Have you heard of Scrapbook Campus? It’s a website about using Paintshop Pro for scrapbooking, run by my friend Cassel, and she’s got some fun freebies for you this month.

For the first twelve days of the month, she’s got templates for twelve card and envelope sets. You can use them with your digital supplies, or let them inspire you to create with your paper stash. You just need to sign up on her website, and you’ll get a link to each template in your mailbox each morning. If you sign up today, tomorrow will be your first email, but Cassel will have a link to all twelve card and envelope templates available at the end of the series.

This is the template I worked with:

Isn’t that a lovely base to work with? The four-square is one of my favorite base designs to build pages.

Now, the next question was how did I want to use this? To create cards for mailing? As a starting point for the design of a scrapbook page? How about as a spot for hidden journaling?

Yep, that’s it! Journaling card it is! My next debate–make the envelope to hold the card or not? That decision was taken out of my hands when my printer died on me. As in it will no longer turn on for me. So no printing envelopes for me! I was able to get the card printed however.

To make the card, I started by choosing four papers from a couple Christmas digi kits. I probably got them from Jessica Sprague’s website, one set was by Echo Park, and the other was by Pink Paisley. Both of them are older and may not be available any longer.

I assigned one paper to each square, and then added text to one, and a reindeer to another.

Then it was time to print it and trim it.

And yes, I did decide to add a paper on the back at the last minute. That was a collage paper that seemed to tie the two sets together.

After cutting it out, I folded it, and added my journaling, and then started to put my page together.

Since the journaling was all about decorating the house for the holidays, it made sense to use a bunch of holiday embellishments. I even stamped and fussy cut a reindeer to help carry design elements throughout the page.

One last little idea for you: since I wanted to be able to pull out the card and read it, I added a leftover borderstrip to use as a line to slip the card over. It’s anchored by the brads on the poinsettias and holly leaves. Yes, those brads are functional as well as decorative! My favorite kind of embellishment!

Thanks for visiting! If you like what you’ve seen, make sure you join my mailing list up at the top of the page! there are always some fun ideas floating around here!