March Rudolph Days Challenge

Seems hard to believe that it is time for our March 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 all those who enter here every month, January through November 2018.

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.. 

First up is Linda at Snails Space blog. Linda always has the sweetest images and this snowman is no exception. I love the pretty sky background Linda has created here. The colouring is awesome, as always. I especially love the colouring on the lights. There is that perfect shading on each little bulb!

Next up is Dr, Sonia at Cards, Crafts,  Kids projects Blog. 

Dr Sonia has made us a card full of flowers, trees, sparkle and verve! Such a beautiful setting for that sweet owl family. I can not wait to read how she made this on her blog post!

My card is an Upcycled image with a very vintage feel! While assisting her elderly Aunt with purging and packing up her apartment, my best friend tucked away several of her Aunt's vintage cards for me. Some of the cards dated back to the 1940's!!!  This sweet vintage image of a young girl carrying a beautiful Holly wreath, caught my eye and I knew I had to make up this one, right away.

The background plaid, and beige plaid DP are Photoplay Papers, Holiday Cheer. I distressed the edges of the beige plaid and the slim border piece of the darker one, with the side of my scissor blade. I used Chestnut Roan chalk ink along those ragged edges.

I fussy cut the girl and simply glued her down to the beige plaid. The larger kraft snowflake was punched from a snippet of kraft card and given a wash of Wink of Stella.  Impression Obsession snowflakes were cut from snippets of heavy weight red Bazzill card and the larger one was layered over the MS kraft one.

I gave the leaves of the Holly wreath a lick of stardust stickles and a couple of DCWV rhinestones were added to the snowflakes and also to the knot in the center of the wreath bow. 

The envelope was stamped with a random VOS snowflake wooden stamp that I picked up at a garage sale many years ago. I used Momento brown to keep with the vintage feel.

I am entering this card in the Jingle Belles Challenge- vintage theme.

Our prizes this month are a choice of this Penny Black, Holly die

Or this Stampers Anonymous Tim Holtz, Carved Christmas I stamp

CAS Christmas

Do you find CAS cards hard to make? I sure do!

I made this card for the CAS Christmas Card Challenge, which closes on March 24. The theme this month is Holly and I immediately thought of my NBUS Recollections, Poinsettia and Holly stamp and die combo. It doe not have a name on the package, just the numbers 88146 2017-10   529319
I picked it up at Michaels with a 40% off coupon and stashed it in with my Christmas stamps and nearly forgot about it.

I think that is the beauty of themed challenges. It forces you to think about what stamps you already own to create the theme, and oftentimes you actually have to peruse your stamp hoard to find just the right one! Luckily, this stamp was on my mind as I had organized my Christmas stamps over the past few weeks.

With just a few hours left till the deadline,  I created this CAS Holly card.  The stamp set came with a great sentiment that used the phrase Holly Jolly, but that particular sentiment seemed way too small to use with the holly image.

I used my Misti and stamped off 4 cards. I managed to smear ink from my fingertips onto the first two and only managed to complete two cards. 

The holly was coloured with copics. As I have mentioned many times in the past, I am a hopeless colourist. Although I like the first card, I think I did a terrible job on the second. The leaves look too outlined and I did not have the right green to use with that dark outer edge. I may purchase a new green and see if I can touch it up, but for now it is considered finished!

The stamp sets comes with this sort of stripey line and series of dots stamp. I stamped in red ink on the first card with the lighter coloured holly and black and the second card. I may just batch bake another half dozen of this card so which colour do you like best?

A couple of dollar store sequins and finally the fronts were done.

I coloured direct to card. The colours did indeed bleed through to the inside of the card, so I used the two smeared cards to fussy cut two more holly images. On the first card with the lighter coloured holly, I was able to to merely glue one fussy cut holly image down over the messy area and it worked like a charm! The second card needed a triangular snippet of holly paper, and then the fussy cut image.

I rather think I chose the wrong type of sentiment stamp for the inside. I had a small smear of ink on the inside and got so obsessed with finding a sentiment that would cover it up, that I forgot about keeping my card clean and simple. I used a NBUS Penny Black sentiment stamp called Glad Tidings. I wish I had just picked a plain sentiment and to heck with the teensy smear...but you know what they say about hind sight!

The envelopes were stamped with the same Holly image as the card fronts.

I am entering this card in the CAS Christmas Card Challenge.

Joy to the World

This fortnights card theme of Christmas flowers was chosen by Rachel at Fisher's Cards and Crafts.
I knew right away that I would use this NBUS stamp, (never before used stash)  and that is a good feeling to be able to remember it at all! At times it feels that there is a mountain of NBUS.  I have owned this stamp for quite some time and today is the first time it met ink!

The image and sentiment are part of an Our Daily Bread stamp set called Luke 2.1...although I chose to use one of the other sentiments within the set. It stamped so nicely the very first time. I used my MISTI just in case, but did not have to do any touch ups.

Stamped onto Elizabeth craft paper with black Momento ink and coloured the image with copics..,three reds and two greens. I then added red stickles quite sparingly around the edges of the petals with a touch in the centers.  I placed yellow stickle dots for the inner part of the flower and placed these over the area I had previously coloured green. I like the look of the two colours there.

That led me to decide if it worked in the centre, why not on the petals...so I carefully and very sparingly added green stickles to the petals as well.  Here is a close up of that...

I am happy with the colouring of the flower. While I know it is perfect like true colouristas can obtain, it is good for my talents and that makes me pleased! I struggle to see the light hitting the image so it is hit or miss whether I get any of the petals right!   While I did colour up two sets of the flower, I decided to not layer it up after all...as the second image is not as nice.

Background paper is Making Memories, Glitter Strip Twinkle. This is a VOS (very old stash) 12 x12 scrapbook paper, from 2011. After Christmas that year, I picked up about 20 sheets of it, on clearance for 80% off.  Although I did use it for some scrapbook pages, the vast majority has been used for cardmaking. The red stripe is glittered and is gives a lovely feeling of pizzaz.

The green snowflake and the woodgrain paper are from my snippets files. They too are quite old, so I do not remember the manufacturer or the name. The image was stamped on a snippet as well. I had three pieces of that Elizabeth craft paper left, so used the MISTI to stamp this image and sentiment three times. I have not finished the other two yet, but they will be identical to this card, as long as I can find more of the green snowflake snippets!

I am entering this card in the following challenges.
1. Pixies Crafty  Workshop - must use snippets.

A Twofer Love

Darnell over at djkardkreations has started a new challenge this year. It is called the Twofer Challenge and runs monthly. The Feb theme was Love and themes are usually announced on the 10th of each month. You must make two cards with the same stamp or die, and they must be for two different occasions.

Sadly, I forgot there was a time change between Darnell and I, and so I waited too long to post these (at ten pm my time) on the 24th. The contest was closed and as I had my Rudolph Days Post due in another two hours, I decided to save these and post them later.

My first card is a Valentines card, and I used the Stampendous Love Letters stamp, in a Lawn Fawn stitched rectangle. The red background mat is just hand cut to match. The Love Sentiment is a dollar store stamp, brand unknown, stamped onto a wee snippet of the same white card stock.  The background paper is by Creative Imaginations, and is part of their Neutrals line.

As this is a Valentine for my DH next year, I kept the design paper on this card quite plain and masculine looking.

My second card is an Anniversary card for DH.  I restamped the Love Letters stamp coloured the hearts in red, and then fussy cut them out. I stamped a Crafts Smart Dove stamp on a snippet of white and used a circular Marianne die for the image and their doily die, for the pink mat (snippets again).

The dove was stamped twice and then I fussy cut the second image. Popped it on top of the first one and gave it a coat of Nuvo aqua glimmer.

The first wee heart was glued to the end of a branch that was part of the dove image. The rest were used to look like the dove was scattering the hearts, as spouses do as they live their lives together. We scatter love through our own lives and our children's as well. These scattered seeds of love help us grow together.

After viewing the photo in this post, I wish I had coloured another set of the hearts in the lighter pink of my background papers. They could be gued just slightly off of the red hearts... just enough to leave the red peeking through one side of them.  I think that would have tied the background papers in more. Perhaps I shall do that still!

The background papers are snippets from my 12x12 scrapbook pages. I added a piece of dollar store blue glimmery Washi tape to hide the seam. Love that Washi...although it is looks like glitter paper, it is only a thin glimmery tape and so it fairly slim in depth.

The sentiment is Stampin' Up. The larger love script stamp is from 2004 and the smaller always script stamp is from 2005. Too bad I seem to have stamped the always script just a bit crooked. This card is for DH as our Anniversary is in April. Hopefully, he will not notice!

All in all, there was a good attempt at the use of snippets. All the white, red, and pink card were snippets. For regular card stock, I save anything credit card sized or larger. The cloud and striped paper used on the second card were also from my snippets box. It is a great feeling to use up some of this never ending stack of pretty snippets!!!

The other benefit of both cards today is that they are very slim in depth. They will sail through that tester slot at the Post Office and just take regular postage  Yay!

I am entering this card in the following challenges:

1. Pixies Crafty Workshop - must use snippets

Christmas Card Club - Robin

This fortnight, Mrs A at Valery Anne Designs   chose a Robin or Robins as our card theme.

I do have some bird stamps but since they are not actually robins, I chose to make a Hunky Dory Decoupage kit called Robin Redbreast. This kit really appealed to me as my Dad had a farm and raised horses. His boots were always sitting just outside the door, if he came in for tea...which was several times a day as he loved his tea! It was made even better, if it was served with thick toast and lashings of jam.

So a pretty robin it is...perched on what looks just like Dad's boots.

There are 6 layers of decoupage to create the scene and I used a brand new set of really slim pop dot to help reduce the depth. I am going to be purchasing more of those as I loved how thin they were. I threw the packaging away to help them fit in my pop dot drawer, but will tell you the name after I purchase a new set. When I next use them, of course!

I trimmed the kit card base down into a square. I added a piece of DP on the inside, to stamp the sentiment on. In my experience, the Hunky Dory card base has too much sheen for the ink to dry quickly. Translate that into, I have learned the hard way that any ink stamped upon it smears easily if brushed against. It takes quite some time for the ink to dry.  As you have probably guessed, under my DP liner, there is a smudged sentiment!

The back of this card base has a very pretty repeat of the scene build into the card.

This was a quick and fun card to make. Sometimes, that is just what one needs!

If you are interested in joining our Christmas Card Club, drop me an email. The hyperlinks to the other members cards can be found on my right sideboard. You will not regret popping by their blogs to take a peek.

February Rudolph Days Challenge Winner

We had 59 entries! Not bad, considering February only had 4 days between the 25th and the end of the month, for you to enter your cards.

The design team all submitted a deer card and in my case, two of them. It was cool to discover that many of you made deer cards, as well. Perhaps we will start a trend!

Once again, I have used Random Org to choose the winner. Here is the photo of the winning number #15, Verna Angerhofer

Verna, would you please drop me an email to maureenkane@telus.net and let me know your mailing address, and which prize you would like.