The Christmas Kickstart Challenge #5 - Have a Very Bear-y Christmas!

It's time for  Challenge #5 of The Christmas Kickstart Challenge! Can't believe it's time for the fifth challenge already. For this fortnight a new Guest Elf has taken up residence and the lovely Lynne from Ruby-Dooby-Doo Crafts is 'In da house'.

You'll love Lynne's adorable bear card which you can see here.

Here's my first card for this challenge:

I went with non-traditional colours and broke out a whole heap of My Favourite Things goodies for this one. I love every bear from BB set Polar Bear Pals, but I have to admit that this one (affectionately none to me as Bernard) has captured my heart.

My next card is very, very different and was very difficult to photograph. I'm still not sure whether I need to add Santa hats. Whaddya think?

The bears come from a set from Concord & 9th called Hugs. The trees in the background come from a Hero Arts stamp (Winter Trees Pattern) and the trees and cardinal bird are by Lawn Fawn (Birch Trees). When I assembled the card I couldn't decide whether to include the cardinal: you don't get cardinal birds here in the UK. Then I realised that you don't get bears either, so there he is!

Hope you decide to play along...

The Sisterhood of Snarky Stampers Challenge #129 - D is for Diet

Poor Edna, it's never a pleasant experience stepping onto the scales, but when the scales signal their disapproval like this it's enough to make a grown woman run straight to the biscuit barrel.

The sisters are tackling the thorny subject of diets for Challenge #129. However, being the sistahs, you won't find any top tips for achieving a bikini body or recipes for cabbage soup: we're just snarking the heck out of this theme in our usual fashion!

For my card I've used AI 4670 - Thin Enough set. I bought this stamp ages ago as I was so 'tickled' by the sentiment and always knew I wanted to paper piece the image.

Please join us, and our fabulous Guest Queen, for D is for Diet and let the good ol' snarky times roll!

Lovely love birds.

I'm currently very much in love with AALL and Create's sweet little set Love Birds! These two snugly cuddled owls are simply adorable and I couldn't resist using them to make my DH a Valentine card. The sentiment and the stamp for the embossed hearts are both included in the set. I created a little ombre effect for the background with Distress Inks. The owls are coloured with Promarkers and and a little definition was added with pencil crayons.

I'm linking up to two lovely challenges with this card:

Shopping Our Stash - Challenge #389 - Make Your Mark (Colouring with markers).

Addicted to CAS Challenge #152 - Birds

Hope you have a romantic and loved-up week!

If you are looking for the Christmas Kickstart post for Challenge #4 you will find it here. 

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!