Inky Christmas Blog Hop

With the holiday season quickly approaching, I thought you might enjoy seeing projects made with our newest Christmas stamps for this month's blog hop!

I asked each of our designers to create a project featuring one of the Christmas clear stamp sets from the Fall & Winter '12 flyer:

To see what they made, please visit each DT member's blog and leave comments along the way. The more you comment, the better your chances are to win. (Limit one comment per blog, please.)

The blog hop starts today and ends on Sunday, October 28th at midnight Central time. TWO people’s names will be drawn at random to receive an Inky Christmas clear stamp set! The winners’ names will be announced next Monday, so remember to stop back and see if you’ve won.

Ready to begin? Here's the order:

Tex
Jovi
Trudy
Michelle
Crystal

After you're done, please return here to read the rest of my post and leave a final comment. Happy holiday hopping, Inky friends!

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For my project, I used 11118MC Decorating Snowman HoneyPOP Clear Set (drawn by artist Tammy DeYoung):

I decorated a clear pillow box with one of the snowman images from this set, and I used the ornament pattern stamp on a White Honeycomb Paper Pad so it would resemble a snowball:

The snowman's hat was accented with ultrafine glitter, and I added shine to his carrot nose with a Glaze Clear Gloss Pen:

To fill the box, I needed snowballs...of course! I wanted something quick to make, so I pulled up my favorite no-bake cookie recipe for Coconut Date Balls.

Unfortunately, I was out of dates and didn't have time to run to the store. Instead, I made faux-balls using a peanut butter-based recipe. However, I've reprinted the "real" snowballs recipe (adapted from Allrecipes.com) in case you'd like to give them a try:

Coconut Date Balls

2 eggs, beaten
1 cup white sugar
1 cup chopped dates
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 tablespoon butter
3 cups crispy rice cereal
1 cup flaked coconut

In a medium saucepan over medium heat, combine the eggs, sugar, and dates. Bring mixture to a boil, stirring occasionally, and boil for 3 minutes. (Do not boil any longer, or it will become too crumbly once it cools.)

Remove saucepan from heat, and stir in the butter and vanilla. Mix in crispy rice cereal.

Butter your hands, and shape the mixture into 1" balls. Roll the balls in coconut. Store in tightly covered container.

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You can find 11118MC Decorating Snowman HoneyPOP Clear Set plus all of the other clear sets used in our hop by visiting this page.

Thanks so much for joining us today. I hope you've found some inspiration to put you into a "homemade Christmas project making" mood!