The Christmas Kickstart Challenge #113 - Reminder

I'm so happy to have Lauren and Stephanie as our guests over at The Christmas Kickstart Challenge! Together, this dynamic duo are The Jingle Belles and run one of my most fave Christmas challenges. 

Our Theme this month is FRIENDSHIP!

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

As regular visitors to my blog will know, I like to create an 'Inspired by' piece for my Reminder card. I like to do this as a little homage to my guest's work, but also to stretch and challenge myself a little. With two cards for inspiration I wondered how I could do this, but actually everything came together really well for my card.

I love how Stephanie's card has a photographic motif, and so thought of using photos of friends 'goofing around' in the snow. I picked girl and boy images to mirror the friends in Lauren's card, and used her colour palette for their clothing. The images of the children are from Concord & 9th set Bundled Up. Sadly, this set appears to be retired now, which is a pity. 

Rudolph is playing with penguins for this month's Random Raffle Draw.

Stephanie, Lauren and I hope you'll come and join the fun!

Masculine Merriment with the Jingle Belles

The lovely Jingle Belles AKA Lauren and Stepanie are my current elves over at The Christmas Kickstart Challenge. Back at their own site they have a brand new challenge 'Masuline Merriment' on offer and I wanted to play along as I so rarely make masculine cards and welcome the push in that direction. (I may have had a wee heads up about the theme! 😉)

I've made a very simple card using Layered Boxes Die from Waffle Flower. I'm quite pleased with the colour combo - the green really makes it work for me.

I'd love to tell you which dies I've used for the lettering, but they've vanished! I'm hoping they've not fallen over the front of my desk as it'll mean climbing under or over said desk to find them. It's happened before, people, and it was tricky! Wish me luck.

You'll love Stephanie and Lauren's cards for their challenge, so why not head on over and play along with them!

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.