May 2020 Rudolph Days Challenge

Hi there. Once again, it is time for the Rudolph Days Challenge. Here are the rules for your perusal...

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.

I am sad to announce that I will have to suspend mailing of gifts until things are safer here in my area. Our province has relaxed things somewhat, but are still recommending if you fit the high risk group then follow the original rules. With so many people out and about, it is riskier to go to the post office to have the parcels stamped. I do have everything here at home, customs forms, stamps, scales etc, but the customs form has to be stamped by the post office. I will mail them all out once this has let up to a safe level.

Now, on to our designers...

First up is Linda S at Snails Space. Linda has made us this gorgeous card. I love the non traditional lavender colours and also this very sweet image. As usual, the colouring here is spot on! I hope you will drop Linda's'blog and leave her some love.

Next up is is Jenny at Cardsarus blog.
Jenny has made this pretty lavender pearlescent card for our inspiration. Again we see non traditional colours along the same colour tones. It is as if Linda and Jenny coordinated their selections today!
To read all about this pretty card, pop by Jenny's blog and leave her some love!

My card is made from a recycled image. I could not resist reusing this adorable image!
This is another snippets card. The background paper is BoBunny Mistletoe and is left over from a 12x12 Bo Bunny scrapbook kit. The lime green mat is a snippet of quite heavy glittered card, and the border strip just a snippet of plain red card.

I even managed to use up some odds and ends of embellishments. This was the last snippet of fine red striped twine and the snowflake was punched from a small kraft snippet.

The flowers stacked are a very old green Recollections poinsettia, (which I trimmed down in size), and the wee red one is a NBUS from Jolee's by You by EK Success.  I picked up this packet of flowers at a paper crafts garage sale. There is a liberal use of Wink of Stella clear, over the holly and berries.

The prizes this month are a choice of this Poppy Believe Fresh Script die

or this Charming Christmas, Precious Marieke embossing folder.

Christmas Card Club - Humourous

Here is my Christams Card Club card for this fortnight. This club is a great way to get some cards made over the course of the year. You can check out the other ladies cards by clicking on the their names, situated on my right side bar.

This fortnights theme was chosen by Rachel at Fisher's Cards and Crafts.
This is a hard theme for me as I am not very funny! My husband is the humourous one in our family.
Luckily, I do have a couple of funny looking images so was able to fill the brief!

My card today features a very old (2008) Fluffles the Cat Christmas stamp. It is an old wooden stamp and it always amazes me how well rubber stamps hold up over the years.

My design is made up of snippets. The Christmas light background paper is a snippet of 12x12 scrapbook paper, leftover from a layout. It has long lost the identifying manufacturers edge.
The three green holly print fish tale banners are from another 12x12 snippet, again unknown.

I used a Wonky Stitched Rectangle die by Scrappin Cottage to cut out Fluffles. I then added a plain red mirri card mat. I  will add the die manufacturer later as I am not in my craft room at the moment. The image was coloured with pencil crayons and gamsol. Wink of Stella was added to the image quite liberally. A trio of green rhinestones finished off this card.

Christmas Card Club - Window or Door

This fortnight,  Margaret at Dutchess Blog  chose the theme of windows or doors. You can check out the other members cards by clicking on the hyperlinks for them on my richt sidebar. If you ever want to join, just drop me an email at maureenkane@telus,.net.

My card is a Wellington decoupage. Years ago, I bought a package of decoupage sheets, design papers, sentiments, and various precoloured images in this Wellington theme. I have since lost the front page that told the Wellington collection name...

There are four layers to my decoupage. I tossed away the fifth layer as I find they will not fit through the mail if lifted too high! I kept this card quite simple. Just the layered image, one of the Wellington kit sentiments, and one of their design papers.

I tore the edge of the mat so that I could add a little fine jute twine. I thought it tied the beige/brown colours of the bear back into the mat.

Fabric Face Masks

There is some slight relaxing of the quarantine rules here in British Columbia, Canada. People must still keep to at least 6 feet of social distancing, and are encouraged to wear masks. The mask is to cut down on the possibility of  the wearer spreading anything if they are asymptomatic.

We have the disposable type of surgical face masks that you can get at a hardware store or car parts shop, and disposable gloves from when I had MRSA a few years ago.  Al uses these when he goes to pick up the groceries.

My daughter (the nurse), told me to sew a fabric cover to wear overtop as she felt it helped keep the paper mask dry to help keep out particles if someone sneezed of coughed nearby.

I only venture out to go for a walk or to pick up the mail from the superbox down the street from me. So far, if any adult approaches me, they cross the street right away, but in the last few days there has been a lot of children in the neighbourhood playing on their front gardens. They mostly seem to social distance as they play, but they dash around and never seem to notice adults. Yesterday, a girl of around 8 years, noticed me at the last moment. I had stepped out onto the road to keep the distance and she rushed straight at me to move her bike, which was about 3 feet from me...coughing as she ran!

Luckily, I had taken my daughters advice and sewed some fabric masks. Here is my favourite style to wear. I need glasses so with this style, the metal band fits snugly to the nose and does not make my glasses fog up!

I am a bit embarrassed to show the stitching detail of the mask as I had not used my sewing machine much in the last 10 years. It has survived two household moves and somehow the tension got jarred. The first mask was made with rather weird stitches, caused by my rough tension adjustments. And also made with my trifocal glasses not able to adjust to the angle I needed to stitch straight!!!

But as my daughter reminded me, the virus does not inspect the stitches...

The second mask is for my grandaughter. I adjusted the pattern to be shorter and have threaded the elastic through but not sewn it together, My daughter will try it on her, mark the elastic and sew it herself. Once the elastic is sewn together, It is tugged until the stitching is hidden in the the overlap.

I made this one with a flap to insert a filter. I think you can see it here. The first few masks I made were the square ones and I sewed a channel to slide the nose band metal strip into. It slides in and out for washing.



I did not like the look of the poor stitching line for the nose piece channel, as my tension adjustments are very rough estimates. So on these two I have used an iron on fusible hemming  tape to create that channel. I will see how it lasts. I can always sew in a channel if the tape does not work out.

The stitching on this one looks a little better after some more fine tuning. The sewing machine shops are closed of course, so I can not take it there for a tune up!

April Rudolph Days Challenge - Winner

We had 57 wonderful Christmas card entries. I have visited each one and viewed 57 amazing cards! Thank goodness we share a hobby that allows us to be creative while we are quarantined.

I used Random Org to chose our winner. #31   Liz  Cavill

Liz, please drop me an email at  maureenkane@telus.net and let me know which prize you would like. Also advise if you want me to mail your prize within the next couple of weeks or hold for you till a later date.