Jingle Belles - Peace on EARTH DAY (Part 1)

Time to scour the stamp cave for all those bits and bobs that I've been saving relevant to Christmas card making for the annual Jingle Belles Earth Day challenge.  I did a disappearing act from my "downstairs" life yesterday and got busy making up for lost time.  Three cards were finished for this challenge along with 3 birthday cards and a thank you - all which will be posted soon.  But let me start first with these 2.

Both of these use parts of a Puffs tissue box that I had saved.  And both also include backgrounds from wrapping paper that was saved from the trash.  I also found red half pearls in with what was left from a card kit a few years back that fit perfectly over the printed berries on the trees.  I don't mind having to add a layer of cardstock over cards that have these kind of embelishments when mailing them so that they don't get crushed and lessen the chance of the canceling machine tearing them up.  So you'll see that the first one also has some wooden silver snowflakes with white pearls also.

The sentiment for this one was trimmed from a Christmas card that we received.  Who could resist using something that was already embossed perfectly.  The tinsel ribbon covers up a crease in the wrapping paper that I couldn't get rid of but I think it blends well with the other silver accents.  And you'll notice that both cards have a snowflake in the bottom left corner.  I'll let you in on a little secret.......they're there to cover up the part of the Puffs logo that I didn't trim off.  Squaring off the panels from the tissue box was also a bit challenging because of the angles of those trees.

There have been a couple of "technical" challenges lately too.  I've been so frustrated with trying to upload the pictures from my phone to my computer.  Unfortunately the software that's involved doesn't just download the most recent photos from the phone, it takes them all and then you have to pick the ones that you want to add to your albums.  It doesn't help that I have a few thousand pictures on my phone....which are backed up to the "Cloud" which I would take off the phone but it tells me that if you delete it from the phone it also deletes it from the Cloud.  I thought the Cloud was there so you didn't have to keep all those photos on your phone?  Does this make sense?  

It also doesn't make sense to me that even though I edit my pictures on my phone, when I go to download them to my computer, it shows me the original and the edited version.  And, should someone take a picture in "Live" mode, there are multiple pictures and a movie for each one.  I tried turning off the "Live" function when I edit the picture, but it still downloads those multiples which seems to be hanging up the download time.  It shouldn't take more time than e-mailing myself the pictures and downloading them that way but it does.  

Sorry for the rant, it'll all shake out in the end I'm sure, but technology sure can be challenging.  And let me get back to this challenge by visiting the Jingle Belles to see see what other bits of Christmas ephemera have been given new life.  You can join me by clicking here.