Fa la la la la la la la la

Well, just look at me managing to fit in some card making time amongst everything else that's going on! 

The Jingle Belles are looking for Christmas Music and Lost Coast Designs would like us to Make it Funny this month. 

 

I think my card should fit the bill for both challenges...

I always enjoy playing with the Katzelkraft cats and thought it would be fun to pair this little caroler with Fa la la Bold Prints from Hero Arts. I'm sure the neighbours are delighted! 

I hope your day is going well and, like mine, has involved some lovely crafting fun!

Santa, Baby!

Bless Lauren and Steph, AKA The Jingle Belles - they always have such fun Christmas challenges on offer over at their gorgeous blog! Congrats to them both as this will be their sixteenth year of challenges. 

Their current challenge has the prompt No Time Like the Presents and they'd like to see us use wrapping paper on our cards or tags. I had some gorgeous pieces of retro-ish Santa paper, then I began eyeing a chocolate box sleeve with a huge red snowflake and here's what happened!

I'm not sure if this will stay as a tag or become a card, so I've not punched a ribbon slot. I think either could be fun. The red hologram card is so pretty and a few snippets have found their way into my stash with a view to making a Valentines appearance. 

Here's the original paper and would you just look at that - I still have a few jolly Santa's left to play with!

Happy crafting, everyone! 

Christmas Kickstart Challenge # 94 - Reminder

 

Welcome back, card friends! We have the very talented Julia Aston as our first elf of the New Year over at The Christmas Kickstart and she's created another gorgeous bauble-themed card for our Reminder post... Please head over and take a look. 

Here's a reminder of the gorgeous card Julia made to get the party started!

As regular visitors will be aware I like to make an Inspired by card for the Reminder post and attempt not to shamelessly CASE my guest's original creation. I love Julia's cute Christmas pudding bauble, but really struggled to get my head around which elements to include for my card. I love the sweet, playful nature of Julia's beautiful card and so here's what I came up: 

A single bauble, patterned paper and a little gentle humour! This card was made in these colours as a reminder of my sweet girl cat, Cleo. Once the tree was up and decorated she would quietly eye up a bauble, check whether we were watching and then extend a paw, bat the bauble from the tree and expertly dribble it across the floor!

I combined a few different dies and images for this card: Paws Up Die from Waffle Flower, Wreath Tag Sentiments from Avery Elle, and Funky Baubles from Sizzix.

My second card for this challenge is inspired by my boy cat Custard. He just used to look blankly at the tree and take no notice of all the sparkly, dangly stuff. He always wore a look of 'Oh, that thing again.' whenever the tree appeared. 

The cat is from Globeland Stamps and the Sentiment is from a fun Whimsy Stamps set I've just opened called Merry Stressmas. 

I'm linking-up over at The Jingle Belles as they are looking for Something Old, Something New for their first challenge of the year. The cat and the sentiment are new, but I've had the bauble stamps for years and have lost the backing sheet and everything! Still stamps well though. 

Rudolph has a beautiful bauble as the prize for our first challenge of 2025!

 

There's still plenty of time to play along, so please come and join Julia and me... and don't forget to Bring the Baubles!

Cardstock Christmas with The Jingle Belles...

 

It's Cardstock Only this fortnight over at Jingle Belles! 

Here's what Stef and Lauren require for their current challenge:

"This fortnight at Jingle Belles we're asking you to step away from the designer paper … yes, put it away … none allowed … not even a scrap … because this time the assignment is to create a holiday card using only cardstock. You can tear it, ink it, stamp it, spray it, emboss it, die cut it … but stick to only cardstock for your holiday card design."

Mmmmm, this one took me a few days to ponder, and then I hit upon this idea:

I do love kraft and white together, and when you go for such a simple design you just HAVE to add some texture. The cute trees are from Sizzix/Tim Holtz Festive Things (On Sale!) and the sentiment is from Creative Expressions Craft Dies by Lisa Horton. 

Thanks for the fun, guys, I really did enjoy the challenge of ditching the design paper! 

Happy crafting, everyone! 

Jingle Belles - The Man with the Bag

 

Whatever the man in red is called in your part of the world, Lauren and Stef would like to see Santa 'front and centre' on our creations for their new challenge.

I was delighted to discover this Birdie Brown Skinny Santa when I was hunting-out a digital image last week. I miss Yoshi's stamps and am glad I bought this set before she closed her digital store. 

I decided to amp things up a little and so used one of my Gel prints as a background. 

I'm also playing 'I is for Inky' over at ABC Christmas Challenge, having played H is for Hats here.

Here's hoping that your week is going well, happy crafting! 

Jingle Belles - Peace on Earth Day

 

So, it turns out that April 22nd is Earth Day, and for this fortnight the lovely Jingle Belles are asking us to help celebrate by creating holiday cards that feature at least one recycled element.

I usually keep some of the cards from one Christmas to help make gift tags for the following year, so I had a small collection of potential toppers to pick from. I thought this card would be good to upcycle, so I die cut some faux stitching and added a sparkly border. Super-simple, and probably a bit of a cheat, but the card does look lovely!

I've got a few more Ideas AND some additional cards to recycle, so may play this theme again. 

Thanks again to Lauren and Stef for all the fun!

Jingle Belles: Cookie Inspired Christmas

Jingle Belles Lauren and Stef, have another fun theme on offer! They'd like us to take our inspiration from this gorgeous picture by Kristens.cookies. 

Seriously, those cookies are just too pretty to eat! 

I was inspired by the idea of festive edibles, and made sure I chose a design paper that picked-up the gorgeous colours of the picture. 

I'm so enjoying working with this Penny Black Noel die at the moment. 

I was browsing eBay recently and spotted Cookie Cutter Christmas by Stampin' Up! on offer for a good price. Click, click, click and it was mine. Isn't this little guy fun!

I'm sharing this card over at ABC Christmas Challenge, where I'm playing G is for Gingerbread and I'm squeeeeezing it at Penny Black Saturday Challenge, where it would appear I'm completely ignoring the Easter option, and playing Anything Goes. 

Thanks for dropping by! 

Jingle Belles: Bling on the Holidays

 

It's currently all about the BLING over at Jingle Belles!

I started off with a piece of green cardstock, and got busy with a stencil, Versamark and gorgeous Wow Glitter embossing powder. However, the green just looked too flat. I rummaged in my stash and found this gorgeous inky, red watercoloured card and repeated the process. The glitter on this card is a thing of beauty. I die cut a Reverse Confetti Peace die, mounted the panel on some leftover card and thus my festival of sparkle was complete.

I'm also linking this card over at Addicted to Stamps and More where they are playing:

 

I was thrilled to find I was their Top Addict for Challenge #462 with this little mouse card.

Thanks so much, guys. 

Here's one last look at my card for today...

It's so difficult to photograph anything sparkly, isn't it. You'll just have to believe me that this is totally blingtastic... as are my face, hands, hair and navy blue hoodie!

Happy crafting, everyone!

O Christmas Tree, Tree, Tree and Tree...

 

An afternoon of crafting has certainly improved this Monday!

I wanted to make a card to play along over at Jingle Belles with Steph and Lauren, and also a few other lovely challenges I'd spotted.

 

Steph and Lauren's current theme is Die Cuts and I was thinking layered snowflakes, until I pulled out this Happy Christmas die from Creative Expressions and noticed that it had a little 'shelf' after the word 'Happy'. 🤣🤣🤣

I die cut three Christmas trees using Sizzix Stacked Tiles, Triangles and assembled my card. Just three trees just didn't look right, so I added a fourth! 

This was so quick and simple to make and I used up some of my most fiddley, tiny pieces of DP too! 

I'm also going to link to these lovely challenges:

I do love the DT makes over at Just Us Girls. My one other colour is RED! 

The lovely Darnell's NBUS Challenge #60, 

Peace on Earth who are playing with Green for Challenge #59, as prompted by this gorgeous Mood Board...

and, finally, the good folk over at Shopping Our Stash who are looking for mostly green projects for their Challenge It's Not Easy being Green.

What a lot of challenges! I think I'll need a lie down after I've tided up.

I'm looking forward to my friend coming over tomorrow. She did a heat embossing course recently and I couldn't believe they'd had the nerve to charge a fee for just a few scraps of paper with a single embossed image on each. What a cheek! I've promised her we'll make something nice, and that I won't charge for the tea and biscuits!

Happy crafting, folks. 

I Saw a Mouse...

 Hey, just look at me posting for the second day in a row! I'm really enjoying my crafting at the moment and seem to be unusually productive. Long may it continue!

A while back I bagged this little Stampin' Up! mouse, and his equally cute buddies, from a Facebook sale site. Isn't he adorable? 

He was great fun to colour, although I didn't mean to stamp him in brown ink. I decided to stick with the brown and I have to say that I think it works with the kraft background. 

I stenciled with white Distress Ink through a TH/Stampers Anonymous Merry Christmas Layering Stencil and then added a sentiment from another bargain buy, which I think is from Hero Arts. 

I'm delighted to linking-up at a few challenges, having created my card using inspiration from:

Steph and Lauren are Getting TEXT-y With It for their current challenge.

The lovely crew at Christmas Craft Creations are looking for Stencils and Embossing Folders.

Edited to Add:

Thanks so much!

It's all about Christmas at Addicted to Stamps and More.

Just Us Girls are having an Anything Goes Stencil Week.

And finally, I'm tickled pink to see that the lovely Helen from Made by Helen has reopened The Rudolph Days Challenge! Congratulations, Helen, I hope this goes well for you. It's great to have a later in the month challenge with which to play along.

Time for a cuppa now. I hope you're all having a happy day and possibly even managing to squeeeeeeze in some crafty fun!

Jingle Belles + Woodblock Wednesday = FUN!

Hi there, Happy Friday to you all! 

I'm very much enjoying playing a few different challenges at the moment as I seem to have a little more time on my hands than usual. How that has happened I do not know, but I'm just going with it until I discover what I've been forgetting to do! 

I'm happy to be playing for the first time at Amy's fun challenge Woodblock Wednesday. I can see that this challenge is growing in popularity - what a great way to make us break out our wood block stamps again.

To be honest, this cute Stampendous stamp has only just arrived in my possession after I spotted it on ebay last week whilst looking for something else entirely. 

It's an oldie from 2007 called Santa Trio, and I couldn't believe it was unused and offered at a VERY reasonable price. Click, click, click... Add to Cart!

I can see so many different ways to use these images. 

I'm delighted to be joining the fun again over at Jingle Belles, where the gals are looking for cards as red as Rudolph's red nose. Thanks for another FUN theme, guys. It was a lovely surprise this morning to discover my last card for the Belles had caught the eyes of Lauren and Steph, along with my crafting buddies Gail and Fabiola's cards too. 

So, whatever your plans are for this coming weekend I hope they involve some crafting and fun! Take care. x

Something Old, Something New...

Lauren and Stef have a new challenge...

and are playing 'Something Old, Something New'. They'd like to see you create a Christmas card using something brand new and something older. 

I'm currently loving my NEW Jane's Doodles sets from Creative Expressions. These stamps are a great size and stamp so beautifully. I inked up this cute little mug image from the set Holiday Cheers and let it take centre stage. My OLD for this challenge is a stamp from a much loved set Puffy Holiday Greetings by Mama Elephant. That quick and easy smooshy background was created with Distress Inks. 

I'm doubling-up on the challenges with this card as I'm also joining the fun at Caffeinated Christmas Card Challenge #25.

 

Have a fun Wednesday, Folks!