Rudolph Days Challenge - February 2018

Seems hard to believe that it is time for our February 2018, Rudolph  Days Challenge. I just want to remind everyone that once again we will be having a special prize draw in December 2018, for those who enter here every month this year, January through November.

Here are the rules for the Rudolph Days Challenge:

 1. The Rudolph Days Challenge will start each month (January to November) on the 25th, and will close at midnight PST, on the last day of that month.
2. The theme is always Anything Goes, as long as it is Christmas.
3. One entry per person and you just need to enter one Christmas card or Christmas project.
4. You may combine your entry with other challenges (maximum of 10 in total).
5. Your card (or Christmas project) should not have been previously posted to your blog. It should be posted to your blog during the current months Rudolph Days Challenge, (between the 25th and last day of the current month)
6. Please link back to or at least mention, the Rudolph Days Challenge.
7. Please leave a comment on the challenge post.
8.   The winner will be selected by random draw and announced on the first day of the following month. Prizes will be mailed anywhere in the world.
9. A special draw will be held at the end of the year, in December,  for all those who submitted a card or project every month that year, January to November.. 


Our designers have been very busy making some wonderful cards for your inspiration.

First up is Jenny L at Cardsarus

Jenny has made this wonderful Z fold reindeer card. The stamped deer look so festive on this card! It looks to me that Jenny has even stamped the background snowflake paper. If you pop over to her blog here, I'm  sure she will have a good write up of creating this beauty.Jenny always gives a great step by step of how she has made her card.

Here is another photo,  taken from a different angle so you can see the Z design...

 Sam at Whispers Cards has two cards for us today. The first is this sweet silver and blue puppy card. Oh my. me thinks he may have just knocked those baubles off that tree! He looks so adorable...

Sam's second card is this lovely kraft reindeer card. The dotted background with the matching trees contributes to the peaceful, serene feeling of this Christmas card. if you pop over to her blog here, I am sure you will enjoy reading Sam's post of these fab. cards.

I wasn't quite happy with how my last deer card turned out. Since I am stamping and die cutting enough to make multiples of each card this year, I decided to remake that last card, in slightly  different ways.

My first card is a 5 x 7 handmade card. It just gives a wee bit more room to playaround with the scene.  I  shaded the Impression Obsession deer die cuts with chalk, ever so slightly. Just enough to have them stand out a bit more. I also added a few dots of white to the deer's rumps. A bit of Nuvo glitter drops on the snowy hills helps to ground the deer!

I cut down a Memory Box, Small Alder Trees die,  and turned them into shrubs for my scene.

I used different finishes to glitter and shimmer up this card. Nuvo Glimmer drops on the Falling Snow EF snowflakes, Nuvo aqua glimmer on the trees and shrubs, and Wink of Stella on the deer..

The red cardinals were used again. Luckily,  that red snippet allowed three cuts of my cardinal Impression Obsession die. I love that die as it cuts so many wee birds in many different poses.
The deer envelope is from a huge bag of envelopes I got at the thrift shop. I think there were about 50 5x7 envelopes with many different designs on the fronts (3 of each design).  I paid a dollar for this treasure trove!  You will see more of these envelopes in the months to come.

My second card is a 5 1/2 inch square. This time I used snippets of kraft card for the deer. I shaded them with chalk and used white acrylic paint for the dots on their rumps. I should have googled about the dots as I am not sure if they are specific to females or if it is indeed all the deer in that species!

I used the larger Memory Box Deer Trio die that I used on my very first card a couple of days ago. I do think I like it best. Will save the small ones for tiny card or tags!

I am so much happier with these versions today. I have one more set of stamped and die cut pieces left, and I think I will try this design one more time, with some evergreen trees stamped behind the birch tree die cuts...  This has sure been a fun way to make multiples!
I am entering this card over at Pixies Crafty Workshop where you must use snippets. These two cards were made completely with snippets...even snippets of scrap laser photocopy paper!

The prizes this month are a choice of this Taylored Expression Iconic Wishes - Christmas Stamp and die combo

Or this Memory Box Hanging Evelyn Snowflake Die

Please use Mr Linky below, to link up your projects and cards. We look forward to visiting with you.

Christmas Card Club - Reindeer or Deer

Zoe at  Stampin' Scene blog chose the theme of reindeer for this fortnight.

As soon as I read this theme, I knew I wanted to make a die cut card...with deer feeding under some birch trees.  I have wanted to try this with my own dies, ever since 'I made a similar card at Langley Stampers. That one used Stampin' Up dies and the deer was quite large.

I wanted to use small deer so that I could make my card the standard "North American" card size.
This is the size that I generally receive from my friends in Canada or the U.S.

I started with a snippet of white laser photocopy paper. It has a bit of a sheen to it. I ran that through my Stampin Up Falling Snow EF, and then placed a Memory Box Tall birch tree die cut  in the middle of the card front. There was not enough room to add one more on each side, so I pruned two more tree die cuts, and removed some side branches so they would fit!

I pop dotted those trees forward with some super slim pop dots, and was careful not to place any pop dots on the bottom portion of the tree trunks. This then gave me room to add a Lawn Fawn snowy hill, cut from white glitter paper., and pop dotted with the same super slim dots.

The trunks of the trees slid sort of flatly under this hill. This helps with the final depth of the card  (for postage rates) as I still had more popped forward layers to add.

The second hill was  popped forward as well and then I added the three deer from my Memory Box Deer Trio die. I cut these deer off the die cut as they come standing on a flat ground, which looked weird with my hills. I placed my trio randomly on the hills, instead.

A few Impression Obsession cardinals finished off the trees and added a pop of colour!

At this point I was happy with the dies on the card front, but thought everything looked a bit dull. Used my white Nuvo Aqua Shimmer pen to add some  glittery shimmer to the trees and to the deer. I went over the deer once again,  with some Nuvo glitter drops just to make them look a wee bit different in shimmer from the trees!

You might be able to see the shimmer a bit better, here...

It was hard to photograph and show the sheen and shimmers. If you enlarge my photo, you may be able to see it better. IRL, everything is more distinctive than it appears in the photo. Each diecut is a slightly different shade of white, so it does not look as nondescript as this photo. Promise!!!

Finally done, I added the card front to a standard size, handmade white card. For the last few months, I have been using the white 110 pound cardstock from Michaels  to make my cards. I love the weight of this paper and it is so much cheaper than the Bazzill heavy weight I used to buy by the individual sheet. Best of all I can use a 40% off coupon at Michaels!

The Last Cookie

This tent fold card is made with the last sugar cookie image from the Mark's Finest Papers stamp. Rather than make it up as a sugar cookie, I  decided to stamp it twice and create a layered Santa image.

I rather like how it turned out. I coloured with copics and coated the moustache with nuvo white glimmer pen, and the fur trim and pom pom with Stickles Stardust. Popped it onto another of the MFP pink tags I had previously stamped and fussy cut. A red Martha Stewart punched snowflake with several clear diamonds for accent,  finished it off.

The beaded circle die was pressed into service once again, and the white gittered card circle was a left over from the tree baubles I showed on this post here. I found a snippet of matching red card and punched out two corners with my Stampin' Up corner punch. With a  few diamonds added to them, they look very festive!

DP is Doodlebug Designs again and the pattern is "Here comes santa claus."  This is another all snippets card. That background DP is left over from a 12x12 scrapbook page and everything else on this card, including the stamped image paper, was cut from snippets.

Candy Cane Kisses

I have continued on using up more of my 12x12 Doodlebug Designs snippets. It has been quite fun to try  designing cards around what is left on my desk, rather than file it away in my snippets baskets. As the papers are so big to begin with, the snippets are sometimes HUGE!

The images here are once again from the Marks Finest Papers sugar cookie stamp set. My youngest daughter often makes these fancy type sugar cookies. She pipes the icing around the edges of the design and then thins it down and floods the icing across each coloured section.  These cookie stamps remind me of her work!

This  2 layered cookie has the bow cut again and pop dotted forward. It sits on another of the Marks tags that I stamped and fussy cut, some weeks ago. The aqua circular mat is cut from glitter paper I stockpiled from a Joannes sale quite some time ago. The larger mat is a Spellbinder Beaded Circles and is cut from red cardstock. You can see a bit of the glitter here...

This background is again from the 12x12 Doodlebug Designs, Sugar Plums line and the corner accents are layered sizes of the Impression Obsession snowflakes die A red diamond in the center, finished these off.

I tend to cut snowflakes and other small embellishments ahead when I am bored.  It is a great way to use up teensy snippets and I file them away (by themes) in one page photo albums from the Dollar Store. The double layered snowflake on the tag is again from those precut choices.

The sentiment is another hot pink American Crafts rub on. My Stampin' Up oval and scalloped oval punches seemed the right size for this sentiment, so were pressed into work.

The inside has one red snowflake added to the bottom left corner. Quite plain and simple.

 I added one fussy cut stamped and fussy cut candy cane to the bottom left corner of the envelope. I think it looks quite festive. It is adhered strongly, as I used Sook Wang double sided glue paper under the stamped images before I fussy cut them.

I am entering this card in the following challenges: 

1. Pixies Crafty Workshop - must use snippets.

Christmas Card Club - Anything goes choice

Once again it is time for me to reveal my  fortnightly Christmas Card Club project. Todays' theme is Fairy's  but I took the alternate choice of "anything goes as long as it is Christmas", We both still have this lingering cold and as I had these cards made up before I got ill, it seemed a good choice. I had only to stamp the envelopes and assemble the coloured images onto the tags.

If you wish to view the others ladies cards, just click on the hyperlink of their name (on my right sidebar). If you wish to join our group, drop me an email.

Several days ago, I posted a  Christmas card with a baking sheet full of gingerbread cookies. I had mentioned on that post to look forward to other "cookie card" posts, as I had coloured up a few types of gingerbread and sugar cookie images.

Rather than clean off my desk and carefully file away the "extras", I decided to bake up a few more.
Here is a card duet using up the last of the gingerbread men. I made up two sets of matching cards and tags! It was a lot of fun and I tried to use snippets wherever possible.

The background DP is leftover 12x12  Doodlebug Designs, Jolly Gingerbread and Sugarplum. I have used both the A and the B sides.

The stamp is my from Marks Finest Papers...sadly they are no longer trading.  This stamp set contains three cookie shapes as well as this lovely tag stamp. I stamped and fussy cut the tags on some snippets of pink card.   The round mats and edging on the borders is aqua glitter paper and the American Crafts hot pink Merry Christma rub on sentiment is my NBUS item!

A  punched  Martha Stewart  kraft snowflake, a single aqua diamond, and some fine jute twine for the bow, are the only embellishments on the first card.

A couple of white Impression Obsession snowflakes, an aqua diamond, and the same jute twine, finish off the second card.

The inside of each card is covered with the same DP that was used on the border band on each. A white die cut was used for the sentiment.

The present tags are that same Marks Finest Papers tag stamp. Luckily that it had a To: and From: stamp included.

The envelopes are such a great colour match and were tucked away in my stash. I stamped a gingerbread man on the front of each one.

January Rudolph Days Challenge Winner

I am so pleased to tell you that we had 70 entries! I enjoyed viewing these beautiful cards and was inspired by your creativity.

 I used Random Org to pick the winner of the January Rudolph Days Challenge.

As you can see from the photo below, the winner is #  66    Jules

Congratulations Jules!  Could you please drop me an email at maureenkane@telus.net and let me know your mailing address, and whether you prefer the die or the stamp set.