Friday, September 7, 2012

Going POSTAL!

We're always thrilled to have our fellow ♥JINGLE BELLES♥ suggest ideas for a great holiday card prompt, so please join us in welcoming our very lovely guest star, Lela Meinke!  Lela (you may know her as Serenity_Stamper) has been stamping for a verrrry long time. Back in the day, she wrote feature articles for RubberStampMadness. She’s active on Splitcoast, and she is a Stampin’ Up! Demonstrator. You can check out her ♥AMAZING♥ gallery at SCS by clicking the link for her card, and you can also check out her Stampin' Up Demonstrator Web Site; be sure to drop by one (or both!) of those fine sites and leave her some love!

Lela wrote in with a brilliant idea that we've never done before, so of course we invited her along to make a card with us! Lela suggested we build cards around postoids or real postage or even postal images; we've added in a couple twists of our own, so this fortnight you can choose from a few different-- but all MAIL-RELATED-- options:

make a card that includes faux or real postage or postal images 
(mailboxes, postcards, stamps, cancellations, etc)
OR
create a holiday postcard
OR
make a holiday card with a matching (decorated) envelope


Lela says, "This card combines so many elements that I love: I love roses. I love all things postal. I love the distress technique. I love collage. And I love the holiday season! I decorate my family room with a rose theme every December. Our holiday wreath has roses too. I’ve saved that cancelled postage-stamp for a while, and it served as the perfect inspiration and focal point for this challenge. Those two red roses holding the banner are from the goody-bag prize I won from Lauren!”


Stephanie says, "As the wife of a postal carrier, I naturally love to collect mail-related images to use in my creations. These bright and beautiful EAD Christmas Stamp Stickerz are so very appealing that I only needed a few strips of cardstock and an EAD Christmas Sentiment Rub-On to make one of my fastest holiday cards ever!”

Lauren says, "Amongst many other types of vintage paper, I collect postcards. I couldn't quiiiiiite bear to part with any of them, so I did the next best thing: scanned, printed and distressed both the front and back of one of my favorites (which was mailed to two young girls by their aunt, from Bethlehem, Pennsylvania in 1907!) to put on this card. I used Kimber McGray's current card challenge sketch at Two Peas for the layout of my design."

We hope you'll be inspired to try one (or all!) of our fun options and that everyone will be "Going POSTAL" with us this fortnight! To inspire you further, we thought it would be appropriate for one lucky cardmaker to get a sweet little crafty package of christmas goodies in the mail. we'll randomly select a link number from the submitted cards, so you'll get another chance with every new card you make which fits this challenge!


You have until 6pm (EST) on Wednesday, September 19th to link up your mail-related creations; use keyword JB-12-19 in galleries and our flickr group, and be sure to HAVE FUN! ♥

7 comments:

Marianne said...

Not one of the easiest prompts (for me at least) but I guess that's the fun part of these challenges. At least I'm happy to see that there are many interpretations possible. I admire people who can put many layers on their cards and still make them look stunning (Lauren), but I think my personal style is more akin to Stephanie's. I guess I'll just need to do some serious rummaging in my stash this weekend LOL.

Leslie Hanna said...

HA! I know several people who work for the USPS and they won't let me say "going postal". :) However, they do have me collecting the stamp brochures for images. This one looks like fun!

Unknown said...

A fun and unusual challenge. You've all done a wonderful job with it.

Darlene said...

WOW! What a fun challenge! Thanks to Lela for commenting on my card over on SCS and letting me know about this challenge! The sample cards are awesome! Thanks again for the fun!
Darlene
DAR'S CRAFTY CREATIONS

MarvA1ix said...

Hmmm, nothing postal in my stamps, so I went for the matching card. I am so glad to have this challenge, because it's going to remind me to make that matching envelope, which I always do with Christmas cards, but used to find myself doing it later. This was fun!

Anonymous said...

beautiful and very creative cards ladies! this was such a fun CHALLENGE. :)

Deborah Frings said...

Super cards ladies - this one has proved to be a real challenge. But I've made it - at last!! Now that I've got the layout sorted - I'll make a few more!!