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)!

Have Yourself a Very Vintage Christmas

For this prompt, we're asking you to create a card with a vintage or retro vibe … either by using new products that are vintage-in-style or by incorporating actual vintage items into your design... or heck, really go for it and use both!

If you've got absolutely NOTHING to use, don't despair, there are a few scans below, from Lauren's personal collection/hoard for you to use if you'd like. Also, one lucky random cardmaker who links up with us this time will win some fab and funky Christmas Ephemera from Lauren's Etsy Shop, Just Enough Stuff!

Here's what we made:

Stephanie's Card

Stephanie says, "I pulled together all sorts of vintage elements from my stash ... game card, ektachrome slide, trading stamps, postage stamps, wildlife stamps, a doily, and a dictionary page.  I had fun layering it all together and finishing with some modern vintage sentiment strips."

Lauren's Card

Lauren says, "I went with mostly real vintage because it's sorta my thang, lol! I went collage-y for the same reason. But of course there are loads of fabulous brand new stamps and paper lines that will get you a similar effect; for that matter you could use vintage elements in a CAS card! There are lots of ays to go with this! I've combined a poinsettia fussycut from a vintage Ideals Magazine, a collage of sheet music and text papers overlaid with some fun Red Stamps and at the end I added ancient lace and brand new (but I've had them awhile) 7 Gypsies velvetty leaves for texture."

♥♥♥

Right-click and save an old-fashioned Belle-centric image to use if you'd like; print at full-size, as a mini, or anywhere in between!

♥♥♥

In addition, one lucky cardmaker will be randomly selected to win:

A Deluxe Christmas Ephemera Assortment

AND a $10 gift voucher to

Lauren's Etsy Shop

Just Enough Stuff!

♥♥♥

Link up your old-fashioned masterpieces right here, by 6pm (EST) on Wednesday, April 8th. Keyword for galleries and Flickr is JB:20:07.

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter