Holiday Creature Feature

Well, this might be my favorite Jingle Belles challenge ever! I love the idea of creating a card around an animal or even a "monsta." I've been trying to come up with a way to use a stamp I bought specifically to use for cards to give to my book club friends and other friends who love reading as much as I do. The stamp is a lovely cat reading a book. So I decided to incorporate the cat into a bookmark, which is attached to the card. Here is the card with the bookmark attached.

And here is the card after removing the bookmark. I used photo corners to hold it to the card, but since they aren't very sticky, it looks better to just remove them from card and discard them. On the back of the bookmark I attached the titles and authors of a bunch of Christmas themed books. Just the ticket for my bookie friends.

 

Dreamin' of a Pink Christmas

I had a LOT of fun making pink cards for the current Jingle Belles challenge. I made four cards, although I decided I won't post them all. One of my biggest problems with card-making is that I'm not very fast. I spend hours on one card, which makes it very disappointing when I am not overly pleased with the result. But I have to admit, even the cards that I'm not crazy about are more fun to give than a store bought card!

This one was very fast. I inked some snowflakes on a pink card, added a pink ribbon, white bow and a chipboard ornament and voila! The one thing I canot figure out is how other people make such nice bows.

Merry Pink Christmas!

Here is my take on the Jingle Belles challenge, to make a pink Christmas card for Breast Cancer Awareness month (October). I used the sketch from last week's Merry Monday challenge.

Unscripted sketch #178 EEEK!

You just can't beat the Halloween color combos...orange, purple, black and green are so much fun! This is my take on Unscripted Sketches challenge #178, it was a great layout to work with.

For my (snow)flaky friends, the sequel

I found this Tim Holtz Kraft Core paper and thought it would be perfect to use with his grungy snowflake stamps for my second creation for the recent Jingle Belles Snow Challenge. It just so happened that the Christmas Cards All Year Round October Challenge is to use either a non-traditional image with traditional Christmas colors OR a traditional image with non-traditional colors so I'm also linking this up to CCAYR as these are definitely non-traditional colors!

For my (snow)flaky friends

I've been so busy that I never finished my card for the last Jingle Belles challenge, Going Postal. Lucky for me, it worked out to use it for the new challenge, snow-inspired Christmas cards! I love this Stampendous snowy postcard stamp I found at a little shop in Rapid City, SD, where my sister and I were visiting relatives. I stamped some Tim Holtz grungy snowflakes on craft paper as background and used colored pencils to give it a little sumpin sumpin.

Be of Good Bingo

This is the first card I've made (in my entire 9 months of card-making!) that my husband hates. On the plus side, now I know that he really means it when he tells me how cool they are! A couple of firsts for this card: I used a new embossing folder I just got in the mail from my good pal AND I embossed it on cardstock with a lighter core...something I just learned about from the same friend. One of the things I love most about making my own greeting cards is using non-traditional colors; the colors are actually quite a bit more vivid though. The sentiment is an EAD rub-on that I forgot about I think it's perfect for this blingy card. And for the second time in a row, this card is inspired by not ONE but TWO challenges. For the Jingle Belles Bingo challenge, I chose the diagonal row, starting in the upper right hand corner, bling, flowers, and dry embossing. And the layout is courtesy of Merry Monday Be of Good Cheer.