New Year - New Challenge!

Happy New Year to all my card making friends - hope you had a great Christmas, and that 2019 is off to a good start for you!

Picture Credit

So, hands up, who fully intended to start making their Christmas cards in January 2018... then it slipped to Easter, July, September and before you knew it December arrived and you were up to your ears in tinsel, wrapping paper and sprouts?
Sounding familiar? Yes, that was me again!

I'm planning that this will change in 2019, but I do need a little help from my friends and that's where you guys come in! My aim is to run a little challenge during the year to kickstart my Christmas card making and I thought I'd share the fun by adding a linky and asking you to play along too!

The themed challenges will launch fortnightly on a Tuesday morning. They will run for two weeks until Monday evening, just before a new challenge commences. I'll try and keep rules and regulations to a minimum and will probably mess up things from time to time, but I hope you'll just enjoy the ride and have some fun!

There will be 53 Tuesdays in 2019 (or so Mr Google tells me), so that will be about 26-ish Christmas cards made if you were to play along in each challenge - Woo hoo!

I'll pick some favourites from the entries (see how gloriously optimistic I am?) and award a bauble or two by way of a little thank you for joining in.

The theme for Challenge #1 is Rudolph and Friends

Here's card #1 from me, hey look, it's January 1st and I already have a Christmas card made and ready to send! This challenge is all about deer - so break out your reindeer stamps or stag die cuts and join the fun.

I'm totally smitten with this little Rudolph by Clearly Besotted from their lovely set Let's Prance! Isn't he just so pleased and proud to be dashing through the snow? BTW, Clearly Besotted have a rather nice sale going on in the UK right now, and Rudolph and his mates are priced at 25% off normal price.

And now it's your turn to play along....

An InLinkz Link-up

Challenge Rules and Guidelines: 

• Like and/or follow this blog either via Blogger or Bloglovin, or Email. 
• Add the URL link from your project after it has been uploaded to your online craft gallery or blog to the Linky tool. 
• Please mention and link back to this post/blog to let people know about this fun challenge!
• I'd appreciate cards made especially for this challenge, but I understand that we all love challenges and the additional traffic they bring, so please link a card that fits NO MORE THAN 8 CHALLENGES including this. 
• New Challenges will commence fortnightly on a Tuesday, with the previous challenge closing at 23.55pm GMT on the Monday before the launch of each new challenge. 
• Please enter a max of 3 cards per challenge (Thanks for the query, Gail).

Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!

I've very much enjoyed making Christmas cards this year, especially after inking-up the gorgeous MFT Polar Bear Pals set. What a lovely set this is to use, but I can't help but wonder why there are no festive sentiments included.

I got busy with some distress inking and then stamped the sentiment (oldie from Stampendous, I think) and the polar bear using my Misti. I stamped, coloured, cut and stuck a second bear into place on the bacground. The cards look very cute in real life.

I'm linking my card to the current CASology Challenge: North.

and to Marina's The Librarian's Challenge, inspired by perennial Christmas favourite The Snowman. The bear's smile really reminds me of the Snowman's smile and I used the layout of the cover as my inspiration for the layout of the card..

I'm also linking to The Lost Coast Portal to Creativity Challenge #66 - Cold and Frosty because that cute little Polar Bear must be feeling very cold and frosty indeed.  Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!

Have a happy Sunday, peeps!

The Sisterhood of Snarky Stampers Challenge #125 - R id for Rude Christmas.

I'm loving Edna's strategically placed mistletoe - looks like she's totally primed and ready for her 'Rude Christmas'.

My offering for our mid - December challenge isn't so much rude as just cute and slightly cheeky!

Yes, this is hubby's Christmas card from yours truly. It was quick and simple to make, but still heaps of fun. The stamps are from an oldie but goodie Sweet Pea set (I think). I printed the sentiment on my PC.

My fabulous sistahs, and our reigning Queen, have interpreted 'Rude Christmas' quite differently, but all are pretty darn hilarious and totally snarky. This challenge will run across the festive season, so why not make this the time when you join the challenge and impress us with your Christmas Rudeness!

Thanks so much!

Hi cardmakers, remember this?

I was lucky enough to be one of the winners over at the lovely Janis's kitty hop. I won a voucher for Clearly Besotted Stamps and decided to send her a card to show my appreciation for all the hard work she puts in to make the hop such fun.

Don't you just love that little kitty? He's from the set Fluffy Furball, which I just couldn't resist!
Have a good day, everyone.

Card Chain Challenge Reveal - November 2018

Hi there cardmakers, it's time for another gorgeous reveal over at The Card Chain Challenge.

Our options for November were a fabulous sketch from Deborah:

And some lovely colours from Gail:

I seem to remember that I contributed the themes and products options of baubles, deer, friendship and mirror card.

Most of our players saw the festive potential of our options and went for Christmas/holiday cards.

I sent this card to Joanne in the UK.

This is very different to my usual style of card, but I really enjoyed working with Shirley's gorgeous Stamplorations set Layered Mistletoe.

As always, the reveal is a feast of crafty gorgeousness, so why not drop by and take a look.

The Sisterhood of Snarky Stampers Challenge #124 - W is for Winter

I'm glad to see that the lovely Edna is well wrapped up on our snowy graphic this week!

For Challenge #124 The Sistahs want to see your WINTER creations.

My card features both snow AND snark... Or is it just downright rudeness?
I made the background by creating a Distress Ink base and then stenciling with a mixture of paste and Icicle Stickles. The image is a stamp from VLVS (my collection of flamingos grows) and the sentiment was computer generated. The tiny snowflakes are from a border punch; I don't know which company it's from as I bought it second hand and unlabeled.

We've been a little low on entries recently, so we'd love it if you played along with this fun challenge. BTW, I can guarantee that you'll want to see our current Queen's card - it's hilarious!