Santa's Extra Nice List

We had so much fun seeing how each of you created with your new goodies.  Here are a few that made Santa's Extra Nice List.

Brenda B of

Brenda's Scraps of Life

Created with a gorgeous new falling snow embossing folder ... 

she added ink & holographic embossing powder for extra snowy sparkle.

Helen of

Helen's Craft Haven

used some new designer paper to create this adorable snowy scene ...

we loved his fun winter hat & scarf.

Eliz Stewart of

Paper Sweetness

discovered a new technique that gave her colored image

a soft ethereal look ... so festive and pretty.

Come back at midnight to see what our next holiday card inspiration will be (PS ... there will be another prize)

That's a *WRAP*!

I don't suppose it's a huge surprise that our fellow card-makers also love to save bits of pretty giftwrap and tags to reuse. Which makes it even more fun to marvel at all of the creative and beautiful ways you've found to USE such bounty! Before we show off a few cards that made us especially happy this fortnight, here's a little badge we made for occasions such as this, in addition to the more generic version on the sidebar.

And now here are some cards that especially ROCKED, in our humble opinion:

Rose of My Happy Place

...used a surplus-to-requirements clear Treat Bag to add an extra-clever shaker element to her fun and festive card!

Bonnie of Stamping with Klass

...shows that you can feature just a tiny bit of leftover giftwrap -in this case a snowman's face- and make it the centerpiece of a CAS masterpiece!

Sue Culotti aka Gregzgurl on Splitcoast Stampers

...reminds us that copper giftwrap is every bit as lovely as silver and gold; as well as impressing us with her amazing abilty to perfectly photograph such a shiny, reflective card!

Of course we're all dying to know who won the prize that was on offer this time, right? According to the fine folks at Random.org the lucky number is #100 so that means our lucky winner is...

♥Kathe D!♥

CONGRATULATIONS!

Please send your snail mail address to 

Lauren at llaurenb (at) hotmail (dot) com 

to claim your prize!

We'll be back at Midnight with a brand new prompt... in every sense of those words! :)

Delicious Leftovers

Thanks for sharing your holiday treats with the Jingle Belles ... it was so fun seeing all the different ideas.

Here are a few of our favorite eats & drinks:

Elisabeth of Paper Anthology

die cut and decorated a whole plate of holiday cookies ... 

the addition of the doily and striped twine were both perfect finishing touches.

Jane Willis of Onions and Paper

shared Rudolph the *very* red-nosed reindeer and his bottle of Christmas spirits ... 

we loved how his Santa hat is even a bit askew ... so much holiday spirit!

Amy T of Tsuruta Designs

cleverly combined stamps & dies to produce three different

mugs of holiday cheer ... Oh What Fun!

And now I know we're all waiting do find out who wins that fun prize, right?

The completely random selection is:  ***Lorraine Mastalski of Paper Vernissage***! please email smilynstef@aol.com so Santa can get that on its way! ♥  and for an extra, here's her adorable card.

It's hard to believe this is our LAST official challenge of 2018, isn't it? We've had so much fun this year and we hope you have, as well. Many thanks to everyone who followed along, linked up, left comments and just generally made the first eleven months of our year fly by so quickly! We'll post one last link-up tomorrow, for those who aren't quite finished their cards yet... and of course we'll be back on January 1, 2019 to start this whole thing all over again! Happy happy holidays to everyone! 

XOXOXOX

Stephanie and Lauren

Bloomin' Awesome!

It seems we are not the only cardmakers in the world who looooove to create with holiday blossoms. A quick glance at the Mele Kalikimaka gallery very clearly shows that absolutely every card was enitirely gorgeous! Here are a few that especially tickled our fancy:

Robyn Oliver of Waterlily Cards

...combined stencils and diecuts in a way that sings with CAS perfection!

Maria of Rieslingmama

...used a variety of bright, beautiful shades to instantly make this impressionist poinsettia stamp feel totally tropical!

Janie Rinta of The Crafter's Castle

...proves that amazing Christmas flowers can come in ANY color, including this luscious shade of denim blue!

Many thanks to everyone who played along, we loved seeing every single card! We'll be back with a midnight snack for your creative appetite! 

Christmas Creature Feature

We loved all of the creative Christmas Creatures that filled the gallery ... here are a few we thought were extra fun.

Trina P of Phamtastic Design

not only featured an adorable wintry penguin ... 

she also provided a tutorial for an amazing reflection technique.

Jen Mitchell of I Create

rocked a perfect CAS design with our favorite grumpling Moose ...

because everyone has at least one grumpling at Christmas.

Toni at Frankie Helps Craft

used masking, drawing & coloring

with some white ink splatters for snow 

to create an absolutely perfect winter scene.

Come back and join us at midnight for a little *blooming* fun.

In the PINK! ♥♥♥

We *ALWAYS* love the kindness and skill that goes into all of your amazing PINK CHRISTMAS creations, and this year is definitely no exception. If you haven't yet treated yourself to a thorough scroll through the gallery, please do, there is soooooooooo much inspiration to be found, we really did have a very hard time featuring just a few cards, which we'll get to in a minute.

But first, we know that everyone is longing to hear how much money you helped us raise for the Breast Cancer Reasearch Foundation! Counting posts with multiple cards... (for which we thank you VERY much indeed!) ...there were a grand total of *69*! We have both pledged $2 per card, which means we multiply 69 x 4 and come up with $276! Thank you so very much to EVERYONE who participated and extra special thanks to those who linked more than once, we are so grateful for your help each year! ♥♥♥

And now just a few shout outs to some of our faves:

Jerri of Coloring Outside the LineZ

...says she wasn't sure about *PINK* penguins at first. Jerri, we had no such doubts, they are AWESOME,! ♥

Bonnie of Stamping With Klass

...was worried that this amazingly lovely creation might not have enough pink in it, but we beg to differ! Granted it's just a splash... but it stands out all the more against the gloriously textural white!

Viv of Viv's Visuals

...created this serene but sparkly minimalist masterpiece on which we just cannot stop feasting our eyes!

Once again MANY thanks and a big WOW not just for the number of cards, but the fact that each and every one was exceptionally lovely! We'll be back at midnight with a brand new prompt we hope will appeal to your love of CREATURE comforts?! :)

SNOW-tacular

We loved seeing all of the version of SNOW in the gallery ... so white a pretty for sure.

Here are a few that caught our eye.

Julie of Crafted by Jules

used the white space of her card to create an adorable snowy card.  The slight black shadow on the die cut make it pop perfectly off the white background.  CAS Perfection.

AJ of AJ's Creative Energy

shared a *Snowman Selfie* that made us giggle outloud ... love that little guy trying to squeeze into the picture at the back ... and those colors just pop for a fun snowy scene.

Aimeslee Winans of Paper Paisleys Art Adventures Blog

created this gorgeous, glittery, layered monochromatic SNOWY tag featuring some of our favorite vintage Basic Grey papers (Fruitcake) ... this girl knows how to rock the bling.

Make sure you come back at midnight for one of our Annual PINK events you won't want to miss.

Peace & Love

Nothing makes us feel more peaceful than gazing at a beautiful gallery of handmade holiday cards. And you guys really pulled out all the stops for "PEACE on Earth"! It's hard to feature only a few, but we think you'll agree that these are pretty impressive choices:

Marianne of Marianne's Cards 'n Stuff

...created an amazing watercolor galaxy background as the night sky, then found the perfect set of adorable stamped creatures to be appropriately awed by it!

Lorraine of Paper Vernissage

...made us realize that from now on we definitely need to add, "or a DOVE!" to our list of elements which perfectly sum up "PEACE" in greeting card form.

Sonja aka Oldpunca of Na obisku pri Oldpunci

Combined diecuts, a CAS asethetic and a limited color palette for a card that offers the peace of perfect simplicity!

Many thanks to every cardmaker who joined us. We LOVE seeing all of your amazing  creations! We'll be back at midnight with a brand new prompt. We hope you won't be too snowed under to join us... ;)

The Shape of Things to Come

There were beautiful cards in literally all shapes and sizes in the Shape Up gallery. You guys really make it hard for us to choose only a few to feature!

Plony's Blog Vol Met Knutsels en Frutsels

...created an elegant, vintage-style, mitten shaped card that will surely be framed, or hung on the tree of the lucky recipient!

Sherri Thacker of Sherri's Blog

...not only made the cutest and cleverest round card imaginable, she used a set of non-holiday, watercolor-style landscape stamps to do it!

Rocky of Rocky's Crafting Blog

...used an extra large die, pearlescent cardstock and a whole lot of creativity to paper piece this sweet reindeer card, which not only opens, but actually stands up. Then she called her post, "Getting Ahead for Xmas" which you know went right to our pun-loving hearts!

Many thanks to everyone who played along, we loved seeing all of your clever shapes and fancy folds. We'll be back at midnight with a brand new prompt we hope you'll want a piece of! 

Nothing Sketchy Here!

Because every single take on Stephanie's beautiful sketch was totally inspirational! Here are a few that made our eyes especially happy this fortnight:

Karen Finkle of Karen's Card Korner

...used limited tools and ingredients from a Christmas card kit, but was inspired by the sketch to use all of the "bits" in completely different ways, and we are quite smitten with the result!

Fabiola of Mon P'tit Monde

...chose to repeat the same simple image in all three circles, then took this card to the next level with beautifully vivid, non-traditional colors!

Brenda of Brenda's Scrappy Blog

...swapped the circles for diecut snowflakes, each one framing an adorable snowman; what a great way to feature smaller stamps!

Many thanks to everyone who played along, we love seeing every single one of your creations. We'll be back at midnight with a brand new prompt we'll hope will shape up into major inspiration!

A BANNER Christmas

We loved seeing all of the fantastic card designs inspired by our Jingle Belles Blog Banner.

Here are a few of our favorites:

Loll of Stamping with Loll

made this gorgeous shaker card featuring silver metallic foil snowflakes with lots of 

gorgeous blue and teal sequins (and if you click through

you can see what she made with her leftovers)

Darnell of  djkardcreations.com

created a lovely stenciled & splattered background

for her perfect glittery elements ... love that teal heart.

Donna of CraftDee Donna

created a fantastic super-glittery inspired scene ...

love those reindeer frolicking in the snow.

See you at midnight for our next prompt ... it's a sketchy one.

Lovely and Layered

We just love the many ways you interpreted the layered theme of "All Bundled Up". As usual, the only difficulty was choosing just three cards to feature!

Linda S of Snail's Space

... built a beautiful layered cup of cheer on top of her beautiful layered background!

Pinky of Pinky's World

... incorporated a layer of stamping, a layer of patterned paper and a layer of embossed texture, yet she STILL has a beautifully flat and mailable card! Yowza!!!

Glenda Atkins of Gilby's Corner

... cleverly turned three gorgeous layers into SIX gorgeous layers, just by adding those dramatic, skinny black mats!

As always, we thank everyone who played along, and encourage you to scroll down to the original post to see all the amazing cards in the gallery. Meanwhile, we'll be back at midnight with a brand new prompt we hope will lead to a banner day of creativity!

Shining STARS (and STRIPES)

We loved all of the creative uses of stars and stripes in the gallery this week.

Here are a few that caught our eyes.

JanR

from

Huh. So this is a blog.

used a star in her image & her sentiment ... 

and her coloring really brought this adorable little one to life.

Pamela

from

Pamela's Craft Spot

featured both twinkly stars in the night time sky 

and a focal star image with her adorable holiday teddy bear.

Scatty Jan 

from

Scrappy Scatty Jan

featured traditional stars at the top of a beuatifully

water-colored Christmas tree ... she

also incorporated wonderful texture in her design.

Join us at midnight for our next holiday card prompt.

Wonderful in White!

We have to confess that as committed color-lovers, we sometimes find it challenging to make cards that are mostly white... but looking at the beautiful creations in the "White Christmas" gallery, it seems like we're the only ones who struggle! Here are three cards that made us not miss any of the shades of the rainbow at all: 

Brenda B of Brenda's Scrappy Blog

...traded color for sparkle, dimension and beautiful attention to detail --like that awesome scalloped, lacy edge-- in her perfectly CAS creation.

Barbara Godden of Barb's Crafting Corner

...made three (3!) gloriously all-white layery creations of which it is impossible to choose a favorite, so you need to visit her blog and see the other two, ASAP!

Aimeslee of Paper Paisleys Art Adventures

...makes us want to go back and re-make both of our cards from this challenge because: WOODGRAIN!!! ♥

Many thanks to everyone who played along, we love seeing ALL of your creations! We'll be back at midnight with a brand new prompt we hope will put stars in your eyes...

Ring a Ding Ding

We loved seeing all of the wonderful bells in the gallery ... here are a few that caught our eye.

Jenni (Mom2Two)

didn't have any bells in her stash ... so she made her own embellishment using Perler Beads ... how fun is that.

Lilian B

combined blue and green and lots of fun speckled dots for her bell background

Cyndie

combined the perfect sentiment with her fun pair of jingle bells

Remember, we'll be back at midnight with another fun *COLORFUL* prompt to inspire your Christmas card creations.

Blue Ribbon Cards!

There were nothing but Big Winners in our Ribbon Gallery this fortnight, if you don't believe us, go and see for yourself! Here are a few that especially caught our eye:

Vickie O'Dell of HeARTful Stamper

...made two equally awesome cards featuring this beautiful poinsettia digi and that gorgeous gathered ribbon. She even changed the color and saturation of the image to create a soft watermark effect *inside* the cards!

Meg of Bits and Pieces

...made the cleverest snowmen EVER by stamping the face, adding ribbon bowties and gem buttons. Pure genius. Why didn't *WE* think of that, eh??!

Bobbi of Bobbi's Treasure

...brilliantly used the negative space of this sweet tree diecut to frame out a panel bedecked with many lovely holiday ribbon scraps! We are definitely trying this idea!

Many thanks to everyone who played along, we love seeing ALL your cards! We'll be back at midnight with a brand new prompt that we hope you'll think has a nice ring to it... :)