A Care-A-Van of Holiday Cuteness + Our First Give & Make

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Welcome to our second day of product reveals for our Let’s Make Memories Holiday Collection. We have some really cute things to show you today, plus a special announcement.

All of the products being introduced on the blog this week will be available for purchase in The Shop, beginning at 10am EDT on Friday, October 4.

Let’s meet today’s new products…

Christmas Care-A-Van stamps & dies

Load up the gang, we’re heading to Grandma’s house! The Christmas Care-A-Van set features an adorable multi-step bus image that can be decked out for a holiday adventure! Top off the bus with the tree or stack of gifts, and you’re ready to roll. You can even add some passengers with the adorable critters included in the set. Use the Christmas Care-A-Van set to create cards, tags, and more this holiday. When the holidays have passed, these cute buses will be ready to take you on year-round adventures! Perfect for those guy cards, too!

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This multi-step stamp set comes on a 4″ x 8″ sheet and includes a printed full-color stamping guide.
Sentiments included in the set:
adventure time – let’s go!
let’s make memories
you are loved – at Christmas & always
special Christmas delivery – just for you
to grandma’s house – we go!
a gift for you
to:, from: (two styles)
Approximate sizes:
assembled bus – 3.25″ x 1.6″
animals – .4″ – .5″
stack of presents – 2″ x 1″
tree – 2.2″ x .7″
garland – 2.2″ x .4″
let’s make memories sentiment – .75″ x .6
you are loved… sentiment – 1.6″ x .5″

Happy Hippie Van die

Are you ready for a crafting adventure? The Happy Hippie Van die is ready to make your holiday treat giving truly memorable! This adorable 3D vintage bus is sized just right to fill with a few sweet treats. Embellish for the holidays by tying a tiny bottle brush tree to the top. Change things up, and this die is ready to head into the summer crafting season too! Also great for those hard-to-gift-for guys on your list!

Approximate size of assembled bus: 3.75″L x 1.7″H x 1.5″D

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Next we have a few products that give you some options as to how to embellish your Happy Hippie Van die…

Happy Hippie Van Details Stencil

This stencil coordinates with the Happy Hippie Van die, allowing you to sponge ink to easily create colored panels to the front, back, and sides of the van.

Overall size of stencil – 5.25″ x 6.5″

Happy Hippie Van Details Die

This die coordinates with the Happy Hippie Van die, allowing you to add colored panels to the front, back, and sides of the van. Cut them from cardstock or patterned paper to change up the look of this cute little van!

To aid in your list-making and planning, below you will find the prices for today’s products.

• Christmas Care-A-Van 4″ x 8″ stamp set – $18
• Christmas Care-A-Van die – $16
• Happy Hippie Van Die – $50
• Happy Hippie Van Details Stencil – $6
• Happy Hippie Van Details Die – $21

Before I get on to the projects, I have a special announcement about the Christmas Care-A-Van set being showcased today. For those of you that have followed my personal blog over the years, you might remember that Operation Christmas Child is a cause that is near and dear to my heart. I’m excited to announce our first ever Give & Make.

Our shared hobby is inherently giving…we spend time creating cards and gifts that are meant to be given away. When establishing The Greetery, we wanted to incorporate giving into our very being. Our tagline is “where making and giving meet”, and we want to carry that theme through in other ways as well!

With this in mind, $3.00 from the sale of every set of the Christmas Care-A-Van stamp set will go towards putting together shoeboxes and shipping costs for the shoeboxes for Operation Christmas Child. The collection date for the shoeboxes is November 18-25. After this time, we will continue to donate the same $3 per set for the lifetime of the set, but it will be given to the broader Samaritan’s Purse charity, which is so instrumental in providing emergency relief during hurricanes and other natural disasters (and is also the parent charity of Operation Christmas Child).

I know so many of you are also big supporters of Operation Christmas Child, because you’ve shared your stories with me over the years. But, in case you’re not familiar here’s a short video…

Now I’m excited to share some projects with you using the Christmas Care-A-Van stamps and Happy Hippie Van die!

First I have a video with an introduction and how-to for the Happy Hippie Van die…

I’m so excited to use these little Happy Hippie Vans on my Christmas Eve table this year. For those of you that have followed my Christmas crafting over the years, you might remember me mentioning that Christmas Eve is always a special dinner time at our house. We’re not normally fancy people here, but we go all out on Christmas Eve. I always have some sort of special treat by everyone’s plate, and this year it will be this adorable rainbow caravan of cute little vans! I simply tied tiny bottle brush trees to the top of the vans using a bit of cotton string. I used the “merry Christmas” banner that’s included in the Christmas Eve set that was introduced yesterday to embellish the side of the van. It’s just perfect for that!

Besides Christmas, I’m envisioning all sorts of uses for these cute vans. I had this crazy idea to create an “Up” version of the van, inspired by the sweet movie by that title. I had to get a little creative with how to create the balloons. I decided on small styrofoam balls. I colored them using Copic Ink refills. I wasn’t sure what coloring on styrofoam might do to my Copic marker tips, so instead of risking it, I dropped a bit of refill onto a scrap of acetate and rolled the ball into the ink. This worked really well! I wrapped some colored craft wire around my van, and stuck the foam balls onto the wires, using a bit of hot glue to secure. I’m thinking now that I should have glittered them up a bit too! To decorate the side of the van, I used the pom-pom like banner from the Christmas Eve die set that was introduced yesterday. I added color using the same Copic marker colors I used for the balloons. The little sentiment is from the Sentiment Suite: Happy Birthday set and the matching Sentiment Suite: Basics dies.

Before I move on to some projects using the Christmas Care-A-Van set, I want to mention something that I also talk about in the assembly video for the Happy Hippie Van. I feel it is important to point out since we want happy crafting and happy giving! If you feel that your van will be handled quite a bit, or it’s intended for little hands, you’ll want to add a bit of reinforcement to the back door. This can easily be done before folding and assembling the van by simply adding a piece of clear tape across the entire width of the back door flap – edge to edge across that fold. This will help keep the corner hinges intact and secure.

Now for a few fun projects using the Christmas Care-A-Van set! This set was so much fun to work with. There are so many different looks you can create, depending on your style! This first card has a vintage vibe to it. I started with a panel of watercolor paper on which I stamped the two larger trees from the Fir & Foliage No. 2 set. They look watercolored, don’t they? I then stenciled over the top with the new Frosty Flakes stencil, and added a few Frosty Corners snowflake diecuts. Then I added that cute van, topped of with the tree from the set, and decorated with the ball garland from the set. I used one of my favorite techniques of late on the van. I used colored pencils to add shading. This is so fun to do on solid stamps, and so much faster and easier than coloring an outline image, since the base is already done with the stamping. All you have to do is add the shading! I also added shading to the tree. The sentiment that I stamped along the bottom is from the Tree Trimmings set.

Next up is a collection of shaped tags. Ohhh…these were so fun to make, I want to make more! To create these folded tags, I simply scored and folded my cardstock before running it through my diecut machine. I positioned the van die so that the top cutting edge of the die was above the fold of the cardstock, so as not to cut through it. I used heavy 110lb cardstock, so the die did not cut through the windows on the second layer, which I ended up preferring, so it turned out great! I forgot to snap a pic, but the inside is stamped with a to/from sentiment from the Christmas Care-A-Van set. The “merry Christmas” sentiments on the outside were done with a new Sentiment Suite set that you’ll be seeing more of in the next few days. I topped off the vans with the stack of presents and the tree from the set. I embellished the trees with red Nuvo drops for a fun touch.

I mentioned earlier that this set can take on so many different looks! Here I went cutesy and chose to add the small animals from the set. They’re sized perfectly to look like they’re hanging out the windows of the van. So fun! There’s a sentiment included in the set that says “to Grandma’s house we go!” and I thought it was just perfect for this card. I used the Drifting dies to add some layered snow drifts along the bottom, and the Frosty Flakes stencil to add the detail across the top. I also stamped some tiny flakes using the snowflake cluster from the Christmas Care-A-Van set. Such a fun card to make, and I know a certain someone that would love to get this card. 🙂

The Christmas Care-A-Van set definitely doesn’t have to be just for Christmas! There are a few every day sentiments included in the set as well. Here I used one to create a more rustic summery card. It would also make a perfect father’s day or masculine birthday card. I once again used the trees from the Fir & Foliage No. 2 set, but this time used them in a whole different way. I stamped just the second and third steps from the two larger trees, and used colored pencils to add the trunks. They take on a whole new look this way, and remind me more of mountain pines than the full evergreens we have here. This card is making me want to go visit the mountains…my very favorite place!

That wraps up my projects for today, but there’s more fun! Now that you’ve gotten to meet all of today’s new products and see them in action, you can “greet” them for a chance to win a $50 gift card! Read on for details…

• Comment here on the blog for one entry (one comment per person)
• Comment on our Inspiration Team Members’ blogs for more entries (one comment per person, per blog)
• Comments close at Midnight EDT on Thursday, October 3
• Winners will be posted at 7am ET on Friday, October 4 here on the blog

Without further ado, here is what our amazing Inspiration Team has to share with you today!
(click on the images to visit their blogs, or click HERE if viewing this post via email)

Thank you so much for visiting and for sharing in our excitement over out Let’s Make Memories holiday collection! We’ll be back tomorrow with more projects and product reveals!