Dreaming of a Pink Christmas

Happy to have a Monday holiday to get in a little card making so of course I had to go to my favorite card challenge blog, Jingle Belles, and take a stab at the current challenge, to make a card featuring a lot of pink. Lauren and Stephanie are each donating $2/card submitted, so $4 per card, to the Susan G. Komen Foundation. It's a little busy but there's a lot of pink! I think I'll go a bit more CAS for the next one. The sketch is from Freshly Made Sketches #157 by Amy.

Wish you a beary Christmas!

I had so much fun making this card. It has a little bit of everything: stamped Recollections ice skating bear colored with Spectrum Noir markers, fussy cut and glued to a background of cardstock with wax resist stamped snow flakes and Color Box French Blue chalk ink sponged on. Die cut DoodleBug patterned paper for the card base, glittery Jolee's snowflake embellishments, finished off with baker's twine, glittery sentiment and a button! 

 

My inspiration for this card came from the challenges:

Jingle Belles Shape Up  make a card in any shape except a square or a rectangle
Merry Monday Challenge #120, Skates, Skis or Sled
Crafty Hazelnut Christmas Card Challenge Fur or Feather
Christmas Cards All Year Round Sparkle and Shine
And of course, I always submit to Crafty Hazelnut's Christmas Card Extra Anything Goes!

Can't wait for Christmas!

It's 107 degrees here. Hubby is traveling and son is on the coast with friends. Yep. Yeah. Uh-huh. I think you know what that means. The dogs have taken over the bed and I'm making cards. I'll take a shower eventually.

For the Jingle Belles Shopping our Stash challenge I dug out a stamp of a nutcracker that I bought at the end of season sale at Michael's a couple years ago. I was (still am) a card-making newbie and didn't understand how to select a good stamp. The problem with this stamp is figuring out what color ink to use. If I stamp it with black ink the nutcracker's cheeks are black. Um, no. Nutcrackers have red cheeks. But if I use red ink, all of the outline is red. That just doesn't seem right either. So I decided to go all sparkly with gold ink and gold embossing powder. Stitched around the edges, added a few sequins (hello, Merry Monday Challenge #117) and slapped on a glittery gift tag embellishment and voy-la!

 

Green & red all over

Here is my second card for the Jingle Belles Red & Green card challenge. I used the same sketch as the first one, Seize the Sketch #22 by Lori Tecler, but covering the card with patterned paper for a completely different effect. I also embellished with some little gifts with silver metallic ribbon and a Christmas tree which looks like a different color than it does in person.

 

 

I am submitting to the following challenges:

 

Jingle Belles - Red & Green

Seize the Sketch #22

52 (Christmas) Card Throwdown (color challenge) (three colors + one metal)

CHNC Extra (anything goes)

ABC Christmas Challenge (L is for little gifts)

CHNC #181 (include silver or gold)

CHNC Patterned Paper Challenge

 

 

 

 

 

Dreaming of a green and red Christmas

Jingle Belles is featuring a card challenge using the colors green and red. I had this funky martini olive green paper that just happened to perfectly match the green in this remnant of old scrapbook paper. I used the sketch from Seize the Sketch, added a die cut from my favorite poinsettia die, a little ribbon and voila!

 

And here is Lori Tecler's sketch, which I LOVE and used for another card as well.

 

 

 

I'm submitting to the following challenges:
Jingle Belles Red & Green
Seize the Sketch #22
CHNC Challenge Extra (anything goes)

 

Layers and layers

I don't like gingerbread. In theory it should be great: brown sugar, ginger, butter...good stuff. But it just never tastes as good as it should. If I make gingerbread men shaped cookies, I use sugar cookie dough. What I do love is this Tim Holtz gingerbread man die. I knew he would work out great on a layered card for the current Jingle Belles challenge. And happily, Merry Monday's challenge is to make a card featuring a gingerbread man. I recently found CraftyHazelnut's Patterned Paper Challenge, a challenge void waiting to be filled! This card is covered ENTIRELY with patterned paper!  I used Seize the Sketch #19 for the layout. All of the papers are Pink Paislee.

 

 

Here's my card:

 



I'm entering this into the following challenges:

Jingle Belles: Layers (I have 5)
Merry Monday Gingerbread man/woman
Seize the Sketch #19
CraftyHazelnut's Patterned Paper Challenge
CraftyHazelnut's Christmas Challenge something beginning with B (bow and the stamped bell)
Craftyhazelnut's Christmas Challenge Extra anything goes as long as it's Christmas

This is not an Easter Bunny!

Sure, Easter is a few weeks away. But this is not an Easter Bunny. This is a card for a 7 year old girl named Emma who loves bunnies and the colors purple and blue and green. She is also undergoing treatment for Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia. I learned about Emma when I saw a card that a card-making friend (the amazing Stephanie of Ingenious Inkling) made and posted on her blog. Another card-making blogger named Kelly (who has a pretty cool blog Kelly's Place) started the card drive for Emma. For my card, I used Deconstructed Sketch #144 which is a sketch challenge that I just started following and really like.

I decided to use coordinating papers to make the envelope too. Here's the front.

 

 

And here's the back.

 

 

 



Sing a Song of Christmas Cheer

Now that we've gotten some rain in Northern CA, I took a break from my rain dance to make a card for the current Jingle Belles challenge Spirit of Christmas Past. The idea is to make a vintage-themed Christmas card. I scanned a vintage postcard, added a die cut frame, some lace and a die cut poinsettia.

You can't read the poem in the picture so here is it: "Sing a song of Christmas Cheer, Of Santa Claus who'll soon be here; Of dolls and other lovely toys, To please both little girls and boys."

 
 

Jingle Belles Sketch

I have only made birthday cards lately so I'm very happy to have had a chance to make a Christmas card. Here's Miss Stephanie's lovely sketch for the current Jingle Belles Sketch Challenge.

 

 

And here is my card. I don't think I've ever used this vintage looking Santa stamp so I was glad to put it to work.

 

Papers: Pinkpaisley

Tim Holtz Festive Greenery and Sizzix dies

The word is Christmas!

Here's my newest Christmas card, based on the Jingle Belles Oh Christmas Words challenge. For the layout I used Deconstructed Sketch #136. Papers are from My Mind's Eye and the ornaments are a gift tag that just happened to match the colors perfectly. Kismet.

Happy New Year of card-making!

What better way to start off the New Year than with a Christmas card challenge? I was thrilled to see the first Jingle Belles challenge of 2014, Something Old Something New, this morning. The challenge is, well, pretty much self-explanatory. The layered papers are old, from the first batch of Christmas paper I bought in late 2011, when I first started making cards. I realized pretty quickly that I preferred less traditional types of paper but couldn't bring myself to just toss it. But, just like quilting (she says as if she had ever actually quilted), paper that isn't pretty by itself can look quite striking in the right combination. The papers and ribbon have been around for a while and the tag was a surprise with a bunch of other tags that arrived from a great friend just a few days ago. I stitched around the papers, which is a skill I haven't perfected but I keep trying!

Also, I resolved to do more on the inside of the cards this year. I usually leave them blank and then write a message when I send them. But I decided to use stamps and embellishments on the inside as well. It's also a good way to use embellishments that just don't seem to warrant being on the front of the card. Happy New Year!