January Rudolph Days Challenge

Welcome to the first Rudolph Days Challenge for 2023. This is always an exciting month...a month to set new crafting goals, to plan some new cardmaking or scrapbooking ideas and designs, and to just have fun!

I have some news to share as well. We had several entries for the design team opening, and I finally got Al to draw the winner. I would like to welcome Marjeta from Marjetina ustvarjalnica (Marjeta's Creative Company blog), to our team. She will partner up with Sam who has been such a champ about being short a partner! Once you arrive at Marjeta's blog, there is translate button near the top that you can press to get an English version to read. Sam and Marjuta will be our designers next month.

Our designers have been busy creating cards to inspire you! First up is Jenny at Cardsarus blog. Jenny's first card features this pretty wreath! It looks to me that she has stamped the images individually in a circular mannner, and added some of the same stamps in the corners. I love the look of this and also love the matching images on the envelope! I am going to try to match my envelopes this year too, as I thnk it makes the card look fabulous!

Jenny made a second card in the new long, slim card style. This style is very popular over here right now. My local store has all sorts of dies and stamps etc in the slim sizes. I think Santa likes them too, as he brought me one of each this year! I quite like the glitter card Jenny used for the background. It makes her images pop off the card front! I am thinking these might be upcycled images but we will have to pop over to Jenny's blog to know for sure. Be sure and leave her some praise while you are over there!

Sue has been very busy as well. Sue has made a series of cards in differing background shimmery colours. They feature a very pretty Christmas bauble die. It always amazes me how many cards Sue makes for us to view. Be sure to pop over to Sue's blog, Sue's Crafty Corner, and leave her some praise! I am looking forward to reading about this very pretty die!

My first card showcases an image that was a gift from a friend, many years ago. I like the quiet, peaceful feel of this little scene. The image is embossed in black embossing powder and colourd with copic inks. l applied lots of star dust stickles on the trees and used a sparkle pen over the image and setiment. I used a snippet of quite thin copper mirri card from the $ store for the mat, and used another snippet of snowflake DP for the background. That background paper was from a really old kit that I picked up at the $ store as well.

My second card features a Hunky Dory cardfront. I love assembling these when I am bored! They always perk me up...The background is from my snippet files and the card itself is a 5x7 inch card. I managed to get red 5x7 envelopes this year but forgot to take a photo of the card with the envelope before it was delivered to our neighbours.

I only use these Hunky Dory cards for hand delivered cards. All the layers tend to make the cards too thick to mail with normal postage. We usually see the same group of family and friends during the Christmas season, so I bring these layered type cards along when we meet up for coffee, cards, or just meet up for fun, during the lead up to Christmas.

Al is still working on his recovery. He has a heart imaging test coming up in February that will hopefully tell if he is a candidate for a surgery to correct his aortic heart valve. They have ruled him not well enough for a valve replacement, but are testing to see if he could perhaps get a stent there instead. Fingers crossed, as that would give him more energy as aortic stenosis is very draining. After having already been through the quadruple bypass bypass surgery a bit more than a year ago, he would be quite happy to only have to deal with a stent this time!

Our prize this month is this Sizzix, Tim Holtz die set, Holiday Brushstroke #3.