Tree Skirt Tic-Tac-Toe with the Jingle Belles

Over at The Christmas Kickstart Challenge for the whole of August, I'm delighted to have Lauren and Stephanie aka the lovely Jingle Belles as Elves. I'm a big fan of their Challenge, but don't often manage to play along. However, somehow the planets have aligned perfectly and so I'm joining the fun for their Tree Skirt Tic-Tac-Toe Challenge!

I do love a Tic-Tac-Toe and decided to go diagonally across the grid from left to right, picking red as my colour option. I created the background with a Tim Holtz Layering Stencil (Merry Christmas) and coloured-up one of my favourite snowmen from a golden oldie set Paper Smooches Snow Dudes. 

The sentiment looked a bit unbalanced so I added 'Friend' and felt that made the card work on quite a few different levels!

The Christmas Kickstart Challenge #113 - A Friend is for Life and not just Christmas

 

Over at The Christmas Kickstart Challenge this month I'm joined by Lauren and Stephanie AKA The Jingle Belles! 

With two 'Craft Besties' as our elves for August there was only ONE possible theme for us to play:

Our Theme this month is FRIENDSHIP!

We'd love to see your cards for a friend or celebrating friendship, please.

My first card for our challenge together is this one:

I was feeling in the mood for some solid colour and tone-on-tone stamping. I always enjoy working with this MFT stamp set. I do miss MFT, don't you? 

My second card is this one. Another 'oldie' of a stamp, this time from Stampin' Up! Again, good fun to work with. 

Rudolph has chosen a sweet penguin set for his August Random Raffle Draw... Nice choice, Mr R. 

Stephanie, Lauren and I hope you'll head on over and join the fun!

The Card Chain Challenge Reveal - July 2026

We are all about spreading love around the world, 

one handmade card at a time!!

Hi there, Card Fans, over at The Card Chain Challenge we had 26 participants who exchanged cards across the globe throughout July. This brings our total number of cards exchanged by Card Chain Challenge participants to a rather staggering 5,028. All hail Gail for all she does to keep this challenge moving along so smoothly.

All the cards exchanged this month used at least one of the following options:

 

Colour Palette Option

(Exact matching is not required.)

Sketch Option

(Orient as desired.)

Theme Options: Cocktails / Pets / Friendship

Product / Technique Options: Embossing Powder / Ink Blending

My card went winging it's way across the Pond to Jeanne. 

I enjoyed playing with the colours and the cocktails theme. After creating a stencil I got busy stamping, colouring and cutting cocktails from a sweet Newton's Nook set I've had for ages.  

Brenda in the UK sent me this beauty.

Thanks, Brenda, I love it!

If you'd like to join us over at The Card Chain Challenge we'd love to have you! 

The Sisterhood of Snarky Stampers Challenge #277 - A is for Animals

Welcome, welcome, welcome! The Sisterhood and Good Queen Jenn, are playing - A is for Animals and we'd LOVE you to come and join us. 

My offering isn't on the snarky side, but does have cute in abundance.

Just look at these Unity sheep from the set Shear Surprise. They are currently on sale... just sayin'. 

As always, we would love for you to join the sisterhood and play along.

The Christmas Kickstart Challenge #112 - Reminder

 

Over at The Christmas Kickstart Challenge I'm so happy to welcome back our July elfin: Lynn AKA Linby from Crafty Linby.

Challenge #112 - Grace Us with Your Presents!

Lynn picked a fab theme and so we'd like to see gifts and presents galore this month on your cards. 

In the previous post I mentioned that Lynn had kindly made a second card to inspire us, and I'd love it if you headed over to take a look.

Here's a reminder of Lynn's first card...

For my 'Inspired by...' card I really wanted to 'steal' Lynn's use of DP to frame the image, but just couldn't find the right mix of papers to even come close to achieving a similar look.

The gifts on the sledge immediately reminded me of LOTV stamp Sledging Party. This stamp doesn't seem to be available any longer, but there are some gorgeous digi stamps to be found here on the LOTV Etsy shop.

I've not added a sentiment, but may do later when I decide who I'm sending this to. This is such a sweet image, but believe me it takes ages to figure out which leg belongs to which child! 😆😆😆

Rudolph has chosen a gorgeous prize for his July Randon Raffle. 

You can see Lynn's cards and enter the challenge by heading here. 

The Christmas Kickstart Challenge #112 - Grace Us with Your Presents

 

It's time for a new challenge and a brand new guest over at The Christmas Kickstart Challenge. Our July calendar girl is Lynn AKA Linby from Crafty Linby. I've been following Lynn's creative journey for quite a while (huge understatement) and I know you'll enjoy her cardmaking style as much as I do...

Lynn has picked such a fun theme for our challenge together...

Challenge #112 - Grace Us with Your Presents!

We'd like to see gifts and presents galore this month on your cards and I know you will love the card Lynn's made to kickstart our creative month together.

Here's what I made:

I had so much fun stamping and colouring North Pole Mischief from Stampin' Up! I was planning to emboss the red card, but had assembled everything before I remembered. 😐

Rudolph has chosen a gorgeous prize for his Randon Raffle.

Just look at that wreath - so pretty. Please head on over and take a look at our guidelines before signing-up to play so you can be included in his Random Raffle Draw. 

Lynn and I are both so excited to see what you create for this challenge and hope that you'll come and join the fun!