It's Sunday and time for a new challenge over at The Paper Players! It's the turn of our fearless leader the wonderful Nance to host this week and she has a fun wintery theme to get your creative juices flowing:

Use a snowflake (or two!) on your card. I decided that I wanted to feature the large frosted medallion snowflake from the stamp set of the same name on my card this week and this week's Mojo Monday sketch gave me the perfect layout - here's my card:

Here's the low-down on today's card:

All About The Layers - My card this week has 9 layers in total, rather a lot even by my standards! Can you spot them all? They are, in order: Pool Party card base, Sugarplum square panel, vellum square, Fabulous Foil Designer Acetate, silver foil, Fancy Frost Specialty DSP, Sweet Sugarplum circle, a vellum circle with the frosted medallion stamped in Versamark and heat embossed in white and lastly the word 'joy' cut out of silver glimmer paper with my Wonderful Wreath framelits. A lot of layers indeed, yet I think they all play a part in contributing to the balance of the card design.

Glitter, Glitter - I used lots of elements to add sparkle to my card, from the Fabulous Foil Acetate, to the glimmer paper and sprinkle of Fancy Frost sequins, along with a rather fancy bow in silver (current) and Pool Party (retired) glitter ribbon beneath my snowflake. This card is definitely not practical for posting, but will make a nice special one to be hand delivered. The snowflake/glitter combination means I am linking up with CAS-ual Fridays too where these are both the order of the day!

A Contemporary Colour Combination - you may recognise my colour combination this week as the one our very own lovely Nance used for her pines card last week - you can see her card here. This isn't a colour combination I would ordinarily choose for a Christmas card, and I did start out using just white, silver and Sweet Sugarplum, but I felt it needed something more. I decided to add in the Pool Party as it looked so great on Nance's card and voila - an altogether brighter card, so thank you Nance! If you like this colour combination, feel free to save it:

So only one main snowflake on my card, but it is a big one! That said, I did use the snowflake background stamp from the Pretty Pines stamp set on my card base to add a little background decoration, so there are lots more there too!

Here is the visual summary of the key products used on today's project for you to pin for easy reference:

You can see all of my 'How To' summaries on my 'How To - Tips and Techniques' Pinterest board in case you've missed any. 

Before you reach for your ink and papers, check out what our amazing team has created to inspire you this week:

I look forward to seeing what you create with our theme this week. We are off for our usual Sunday morning of sport, followed by a spot of lunch and then we are going to watch a basketball game this afternoon - go Northampton Neptunes!

Enjoy the rest of your weekend as it will be over all too quickly; I'll be back soon with another project; until then, happy stampin'!

Stampin' Up! Supplies Used:

Frosted Medallions Clear-Mount Stamp Set	Fancy Frost Specialty Designer Series Paper	Fancy Frost Sequins	3/8" (1 Cm) Glitter Ribbon Combo Pack	Christmas Pines Photopolymer Stamp Set
Versamark Pad	Heat Tool (Uk)	Embossing Buddy	White Stampin' Emboss Powder	Silver Foil Sheets
Fabulous Foil Designer Acetate	Silver Glimmer Paper	Vellum A4 Cardstock	Wonderful Wreath Framelits Dies	Sweet Sugarplum A4 Cardstock
Pool Party A4 Cardstock	Pool Party Classic Stampin' Pad

A late post from me today as I've spent a lovely day crafting with friends, followed by James family piano lessons this evening (3 out of 4 of us are learning!) so have only just got around to it. Our craft session was fun - we finished off some projects we started a little while ago, which always gives a good sense of achievement. With Christmas creeping ever closer, today I thought I would share with you the advent calendar I made for the James juniors, which is a case of a project by the lovely Julie Kettlewell. I love the Tiny Treat Boxes in this year's Stampin' Up! seasonal catalogue, which are of course perfect for making advent calendars. The sample in the catalogue shows just how easy it is to make something to a basic design, however having seen Julie's project a little while ago - you can see her original project here - I knew I wanted to create something similar. So without further ado, here is my framed advent calendar in all its glory:

Isn't it beautiful?! It is framed in a 20" frame/50cm, so is a substantial piece in terms of size and it makes a real statement. I chose to make mine using the All is Calm Speciality Designer Series Paper, here are some close ups:

This is the central panel, with a sentiment stamped using the Epic Alphabet and some trees punched using the Tree Punch and decorated with some frosted sequins.

Each of the boxes is covered on 5 sides using the All is calm DSP, then a number label made from a layered section using a 1 3/4" scalloped circle punch and a 1 3/8" circle punch, and numbers cut out of Dazzling Diamonds Glimmer Paper using the Perfect Print Numbers Bigz Die and the Big Shot.

This is a great project to showcase all of the lovely papers within the All is Calm DSP stack.

I adhered my boxes so that the flaps would open upwards and put my numbers in order from one through twenty four, however you could 'mix and match' if that's more your style. Each pack of treat boxes contains 25 boxes, so you have one spare to package an extra special treat for Christmas Day if that's your thing. I'm really pleased with how my calendar turned out and am busy acquiring lots of little treats to fill my boxes for the month of December. I can see this project becoming a real heirloom piece that we bring out year after year.

Hope you like today's project; back tomorrow with the new Wednesday Weekly Deals and my Design Team post for this week's challenge over at Colour Me...! Until then, happy stampin'!

Stampin' Up! Supplies Used:

Perfect Print Numbers Bigz Die	1-3/8 Inch Circle Punch	1-3/4 Inch Scallop Circle Punch	Frosted Sequins	All Is Calm Specialty Designer Series Paper
Tiny Treat Boxes	Dazzling Diamonds Glimmer Paper	Card Stock A4 Soft Sky	Card Stock A4 Smoky Slate	Lost Lagoon Classic Stampin' Pad
Lost Lagoon A4 Cardstock	Whisper White 12 X 12 Smooth Card Stock	Tree Punch	Mini Glue Dots	Sticky Strip
Tombow Multi-Purpose Adhesive