July Rudolph Days Challenge

Once again, it is time for the Rudolph Days Challenge. With these lovely summer days now, it is hard to think of Christmas. But we must make time to create some Christmas cards or we will be swamped trying to make them at the last minute!

Many of you have asked me if we are safe from the forest fires. Yes, we are very safe, but there are 258 fires currently burning in my province. 5,000 proerties are under evacuation, and 16,500 properties are on evacuation alert. That alert means they must be packed and ready to go on very short notice. 3,320 very brave men and women are fighting the fires and we just had 100 firefighters arrive from Mexico. As always, many Native fire fighters have joined in to firefight as well.

The town of Lytton was burned completely at the beginning of the month. My sister built a new house on some land near Spences Bridge and retired there. The Lytton fire has grown so much it now endangers her town. My son-in-law has a Father and Step Mother who alwo live in the danger zone. Their house is in an alert area and they also have land with camping trailers near 100 Mile House, another area under alert. It is scary for them!

We go through this wild fire season every year, but that huge heat dome and 100 plus degree weather I mentioned in my June post, made everything so hot and dry. Fires can be started from lightening, sparks from passing trains, careless smokers, careless campers/hikers, etc. It is so scary and dangerous for so many people. There are not enough places for the homeless to go and hotels and motels are full everywhere nearby. The government is asking people to stay out of fire danger areas and cancel or change their vacation plans as they need every available room for the displaced evacuees.

Now, back to our challenge. I have made two cards. The first is a Hunky Dory Nativity scene. It only has three layers for the scene itself so as to keep the depth of the card down. The background papers are snippets from 12x12 scrapbook papers. I think I bought them for a wedding album. The banner is a metallic shimmer snippet and the Nativity border is of course from Hunky Dory. The North Star is a Memory Box die and the Merry Christmas was a gift from a scrappy friend who sent me a set of gold and of silver sentiments. I love them as they are small, but heavily glittered, so they stand out!

My second card has a scene that I made with a Find It Media frame die. Frame dies are starting to become my favourite type of die. I cut this with a snippet of plain white cardstock but now wish that I had used a white or even a silver sateen card. I was trying to use up snippets on my desk and so...

The teal/green glitter paper is from the dollar store and the red mirri card is from there as well. They had three huge sheets of red, green, blue, silver and gold for $1.25. The sheets were maybe 11x19. I am almost out of the red now and sadly they do not carry it any longer. The Merry and Bright sentiment is a Sue Wilson Festive Collections die. I really enjoy those Sue Wilson dies. I try to pick up every one that my local shop brings in!

Linda at Snails Space blog has made up the cutest tags.

They will be so perfect this holiday season for wine and cheese parties! I love the image too..so very, very cute. Those little Santa hats made me snile! I can just picture a beautiful table setting for a wine and cheese party with these lovely tags taking top billing. Please pop over to Linda's blog and leave her a lovely comment.

Jenny at Cardsarus blog has made us two lovely cards featuring some tags that she made. The first is a beautiful vintage looking card with lots of texture and shimmer! I love the vintage Old World looking Santa on the Christmas bauble. It has a sort of old looking shimmery frosted look. The snow on the leaves and the corrugated card work together to make this a lovely vintage card.

For her second card, Jenny has made this adorable snowman tag card. I think it is so darn cute. The use of the greenery behind the tag really sets it off and of course it calls out for that lovely hollographic shimmer background mat! With the same shimmer as a mat behind the card background, it really makes the tag stand out. I hope you will follow the hyperlink and drop by Jenny's blog and leave her a lovely comment.

Looking forward to your entries and remember to leave a comment ofn this post when you enter. Our prize this month is this Tutti Designs Forest Friends Nativity die.

June Rudolph Days Challenge Winner

We had 42 fabulous entries this month. Not bad for summer!

I know it is hard to work on Christmas cards when it is hot and dry out. It has been a sweltering 43 degrees here for the last few days. We do not have central air conditioning as it normally does not get that hot here. July and August can bring mid 30"s but never 42-43 degrees in June!!!

My daughter gave us a portable air conditioner unit and we kept to the one room in our basement where we had it set up. We have spent the last several nights sleeping on the recliners down there. We have a walk out basement that faces south so there would have been no relief from the heat without that generous gift. Of course all fans, air conditioners etc were sold out everywhere. We had a good chuckle about the fact that we gave two window style air conditioners away a couple of years ago! The one my daughter gave us was small for the size of the room so it could only keep the temperature around 80 to 85. But we were glad to have it be able to do that! Needless to mention, I have not been round to visit all of you yet... You do not have much energy when it is that hot. I plan to visit the rest of you now as the heat is finally moving on and is heading into Alberta, the province east of us. Those poor people...

I used random org to chose our winner and it is # 27, Lynne.

Lynne, could you drop me an email with your address so I can mail your prize to you. My email is maureenkane@telus.net