More upcycling for Jingle Belles

Hello everyone. I'm back with more upcycled packaging for Jingle Belles.

Before I remembered the Christmas gift bag, I used some old packaging (probably from Christmas cards at a time that I did not make enough cards myself), to create the perfect backdrop to this super cute bear from Katie Skilton's Festive Animal Antics collection. The bear and the Santa hat are in the Bear and Deer set. The sentiment is from the Fun Sentiments set that is part of the collection.

I had this snippet of white card that was exactly enough for die cutting two bears. I tried different cardstocks and colours for the belly and snout and found a snippet of silver Centura pearl card that was the perfect match for the silvery grey background. I love that the dies can also be used as a stencil to add colour, e.g. to the ears, while the debossed lines are perfect to add black details using a Micron pen.

I'm linking up this card at:

NBUS - #58 AG with NBUS

Snippets Playground - #471 Celebrate
To celebrate 12 years of the Snippets Playground 
under Miss Di's supervision
I used snippets for the bear and belly/snout and a
similar snippet of white card for the sentiment.

I was about to discard what was left of the bag when my eye fell on the garlands at the top of the bag (front and bag). I thought I might just as well pair these with two more bears I had already created to whip up two more QCAS cards (as my blogging friend Darnell would say - quick, clean and simple). For these bears, I decided to use the other hat in the set. I added the white detail using a Sakura gelly roll, again using the debossing as a guideline. The sentiments are from an older MFT sentiment set.

If I'm continuing like this, all of my Christmas cards will be done by August LOL.

I'm linking up my cards at:

Jingle Belles - Wrap it up

Another gift bag Santa card

Hello everyone. I'm back with my second card using the Christmas gift bag that our dog received from our dog trainer.

For this card, I used a circle die to die cut my Santa image and added it to a white mat.
I used the below sketch from BSYSHC but used washi tape and ink blending with a stencil (same stencil used on the previous card) to create some of the layers to keep my card flat for easy posting. 

I'm linking up my card at:

Jingle Belles - Wrap it up!

The 12 Months of Christmas - AG Christmas
(optional: die cuts and/or embossing)

MLCCB - #54 AG Christmas

ABC Christmas - A for Anything Christmas

Aud Sentiments - #309 Make your own background + sentiment

Stencil Fun - AG with a stencil (optional: Birds theme)

Wrapping it up for Christmas

Hello everyone. Thanks for stopping by.
I am determined to avoid the November cardmaking stress by starting my 2024 Christmas stash early, like I have been doing for several years. And what better way than to play along with some of the fun Christmas challenges out in blogland?

The lovely Jingle Belles are challenging us to use Christmas gift wrapping for our cards. Since we don't exchange gifts for Christmas, I had to resort to the only Christmas gift bag that our dog received from our sweet and lovely dog trainer. 

For this first card, I simply die cut a rectangle panel from the glittery side of the gift bag and paired it with an older stencil and distress ink blending. I added a mat of dark green behind my Santa panel and finished things off with these new sentiment dies from the Festive Frames and Sentiment die set, which is part of Katie Skilton's Animal Antics collection that I could not resist buying at Craftstash last summer. You will be seeing more of this collection on my blog soon.

I'm linking up my card at:

Jingle Belles - Wrap it up!

SSS Wednesday - Something new

The 12 Months of Christmas - AG Christmas
(optional: die cuts and/or embossing)

MLCCB - #54 AG Christmas

MAWTT - #162A new craft item 

Sugar and Spice for CCC December 2023

Hello everyone. Wishing you all a happy, healthy and crafty New Year!

It's the 2nd of the month, which means it's time to reveal all of the cards that were exchanged in the Card Chain Challenge this past month. You can check out all of the cards in the CCC reveal post.

This month, my card went to Tina in Slovenia. 

The Tic-Tac-Tic-Tac-Toe 5x5 grid had me stumped for a while, until I realised that I could go with row 5 down, using the gingerbread man as my 'bloke'. The colours do seem rather pink in the picture instead of the burgundy from the Tic-Tac-Tic-Tac-Toe grid, but I did use Aged Mahogany distress ink as my darkest red.

The heat-embossed sentiment is hard to read in the picture but it says: Sugar and spice and everything nice.

I also realised I never shared the card that I sent to Jo in the UK for the November CCC. 
Some of you may have seen the card before, since I pulled the it from my stash. I was in such a frenzy finishing my Christmas cards that I could not find the peace to sit down and create a CCC card from scratch. This year, I intend to create more Christmas cards throughout the year again, so that I can avoid the end of year cardmaking stress. In fact, I already created my first two 2024 Christmas cards yesterday. Yay me!

Anyway, here's the card I sent out last month.