Jingle Belles Wrap Up

See this box?  This box is the very box that held all my Jingle Belle cards for 2011.  It also held any other Christmas card that I happened to put together during that time. 

Look at the top of the box .  This angel kept guard over my creations up until a couple of weeks ago.

I had all my cards done - 48 in all (some where multiples from a particular week which made up for some challenges that I missed). 

There were so many that I could not get them all into one picture.

And the lighting wasn't the greatest - sorry!

But you see them here before I sat down to add the sentiment to the inside and made sure that I had an envelope that would fit each one.

There were a couple of them that needed special sized envies so I am making a note to myself to try to keep within standard card sizes for 2012.  I'm also noting, to myself, that I should add the sentiment and set aside the envelope as I go along so as to save even more time when getting ready to mail them out.

The selection, signing, and addressing of the envelopes were all jobs that I passed on to HWNSNBP.  I had taken some time during the past month to sit down and notate the Challenge week number on the back of each card (another thing that I'll do as I complete them next time) and I made up a little slip of paper that explained a little about the Jingle Belles challenge and a "fill in the blank" for him to include the week number along with a link to the searched list of Jingle Belle challenges in case the recipients wanted to see the rest of the cards.  It was noted on the slip that the cards were chosen at random, which they were for the most part except for the ones that had been previously requested or specially made. 

I'm so glad that I found the Jingle Belles Blog last December because this was fun to work on a Christmas card almost every week and a relief to have all those cards done by this December.  There will be another challenge this year with a little bit of a difference to it, but for the most part, we will be Taking Back December once again.

Jingle Belles 48 - Candy Kisses

We're ending up the Jingle Belle challenges this week with a yummy one.  Our prompt is Candy Kisses - and our cards can have anything to do with holiday food.  Well, when I think of holiday food I do, indeed think of all the festive candies and cookies that pop up all over the place and tempt me to no end.  I was perplexed however, when HWNSNBP and I were in Shop Rite last Friday and I could not find a bag of regular milk chocolate candy kisses.  They had peppermint, dark chocolate, caramel, and a few others but no plain milk chocolate ones.  And I didn't even care if they had the red and green wrappers, I just wanted some milk chocolate candy kisses.  Oh well, I gues I can bank those calories for later in December when I will be tempted with all the other goodies. 

But before I side-track myself even more with thoughts of chocolate chip cookies and cinnamon marshmallows let me show you my card for the week.

I've had this $1 candy stamp for a long time and inked it up for the first time.  It was a little tedious coloring it and I'm sure that someone with Copic Markers or any of those other similar markers could have done a better job of coloring this image, but my SU markers didn't do too bad. 

The glittery background paper was a "Black Friday" purchase at Mikes with my 30% off before.... I forget what time of the day, but we were there around 9 a.m.  And the little glittery lollipop button also found it's way into my bag that day along with some lights and mucho ribbon and lots of other stuff. 

A trip to the Christmas Tree Shop on Saturday with my daughter yielded an addition to my border punches as they had these MS punches for a fraction of the original cost in the craft stores.  Who can resist a good deal on a punch?  I have to admit that it is kind of difficult to use this on thicker paper which is probably why they were so reduced and found in the CTS, but the Whisper White was okay, and if I just want those little gingerbread people I found I can punch them out on either side individually with the thicker paper.  Come to think of it, as I look at the card I think I will do that and add one on each side of the sentiment.

The ribbon treatment was an attempt to fill in that blank space created by not stamping that candy image twice, but I really thought that that would be too much busyness. 

So that is the last of the Jingle Belle challenges for this year.  I have to thank Lauren and Stef for coming up with this idea and for providing the venue to share all these cards since last January.  It really has put my mind at ease a little knowing that I will not have to do this in December.   I may even get to spend some time putting together some Christmas Thank You cards to have on hand and ready to send out right after the holiday instead of in January! 

I also would like to thank all the guest hostesses who came up with such great prompts for us and for all those fellow Jingle Belles who visited me here on my blog and commented on my cards.  I know that we are all limited in time, otherwise we wouldn't have been doing this, and I'm sorry that I didn't get to visit with the JB's as often as I would have liked to. 

I'm also glad that there were a couple of weeks when I made multiple cards because there were a couple of challenges I missed, like last week - I really wanted to make a Festivus card, but just couldn't fit it in!

And now I'll go take a peek at the gallery and look forward to seeing what the ladies will be coming up with for 2012!

Jingle Belles 46

This week's challenge is Sticky and Sweet.   We had to use a sticker on our card.  Last year before Christmas I picked up a few of these jeweled teapot stickers in the $ bin at Michael's and didn't use them.  That didn't stop me from grabbing a few more of them when they went into the clearance bin for 20 cents in January.  Thought this would be a good time to use at least one of them. 

I have to say that they are a little tricky to get off the clear plastic that they come on, but with a good pointy tweezer and a little perserverance I managed.  It was finding supplies that took the longest today.  (Yes, I know I shouldn't have waited until today.  Bad me!)  I have a bazillion of these paper doilies gifted to me by a retiring teacher a couple of years ago and I just could not seem to remember where the devil they were.  Luckily I had pulled a couple for another project that I came across. 

I really love this Cherry Cobbler cs and seam binding.  The color went well with the scrap of Basic Gray dsp that I had in the Christmas pile.  The champagne ribbon is from the Christmas selection at Michael's.  They were having a 60% off sale a couple of weeks ago, and who could resist ribbon at that price? 

I took some 1/8" red line tape and pieced it all around the center of the doily and then with the trusty tweezers I ruffled that ribbon.  A quick pass with the heat gun should help the ribbon stay adhered to the doily (I hope, I hope, I hope!). 

So I hope that this is still considered a sticker cause it is stuck on with no glue or adhesive added. 

Okay, it's raining and nasty tonight and perfect for going to visit the rest of the sticky and sweet concoctions.  You can check them out here.

Jingle Belles 45

It Came Upon A Midnight CLEAR - our challenge for this week was to use something on our card that was clear.  It could be a button, a transparency, slides, etc.  I was in Michael's on Sunday looking for something else in the scrapbook paper section when I spotted this acetate paper doily by Anna Griffin - the vanilla doily is printed on the sheet of acetate.  And then I found these Dress It Up buttons also in vanilla.  The holiday ribbon was on sale for 50% off and this champagne ribbon went well with the vanilla items.  I thought that I had a sheet of copper colored glitter paper at home and thankfully I was right (it's actually called Chestnut by Recollectioins).  The copper looked good against a Chocolate Chip card base. 

I used some nesties for the oval and scalloped oval and stamped the ribbon banner from the set Pines and Poinsettias in Chocolate Chip on Very Vanilla cs and trimmed it up.  The photograph doesn't really do it justice.  Of course it will need special attention to be mailed so that angel doesn't get smushed - there's nothing worse than a smushed angel.

Let's head on over to the Jingle Belles blog to see all the other CLEAR lovelies. 

Jingle Belles 44

Not a Creature Was Stirring...................... not even a, a, a, snowdog, snowcat, or snowbunny.

It's Halloween week and I thought for sure that we would be challenged to use orange in our card - nope, not part of the challenge.  But........... I did it anyway.  Ha! 

These are definitely not your typical Christmas colors, but I thought that the red, pink and green would be pretty cool and the fact that the two shades of orange were in there just added to the fun.

The stamps are from an All Night Media set called Snowglobe that I picked up several years ago and it has finally been inked up, or should I say that the creatures were inked up because this week we were to put creatures on our cards. 

I've got a slew of Christmas stamps with birds and some other animals too, but I decided that in honor of Halloween I would go with something else and these actually made me think that the dog, cat and bunny were dressed up in their Halloween costumes which would have worked here in New Jersey because we actually had snow on the ground on Halloween!

The sentiment is an A Muse stamp that I picked up at One Little Spark in Tuckerton.  I thought that it was kind of playful and matched the playfulness of this card.

So, who will get this out of the ordinary holiday creature creation?   I'm beginning to think that I might just have to let HWNSNBP randomly pick the cards out of the box as he addresses them because that is his part of the Christmas card mailing.  But before he does that I think that I am going to do a little write-up to insert with these cards to explain what I've been doing all year with the Jingle Belles and indicate what week and what the challenge theme was.  That, and I will make sure that each card has an envelope with it because some of them are not standard size.  Yep, I'd better get to doing that soon, huh!

So let's go check out the creature creations in the gallery this week.  Click here to join me. 

Jingle Belles 43 (and 42)

Gently falling - softly falling

The silence of the snow

Softly falling - gently falling

The warmth we want to know

Gently falling - softly falling

The flakes fall from the skies

Softly falling - gently falling

It's magic to our eyes.

lmastalski 10.26.11

Our Jingle Belles theme this week is "Softly Falling Snow" brough to us by our guest hostess Noelle McAdams of paper & ICE.  Do you want to guess why her name could possibly be Noelle?  I'll let you think about that. 

We are to use something soft on our cards this week.  Could be felt, fabric, flocking, fibers, or, in this case - dryer lint.  Yes, you read it right.  Dryer lint.  (This would have been a good Thursday's Throwaways post if I were still inclined to do them!)

Here's the deal - I bought a couple of new beach towels at Costco this summer and, of course, I washed them before we used them - alone as it were, because you know how new towels can sometimes wreak havoc on old towels with the fuzz that they produce.  Well, in this case, when I went to clean out the lint screen from the dryer this is what I found and I, being the packrat creative person that I am, could not bear to throw it away.  It would have a purpose sometime in the next millenia, even if it were only an offering to the birds for nesting material in the spring.  Isn't it the prettiest shade of blue?

Oh, and that's not all I saved.  I saved the tags that were on the towels because they had a picture of the towel that I thought I could do something with....... someday.

So what does one do with dryer lint?  Believe me, there are more people out there that use this as a medium for their artwork - just google dryer lint art and you'll get a glimpse.

I thought that I'd like to try using the lint in the Big Shot with a flower die.  I wondered if it would hold together after it was die cut, and surprisingly it did as the process of making the die cut actually compressed the lint so that it almost has the appearance of a very thin felt.

I used the Birds and Blossoms die to make the flower.  The leaves and center of the flower were created with DMC Memory Thread.  The picture of the towel was used to make something else that in real life would be soft - a hat and a scarf.  (I hope you can tell that that's what you see as HWNSNBP did not get it.  His first guess was an igloo and he was not joking!)

The snowflakes on the Island Indigo card base were stamped in VersaMark ink and embossed with white EP using the SU set Northern Hearts.  The sentiment comes from The More the Merrier.  The hat is popped up and the scarf is only glued down where the scarf would be folded.  If nothing else, I certainly do like the colors of this.  Will the flower hold up?  Time will tell, but I certainly would not use something like that on a real hat! 

Before I go to check out the other "soft" creations, let me give you a glimpse of the card that I did make for last week's challenge - to be inspired by a holiday song.   I was really not in the mood for card-making so much last week as I was working on addressing the envelopes for my son and future daughter-in-law's Save The Dates, and as it was, I finished my card about five minutes to 6 last Wednesday, but by the time I got the picture loaded on the computer the clock read 6:01 and the link was closed - sigh! 

But what I managed to put together in about 20 minutes that night was this, uh, disaster.   

I found that JOY image already stamped and colored with Twinkling H2O's in some paperwork that I had been cleaning out earlier in the week and put it aside for this.  What I was going to do with it I couldn't remember, but when the clock is ticking (and I do have a ticking clock on my work table) you just start grabbing things.  I looked around and found a piece of copied sheet music, some sparkly ribbons, a little emerald green crepe paper and  here you have it.  Will I sent this out?  Don't know that I will or won't but it will go into the box just the same.  (Yeah, there should be a World on there someplace to fit in with the theme - maybe in the future.....)

Teapot Tuesday 168

Looks like we're going to a Birthday Tea Party this week.  What a sweet single serve teapot and teacup all in one.  That gingham cup is really cute.  Can you image opening this box and finding that set inside?  You know there is a story to go along with this and you can find it if you click here. 

I'm very behind on everything this week.  I actually had my card done on Monday night, just never got to posting it.  The changes at work have really zapped my energy and I've had projects that I promised to both of my children to work on which have kept me away from everything else.  I don't mind that because they still come first, just wish I didn't have to expend so much energy at work multi-tasking.  There are so many interruptions during the day that I have to shut down when I get home.  No tv, no phone, no noise.  These projects help to get me back to single-tasking.  When I finally do sit down at the computer the weariness really sets in and I can barely keep my eyes open. 

But anyway...... here's my card for this week.  I attempted to make my own "gingham" with the squares in two shades of pink and white.  The stripes in between are from a third shade of pink.  I embossed the white square as well as the icing on the punched cupcake (I think this is the very first time that I used that punch!)   I used the red glitter paper for the cherry and some striped dsp for the cupcake base.  The sentiment comes from the set of Occasional Quotes. 

A little close up.

Pay no attention to the crooked square in the lower left-hand corner - it's your imagination!

Okay - over to the gallery for some oohing and ahhing.  Click here to join me. 

Jingle Belles 41

Our theme this week - "I'm Dreaming of a Pink Christmas" (and a cure) - yes this challenge is hand-in-hand with Breast Cancer Awareness month.  Our cards should have some pink in them - a non-traditional color for Christmas, but I love it. 

The Medallion was stamped in VersaMark and then embossed with Whte EP.   I then took a sponge and sponged on some Regal Rose from the center outward and then Rose Red at the edges of the paper.  The trees from Patterned Pines were stamped in Regal Rose and in Wild Wasabi and cut out.  I torn some Whisper White cs for the hills and added the trees.  The pink ones in the background were completely glued down but the green ones in front were only glued at the bases so the tops come forward a little.  I added some glitter pen to the torn edge of the white cs.  The greeting from Four the Holidays was stamped in Rose Red using my stamp-a-ma-jig for placement.  The final touch was to add the whole thing to a base of Rose Red.

I'll be adding this to Pink Saturday.  You can follow the Jingle Belles contributions here.

Jingle Belles 40

Let there be Peace on Earth................  our theme for the week is Peace.  I have had this image for a few months.  Got it when I went a little crazy on a rainy Sunday looking at ebay rubber stamp sales.  Yep, the thrill of the auction and shopping from your seat at home - too good to be true until the paypal statement comes in!  But anyway, I liked the image of the House Mouse and the Dove.  Reminded me of the white bird I saw outside the doctors office last December and the problem we were having with mice at home at around the same time.  Come to think of it, not really a very peaceful time for me, but still I think the image is sweet. 

Of course, now I'm going to have to figure out who to send this to.  I realized when coloring it that mice are not particularly tolerated by many.  And lately I've been made aware of more people who have an adversion to birds, believe it or not.  But I allow them this as I probably feel the same way about dogs.  Cats I don't mind...... oh, this would be a good card to send to a cat wouldn't it!  A cat likes mice and birds.  Hmmm, who are my cat-loving friends out there???   You might see this card coming your way, but don't let your cat confuse it with a snack.

The image is stamped onto watercolor paper and colored with my aquapainter and inks.  I then used a die to cut it out and added the Snowflake 2 die above and below.  I found a piece of starred paper for the background and mounted the whole thing on a base of Bashful Blue. 

Let's go check out all the other peaceful scenes.

Jingle Belles 39

Have you heard the song by Rosemary Clooney "Here Comes Suzy Snowflake"?  Well that's our prompt for this week's Jingle Belles card brought to us by Marie Bingaman.  What a cute little song and a fun challenge. 

I didn't do any stamping on this card, but don't think that it didn't take some planning and preparation.  Those snowflakes that make a snowflake where punched out of Baja Breeze cs with the Simple Snowflake punch.  Then they were carefully lined up to form a larger snowflake with six points as every snowflake is supposed to have.  I didn't glue them down completely, just mainly in the centers as you can see below.

It was after I glued them down that I thought about adding the Dazzling Diamonds glitter and did so by using my Tombow glue just on the end tips of the flakes.  To finish it off I added the sticky rhinestones in the centers of the flakes.  The card base here is watercolor paper - a thicker paper I thought necessary to be able to stand up nicely.  I just so happened to be gifted some old watercolor tablets this summer and they have come in handy for some card bases recently.

This card could double as a quilt square - minus the glitter of course.  As much as I don't particularly like working with glitter, sometimes it helps get things straightened up.  How is that you might ask?  Well, usually I wind up changing the paper mat on my work table after I'm done with the glitter because you just can't get every little speck up.  It's nice starting fresh now and then.

So, let me get over to the gallery and take a look at all those other snowflake inspired works of art.  You can check it out too here. 

Jingle Belles 37

Yes, that's correct.  It is Jingle Belles 37.  I was so busy last week that I missed a day and totally missed the deadline to get my card in.  Well, to be honest, it wasn't even done, but the challenge was pretty straightforward and....... well, no more excuses.  I'm posting this today before I run out of time again (as I'm staying late at work yet again!).

The challenge this week is call Deck the Halls brought to us by Ms. Sue Culloti and we are to:

"make a freestanding (2.5 x 3.5") xmas-themed Artist Trading Card

OR

add an ATC-sized element to your holiday card

OR

incorporate a playing card into your design

OR

use a recycled xmas card (or an element from

one!) on your (newly made) holiday card!"

I had purchased some ATC watercolor blanks over the summer - for what I do not know - so I scrounged around and found them - lucky for me - and used an image from a stamp that I had recently purchased at a stamp store I visited recently.  (I'm a sucker for bird images you know!)

Then, feeling in a dreary mood (from the week I was having last week) I decided to go really out of the box and use some "different" holiday colors.  Well, really only one unique color - yellow!

Do you like it?  I know it's out there a little, but I just got a book from one of those book thingy's that sends you a Christmas book each year and one of the featured sections was Christmas in Yellow, White, and I think Gray.  Not what I would choose, as yellow doesn't happen to be one of my favorites, but I think it worked for this card based on the background paper.

Okay, maybe I'll be back to add more rambling on to this, but I've got to get going and finish up.

You do want to see the rest of the cards for this week right?  Click here.

Jingle Belles 35 - The Midas Touch

It's not that I was feeling industrious.  Nor was it because I needed to make two cards for our Jingle Belles Challenge.  But I figured that since I had the embossing powder out, and since it was a nice cool day and I did not need the fan on, and since we had our power back, and since the power was still out at work and I was able to come home early, I might as well take advantage of it and stamp and emboss more than one image.  You see our theme this week is "The Midas Touch" and we were to use gold and/or silver on our card along with our choice of neutrals.  Our guest Belle is Leslie of The Crooked Stamper.  This is a wonderful challenge that also let me ink up a new stamp set - Comfort and Joy.

My choice was further inspired by the fact that I bought the two-pack of Nutella at Costco and had opened each jar and had carefully removed the gold foil seal on the jar to use in some craft project.  So I had two of those to use also. 

I really did not intend to wait until yesterday to work on this/these cards, but Sunday, as I was preparing my work space (cleaning and purging would be good words too) our power went out - the tail end of Hurricane Irene had nailed us.  She flooded our basement, but we had that under control.  And she toyed with the power off and on for most of Sunday afternoon.  But just as the sun was beginning to go down the wind was too much for the power lines somewhere down the road and our power went out.  Lasted about 18 hours which is not bad compared to some people who are still without.  But when you are planning to emboss, and I must say that I don't often do that, you need electricity for your heat gun.  So I had to put this off until yesterday.

I will tell you though that I put that time before the sun completely went down to good use.  There were numerous (I'm embarrassed to say just how many) stamp sets that I had not mounted and that was one of the things that I could relocate to the kitchen counter by the window.  So now I have no excuses to ink up some more of my new sets soon.

Here are the details of the cards.  The cardstock is metallic gold cardstock that I picked up at One Little Spark.  The stamp set is called Comfort and Joy from the new Holiday Mini catalog.  I stamped that bird image in VersaMark ink on Very Vanilla cs and embossed with gold EP.  The gold Nutella seals were die cut with the Sizzix Pennant die.  The top card has a bit of crocheted lace (thank you Sabrina) and some gold cording threaded through.  The bottom card is outlined with SU's gold glass glitter.  They both have an antique gold SU brad.  I used some of those paper doilies that are in my stash and the sentiment is also embossed.   

I think I will earmark these cards for the grandmothers.  Now I'm off to see the other beauties - join me here.

Jingle Belles 34 - Holiday Fall To Layout

Are you ready for a great sketch?  Are you ready for a great Clean and Simple Sketch?  Well I was.  I checked the prompt before we left for vacation and using what little time I set aside I whipped up my card for this week's challenge. 

Oh, you want to see the sketch first, right!  The sketch comes from Clean and Simple Stamping blog.

I used an image and sentiment from Easy Events, one of my new sets from SU.  I love that you can cut apart the sentiment from the image and easily put it back together on the acrylic block if needed.  In this case I split them to conform to the sketch requirements.

The card base is Read Red with a Crumb Cake panel on the left.  I used my new lace border punch with Whisper White between the layers.

The circle was cut with a circle die and the bird punched out of a discarded candy bag from the holidays.  I added a little sticky pearl for the bird's eye.  The flowers are an old attempt at tatting that I recently found in some "stuff" that had been accumulating.  The white glittery dots were added as the sketch called for. 

Here's the image and bird up close.

This was a fun challenge.  I am going over to see how much fun everyone else had.  Click here to join me.

Jingle Belles 33

Bring on the Bling!  Show the sparkle, twinkle, razzle dazzle.  Make it shine, glitter, show it's pizzazz!  Get the picture?  I did, but I struggled a little with this one.

I actually spent about an hour straigtening out my work table, cleaning and putting away stamps and sets, filing paper and scraps, picking up bits and pieces on the floor, etc., before I started working on this and I think I wore myself out.  I had thought that I wanted to add glitter to that wreath but I stopped myself and now I think it will become a royal mess and stick to that snowflake gem sticker if I do.  Oh, but wait.  Now that I'm thinking about that I can take my Frost White Shimmer paint or some H2O's to that wreath and sparkle that up a bit.  Yes, I think I will........... sometime before it gets mailed. 

I wanted to use that new Island Indigo paper as my background.  I know it's not a usual holiday color, but I like it.  The wreath is my new Memory Box twig wreath die I had been playing with with white paper this time.  The snowflake is one that I found in the dollar bin at Mike's (when they still had dollar bins, now they're $1.50 bins!).  I punched some holes at the corners and threaded some silver metallic stretch cord through them then added the blue gems in the corners.  This is only 4" x 4" but it will do well for a gift enclosure or thank you note during the holidays.

Off to check out the rest.  Click here to join me.

Jingle Belles 32 - Shape Up For Christmas

Shape Up For Christmas!  Okay, that's a good goal.  Gives me plenty of time to work on my............. oh wait, we're not talking work outs of the physical kind.  We're talking about shapely cards.  Something not your typical square or rectangle card. 

Our lovely hostesses Lauren and Steph have outdone themselves with their wonderful samples this week.  Please do click on their names above to see just what I'm talking about. 

I mulled over some ideas that I had for this challenge.  I actually had the pattern and a mock up started a couple of weeks ago for the star card that Steph featured, but it was not coming together in my head.  Then I thought about doing a telescoping circle card, but again, blank.   Finally, I had an idea......... not a telescope - a stack of blocks.

I took the actual stamp blocks and lined them up on the paper giving me my pattern.  Cut that out and then did some masking and then stamped each block individually with my Woodgrain background stamp.  Then, to delineate the lines between the blocks, I sponged on darker ink around the edges of each block.  The base of each block is slightly darker than the top, hopefully to give it some dimensional quality. 

The snowflake images from Serene Snowflakes were stamped onto each block with VersaMark and then embossed with White EP. 

To embellish, I used the fourth stamp from the set with the smallest snowflakes.  I stamped them in Crumb Cake on white cs and then used round punches to punch them out.  Then I layered a piece of SU baker's twine between two of the same snowflakes.  These were tied into the knot of Red 1/8" ribbon. 

This is one of those cards that really is prettier in real life - trust me. 

Now, I've got to get over to see what other shapes have been created.  You can join me here.

Jingle Belles 31

This week we are celebrating a Blue Christmas as suggested by our guest hostess June Houck.  What does that mean - well blue should be the predominate color of our card and I think I pulled that off.

I used both Marina Mist and Night of Navy cs and I also got to use my new Memory Box swirly tree die.  I love those delicate swirls which I tried to compliment with the swirl embossed background.  Those are some MS punched snowflakes with sticky blue jewels.  The oval was cut using the Scallop oval die and embossed.  I didn't want those background swirls to disappear so I swiped some white craft ink over them. 

So don't be blue but come and see the other blue beauties here.

Teapot Tuesday 156 and Jingle Belles 30

YES!  I can combine both of my challenges this week!  This is the lovely teapot inspiration that we have for Teapot Tuesday.  I'm sure you'll want to read the story, so click here.  And it's Tickle a Teapotter Tuesday too!  So that means that this card will be going to a Teapotter somewhere in the world.  Aha, but I also made a second card just like it to add to my stash of Jingle Belles cards - don't want to fall behind!!!

The Jingle Belles challenge is called "O Hole-y Night" and using big technical stamping words - the card has to have an aperture.  This challenge was suggested by guest star Ros Crawford - and a fun one it is!  (Oooh, oooh, I just took a peek at Ros' blog and there's a real cool project there I'm going to have to give a try!!!!)

So scouring my stamps I knew I was looking for a gingerbread man and I actually found two, but this little guy from Bingo Bits won out and became part, or rather the triplets became part of this card this week.  There are three apertures and they are framing the triplets who have been stamped and then cut out (yes, I know I'm crazy but I didn't want to screw up and stamp them crooked or something) and popped up.  The apertures are framed with a Real Red ring (now that was crazy) and I tied three tiny red cotton thread bows. 

The retired dsp strips were each punched with different border punches (except the farthest on the left) and layered on the Soft Suede card base.  I added a strip of white rick-rack - one of my 25 cent finds at a recent flea market. 

The sentiment comes from the set Got Treats (which had the other gingerbread man).  Aren't these little guys cute though? 

I went through my box of Jingle Belles cards this week and had to put post-it notes on some of them.  Why?  Because several people on my Christmas card list have made requests for certain cards and I would like to honor them.  Whew!  That will make it a little easier for me when it comes to choosing who gets what. 

Let me get going to get some stamping in, jump in the pool, and then get to browsing the Teapot Gallery and the Jingle Belles gallery. 

Jingle Belles 29 - Reindeer Games

I've had this stamp for a while now and finally put it to use in our Reindeer Games prompt this week.  This is quite a mish mosh of things that I had that just kind of came together, although I'm not quite thrilled with this card.  Too much space to the  left of the deer's head.  I think I will put a Merry Christmas or something there. 

Anyway, I was happy to use the stamp and the new Memory Box twig wreath die both of which I picked up at One Little Spark in Tuckerton.  The paper was a recent purchase at AC Moore and the Christmas tree ribbon just happened to be in my eyesight as I was searching for the stamp. 

It's still a suana up there in the Stamp Castle, er, Stamp Suana.   And it's not going to cool down anytime soon.  So I'm going in and prepping things and then trying to finish them downstairs where it's cooler.  A little exercise going up and down the stairs.  Can you call it Stamp Aerobics I wonder?

Okay, heading on over to see the other "Reindeer Games".  Click here.

Jingle Belles 28 - Holiday Leftovers

As you might be able to tell from the title, the prompt for this week was to use leftovers (aren't these ladies clever with their prompts!).  Well, there is no shortage of leftovers here in the Stamp Sauna (which the Stamp Castle has been renamed for the duration of the summer or until I get HWNSNBP to commit to an air-conditioner!). 

I dug through my scrap box hoping to find something that had been punched, stamped, colored, or whatever, and boy did I get lucky.  I found something that had been stamped, colored AND punched.  So then I dug through the pile of Christmas dsp that I have accumulated and came up with a scrap that I punched my squares out of.  Put them onto the red scallop die cut background, and put that on a base of Soft Suede cs.  The ornament blended in too much just on top of the squares, so I trimmed down a paper doily to put behind it. 

Then I checked the ribbon scrap jar that I have and found what I needed there for the bow and the hanger.  The last touch was the little cardinal.  I had some of them stamped on a strip of white cs so I cut one of them out to add to this card.

Fun challenge!  I'm going over now to see how much fun everyone else had with this - you can check for yourself by clicking here.

Jingle Belles 27 - Stars and Stripes

Actually that should be Stars OR Stripes, but I decided to go with both on this card.  It's a holiday week and we're celebrating with our Patriotic Stars and Stripes so why not use that for our Christmas card this week.  I found this SU dsp - unused - in my stash and put this together with some star punches and the MS fern punch.  The colors are very subtle, but in real life it looks really pretty. 

I can't believe that we are up to week 27 already.  It doesn't seem to be that far, but when I look into my box of cards I am very happy that I will not be scrambling as I usually do in November/December to get them made and posted before Christmas.  I will venture a guess that HWNSNBP will be happy about this also.  He quite looks forward to seeing what I've come up with each week - at least he says he does. 

I got one of my Christmas books that I usually order each year - the Gooseberry one, and I think I might actually have time to make some of the stuff in there this year!  I'll have to pull out some of the back issues and start making some plans for gifts. 

Okay, let's go check out the other Stars or Stripes cards for this week here.