Today I have my card for the new challenge over at Festive Friday Card Making and Paper Crafting Challenge. 

The challenge that we are celebrating this week is 'World Photography Day' which is on 19th August. Remember the fun thing is that at Festive Friday you do not need to actually celebrate the occasion; your goal is to simply use three or more items from the inspiration list on your project. We have a number of keen photographers in our house, but I chose to go in a totally different direction today. I used black, white, rhinestones and landscape/cityscape from the inspo list and this is what I came up with:

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

I used some retired Peaceful Place starry night sky paper and my retired Bethlehem Edgelits to create a monochrome Christmas card that is something of a CASE of a previous card I made using this set (you can see that card here), adding my cityscape diecuts with dimensionals for a little extra lift. I heat embossed my 'O Holy Night' sentiment from the retired stamp set 'Illuminated Christmas' in white on black, and highlighted the embossed stars on the designer paper with a single rhinestone - the star of Bethlehem, perhaps?

I am linking today's card up with the team over at Time Out who are asking us to create monochrome cards for their current challenge; there is something so elegant about a single colour scheme, for sure.

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. 

I did place a pre-order for Christmas goodies from the new mini catalogue yesterday, so will have some lovely new things to share with you in the coming weeks, but it has been fun to give some love to favourite sets of old this week and of course it's always good to use up retired designer series paper!

How does our board inspire you? I can’t wait to see what YOU create! For more inspiration, be sure to visit the rest of the Festive Friday Card Making and Paper Crafting Challenge Design team:

Enjoy your day and I'll be back tomorrow with another project. Until then, happy stampin'!

Today I'm sharing a card for the current Inspire.Create Challenge where they have a great sketch that I just couldn't resist:

I was tempted to go with a focal piece of designer series paper and one of the fabulous festive word dies we have for the horizontal element, but with some great Design Team examples of this, I decided to take a slightly different tack and explore options around the horizontal piece. I ended up making two cards, each with the same basic design, however one portrait and the other landscape - take a look:

And here's the landscape version that uses the whole of each of the diecut pieces:

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

Bethlehem Edgelits - I decided that the landscapes in the Bethlehem Edgelits set would make a perfect horizontal feature on my card and that informed my decision to make two cards: one in a landscape orientation in order to accommodate them completely and a second in a portrait orientation that necessitated me trimming them to fit. For each card, I layered a white top layer on a Night of Navy bottom layer and embossed the sentiment in white onto the navy base layer. 

Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star - You might be wondering how I created my atmospheric night sky; furthermore, you might be surprised to know that there was no sponging, brayering or splattering required. This rather realistic sky is courtesy of one of the patterns in the Twinkle Twinkle designer series paper pack. Part of a suite originally designed for baby and children projects, many of the starry papers in this pack work for plenty of other projects - especially this one. It is easy to overlook certain packs of papers and to be fair the catalogue doesn't always make it easy to see some of the detail. The lovely people at Stampin' up! have produced this great video though that shows these papers in more detail:

Here's the papers from the current seasonal catalogue too:

And of course you can continue to follow my blog; you all know how much I love patterned paper!

A Night In Bethlehem - With the exception of the 'O Holy Night' sentiment on the front of the landscape card (this comes from the 'Illuminated Christmas' stamp set in the current seasonal stamp set), all of the stamping on my card comes from the Night in Bethlehem stamp set, which also has this beautiful verse that is great for the inside of your card: 

The silhouetted images are great for easy decorating of your envelopes too - love a co-ordinated envelope! I do like to make cards that remind us of the true meaning of Christmas and this set is one of my favourites for reminding us why we celebrate at this special time of year. So which of these cards is your favourite - the portrait or landscape version? I like them both but would love to know what you think - do leave me a comment below with your thoughts!

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. 

Enjoy your day, however you choose to spend it. The James family is off to the dentist for our 6-monthly checkup followed by something special in store which I'll share with you later in the week. I'll be back tomorrow with another project though for sure. Until then, happy stampin'!

Stampin' Up! Supplies Used:

Bethlehem Edgelits Dies (£30.00)	Night In Bethlehem Clear-Mount Stamp Set (£20.00)	Twinkle Twinkle Designer Series Paper (£10.25)	Whisper White A4 Cardstock (£9.00)	Night Of Navy A4 Cardstock (£8.00)
Night Of Navy Classic Stampin' Pad (£7.00)	White Stampin' Emboss Powder (£4.75)	Versamark Pad (£8.25)

 had a little crafty time today and was creating with more of my pre-order stash and decided I just about had time to squeeze in a card for the current challenge over at Less Is More (this was my starting point for today's card but I'm too late to link up unfortunately) which also fits the bill over at Stamp Ink Paper and ATCAS this week:

I went with a rather less obvious vehicle for my one layer card today - take a look:

Since the dictionary definition of 'vehicle' is 'a thing used for transporting people or goods, especially on land, such as a car, lorry, or cart' I think my donkey more than qualifies; not the most common mode of transport granted, but one that transported Mary on that momentous journey to Bethlehem so many years ago. 

I've used a combination of stamps from one of my favourite sets in the new Stampin' Up! Autumn-Winter catalogue called 'Night In Bethlehem' to create my card today. It has a set of co-ordinating framelits which I will share another day; today's card uses the stamp set alone, with some additional masking and brayering to create the illusion of depth and layers, finished with an embossed star. I also stamped the verse that comes with this set on the inside too (in my second colourway):

Little more than stamps, ink and paper today - and I love this card! In fact I liked it so much I made a second version in an alternative colour combination too:

Which one do you prefer? Leave me a comment below - I'd love to hear your thoughts.

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. 

Enjoy your day and I'll be back tomorrow with another project. Until then, happy stampin'!

Stampin' Up! Supplies Used:

Night In Bethlehem Clear-Mount Stamp Set	Whisper White A4 Thick Cardstock	Sponge Brayers	Island Indigo Classic Stampin' Pad	Bermuda Bay Classic Stampin' Pad
Pool Party Classic Stampin' Pad	Basic Gray Archival Stampin’ Pad	Night Of Navy Classic Stampin' Pad	Versamark Pad	Silver Stampin' Emboss Powder