Christmas Kickstart Challenge #4 - Always with a Heart!

It's Challenge #4 over at The Christmas Kickstart Challenge.

Once again we have a gorgeous Guest Elf to delight and inspire, and during this fortnight we are in the company of the lovely Julie from Always with a Heart.

     

For this challenge (which covers Valentines Day) we'd like to see a heart somewhere on your card. The heart can be stamped, die cut. embossed or stenciled - it's all good! In addition, Julie has very kindly agreed to share a sketch for you to use as an optional extra.

Here's how Julie used the sketch to create her breathtakingly beautiful card. You can see other pictures of her creation and find out how she made it by visiting her blog Always with A Heart.

I decided to tackle the sketch too which is very unusual for me as I am ever-so slightly sketch-a-phobic.

I opted to use this gorgeous pad called Celebrate Winter from Echo Park. This meant that everything matched without my having to hunt out coordinating papers. The die cut snowflake is actually beautifully sparkly as it is cut from glitter paper.

In addition to using Julie's sketch I made these little cards using the Scandi Christmas set from Cardmaking and Papercraft magazine.

I very much hope you'll head over to The Christmas Kickstart Challenge to play along. 

The Sisterhood of Snarky Stampers Challenge # 128 - K is for Kitties

Doesn't Edna just get the best gigs? For this challenge she's gathered herself a posse of gorgeous kitties for the photo session.

I'm still in Christmas card mode with my creation for this challenge. The computer printed sentiment has been sitting on my desk for ages, but was part of a damaged panel for an earlier piece of work. I die cut it into a speech bubble and paired it with this cute cat stamp from June 2018 Making Cards and Papercraft magazine. The set is called 'Catitude' and has some fun images and sentiments. The papers are from a set which has lost it's covers. They look much brighter in real life.

The cat was simply coloured with promarkers, fussy cut and stuck over the top of another stamped image - there was no way I could cut out those whiskers!

Join us at SoSS, we had so much fun with this challenge and I'm sure you will too!

Card Chain Challenge Reveal - January 2019

It's another gorgeous 'Reveal' over at The Card Chain Challenge today!

To play with in January there was a 'double the fun' colour palette:

and a lovely sketch:

The themes for the challenge were Snow, New Year and Friendship plus product options of Die Cuts, Sparkle and Vellum.

I sent my card to Shylaa in India.

My obsession with this adorable Concord and 9th set (Winter Wear) continues unabated. I masked the larger portion of the sentiment to give me this simple greeting.

Just take a look at the rather moooo-velous card I received from Gail!

Thanks Gail, I love that bovine beauty and I hope you are feeling much, much better soon.

To see the full January Reveal AND hopefully to become a link in our February Chain, you can head on over by clicking here.

The Christmas Kickstart Challenge #2 - It's Time to Trim the Tree!

Hi Card friends, it's time to 'Trim the Tree' and give the 'results' for Challenge #2 - Bundle Up.

Once again, you guys didn't make it easy for me to narrow it down and pick Top Picks and Winners. Please head on over to The Christmas Kickstart Challenge blog to see the results.

BTW, Challenge #3 - Festive Felines still has eleven days to run, so why not take the plunge and join myself and Guest Elf Janis - you'll love yourself come December if you do!

Shopping Our Stash Challenge #388 - An Ode to Jessi

The guys at Shopping Our Stash have come up with such a lovely challenge this week as they pay tribute to team mate Jessi, who lost her brave struggle with illness in late December.

The girls would like us to create projects inspired by something that Jessi made; you can visit her blog by clicking here. Even if you don't decide to participate in this challenge, why not take a look at Jessi's work anyway: I think you'll be glad you did. She truly was 'One Crafty Mama'.

I chose this card as my inspiration:

I love the sentiment (so typical of Jessi), plus the card's proportions and that cheeky kitty.

Here's my take:

The sentiment is from Sassy Pants B-day Greeting and the cat is from BB I Knead You, both are by MFT.

The Shopping Our Stash Team have created some brilliant 'Odes' to Jessi. I don't doubt that they'll be plenty of entries for this challenge as we all come together and pay tribute to this lovely lady.

Christmas Kickstart Challenge #3 - Festive Felines

Welcome to Challenge #3 at Christmas Kickstart Challenge. 

I'm super excited today because we have our very first Guest Elf here at Christmas Kickstart! Let's give a very warm welcome to Janis from Her Peaceful Garden. Thanks for agreeing to 'Elf Yourself', Janis, it's great to have you here. 

Many of you will already know Janis from her yearly Cat Lover's Blog Hop. I played along in 2017 and 2018, and got chatting with Janis by email after I was lucky enough to be one of her 2018 winners. Janis is a committed Christian; a wife, mom, and grandma. She lives in rural Idaho, USA and loves papercrafting and cats, and is a very lovely lady. 

Janis's presence should give you a big clue about the new theme... 

Challenge #3 is Festive Felines!

Janis's card

I know you'll agree that Janis's card is adorable. I love the plaid, the heart and snowflakes, and the sweet little kitty who is all ready for Santa. Who wouldn't be delighted to be the recipient of this lovely card. For all the details on how she made her card, please visit Janis's blog.

My card is one that has taken me outside my comfort zone. To be honest, I'm not sure it completely works. I knew I wanted to use this image, which I found on the internet last year, and felt it would work well as a masculine make. However, I can't help but feel it's a little bottom heavy. The beautiful sentiment is a die cut from Stampin' Up.

My second card is much more my style. I love the MFT cats from the set BB Cool Cat and have to forcibly restrain myself from using them on all my kitty cards. I think this little guy is just washing, but he just might be having a scratch for a festive flea!

Now let's see what you guys can come up with!

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. 
• Please enter a max of 3 cards per challenge.
• Preferably no back linking to older projects, please.

Would you like to be a Guest Elf at The Christmas Kickstart Challenge?

I'm looking for someone to to keep me company for Challenge #6. If you'd like to go into Rudolf's Random Raffle, please include the world 'Elf' next to your name when you sign up! The lucky winner, drawn at random by Rudolph, will guest on Tuesday 12th March and will need to be available for commenting in the fortnight following the challenge launch.