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. 

The Sisterhood Of Snarky Stampers Challenge #127 - V is for Valentine

We've reached Challenge #127 over at The Sisterhood of Snarky Stampers. Edna is looking truly loved-up today; I wonder which lucky person is the object of her affections?

Yes, it's V is for Valentine time for the sistahs.

My card features Annie Oakley from Technique Junkies.  Isn't she fun? This may or may not be my DH's Valentines card: I might just give the poor guy a break and make him something a little more romantic before February 14th.

I created the background on my Gel Press and then stamped a few different random stamps around and about. It's ok, but I have to say it doesn't look as good as the picture in my head before I started!

My sistahs have created some brilliant cards for this challenge and we have a super, fun card from our reigning queen on show too!

Playing The Library Challenge #25 - The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.

The only good thing to come out of hurting my back at work last week is that I currently have a bit of time for crafting. Thankfully, I can sit at my desk for short periods and pass the time that way. Ironically, my DH hurt his back the same day and so we are hobbling around the house together and trying to look after each other.

Sadly, I almost never seem to find time to play in Marina's The Library Challenge, so decided to make the most of my enforced rest and break out some very cute dragon stamps!

Her book for Challenge #25 is The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Steig Larson.

I read this a few years ago and seem to remember that it was quite a gripping read.

My card is very simple and makes use of a cute dragon and his cake from the set Dragon Wishes by Mama Elephant. The design paper is from a pack I won a few years ago from crafting buddy Rebecca, so I don't know the brand. Rebecca sent me so many sheets of DP that I'll be dipping into this stash forever! Thanks, hun!

I'm also linking my card to Seize the Birthday Challenge #157 as this is another favourite challenge that I wished I could play along with more often.

Happy Tuesday, Crafters!

Let's Trim the Tree for Christmas Kickstart Challenge #1.

Hi Cardmakers, it's time to 'Trim the Tree' over at Christmas Kickstart Challenge. I'll share the results for Challenges #1, #2 and #3 on this, my personal blog, before we all make the transition to the main blog in February.

Thank you so much to everyone who played along, commented or just took a look at Challenge #1. I've been completely overwhelmed by everyone's enthusiasm for this new challenge.

Your cards featuring Rudolph and Friends have been completely stunning: you guys certainly haven't made it easy for me to come up with my 'Top Picks'! If I could, I'd pick you all as there's so much inspiration on show in each and every entry.

In no particular order, my top picks are:

Brenda's twirly mustachioed Santa and his reindeer buddies.

Greta's super adorable reindeer.

and Marina's lovely Rudolph in his sentiment circles.

Please grab your Top Picks Bauble for your blog.

The winner of Challenge #1 is Sally from Cinnamon Sally Designs. 

I love Sally's card for so many reasons: a cute and beautifully coloured reindeer dashing across snowy die cut letters AND a pretty winter sky on the horizon.

Well done, Sally, you're the first 'Star on the Tree' here at Christmas Kickstart, hope you like your new blog badge.

Once again, many thanks to everyone who entered Challenge#1.

Challenge #2 - Bundle Up! is already live, and I very much hope you'll join me to play along.

Christmas Kickstart Challenge #2 - Bundle Up!

Hi Cardfriends, welcome to Challenge #2 at Christmas Kickstart. 

A very, very big thank you to everyone who played along with Challenge #1. I was completely blown away by how many of you fabulous folk joined the fun. Please, please, please check back towards the end of the week when I'll pick Challenge #1 Top Picks and a Winner from your gorgeous entries.

Before we get going, I've an announcement to make (imagine small fanfare) The Christmas Kickstart Challenge now has it's very own blog! You can find it here!

I'll be posting all three of the January challenges both on my blog and the new blog, so hopefully you can make a smooth transition between the two and continue to play along. 

The theme for Challenge #2 is Bundle Up!

Yes, we're wrapping ourselves in scarves, hats, ear muffs, mittens, big socks and any other paraphernalia you can come up with to keep the Winter chills at bay!

My cards for this challenge both feature a set which I first spotted just before Christmas called Winter Wear by Concord & 9th. So cute! The set comes with some lovely sentiments, but I wanted the phrase 'Baby it's Cold Outside' on the card.  To achieve this I used some of the sentiment from Lawn Fawn's adorable set Winter Alpaca plus some very old, squishy individual letters from a nameless set I must have bought from Mrs Noah when she gave up crafting to help her husband build the ark.

As you can see, you can easily use the images from this set without the sweet girl's face to achieve a completely different look to your card.

I very much hope you'll find time to play along with Challenge #2.

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.

The Sisterhood of Snarky Stampers Challenge #126 - B is for Books

I'm loving the look of Edna's library: reminds me of my dining room!

For our first challenge of 2019 it's all about books. It seems that the sistahs love reading almost as much as they love crafting.

I knew immediately which stamp set I'd be using for my card. It's snark free but as it's such a gorgeous image, I'm sure you'll forgive me. This is from Late Nights by Tokomo at Pinkfresh. 

To join in the challenge, please head on over to The Sisterhood of Snarky Stampers.

Before I close, I'm going to take a moment to pay tribute to my sweet stamping buddy, and fellow snarky sistah, Jessi, who sadly lost her battle with gastroparesis over Christmas.

Donna found just the right words to say about Jessi over at SoSS (thank you, Donna), so I'll just echo those words by saying that the world has lost one fabulous, fun and feisty gal. I'm sending my love to Rob, Connor, Riley, and Jessi's family and friends.

Snark on, sweet sistah, snark on. We miss you.

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).