Happy Friday 13th - hope it's a lucky one! I'm progressing at pace with my Christmas cards and today I'm sharing a card that I made using Karren's sketch of squares over at Freshly Made Sketches:

I also chose pastel colours, something glittery and detailed diecuts from the inspo list over at Festive Friday and used all four of the Color Dare challenge colours to make a Christmas card in non-traditional colours - take a look:

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

I have been itching to use this new coverplate from A Pocketful of Happiness called Christmas Mosaic Backgrounds and Karren's sketch gave me the perfect opportunity. I didn't stick to the 6 squares, as I wanted to include as many of the squares as possible, so instead I went with a 3 x 4 design. Karren did say that the 6 squares serve as inspiration rather than needing to be taken literally, so that's what I went with. I cut the coverplate in each of the four colours - Balmy Blue, Lemon Lolly, Bubble Bath, Fresh Freesia and one in white - then used a white card base and a mat in Bubble Bath, to create my mix-and-match design. I switched out the bear and the snowflakes for white glimmer paper for some festive glitter and sparkle:

With so many spare bits and pieces, this was the perfect opportunity to make three more cards by switching out the elements - here's all four together: 

I used standard white cardstock for the remaining three as it gives better definition to the bear's face, but I do love the sparkle of my first one. This plate is much quicker to piece than the holly one I used yesterday as the pieces are larger - and a great way to get multiples in less time. I played about with both stamped and diecut sentiments, but in the end decided to leave the front blank - I couldn't bear to cover up any of those cute squares! I love the rather non-traditional colour palette too - it makes a nice change from my usual red and green.

Right - my gym session is done and I've a busy day today with a trip to the hairdressers, grocery shopping and laundry to contend with and I'm out with friends for dinner this evening, so I need to crack on!

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 colour challenge over at Color Hues:

Red and green is my all-time favourite festive colour combination so I just had to play along. I have a new die that I thought would be perfect to showcase these colours - take a look:

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

I recently purchased the Holly Background Die from A Pocketful of Happiness and I thought it would make the perfect base for my card. I first cut the die in white and glued this to my white card base, then again in Real Red and Shaded Spruce and paper-pieced in the holly leaves and trio of berries - the photo below shows better the criss-cross pattern that links the tiny foliage clusters:

I finished with a sentiment from Concord & 9th's Holiday Sayings Dies that reminded me of the traditional carol to complete my card. Now, as simple as this card looks, the paper-piecing did take me quite a while. That said, I love the finished effect and it's a great way to showcase the challenge colours I think.

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

Today I've a super quick post to share a card I made earlier for a couple of challenges:

I thought I could combine that sketch from 52 Christmas Card Throwdown with the 'background embossing' challenge at CAS on Friday; take a look at what I came up with:

 Here's the low-down on today's card:

I thought that the embossed wreath would work nicely for the sketch - although I'm note sure whether the team will approve of the placement of my clear berry clusters for those 4 outer elements - I just couldn't bring myself to have them floating in thin air!

A simple Merry Scripted sentiment completes my card. Right - off to catch the CAS on Friday gallery!!

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

It's Tuesday and time for a new challenge over at CAS Colours & Sketches. Deborah is hosting this month and our first challenge is a colour challenge: 

These colours made me think of summer so I'm changing things up from the run of festive Christmas cards that I have been making to bring you a splash of summer colour - take a look:

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

I thought that this little cutie from My Favourite Things, 'Pineapple Of My Eye', would work well for these colours and allow me the opportunity to feature lots of Hydrangea Hue - one of my favourite blues at the moment. I coloured her and cut her out, but stencilled a Crushed Curry sunburst behind her for a little added pop of sunshine colour:

A simple sentiment completes my card.

As a reminder, for our colour challenges, you must use all of the stated challenge colours. You may also use neutral colours; however, the challenge colours should be the most noticeable ones featured on your card. We use Stampin' Up! colour names for reference, but you are welcome to use any other companies' products as long as you match the challenge colours as closely as possible.

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

Today I'm sharing a card that was inspired by Cecile's layout over at Freshly Made Sketches and Lisa's 'acorn' die theme over at Just Us Girls:

I almost didn't play along with either challenge; I couldn't get past those snowflakes on Cecile's layout and I didn't think I had any acorn dies. Then I was musing at my desk as my pilates class this morning was cancelled and I remembered the acorns in my Winnie The Pooh Sweet Words and Labels set and it unlocked both challenges in one fell swoop! Take a look at what I came up with:

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

Today it's Piglet that's in a spot of bother as he struggles to reach the door knocker of his friend's house - my image is taken from the Silly Old Bear designer series paper and I framed it using one of the dies in the Sweet Words and Labels bundle, and accented my woodland scene with what else but some diecut acorns from the same bundle: 

The sentiment is one I associate with Pooh hear himself, but it seemed perfect for my balancing Piglet today. Right - I'm hurrying off to the FMS gallery before I'm too late to join in the fun!

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

Today it's Sunday and time for this week's new challenge over at The Paper Players! It's my turn to host this week and I have a festive colour challenge for us to work with:

It's not essential to make a Christmas card with these colours, but that's exactly where I was headed - perfect for the word prompt over at Inkspirational too! I decided to have another go with my Altenew Winterberry embossing folder and coordinating stencils and this time use them to make a Christmas card - take a look:

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

I flipped the embossing folder and stencils around so that they created something of an arch across the top of my card, with the white space towards the bottom. After embossing my panel, I stencilled the poinsettias in Poppy Parade, the smaller berries in Real Red and the leaves and stems in Shaded Spruce with the larger berries in gold, before adding a fine splatter of gold paint:

 A gold foil diecut sentiment from Memory Box and a few clear gold sparkly gems complete my card. I have to say I think this card looks so beautiful in real life, but I'm not sure that my photographs capture it. The weather here has been so grey this week lighting has definitely been on my side and I wonder if the photos make my stencilling look a little patchy? Which is a shame, as I was very careful and laboured in my execution! Ah well, you will just have to take my word for it!

I'm so looking forward to seeing what you make with this week's colours! Before you reach for your ink and papers, check out what our amazing team has created to inspire you this week:

Enjoy your day; the hubby is out paddleboarding this morning (rather him than me!) so I am going to do a little ironing and squeeze in some crafting, before a lazy late lunch this afternoon. I'll be back tomorrow with another project. Until then, happy stampin'!

Today I'm sharing a card that uses the layout over at Try A Sketch on Tuesday: 

I'll be the first to admit that the inclusion of 'snickerdoodles' nearly had me running to the hills, but I needed to make a birthday card for my bee-keeping nephew and thought I would try and combine to the two - take a look:

 Here's the low-down on today's card:

I kept my card super clean and simple with the focal point of a gnome dressed as a bee, from the set 'Buzzing With Happiness' from My Favourite Things, but before adding him to my card base I stamped my punny sentiment and doodled a bee trail with a black Stampin' Write marker, having used a curved die to draw in a pencil line as a guide:

It's not perfect, but that's the point of a doodle, right? And that's all there is to it - a super simple Saturday card! It isn't my nephew's birthday for a couple of weeks, but he won't be reading my blog so I'm safe to share :-)

Enjoy your day; I have been busy writing up blog posts this morning, but since it was Guy Fawkes Night on Thursday this is the weekend for bonfires and fireworks displays and the hubby and I will be wrapping up warmly to head out to attend one later on with friends. We haven't done fireworks here since the James Junior was at school, as his senior school hosted a huge event each year. If I'm honest, I have mixed feelings - they can be good but when you're a Disney fan like me and you've seen the displays at Disney World, there really isn't much to compare! I'll be back tomorrow with another project. Until then, happy stampin'!

I've a quick second post to share a card I made a couple of days ago for a challenge that closes today: I'm sharing a card for the current challenge over at 52 Christmas Card Throwdown using the layout at Hand Stamped Sentiments:

 That multi-layered sketch was perfect for building a mini scene with shaped dies, so I grabbed some old favourites and set to work - take a look at what I came up with:

 Here's the low-down on today's card:

I used my Bethlehem Edgelits as the basis for my scene, framing it in a diecut arch and backing with some retired Merry Little Christmas starry night paper. I carried the stars through to an embossed layer behind, added a sheet of festive text and then a stamped Mary and Joseph on a donkey and stamped sentiment from 'Night in Bethlehem':

There's actually quite a lot going on in this card, so I kept my colour scheme to black and white so that it didn't overwhelm the other elements of the design. Even though this bundle is long retired, it will always remain a favourite of mine; I use it every year at least once as I think it's a really lovely set for religious cards.

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

Today I'm sharing my design team card for our new challenge over at As you See It where it's time for a speed challenge chosen by Deborah:

Shades of green - perfect for the festive season and more besides! I am ramping up my Christmas card making and whilst I considered some simple speed stamping, I thought the Sunday Stamps layout would be perfect for showcasing some busy designer series paper - always a good time-saver when you need to make a quick card! So I searched through my Christmas DSP collection and this is what I came up with:

 Here's the low-down on today's card:

This watercoloured foliage pattern is one of my favourites in the retired Joy of Christmas paper pack: it showcases several shades of green and a pop of festive red from those berries too. I covered the whole of the base of my card, grabbed a few leftover scraps of foil and foiled vellum to cut my banners and some additional scraps to diecut some foliage to create a topper for my banners, all tied with some retired silver twine. The final touch was a sentiment from the Magical Christmas Foil Dies that I had already foiled in Silver Opal and diecut - all I needed to do was fish through my box of finished sentiments to find something suitable:

A few clear epoxy droplets and some hasty dots on my berries with a white gel pen complete my card.

So how long did this take me? 

A total of 9 minutes and 29 seconds - longer than I thought it would. It's surprising how much time you can spend poking out diecuts and tying bows!! It's a good job that I had my sentiment already foiled for sure, otherwise it would have been a straightforward 'ink and stick'! Having made this card, I decided to make a few more in a similar design using up some other paper, including this photographic design from the retired All Is Bright papers:

This time I went with gold accents and a reverse-foiled sentiment on Garden Green, and added a couple of tiny jingle bells to my twine bow:

It's quite tricky to see the detail of the foiling on the sentiment - any and all tips as to the best way to photograph foiling, especially on a dark background, are welcome! I can assure you it does look lovely in real life. I often find these kinds of photographic papers quite difficult to work with, but I'm quite pleased with this finished card.

Here's a summary of our challenge rules:

• Create any card, scrapbooking page, 3D or packaging project that fits the challenge.
• For a Speed Stamping Challenge you must tell us the time it took to make your project and it must be finished in under 10 min.
• Please include the challenge graphic and link back to the challenge in your post.
• Make sure you link the specific post and not the whole blog to the Linky. Use AYSI#(insert challenge number) when uploading to a public gallery
• Please turn off word verification so that we can send you lots of feedback.
• You can combine our challenge with up to 3 other compatible challenges. 
• We do reserve the right to delete, or not consider for Top Pick and Featured Artist, entries that do not comply with these guidelines.

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

Today it's Sunday and time for this week's new challenge over at The Paper Players! It's the turn of the fabulous Claire to host this week and she has a fun theme challenge for us to work with:

I grabbed Jen B's sketch over at Freshly Made Sketches for my layout today and some of my favourite retired plaid patterned paper for another Christmas card (or two!) - take a look:

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

Whilst I'm not always a fan of diagonal lines, Jen's FMS layout was perfect to highlight some festive plaid. I chose a strip of the retired Plaid Tidings DSP and since it had a gold foil in the pattern, I bordered my navy panels and the outlines of my paper-pieced poinsettia and berries in gold to tie in:

I added a simple foiled sentiment to complete m card and didn't even add any enamel dots as I really didn't want to distract from the floral and plaid. I really love this card in Night of Navy, which I chose for my base as it coordinated with one of my favourite plaids, but since I used the same Kristina Werner Poinsettia Inlay Dies for a previous FMS entry on a navy base, I decided to do a second version of this card, using a white base and another of the festive plaid patterns from the same pack, still with the gold detailing for my entry this week - so here's my 'take two':

 I love the clean lines of this card with the festive red, green and gold against the white and the poinsettia adds a fabulous pop of colour I think:

Here's both cards together; do you prefer one colourway over the other? Do leave me a comment below - I'd love to hear your thoughts. 

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

Enjoy your day; I am spending the morning in the kitchen and catching up on a few household chores, having had a super lazy day yesterday reading, sewing and generally relaxing, whilst the hubby is out on his paddleboard - it's too cold for me! Got to love a weekend! I'll be back tomorrow with another project. Until then, happy stampin'!

Stampin' Up! Supplies Used:

MAGICAL CHRISTMAS HOT FOIL DIES (ENGLISH) (£37.00)	GOLD STAMPIN' HOT FOIL ROLLS (£11.25)	UK/IE STAMPIN' HOT FOIL SYSTEM & CRAFT CLASS (£149.00)	GOLD FOIL SHEETS (£4.75)	NIGHT OF NAVY A4 CARDSTOCK (£14.00)	BASIC WHITE A4 THICK CARDSTOCK (£16.00)
REAL RED A4 CARDSTOCK (£14.00)	CHERRY COBBLER A4 CARDSTOCK (£14.00)	SHADED SPRUCE A4 CARDSTOCK (£14.00)