Oh Christmas Sketch, Oh Christmas Sketch

Yep... it's SKETCH-mas time at Jingle Belles, and once again we are lucky enough to have Stephanie doing the honors!

Stay true to the general feel of the sketch, but for example the tag shape can be another shape or embellishment you like; you can rotate, flip or stretch it. Just make sure we can see the "bones" of the sketch!

Here's what we created:

Stephanie Card

Stephanie says, "I fell in love with this Grinch Stamp set from Gina Marie Designs.  I stamped his hand on the green tag and then paper pieced the ornament and sleeve.  I used a metallic pen for the ornament cap.  I added some Eyelet Outlet Clear Swirl Bling flourishes and finished with some EO Holiday Bling in the tag corner."

Lauren's Card

Lauren says, "I flipped the sketch horizontally, and chose a mug rather than a tag, but I think I've done a fairly faithful adaptation. Most of my ingredients are Prima, from the Santa Baby collection; plus a bit of non-holiday paper from Pretty Pale. I used tape for the sketch's horizontal band and a Tim Holtz/Sizzix die for those pink flourishy things, which I thought looked a bit like steam rising off the delightful mug of cocoa."

And one lucky participant will get the awesome Laurels Dies from Paper Smooches.

Link your sketch-inspired creations right here by 6pm (EST) Wednesday, May 6th. Keyword for galleries and Flickr is JB:20:09

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

"GREEN" Ribbons!

Ordinarily, Blue Ribbons are the recognition for the very best and most delightful work, but when it comes to Earth Day, it seems like we should color shift a bit!

The recycling theme is always one of our very favorite challenges, with some of the coolest and most creative cards, and this year was no exception. Of course we award a "Green Ribbon" to everyone who participated, but here are just a few that particularly caught our eye:

Sharon B of Sea View Scrapping

...made this amazingly beautiful and textured background using recycled tissue paper, cling film and an iron; you really have to go see the process! (HOW had we never even heard of that??!)

Bonnie of Stamping With Klass

...created the most realistic snow EVER, by placing a piece of packing foam behind the diecut windows of her astonishing CAS card. Surely we're not the only ones saying, "WHY didn't I think of that?" right now?

Barbara of The Knackered Grouse

...rescued this beautiful photo of Earth from a worn and torn coffeetable book and of course it's the PERFECT background for Santa's reindeer to fly past isn't it? (Note to self: next year use the Earth in our Earth Day cards!)

Many thanks to everyone who participated, we know we say it every time, but we truly do love seeing EVERY SINGLE CARD! We'll be back with a brand new theme at midnight... though our plans are a bit SKETCHY... :)

Red and GREEN...

...the "GREEN" as in ecologically sound, because we are only five days away from Earth Day 2020, and we're still making holiday cards with a recycled, reused or upcycled element!

Here's what we made this week:

Lauren's Other Card

Lauren says, "The inspiration for this card was the two-inch-round metal lid of a hot cocoa mix canister. The other day when I was adding a teaspoon of the cocoa mix to my coffee (a combo I *highly* recommend!) I saw it and thought, "That would make a cool frame!" The rest of the cocoa mix is now in a Tupperware, since the original canister has no lid, because it's HERE, lol. I punched a circle of glittery trees from an old Xmas card, matted it with a slightly larger circle of wood-grain packaging as a mat, and placed them inside the cocoa lid frame. Since it's 1/4" deep, this card will have to be tucked in with a present, or given to the recipient irl, but that's ok with me. In order to make it look like a frame and not a cocoa lid glued to the front of my card, I needed to sort of "build up" the area around it, for which I used dimensional flowers and velvety leaves."

Stephanie's Other Card

Stephanie says, "I started with a piece of polka dot packaging from Donna Downey for my card base.  Then I recycled a page from a vintage Ideals Christmas Magazine for my focal image adding stripes for two thin mats.  I finished with a Hero Arts Stacking Snowflakes sentiment and some coordinating enamel dots ... love the vintage image in one of my favorite colors (often rather than more expensive colored pictures in the magazines, they would tint the paper on an entire page a single color (like pink in this instance) with both pictures and poems).

Scroll down to the original Peace On Earth Day post to see the amazing readers' gallery and link up your own "GREEN" masterpiece!

Peace on EARTH Day

Those of you who have followed us over the years know that we have a special place in our hearts for EARTH DAY.

So our EARTH DAY prompt each year has been all about RECYCLING ... and we'd like you to create a holiday card that features re-cycled, re-used or up-cycled elements.  You know you've got that stash of things that you saved because they were just too pretty to throw away ... break them out and create with them.

In the past we've used everything from Kleenex Boxes & Soda Cans to Gift Wrap and we *always* have a lot of fun making our own cards and admiring yours!

Here is what we recycled this year.

Stephanie's Card

Stephanie says, "We've been numbering our quarantine days by rolls of toilet paper used at our home, so I thought it would be fun to recycle one of those cardboard toilet paper centers and use it to paint the background of my card on a scrap of kraft cardstock ... and I used advice from my mother-in-law and used a cereal bag as my work surface (so all that painty mess was on the recycled plastic). A Taylored Expressions Big Grumpy seemed like the only reasonable choice for a such a background paired with a Simon Says Stamp Ho Ho Postage Sentiment (because doesn't he just scream cheer).  I finished with a few enamel stickers to complete the sign."

Lauren's Card

Lauren says, "I'm the kind of person who saves the pop art tissue box or flowery tag off her new jeans, so if a papercrafting product comes in pretty packaging, OF COURSE I'm going to re-use it! In this case, the beautiful backers from Prima flowers (green ledger) and Little Birdie chipboard (small woodgrain) were used as my interior background and tiny deer, respectively. Some old paint chips became funky fab trees and the clear plastic from a salad bar container serves as the window in my shaker card, which I've filled with super-fun new Eyelet Outlet Snowflake Sequins"

Link your Earth-friendly creations right here by 6pm (EST) on Wednesday, April 22nd aka Earth Day! Keyword for galleries and Flickr is JB:20:08.

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

Old-Fashioned Fabulousness

We loved seeing all your beautiful takes on vintage and retro style cards this fortnight! As usual, you've made it very hard to feature just a few, but here are three cards that made our old-fashioned hearts especially happy:

Fabiola of Mon P'tit Monde

...captured the vintage spirit with a beautiful monotone image, which she surrounded with subtle details like embossing, lacy diecuts and just the tiniest amount of bling! 

Gail of I Like Paper

...made an absolutely charming vintage postcard image the centerpiece of a truly charming collage card!

Sue of Paper Pleasure

...started with the sweetest old-fashioned lady and surrounded her with just the right elements from her stash! plus... she MADE those amazing flowers! 

♥♥♥

And now it's time to see who wins that fun prize from Lauren's Etsy Shop, Just Enough Stuff! The fine folks at Random.org have selected lucky number...

#10!

which means that

LeAnne Pugliese

is our lucky winner!

Congratulations, LeAnne, please email Lauren at

llaurenb (at) hotmail.com to claim your prize!

Many thanks to everyone who played along, we truly love seeing every single card! We'll be getting down to earth at midnight with a brand new challenge... hope to see you then! ♥

Spirit of Christmas Past

This week we're still celebrating A Very Vintage Christmas this week by making cards featuring real vintage items, or new things with a vintage vibe. Or maybe you're an overachiever and want to do both.

Here's what we made this week:

Lauren's Other Card

Lauren says, "The robin postcard I built the card around, is from my own postcard collection, so rather than use the actual card, I scanned and reprinted. This also meant I could resize it just a bit smaller, to fit more comfortably on my A7 card. The poinsettia illustration in the lower background is part of a page from an old Ideals Christmas Magazine. The rest of my elements are new(ish, lol) from my lss Paper Anthology: the beautiful grey plaid Simple Stories paper, Petaloo burlap poinsettia and lovely realistic Prima holly leaves, not to mention the doilies and twill ribbon. I don't think I've ever made a holiday card with this much GREY on it, but I quite like the result!"

Stephanie's Other Card

Stephanie says, "I had plans to go a different route this week, but got sucked-in by the vintage bits and bobs still on my studio table.  I used the other half of the doily from last week's card, a vintage page of sheet music from a falling-apart-hymnal, and more vintage postage and holiday stamps.  I finished with a row of champagne jewels, because that color always says vintage to me."

Scroll down to the original post to see the fabulous Readers' Gallery, catch a peek at the prize, and link up your own Old-Fashioned Masterpiece(s)!