Back to Christmas Cards...finally!

Hi folks,

well, I decided to try to ease myself back into making card today by getting back to making Christmas cards. The last time I posted a Christmas card was June 18th - so it would appear that I decided to take the summer off. I figured the best way to get my Christmas card mojo back would be to pop over to Sparkle's Christmas Card challenge blog to resume where I left off, with challenge #29. The challenge that week was to make a card using {Fabric}.

Even back when I first read that challenge, I knew what I wanted to do - use my Spellbinders Holiday Cheer die cut to make a christmas stocking out of some fabric from my stash.

Here's what I came up with:

Pretty fabric, huh? I was tempted to do the entire card front with fabric but I decided to just stick with stocking as it would have taken me hours to go through my fabric stash (it's not as bad as my paper but...there's a lot).
card details

• Spellbinders: Holiday Cheer, Petite Circles. For those of you who might wonder, I have purchased almost all of my Spellbinders dies from PaperWorksCo (they are in the shop here). Peg has the most awesome everyday prices on her dies (plus you get 5% of the price into your emergency craft fund so...you can't go wrong!)
• sentiment: CTMH Seasonal Celebration
• patterned papers: DCWV Holiday Collection Christmas Stack
• layout: Priscilla Styles: Midnight Madness Sketch Challenge #116. I chose to use the simpler of the two sketches.

additional challenges for this card:

• Craft your passion #70: under the sea or your favourite season (Christmas is definitely up there as a fave for me!)
• Secret Crafter Saturday Challenge #147: Christmas is Coming!

Thanks for stopping by! Hope you are all having a lovely weekend. I have two more Christmas cards that I did today, I'll be sure to share them sometime this week.

Pixie Cottage Challenge #76

Hi folks,

Wow, can you believe it is already the last Wednesday in June? That means that this is my last post as a guest DT for the Pixie Cottage. I must say, I have definitely enjoyed this month of playing along with the weekly challenges. Thanks Michelle for giving me the chance to play along with your talented team of Pixies!

Now - here is this week's sketch

and the theme is "Strawberries and Cream". Perfect for this time of year! I know I've been inundated with fresh local strawberries (see my previous post about this past weekend's activities!).

There are lots of ways to interpret the theme don't you think? In your image choice, your colour choice, your paper choice.....you can even combine both the theme and the sketch on your project if you wish!

I, of course, used the sketch and I tried incorporating the theme with my colour choices on my card - but I think you might say I also incorporated some "chocolate"!

I once again tried my hand at colouring with my PrismaColor Pencils on kraft card-stock as I thought this lovely rose image would lend itself well to that technique. I must say, I AM happy with the results. In my own garden, I actually have two varieties of roses that resemble the one above. One that is a "peaches and cream" colour combo and one exactly like this - a "strawberries and cream" combo. It is actually pretty interesting to watch how the colour on the roses changes over a few days from predominantly the cream colour to more of the peach or pink colour.

Anyways, be sure to pop over to the Pixie Cottage Blog to link up your project for the challenge and to check out the inspiration projects from the design team!

card details:

• finished size: 5.5 x 5.5 inches
• image: "Simply the Best" by Artish for the Pixie Cottage, coloured with PrismaColor Pencils (930, 914, 929, 912, 909, 911)
• sentiment: CTMH
• patterned papers: Bo Bunny "Crazy Love" collection
• card stock: Recollections Kraft, The Paper Company Cream Parchment
• Spellbinders: Scalloped Squares, Fancy Tags
• embellies: ribbon from my stash, button & waxy flax from CTMH

Thanks for stopping by! Hope you are having a wonderful week! Tomorrow I start my long holiday weekend and I am  hopping to get into the craft room to tidy up the current chaos and maybe do a little card-making.

SASSC3 - Happy Birthday To Leap Baby Uncle

I made this card for my Uncle who is a leap baby. Yup, his birthday is on February 29th. It uses the SASSC3 sketch from Stamps and Smiles. You can find it here http://stampsandsmiles.blogspot.com/2009/02/stamps-and-smiles-day-3-sneak-peek.html

I used my small and large label nestabilities for the centre panel. My circle nestabilities for the birthday sentiment. And finally.....a cuttlebug die cut for the lattice strip.

Very simple ... which is where I usually tend to go for masculine cards. Recognize the paper? A few posts back it was used on another card!