Jingle Belles 2017 - And We're Off..... There's No Time for the Presents

Hard to believe that this is the 7th year of the Jingle Belles challenges.  So conservatively speaking, I've made more than 300 Christmas cards in the last 6 years.  I may not have taken part in all of the challenges every year, or made more than one card for each challenge, but looking at our Christmas card list, even with it's fluctuations in number of recipients year-to-year, I know that at least that many cards were made.  Most of them were one-of-a-kind.  Those times I didn't do a lot of the challenges I had to resort to some assembly line cards, but for the most part they've been originals.

Our first challenge is subject to the interpretation of the word PRESENT.  You could have the image of a present or presents on your card, or you could use some upcycled material from an actual present you received.  For this card I chose to upcycle although I might argue that a tag goes on  a present.....yeah, but I won't.

I started with a piece of lovely giftwrap that covered a very thoughtful (and fun) gift that was mailed to me.  Let me say right up front that these pictures were hard to take due to the various "shiny" things that were used on it, including that very lovely piece of medium brown and silver foil giftwrap which I used to cover almost all of the front of the card.  The tag is made from a thin cardboard bellyband that was around a cute buffalo plaid pouch I found in the Dollar Spot at Target before the holidays.  I love kraft-colored paper and the fact that there were a few intermittent white snowflakes scattered over the band, well, that was a selling point also.  (How many people do you know that buy things because of the prospect of using the packaging? Your answer better not be 0.) 

I cut a portion of the bellyband and shaped the top to look like a hang-tag.  At this point the all that lovely kraft color in the base, the back panel and the tag all began to mush together so they needed to be defined.  I don't know what possessed me - maybe the meds that I'm on - but I decided to use........brown glitter. I wanted a nice crisp line on the base of the card so I used some 1/8" redline tape to adhere the glitter to.  On the tag I just carefully added a line of Tombow around the edge, sprinkling the glitter on it it every few inches as I went along.  

The "JOY" is part of a diecut.  The rest of the additions to  this card were bits and bobs that I had laying on the craft table at this point.  The silver glitter-paper snowflakes were leftover from my Thank You cards.  The holographic silver snowflake was on a gift bag at some point in it's life.  And that little jewel in the O was just sitting there, wanting to become part of this card, so I let it.

There were still too many little empty spaces I didn't like so I reached for the sequin container and took out some brown sequins to add to the tag.  And then my eye was drawn to some little crystal stickers I had that were perfect size to add to the sequins.  I thought about putting a silver bow on the "handle" of the tag, but decided against it...............................for now anyway. 

Now I need to jump over to the Jingle Belles blog and check out the "presents" there.  Won't you join me?