Pastel blue and white

Phew. I made it: 5 X-mas cards this month. Originally, I did not use the stars, but I felt I needed something to make it more Christmassy apart from the Dutch text on the right, which means "The most beautiful time of the year in English. So, to make sure this was really a X-mas card, I added the twinkling stars and used the same die for the inside. The sentiment says "Vrolijk Kerstmis" in Dutch, which translates as "Merry Christmas" in English.

I made this card for the following challenges:
Christmas Cards All Year Round – sketch, see below

Winter Wonderland – Blue and white
Fab's Big Christmas Cards – Pastel colours and/or embossing
Dutch Card Lovers – Three in a row; I picked the second row: punch/die cuts + flowers + glitter/glimmer

X-mas in grey and red

I'm still working on my X-mas cards. This time I thought I would try something in grey and red. As before, I used one A5 sheet to create two different cards. And I must say I'm quite happy with how they turned out.

I made this card for the following challenges:
Christmas Cards All Year Round – sketch, see below

Sew Many Challenges – circles

Materials used:

Patterned paper: Marianne Design – Scandinavian Christmas

Scalloped circles: Spellbinders Nestabilities

Stamp: Marianne Design, coloured with Derwent pencils

"Fur" on Santa hat: Aleene's True Snow

Sentiment: created on the pc using Word

Stars: from my stash

The card below is my 4th card this month for the CCAYR challenge (see sketch above). Four down, one to go, so I'd better hurry to get the last one finished in time. This card is also for the Craftyhazelnut's Christmas Challenge (use some ribbon).

Materials used:

Patterned paper: Marianne Design – Scandinavian Christmas

Scalloped circles: Spellbinders Nestabilities

Poinsettias: Marianne Design die

Label: Spellbinders Shapeabilities

Sentiment: StudioLight stamp

Ribbon: from my stash

X-mas in May

Last year I made the first preparations for making my own X-mas cards in August. In September I started to be very busy again with work, so in the end I managed to complete only a few hand-made cards by December. This year I'm starting even earlier, and with the help and encouragement of lots of other crafters and the inspiring examples at all the Christmas Challenge blogs I have found so far, making X-mas cards should be smooth sailing this year ...

For my first card (and the second one below) I used the sketch from Christmas Cards All Year Round, which really got the creative juices flowing. I'm sure I'll be using this sketch a lot!

So here it is, my first X-mas card for 2011:

Materials used
Patterned papers: Marianne Design - eline's Traditional Christmas
Snowflakes: Cuttlebug die
Penguin: Marianne Design decoupage sheet - eline's snow-friends 2

I'd like to enter this card into the following challenges:
Christmas Cards All Year Round - sketch, see above
Winter Wonderland Challenge - Christmas Presents

Below follows card 2/5 for CCAYR:

For this one, I used the same set-up as for the first card, but instead of a decoupage sheet I used a stamp, again from Marianne Design. I wanted to use embossing powder, which I thought would be white frosted, but it turned out to be transparent. That's way I stamped over the image again with white ink and then tried another layer of embossing powder. Oh well, it's all part of the learning curve ...

My very first challenge card

I always said to myself that I would never start a blog, but after seeing so many card challenges and inspiring cards and ideas I surrendered. So here's my own blog with my very first challenge card, and one of my first scrap/stamp cards, I might add. Hope you all like it.

I made this card for Sketch N Stash challenge no. 60. I was too late to enter it for the previous challenge, but this time we could use any existing sketch, so naturally I chose sketch no. 59. Since I just started using stamps and making scrap cards, both the patterned paper and the stamps I used are brand new.

Used materials

Image stamp: Viva decor

Sentiment stamp: StudioLight

Design papers: Papermania Henbury Lane

Pearls: Viva decor Perlen-Pen

Corners: Silhouette design

I would also like to enter this card in the following challenge:

Papertake weekly challenge: Anything goes + something round (optional)