 

Make sure you hop along to the other designers' blogs to see what fabulous inspiration they have in store for you today!

Kelly Lunceford (Creator)

 Claire Broadwater (off this month)

 Lori Tecler

 Nance Salkeld (off this month)

 Nina Forsyth

 Marybeth Lopez

 Nancy Penir

 Carol Hintermeier 

It's no secret that I love a postal theme, and a Christmas postal theme is the cherry on top! I've shared a few Christmas postal ideas already this year, so these go nicely with what I've already made! My mind has been turning with different ways to use the new Create-a-Crate die and I thought it would be fun to make a Christmas crate! 

These are perfect to tuck some holiday treats, maybe a little jar of jam, the list goes on and on! I really wanted to explore stamping on these muslin bags and the idea to make them "Santa Mail" bags popped into my mind! One of my all-time favorite stamp sets is  Santa Stationery and I knew the images would stamp nicely onto the little bags!

I chose a few different images from the set and added them using black and Pure Poppy ink. I did free hand, but you could try putting a piece of cardstock down inside the bags and use a stamp positioner to make sure you got it just right!

I filled the bags up with some Hershey's Nuggets for photography purposes, but you could fill them up with all kinds of things. This 3 by 4 size would be perfect to hold a gift card as well. You could put the gift card in the muslin bag and then add some treats inside the crate. My plan definitely includes some vintage foil wrapped Santas! 

I absolutely LOVE the muslin bags from Papertrey Ink. I used one of those on THIS project (scroll down) but bought some from Amazon for today's project. I would DEFINITELY recommend the ones from Papetrey Ink. These are more flimsy and see-through, which I DON'T like! Oh well....you live and learn!

Once I had the candy inside the bag, I cinched it up and tied the remaining cord into a bow! You could also add a little tag to the cord as well for added detail!

I die cut all of the pieces for the crates and then used the included woodgrain embossing panel to give each crate that realistic look! Also, I found that if I didn't push out the paper that is left in the holes in each of the four corners as I was doing the die cutting, it will leave the circles intact. This eliminates the need to use brads or any other type of embellishment. I was making multiples and I don't have enough mini brads on hand!

I ended up by making three crates and three stamped muslin bags in total! I love having little gifts like this on hand when it comes time to put together my gift ensembles!

I adorned the front of each crate with the beautiful branch from the Winter Sketches Stamp Set. I also used the Santa stamp from the Santa Stationery stamp set, but die cut it using the Pretty Postmarks dies. I used those same dies for the other postal elements for the front. The Special Delivery and wavy postal lines are from the Pretty Postmarks stamp set. 

The Create-a-Crate die collection comes with the frame portion to add to the end of the crate. I used one of the other sprigs of berries and greenery to adorn this particular end. The sentiment is from the Sentiment Suite: Christmas stamp set and is stamped in black and then I added the die cut frame portion around it using liquid glue.

The other side of each of the crates has another sentiment from the same set paired with the pine cone image from the Winter Sketched stamp set. It adds just the right amount of extra detail that I love!

You could also do a chalkboard look like I did on my peach crate during the release! I just really love the light and airy look of these side panels for this project!

I added some paper shred to the inside of each crate to give it some added detail and charm. It also helps secure whatever it is that you are putting inside the crate. 

Here is the final product all ready to go, minus all of the holiday treats and sweets that will be added when Christmas rolls around! This was a fun project to work on and I can't wait to make more crates for other occasions!

Don't forget to leave a comment for a chance to win my GIVEAWAY!! Thanks for fluttering by!