The Shape of Things to Come

Sooooooo many gorgeous entires in the Shape Up gallery prove that beautiful holiday cards come in ALL shapes and sizes. Here are a few that we thought were especially clever:

Bobbi's Treasure

...used beautifully simple silhouetted shapes within a distinctive frame for a card that's a STAR by anyone's standards!

Irene M of Irene's Scrapbook

...placed this beautifully colored bird on a clever half-moon shaped card, which makes this a LITERAL Rockin' Robin!

Beverly Sizemore of Bev's Creative Path

...made SEVEN amazing and unique shaped cards that each made us say, "WOW!" but it's hard to beat a card shaped like Santa on a motorcycle, don't you think?!

And of course we're all wondering who won that fun Ink Road stamp set as well, right? The fine folks at Random.org have decreed that *10* is the lucky number, which means that *Brenda B. of Brenda's Scraps of Life* is our Lucky Winner! Brenda, please email stephanie at smilystef @ aol (dot) com to claim your prize! (dot) com

We'll be back at midnight with a brand new prompt we hope will get glittering reviews! ♥

In Great Shape

We're still Shaping-Up for the New Year ... creating shaped cards (anything other than squares or rectangles will do).

Here are our shapes for this week:

Lauren's Other Card

Lauren says, "Here's another example of choosing a clipart image and re-sizing it to make the perfect customized shaped card. In this case, the mitten is about 6" tall and nearly 4" wide at the thumb. Yes, I raided my treasured hoard of classic Basic Grey papers! I layered up all of my design elements to make the prettiest and most fanciful mitten imaginable, then affixed it to a folded piece of red cardstock and c-a-r-e-f-u-l-l-y cut around the whole thing to make a card that is mitten-shaped but does actually open in a traditional way."

Stephanie's Other Card

Stephanie says, "I turned one of my wonky Christmas Trees into a stand-alone card.  The tall skinny card attached to the back also works like an easel, so the tree can stand on its own on the recipients mantle or desk.  I used four different green holiday papers from my scrap bin cut into triangles and decorated my tree with lots of clear bling and a gold glitter star."

Remember, there's a prize for one lucky participant this week.  Make sure you upload your cards by 6pm EST on February 13th for a chance to win.

Shaping Up for the New Year

Are you still sticking with your New Year's Resolution to Shape-up for the New Year? We're here to help you by making cards that are **SHAPES** Anything other than a square or rectangle will do. We've said many times that we (Stephanie and Lauren) never confer before making and posting our cards, but sometimes quite hilariously serendipitous coincidences occur. Like both of us randomly choosing the same shape... and practically the same "sketch"... but with very different results!

Stephanie's Card

Stephanie says, "I used some paper I hand-marbled in a local class together with the largest Spellbinders Nestabilities Heirloom ornament die to create my shaped card this week (my husband affectionately dubbed it a Christmas Radish).  I added a glitter paper topper and stripes and finished with a large Simon Says Stamp Alexis snowflake and tiny white rub-on sentiment."

Lauren's Card

Lauren says, "Here's my secret for making shaped cards without a traditional template: CLIP ART! I do an image search for the shape I want, find a copyright free version that appeals to me, download it, and print it out at the size I need. This particular bauble shape is one I chose several years ago, and the hard copy I had was a bit too small, so I used my second favorite template trick, which is a version of how we all learned how to make symmetrical paper hearts in the third grade: I folded a piece of cardstock in half, placed the too-small bauble along the fold and traced around half of it... but... at a distance of about 3/4" larger than the shape. When I cut it out, I had a 6" bauble shape that was symmetrical and ready to use as a template! Then I went to town with papers from Prima's "Pretty Pale" collection, plus loads of flowers and pearls!"

And we've got a prize for one lucky participant ... this super-fun *Are You Serious Clark?* Stamp Set from Ink Road Stamps.

Link up here by 6pm (EST) on Wednesday, February 13th. Keyword for galleries and Flickr is JB:19:03.

An InLinkz Link-up