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.