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.

Peace on Earth Day!

If you've played along with us in other years, you'll know that we have a few challenges which are the same theme, at the same time, every year.

For instance, the first challenge of October is always Pink Xmas. And the fortnight which includes Earth Day is always "RE-use, RE-cycle, UP-cycle". That's just the way it is!

Which means... it's time to grab that pretty piece of packaging you saved; or the clear plastic bakery box that could be diecut into shaker card awesomeness; or maybe there's a cereal box in the recycling bin that you could decoupage or paint it to make *free* chipboard embellishments? Don't forget the beautiful store-bought holiday cards we receive each December, or those bits of carefully saved gift wrap... those *totally* count too!

Here are the eco-friendly creations we made this week:

Stephanie's Card

Stephanie says, "I save things all year, so I have a selection of elements to choose from for this challenge ... but unfortunately that stash did not survive the recent flooding of our home due to a frozen pipe.  So instead, I pulled a Kleenex Box out of our Recycle Bin, punched a bunch of Hexagons, and made this holiday card with Hexagon Christmas Stamps from STAMPlorations with inspiration from the If You Give a Crafter a Cookie Challenge."

Lauren's Card

Lauren says, "In the spirit of full disclosure I will tell you right off: I used two store-bought cards I received this past December, and they did almost all the work for me!!! I had planned to add some diecut trees or reindeer or... something... but honestly nothing I tried out really worked. Eventually, I stumbled across the ancient Doodlebug sentiment sticker, which featured exactly the same shade of purple as the sky behind the trees. So I just added a few skinny wisteria cardstock mats, plus some fun Eyelet Outlet Snowflake Brads and called it a day!"

And keeping with our recycling theme, one lucky participant will receive a selection of lightly used Hero Arts stamps for their Holiday card making stash including:

Christmas Poster Background

Season's Greetings

Chalkboard Happy Holidays


Three Happy Elves

Link your eco-centric creations right here by 6pm (EST) on Wednesday, April 24th. Keyword for galleries and Flickr is JB:19:08.

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

It's a THREE-for-all!

So many clever and beautiful trios in our "We Three Kings" gallery! You guys always make it really, really hard to feature just a few. But here are three that especially tickled our fancy this fortnight:

LeAnne Pugliese of Wee Inklings

...fielded a trio of trios: three gorgeous Authentique patterned papers, three stars, three enamel dots... there is not one single thing we don't love about this card!

Cornelia of Stempel Spass (Fun Stamping)

...went three for three as well! (We love this trend!) Three happy reindeer, three beautiful funky trees and three jewels on top, all on a gorgeously vibrant neon green background!

Loll of Stamping with Loll

...has only one trio, but what a fabulous one it is: three of the most handsome snowmen ever, with a bonus in the form of that beautifully watercolored sentiment; so dreamy!

♥♥♥

We'll be back at midnight with a brand new prompt which we definitely hope you will treasure and not trash!

Three of a Kind ... working on a Full Christmas House

As you may remember from last week, our current theme is called, "We Three Kings" but actually, we just want to see three of something rather than kings, necessarily. Though of course, three literal kings would definitely qualify. Perhaps wearing adorable holiday sweaters? Because there's a nice big range here, for you to be as creative as you'd like!!! :)

Stephanie's Other Card

Stephanie says, "This week I went with three Christmas Sweater stickers for my trio ... 

mounted on some coordinating cable-knit paper ... 

can you ever have too many Christmas Sweaters?"

Lauren's Other Card

Lauren says, "I had to laugh when I saw the title Stephanie had given this post, because my card has THREE evergreen trees and TWO tiny reindeer, which really IS a 'full house' in poker terms! I raided my stash of pre-diecut scraps for all of the above, which made this a very fast and easy card, leaving me extra time to add loads of machine stitching for more texture!"

Use your TARDIS to jump backwards in time and link up on last week's post... OR... just scroll down to the post directly below this one...