The Christmas Kickstart #101 - Let's Wreath it Up!

 

Over at The Christmas Kickstart Challenge I'm delighted to welcome back my dear friend Greta, as our Elf for August. If you've not visited Greta's blog before I urge you to head there this very second as her cards are a total delight and so inspiring.

 

Greta has chosen a lovely theme for our new challenge...

Challenge #101 - Let's Wreath it Up!

Yes, we'd like to see a wreath or multiple wreaths on your cards, please. You will LOVE Greta's card for our challenge - it's a total beauty and you can find it here. 

Here's what I made for our challenge. 

I grabbed my pencils and coloured Petunia Loves Christmas from Stampingbella. I don't use my pencil crayons very often these days and I felt rather rusty as I coloured this little sweetie. I loved the contrast of the purple and the green as shown on the stamp packaging so CASEd the look for my card. 

His Rudolphness has a fun new prize for his August Random Raffle Draw. 

 

*Sigh* I wish Heffy Doodle was still in business, but I'm so glad Rudolph bagged a few stamp sets before they closed. This one is a real cutie. 

Hope to see you playing along this month!

The Christmas Kickstart Challenge - If It's Christmassy, Link It Up!

 

This is the final challenge for 2023 and it's our traditional nice and easy, anything goes style December challenge...

Challenge #81 - If it's Christmassy, Link it Up!

Just link up any Christmas cards that you want to. Yes, it really is as simple as that. If you're stuck for a theme why not look back through the past year of inspiration and fun here at Christmas Kickstart - our elfin muses have once again done us proud!

I'm completely in love with this cute cat from Jane's Doodles. 

I printed out a few of these, and made the cards with a variety of different cats. Great fun!

As you can see, I'm very much still in Kitty Card mode after our tribute challenge for Janis in October. 

I do like this Oddball kitty with his ornament, and these cranky-looking Stamping Bella cats make me smile. 

Rudolph is over at The Christmas Kickstart Challenge with a fun Random Raffle Prize...

   

I hope you'll come and play in the final Christmas Kickstart Challenge of 2023!

Cat Lover's Blog Hop 2022

The end of October beckons and this can only mean one thing: Janis's Cat Lovers Hop!

I do not know how Janis pulls this one together each year, but I'm sooooooooo glad she does. Well done, Janis, you are amazing!

I'm in full-on Christmas card mode right now so here's what I made...

Don't you just love this little kitty from Oddball Christmas Pets by Stampingbella! So cute and great fun to colour. The sentiment is from The Ink Road and the embossing folder is an eBay find.

I need very little excuse to re-share this pic of my hubby and the late, great Mr Custard.

These two were such an item and this photo sums up their relationship perfectly. 

I'm going to grab a coffee and take a look at all the fabulous entries over at My Peaceful Garden as I do love a little kitty cardmaking fun!

Let's Squash It! Challenge #7 - Reminder Post

 Hi there, I'm over on the blog at Let's Squash It! today with some inspiration for our current challenge.

I was inspired by Empress Sally's gorgeous wedding card and decided to hunt-out my Stamping Bella stamp Uptown Girl Bridgette the Bride.

I created a simple Distress Ink blended background and spritzed it with a little water before running it through my Cuttle Bug using Crochet Doily from Kaisercraft. I really like this EF and you'll find it on sale in the UK at this link! 

The second of my three folders is this beaut. Unfortunately, it's an oldie and was purchased on eBay, so I can't share a link. However, leaf patterns are fairly easy to find so I'm sure you can track down something similar if you like the look it gives.

For my final EF of the trio I decided I wanted a pattern to pull things together. Again, this is a VERY old folder, but I like how using just a corner of the pattern gave me a leaf and some flowers for my embellishment.

Gail's Technique Time post here shared some ideas about using scraps and leftovers for creating sweet embellishments for your cards. You don't have to use all of your embossing folder all of the time - just a portion of the pattern and a little die cutting can create lovely results.

This challenge is open until the last day of April, so there's plenty of time to get creating. 

Pixie's Snippets Playground Challenge #397

Hi there, I'm delighted to be playing in the playground at Pixie's Crafty Workshop.

I played for the first time a couple of weeks ago and love the idea of using up those little snippets of paper and card, so here I am joining the fun again. Thanks to Di for the lovely welcome, which was such a sweet surprise!

My card uses some leftover yellow dotty card. I was so lucky that I had just enough to cut a circle and a tiny sentiment strip. I thought the dots would be a fun contrast with the bunting of the embossing folder.

I coloured adorable Edna (Edna Needs A Martini by Stamping Bella) and added lashings of Wink of Stella to her rose, martini, shoes and wings. Such a fun way to use up snippets and scraps.

So, stay safe and keep crafting everyone!

Christmas Kickstart Challenge #47 - Slimline Cards

A new month has arrived and it brings with it a new challenge over at Christmas Kickstart! I'm delighted to welcome a new elf: it's my lovely Card Chain Challenge buddy Arlene M. from A Bit of This and That!

Arlene chose the theme for the challenge and I have to say I was VERY nervous at attempting a slimline card as it's a long time since I'd made anything that wasn't square or a chunky little rectangular number. 

  

Here's what I made for my very first attempt at slimline. Whaddya think?

I love these cute MFT penguins and really enjoyed putting this card together. I thought dividing the card into thirds like this would help cover all the space. I'm quite pleased with the result. I don't have any slimline dies, so carefully extended a smaller die in my Cuttlebug.

Here's card #2, and again I extended a shorter die.

By the time I made this I'd begun to appreciate the 'storytelling potential' of these longer cards and couldn't help playing with perspective to create this with some fabulous Stamping Bella images. I wonder what the reindeer is thinking?

Rudolph has chosen a sweet prize for his Random Raffle Prize for our February challenge. 

Nice prize, Rudolph!

Arlene and I both hope you'll come and join the fun with this bang on trend challenge! 

Christmas Kickstart Challenge #46 - Such a Deer

 

It's time for Challenge #46 over at Christmas Kickstart. It's hard to believe that this is the third year I've run this challenge and I'm so grateful to everyone who drops by, offers encouragement and plays along. Thank you all.

To get this 2021 show on the road I'm delighted to be joined once again by my crafting partner in crime Gail from Crafty Nomad.

Our theme for this month, yes, we're going monthly for 2021, is:

Challenge #46 - Such a Deer!

You can see Gail's adorable card by heading here.

Here's what I made - don't you just love the expression on the face of this Stamping Bella Oddball Reindeer? 

My next card is very different:

I coloured a piece of kraft card with some white ink before adding some Sizzix goodies. The white wreath is cut from sparkly card and looks lovely IRL.

Rudolph wishes you all a very Happy New Year and is delighted to share his first Random Raffle Prize of 2021.

Why not head on over and join the fun! BTW, the challenge has now gone monthly so there's even longer to play along.

The Sisterhood of Snarky Stampers Challenge #174 - E is for Elves

 

Sister Lee just does the best graphics!

We're all about ELVES at The Sisterhood of Snarky Stampers for this challenge.

I broke-out two of my favourites eleves: Buddy and Jolly from Stamping Bella and got busy with my Promarkers. The background was created with a stencil and some Dreamweaver paste. I found the sentiment after a little Googling!

Stay safe this weekend, and please come join the fun at The Sisterhood!

 

Jolly the elf!

It's a rainy old day today, so I decided to make a card to pass the time. I found this cute little Stamping Bella elf and couldn't resist playing along at Christmas Kickstart as we need a few additional entries!

Jolly the elf has a lovely cup of Hot Chocolate and looks very pleased about it too!

It's an Anything Goes challenge over at Crimbo Crackers, so I'm linking-up there.

There's still time to join the fun at Christmas Kickstart for this challenge and there's a sweet prize on offer too, so why not come and play along?

Stay safe, and happy crafting everyone.

Nothing neutral...

Happy Sunday! I hope that everyone is doing ok today.

The STB gang have a fun challenge on offer and it's one that tested me a little as they want to see non-neutral card bases on our cards!

I broke out Edna wants a martini from Stamping Bella and paired her with a bling-tastic background created with a martini glass from Newton's Nook Cocktail Mixer set. I added red glitter  card and plenty of Wink of Stella too.

This card proved a real challenge to photograph!

The DT cards are gorgeous and the gallery is filling up nicely for this challenge, so why not head on over and join the fun!

The Christmas Kickstart Challemnge #12 - The Elves and the Shoemaker

A new fortnight brings a new challenge at The Christmas Kickstart, and it also brings a new elf!

For this challenge I'm delighted to welcome Marina from My Perfect Life and The Library Challenge.

Marina's The Library Challenge quickly established itself as one of my favourites when she launched it February 2018. It's for crafters who love reading (that would be me then) and the idea is that Marina picks a book as inspiration and everyone creates a card on that theme. Here's the cover/title that Marina chose for Challenge #12 - isn't it a beauty?

I'm sure you'll agree there's so much to inspire us cardmakers in this cover! 

Here's what I came up with:

Card #1 features a sleepy VLVS elf leaning on some paper pieced presents - perhaps Santa has been working him too hard in the workshop!

I'm also going to link this little guy to CAS Christmas as their current challenge is Gifts. 

My next two cards are very CAS and not my usual style, but I had fun making them.

I decided that I wanted elf shoes or similar on a card to pick up the shoe-making theme. I was delighted to spot this fabulous elf shoe stencil over at The Stencil Studio and knew I had to get it. I'm going to have so much 'Elf on the Shelf' fun with this at Christmas! The sentiment is from MFT.

I'm going to enter this card over at Shopping our Stash (The sentiment stamp is an oldie!) as the theme for this fortnight is Stencil Me This. 

There's also a lovely stencil challenge over at A Place to Start - Stencil Me In: Use your Favourite Stencil. I think this one is already on my Top 10 of favourite stencils. Thanks for the push in that direction, Chana. 

For my final card I focused in on the pretty, blue bead and the elf to create this very clean, graphic make.

The elf is from Stamping Bella and the sentiment from the fabulous, and much lamented, Waltzingmouse Stamps.

I hope you'll feel similarly inspired by this cover and that you'll come play along with myself and Marina for Challenge #12 at The Christmas Kickstart Challenge. I'm sure you'll also want to visit Marina's The Library Challenge to join her for her latest book-themed outing, which is inspired by a stripey read until June 15th.