We Wish You a Vintage Christmas

We're still celebrating "An Old Fashioned Christmas" and you still have plenty of time to link up your own vintage --or vintage inspired--  masterpiece! In fact there's even a little prize this fortnight, from Lauren's Etsy Shop, Just Enough Stuff! Here's what we made this week:

Lauren's Other Card(s)

Lauren says, "Darn, I wish I didn't have so many EXTRA handmade holiday cards ready to send on December first", said nobody ever!!! Yep, I sort of accidentally wound up with TWO cards this week. One of them is nearly all actual vintage bits and the other is almost entirely new, but vintage-style products. I wonder if you can guess which is which? To find out, click through to my blog, where all shall be revealed!"

Stephanie's Other Card

Stephanie says, "I piled on a whole lot of vintage goodness on this week's card ... vintage dictionary page, receipt book, three kinds of trading stamps and a few other vintage-like goodies from my stash."

Scroll down to the original post (just below this one) for details on the prize and to access the Linky tool! ♥

An Old-Fashioned Christmas

This week at Jingle Belles we're going back in time ... we're asking you to create a card with a vintage or retro vibe … either by using new products that are vintage-in-style or by incorporating actual vintage items into your design (or heck, really go for it and use both).

Here's how we went vintage this week:

Stephanie's Card

Stephanie says, "I recently returned from California where I was able to attend a Print-makers' Fair.  At one booth, I picked-up a few tiny vintage cards including this vintage boot in a roller skate filled with roses.  I wasn't sure how I would use it ... but I loved it.  I love how it paired perfectly with several designer papers with vintage designs including some numbers, text, flourishes and holly.  Sentiment is once again Bluebird Typed Christmas (apparently my go to sentiment set)."

Lauren's Card

Lauren says, "My card was inspired by this week's Sketch Saturday (#562) because that funky-cool angle is just so awesome! My vintage bits are actual vintage, from my stash of goodies, and include that lovely Jingle Bells sheet music from an old songbook, the (well-hoarded!) German-Scrap bells; plus a red doily that may have been "liberated" from my mom's dining room, so shhhhh don't tell her lol! I've mixed in some modern patterned paper in semi-muted shades that went well with the bells, and finished off with loads of dimensional flowers and leaves."

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Just in case you have ABSOLUTELY NOTHING even vaguely vintage-inspired in your stash, here are a couple of scans from Lauren's personal collection of ephemera for you to use if you'd like:

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To further inspire you, we've got a little prize for one (randomly selected) lucky cardmaker who links up with us this fortnight:

A Christmas Ephemera Assortment

 like this one, as well as a $10 credit to select anything else you'd like from Lauren's Etsy Shop, Just Enough Stuff

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Link up as many times as you want, between now and 6pm (EST) on Wednesday, May 22. Keyword for galleries and Flickr is JB:19:10.

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

A Very Very Merry Sketchmas!

Many thanks to everyone who played along this fortnight and made such *BEAUTIFUL* versions of Stephanie's sketch! You definitely make it very, very hard to choose just a few cards to feature, and if you haven't had a good long look through the Sketch Gallery yet, we definitely suggest an inspirational stroll! Meanwhile here are a few cards we especially loved this time:

Kathe of Kathe's Adventures

...made two glorious CAS masterpieces, it was extremely hard to choose just one, so you should definitely click through and see the other!

Aimslee of Paper Paisleys Art Adventures

...combined a bunch of amazing ink-centric techniques (you should really go read her blog post!) with some gorgeous vintage style collage elements to make her beautifully artistic card!

Jenni (aka Mom2Two) of Wish I Was Scrappin'

...also made two completely wonderful cards using tag shapes she cleverly up-cycled (our favorite technique!) from store-bought cards received last year! 

We'll be back at Midnight with a good old fashioned brand new theme, we hope to see you then! ♥

Oh SKETCH-mas Tree

We're still making cards based on Stephanie's beautiful sketch, which, if you recall, looked a bit like this:

Here's what we made this week:

Stephanie's Other Card

Stephanie says, "Last week's card recipe worked so well, I followed it again this week with a glittery star tag and tiny typed sentiment from Hello Bluebird Typed Christmas."

Lauren's Other Card

Lauren says, "I've done a much looser interpretation of the sketch this week, but i think you can see the "bones", right? Because I finally got my hands on the fabulous Sizzix "Home for the Holidays" die set, with that amazing retro car, so of course I absolutely HAD TO use it. And the shape of the car sort of dictated the shape of my medallion, so I really had to turn it in the other direction on the card. But the great thing about a wonderful sketch is, you can do ANYTHING with it!"

Scroll down to the original post to see all of the amazing cards already in the readers' gallery and link up your own masterpiece!

We Wish You a Merry SKETCH-mas

We're feeling a little bit sketchy at ♥JINGLE BELLES♥ this fortnight, thanks to the super sketch-creation skills of Stephanie, who's made this beautiful roadmap to inspire our cards!

And here are the cards we made this week:

Stephanie's Card

Stephanie says, "I always buy fun tags at the after Christmas sales like this cute Yeti to have for card making.  I paired him with a Taylored Expressions Plaid embossed background and a tiny typed sentiment from Hello Bluebird Typed Christmas."

Lauren's Card

Lauren says, "I (finally!) used this beautiful (and frankly hoarded) vintage-inspired Santa illustration from October Afternoon for my focal point, then filled out the rest of the sketch elements with a fussy-cut sentiment banner and some miscellaneous red paper scraps. It's super, super simple and yet I love how it turned out!"

Link your sketchtastic creations right here by 6pm (EST) on Wednesday, May 8th. Keyword for galleries and Flickr is JB:19:09.

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

recycle... reuse... and JINGLE!

We loved seeing all of the creative recycling in the gallery the last two weeks ... here are a few that really rocked the recyling.

Robyn of Waterlily Cards by Robyn

turned a Twinnings Tea Box into this fabulous holiday card ... her creative layout allowed her to use the entire panel with her sentiment covering-up the text on the box.

A. Rose of Sundaystamper Papercrafts

turned one of our favorite vintage shopping bag designs into an entire herd of Santa's reindeer ... love the embossed background for a fabulous neutral design.

Jane Willis of Onions and Paper

combined crafting with her granddaughters with recycling some acrylic packaging

for these fabulous holly leaves.

And ... drum roll please ... the winner of our stampy giveaway is:

Beverly of Bev's Creative Path with this golden beauty.  Send us your e-mail address & we'll get your goodies in the mail.

Check back at midnight where we'll be getting Sketchy With It.

Joy to the Earth

We're still celebrating EARTH Day at Jingle Belles by creating cards featuring recycled elements.

Here are our examples of recycling this week:

Lauren's Other Card

Lauren says, "I raided the recycling bag back in December, when a beautiful catalog arrived whose cover had birch trees with fairy lights. There was text at the top and bottom, but I knew that the center section that would be exactly the right size for a tall card and that it wouldn't need much embellishing. I added a couple of mats (gold metallic and wood veneer seemed like good choices) and rescued a sheet music star from the big box of diecuts. A couple of dimensional poinsettias and a sentiment sticker later and I called it good!"

Stephanie's Other Card

Stephanie says, "My card includes multiple recycled elements ... the bokah sky is from a 2018 holiday card; the trees in the background are cut from Studio Calico packaging; and the silver on the car & wheels was recycled from a specialty paper sample book from the local print shop that our marketing team lets me have every year when the new one comes out.  I even pulled the paper for my present and tree out of the trash can by my studio table."

Remember, you have until Wednesday at 6pm EST to upload your recycled creations.