holly jolly!

just when we think we could not possibly be MORE delighted by our fellow ♥JINGLE BELLES♥ talent, cleverness, and beautiful workmanship... (or work womanship?!) along comes another set of unbelievably cool holiday cards to blow us away!

here are a few especially amazing innovations that we found particularly impressive this week:

laurie from SCS

laurie is quite *BRILLIANTLY* making her christmas photo cards in advance by creating beautiful designs that leave space for a family picture to be added later!

deborah frings of deb's gems

deborah earns kudos for that gorgoues texty background & her clean and classy design; with bonus points for fabulousness in the "tall card" format!

jaqi van jaarsveld of jaqi's crafty corner

jaqi may have envisioned an "easy peasy" card... but it's the extra little touches (like those amazing gold-edged leaves!) which elevate this one to the next level!

having singled out these lovely ladies, we really MUST emphasize how wonderful ALL of the "holly and the ivy" cards were, and if you haven't seen them yet, please do scroll down! truly, there was not a single one that didn't dazzle us...we just wish we could see the reactions of the lucky recipients in december! thank you, JINGLE BELLES for yet another stellar week!

we'll be back at midnight with a fun change-of-pace for you! ...has anyone seen the calendar...??!?!

the holly & the ivy

this week's JINGLE BELLES prompt is yet another festive song cue (nope...we never do get tired of them...why do you ask?) and this time, we're "going green"! for the holly and the ivy we'd like you to incorporate holiday foliage into your masterpiece. this could of course be literal holly and/or ivy; but then there's mistletoe, too, and did you know that poinsettias--whether red, white, green or even PINK --are all actuallly considered leaves and NOT flowers? so there's lots of room for ideas to "grow" on you! :)

here's what we did:

Stephanie's Holly

Stef says "I started with some fantastic velvet holly paper from SEI's Winter Song Collection and then added some red Cardinal & green holly stickers to fill in the branches. I finished with an adhesive border sticker along the side & chipboard sentiment along the bottom."

lauren's collage of foliage

lauren says, "being a big fan of festive greens myself, i've covered all the bases: my card has holly--in the form of vintage fussy-cut illustrations, stickers, and printed cardstock frames; mulberry paper ivy leaves; poinsettias of the home-made AND store-bought variety; plus a mistletoe-bedecked tag! something else of which i'm quite enamoured are the pixie sketches miss kirsty draws for us each month...and i think this one is particularly FAB!"

and now it's time to see what you will do: grab your stamps, your patterned paper, your embellies...or heck... even some silk or paper florals!... but let's see your best holiday foliage cards! the keyword for uploading at SCS or flickr is JB13; inlinkz closes at 6pm (EST) on wednesday, march 30th.

(please link the specific post in which your card is featured and not your whole blog! thanks!)

♥LAUREN♥