While Shepherds Watched their Flocks

This fortnight we're asking you to break out the animals for your holiday card ... it could be a sweet little sheep or perhaps one of Santa's reindeer ... or even a monster or Yeti if you're in a bit of a Halloween mood and want to stretch the theme.

Here's how we interpreted this week's theme:

Stephanie's Card

Stephanie says, "I was hunting through my stash for my animal options, and I saw these fun Scooby-Doo Stickers.  When I looked at them and tried to think about how I might incorporate them, I saw a Christmas tree grounded by the Mystery Machine and topped with the logo.  I figured, what have I got to lose (as I tell my friends, it's just paper), so I gave it a try ... and I giggled a bit when it worked.  I added bits of bling for some tree decoration and attached my Scooby tree to a glittery card base.  I finished with a sentiment that I printed using a groovy font."

Lauren's Card

Lauren says, "As I was getting out my much-loved Lawn Fawn Winter Narwhal mini stamp set, I also found a sadly neglected Critters in the Arctic set, as well as Jen Long's Tons of Love Sizzix stamp and die set AND Rubber Moon's adorable Nerdy Narwhal. (Those latter two, sadly, are out of print though the Lawn Fawn sets are still available.) And since obviously it'd be IMPOSSIBLE to just choose one of the above, I decided to stamp my own little pod of narwhals to star in their own punny card inspired by my favorite Narwhal and Jellie book, "Happy Narwhalidays"! I used stripey Thickers and Doodlebug My Type alphas to create the sentiment, clustered the paper-pieced pod around it, added a few mats and called it good!"

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"While Shepherds Watched Their Flocks" (JB2422) will run until 6pm (Eastern) onWednesday, November 6th and you're invited to link up with us right here at Jingle Belles!

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

Pretty in Pink

Many thanks to EVERYONE who made and linked PINK CHRISTMAS cards for the cure! This year, counting the "extra" cards linked up inside various posts, we amassed a total of 58 PINK CHRISTMAS CARDS, and since Stephanie and Lauren are donating two dollars (each!) per card, that means we'll be making a donation of $232.00 to the Breast Cancer Research Foundation! Thank you for helping us do that! Apart from the fund-raising aspect, this fortnight saw some of the most beautiful cards of the year as well, making it even harder than usual to choose just three, but here, in no particular order, are a trio which particularly caught our eye:

Trina of Phamtastic Design

...created a beautiful, eye-catching, unconventional holiday tree shape from gorgeously colored PINK mushrooms that we just cannot stop staring at!

Sandy of Adventures of a Stamping Writer

...used an incredibly clever reverse-masking tutorial to create a truly lovely wreath in several shades of pink within a single layer of cardstock for a card that's as impressive as it is pretty!

Nora N of A Creative Touch

...went BOLD with several vivid shades of pink, gold embossing, pressure embossing, distressing and... well, every time we look at this beauty we see something new to love! 

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We are truly grateful and appreciative to EVERYONE who took time to make cards, link them, and even go round and leave some love for your fellow Jingle Belles. Thank you so much for making this our favorite challenge of the year! We will be back at midnight with a brand new prompt we hope will have lots of lovely cardmakers FLOCKING around to participate! ;)

Pink Christmas: Week 2

It's the second week of our gala PINK CHRISTMAS celebration here at Jingle Belles, in which we're asking YOU to make holiday cards that are predominantly pink... and WE will donate to the Breast Cancer Research Foundation for each card that gets linked up! Visit the original PINK CHRISTMAS post directly below this one for all the details as well as the Linky Tool to add your cards. 

Meanwhile, here's what we made this week:

Lauren's Other Card

Lauren says, "This week I raided my happy little stash of Doodlebug Design papers, journal tags and stickers to make this sweet (in every sense, lol) little card that's mostly pink... with touches of tan gingerbread and reindeer; as well as some fun green Christmas tree cookies. I used an ancient pink background paper with a strong horizontal element to it, which made lining up the decorative strips super-easy!"

Stephanie's Other Card

Stephanie says, "Since all of my pink designer paper scraps were still out on my table, I decided to combine three of them for this week's card.  I topped the papers with a fun pink Baking Spirits Bright Doodle-Pop from Doodlebug Designs.  I finished with a perfect AMuse sentiment and some pink glittery enamel dots."

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Link your gorgeous PINK CHRISTMAS creations (because YES, you definitely can make as many as you'd like!) on the original post which is directly below this one. This challenge (#JB2421) runs until 6pm (Eastern) on Wednesday, October 23rd. 

PINK CHRISTMAS (For the Cure!)

It's that time again here at Jingle Belles, our favorite prompt of the year: PINK CHRISTMAS! In which you make and link new holiday cards that are predominantly PINK and we (Stephanie and Lauren) donate $2 (apiece!) per card to the Breast Cancer Research Foundation! 

Just to anticipate a few basic questions: Yes, you can link as many cards as you'd like to; and no, your cards don't need to be entirely PINK but it should certainly be the main color! You can use any additional colors that you'd like; and the cards can be any size, shape, theme and style. 

Sound good? Then without further ado, here are our PINK CHRISTMAS cards:

Stephanie's Card

Stephanie says, "I went shopping in my designer paper scraps and pulled out every pink paper I could find (including one of my own inky sprayed papers).  I cut 3/8" strips to cover my card front.  I finished with a fun Doodlebug Designs tag that I matted with a thin white frame to make it pop a bit more against that busy background."

Lauren's Card

Lauren says, "I am currently obsessed with Wendy Vecchi's NOT Your Ordinary Card Collection from Spellbinders, so for this card I broke out the Christmas Add-On Stamp and Die Set and used the triple holly leaf die to very quickly cut lots of layers from textured pink cardstock; which I then inked and stacked, in two five-petal layers for each flower, into poinsettias, finishing off with the three berry cluster at the center, and finally a few tiny stick-on pearls plus a few cuts of the beautiful, delicate greenery die. I used the sentiment stamps from the set and a Build-a-Plaid background made with the second smallest stencil and Pink Peony Archival. A little bit of lace, some darker pink mats and a bit of machine stitching and I was good to go! There's a little more detail about the making of the poinsettias and the use of the Build-a-Plaid Stencils on my blog."

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Link your gorgeous PINK CHRISTMAS creation(s) right here. This challenge (#JB2421) runs until 6pm (Eastern) on Wednesday, October 23rd. 

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

Sketchy Stunners!

This time literally ALL of the holiday cards made for our special sketch challenge were outstanding, so here they are and CONGRATS to everyone who did a brilliant job!

Leslie of L Rose Creates

...added a sweet firelplace and stocking scene to the focal panel and clearly trained holly leaves to go up and down both sides of the card!

Deb of Sendable Sentiments

...chose and elegant gold, cream and navy color palette and added just enough perfect distressing to each element!

Pat G who posts on Instagram

...brilliantly swapped the rectangle and strip shapes from the sketch for poinsettias and holly that make her gorgeous stencilled backdrop stand out even more!

Fabiola of Mon P'tit Monde

...made a completely faithfulversion of the sketch and it turns out to look even lovelier in landscape mode; plus we love the luscious soft snowy colors!

Annette Elias of de Kijkkast

...flipped the sketch horizontally and added impressive amounts of eye-catching dimension and texture... not to mention displaying her amazing coloring skills!

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We'll be back at midnight with a brand new (but seasonally predictable!) prompt we hope will tickle you PINK! ♥ 

Gettin' Sketchy

We're still making cards based on Stephanie's awesome card sketch and you're still invited to join the fun! First here's a reminder of the sketch:

And now, here's how we got sketchy this week:

Lauren's Other Card

Lauren says, "I went almost entirely vintage this week. Only my sentiment is cut from a modern Simple Stories mini journal card... oh and there's a silver metallic cardstock mat layer... but otherwise: the background collage is all vintage paper; the postcard is scanned and re-sized but it's from my IRL collection of vintage postcards. Maybe my favorite things are those beautiful vintage Plaid Trading Stamps that Stephanie found and gifted to me and which not only matched perfectly, they work perfectly as the "strips" in the sketch!"

Stephanie's Other Card

Stephanie says, "I found this adorable vintage Santa & Reindeer image from Pretty Little Studio's Jolly Santa Die Cuts (I wonder which reindeer get their own bed).  I paired it with cardstock banners and a sentiment to wish them all a good night's sleep after their hard work is done.."

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You've got until next Wednesday evening (10-9-24) to link your sketch-inspired cards on the original post, located directly below this one. Remember you can flip it, stretch it, rotate it, smoosh it or change shapes; just make sure we can see "the bones" of the sketch in your card!