The Christmas Kickstart Challenge #107 - A Christmas Sing-Along

 

It's time for the February Challenge over at The Christmas Kickstart!! I'm so happy to welcome back a returning elf - it's Carol from Just Me: c. Carol is as talented as she is lovely, and I urge you to go take a look at her wonderful blog. Prepare to be 'wowed'. Thanks so much for leading the fun, Carol, it's great to be crafting with you once again!

Carol has chosen a brilliant theme for our February Challenge, and we're inviting you to play...

The Christmas Kickstart Challenge #107 

- A Christmas Sing-Along!

We'd love to see your cards on the theme of singing, and the songs, hymns and carols we might sing during the festive season. Head on over to The Christmas Kickstart to see Carol's first card for our challenge together - you'll love it! 

Here's one of the cards I've made to play this theme. I had so much fun putting this one together!

This is a total CASE of a card I saw featuring these Whimsy Reindeer. I really loved the idea of recycling a Christmas card as a background. Isn't that clever, and so quick to make too! 

My second card is also a stolen idea, and one that was a lot of fun to create!

The cute cows are from the much missed My Favorite Things and the words were printed on my PC. The background paper was hiding in my stash and features sheet music for a variety of carols. Perfect! 

Here's our favourite reindeer with his rather cute February Random Raffle Prize. 

 

Carol and I can't wait to see what you guys come up with for this fun challenge!

Christmas Kickstart Challenge #95 - Fold it Fancy!

It's the second of the month and time to launch a new challenge over at Christmas Kickstart...

We're in very good company for February as our elf is Leslie from Love to Scrap 2.

Thanks so much for agreeing to wear the elf hat this month, Leslie. You will love the theme Leslie's chosen as we're playing...

Challenge #95 - Fold it Fancy!

We'd want to see your choice of fancy/fun fold on a Christmas/Holiday card. 

Leslie really has created some folding magic with her card, so please go and take a look and prepare to be amazed!

If someone says 'Fancy Fold' to me I immediately see it as an opportunity to create an easel card. I do love an easel card and if, like me, you are a little fold-a-phobic, an easel card can be a great place to start. Just do a quick Google search and pick a style you like. I used Ardyth's instructions here, and you can see how she makes four different types of fun fold cards in her easy to follow video.

My card features this fun tired Santa from Whimsy Stamps and a Simon Says Stamp snowflakes background. I think the snowflakes may be out of stock right now, but there's plenty of similar stamps over at SSS. 

My second card is this one:

There's Wink of Stella on the tree on his jumper, the bobble on his hat and the mistletoe berries.

It's not a million miles from an easel card, but gives a very different 'look'. I know that I used a tutorial for this card too, but it's currently gone AWOL. I'll do a more thorough search and add the details later. Edited to add: Nope, still can't find it! 😟

If you like the little bear you can find him here. He's a cute digital stamp from the same set as the image on this card made by my CCC buddy, Imke.

 

Rudolph has such a fun prize for his Random Raffle this month:

Anyone entering the challenge (and following the guidelines) will go into the random draw to win this sweet stamp set.

Leslie and I can't wait to see your fabulous fancy folds and look forward to you playing along in our challenge.

Christmas Kickstart Challenge # 94 - Reminder

 

Welcome back, card friends! We have the very talented Julia Aston as our first elf of the New Year over at The Christmas Kickstart and she's created another gorgeous bauble-themed card for our Reminder post... Please head over and take a look. 

Here's a reminder of the gorgeous card Julia made to get the party started!

As regular visitors will be aware I like to make an Inspired by card for the Reminder post and attempt not to shamelessly CASE my guest's original creation. I love Julia's cute Christmas pudding bauble, but really struggled to get my head around which elements to include for my card. I love the sweet, playful nature of Julia's beautiful card and so here's what I came up: 

A single bauble, patterned paper and a little gentle humour! This card was made in these colours as a reminder of my sweet girl cat, Cleo. Once the tree was up and decorated she would quietly eye up a bauble, check whether we were watching and then extend a paw, bat the bauble from the tree and expertly dribble it across the floor!

I combined a few different dies and images for this card: Paws Up Die from Waffle Flower, Wreath Tag Sentiments from Avery Elle, and Funky Baubles from Sizzix.

My second card for this challenge is inspired by my boy cat Custard. He just used to look blankly at the tree and take no notice of all the sparkly, dangly stuff. He always wore a look of 'Oh, that thing again.' whenever the tree appeared. 

The cat is from Globeland Stamps and the Sentiment is from a fun Whimsy Stamps set I've just opened called Merry Stressmas. 

I'm linking-up over at The Jingle Belles as they are looking for Something Old, Something New for their first challenge of the year. The cat and the sentiment are new, but I've had the bauble stamps for years and have lost the backing sheet and everything! Still stamps well though. 

Rudolph has a beautiful bauble as the prize for our first challenge of 2025!

 

There's still plenty of time to play along, so please come and join Julia and me... and don't forget to Bring the Baubles!