Banner Holiday

Can you believe we've reached the final Jingle Belles prompt of the 2025 season? This year just RACED past at lightning speed! For the last few years, we've ended with a challenge inspired by the Jingle Belles Blog Banner, which this year looked a bit like this:

You can choose as many aspects of the banner as you like: maybe you can't get enough of the color palette; maybe the sparkly white letters and jeweled snowflakes rock your crafty boat; perhaps it's the watercolor vibe or the frosty trees that you love? Any or all of those are great choices; just be sure to let us know what aspect(s) inspired you if it isn't obvious.

Here's what we made this week:

Stephanie's Card

Stephanie says, "I combined two setts of adhesive letters with a collection of silver glitter snowflakes & silver bling for this flat mailable holiday card.  It's also perfect for the Teal & Silver Color Hues Challenge."

Lauren's Card

Lauren Says, "Yes, my card is VERY literal; and NOOOOO yours need not be!!! As I was thinking about the header, I realized that I owned real-life versions of nearly every feature, so I just grabbed ALL of them and got to work. I found an ancient Webster's Pages vellum sheet of exactly the right shade; Stampabilities' "Jingle All the Way" die looks pretty fab in white glitter cardstock; Taylored Expressions' Evergreens are each cut twice (once from white and once from scraps of blueish green or greenish blue); and the background is made sparkly with several Want2Scrap Bling Snowflakes. Job done!"

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Link up your own Banner-Inspired designs right here. JB2524: Banner Holiday runs until 6pm (Eastern) on the evening of Wednesday, December 3rd.

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Delicious Leftovers

It turns out there are LOTS of crafters who save up their "Holiday Leftovers" and have some pretty brilliant ways to use them! So if you haven't checked out the Readers' Gallery yet, we highly recommend taking a good scroll through all the entries, so as not to miss any of the fabulous inspiration. Meanwhile, here are three cards that caught our eye:

Tracy aka @crafty_whoistracy on Instagram

...shows that small dies + colorful scraps are an outstanding way to make a unique and beautiful background pattern!

Jacinda of LazzieJ's Crafting Corner

...rescued a vivid black and gold embossed panel from a crafty experiment and gave it a beautiful new life as a festive coffee cup on this clever card and giftcard holder!

Marina of My Perfect Life

...combined unrelated leftovers from her work desk and made a masterpiece of both whimsy and minimalism. Seriously... who could resist that reindeer?!

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Many thanks to all who played along, we loved seeing every single card. We'll be back at midnight with the final prompt of the 2025 Jingle Belles season and we hope you'll stop by and check it out! 

More Leftovers? (Yes, Please!)

We're still rounding up those Crafty Leftovers and using them to make fun and festive holiday cards. Here's what we made this week:

Lauren's Other Card

Lauren says, "I found a couple of A2 sized panels in my "leftovers" box: one white with pierced snowflakes; and one red with embossed dots. I'd trimmed them to 1/3 and 2/3 respectively and started trying to decide which proportion I liked better when it hit me: I like BOTH! Luckily I had plenty of red and white scraps, which I started trimming into little flags and attaching at the dividing point... in the card equivalent of wainscotting, lol. I adhered two red metallic mats to two white A6 cards; found two red and white circular sentiments and diecut one red and one white scalloped circle from sticky back felt et voila!"

Stephanie's Other Card

Stephanie says, "One of the things I don't love about leftover creating is that I have no idea the original source of all of these bits, but I did manage to make a second card entirely from pieces in my leftover bin.  I love the silver die cut sentiment (I remember I die cut several using my friend Chris' die set when we were creating together, but have no memory of the maker).  I also love how the die cut stitching looks on that thin piece of wood.  The larger piece is die cut from one of my Gelliarts prints, and I love how you can see the variation from the rolled-on blue paint."

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Need a little more inspiration, check out the beautiful cards already in the Readers' Gallery; then link up your own scraptastic masterpiece(s) on the original Holiday Leftovers post.

Holiday Leftovers

One of the best things about a big holiday meal is the LEFTOVERS, don't you agree?! But in a cardmaking sense, when we Jingle Belles say "Holiday Leftovers" it means we're creating cards using all those leftover offcuts and scraps of patterned paper, alphabet stickers, little snips of ribbon, extra diecuts that didn't get used when cut... you know, all of those tiny things we save because they're too pretty to throw away? Well this is the fortnight let's drag them all out and see how many we can use on holiday cards! (Be sure to tell us in your post what leftovers you've used.)

Here's what we made this week:

Stephanie's Card

Stephanie says, "I've never done a great job of saving leftovers, but this year I designated a container and put all of my bits and bobs in it throughout the year.  I challenged myself to make a card with only pieces from my leftover pile, and I was successful.  I only added the sentiment stickers and an enamel dot in the middle of the snowflake to finish."

Lauren's Card

Lauren says, "For this card, almost all my leftovers are older Wendy Vecchi items. The poinsettia is from her MAKE ART Doodle Christmas Stamp Set (it was embossed but not colored); the small flowers (from Floral Doodles) were stamped and colored on sticky-back canvas tape, I just needed to cut them out. The square panel of sheet music was attached to a 6" card base that for some reason didn't get used; and the MERRY Chippie had been white-embossed with her Perfectly Plaid Background Stamp, but the embossing wasn't very prominent... (likely why it became a "leftover" instead of an element) ...though I discovered I liked it once it had a coat of Leaf Green Archival Ink. The additional sparkly foliage is newly cut, using the Xmas Add-On from Not Your Ordinary Card Collection. The washi tape is from an older roll that I *thought* I'd be finishing up but no, there's still some... wait for it... leftover!"

Link your Leftover Masterpieces right here by 6pm (Eastern) on Wednesday, November 19th. ♥

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Snow Very Lovely!

The cards this fortnight were SNOW wonderful, it was especially difficult to only choose three; so we highly recommend you take a good scroll through all the entries, so as not to miss any of the fabulous inspiration! Meanwhile, here are three cards that caught our eye:

Crystal O. Minkler of Tawny Owl Paperie

...built this charming snowy scene for her adorable penguin pals to frolic in; and of course her amazing coloring skills take the whole thing to the next level!

Pauline C of Passion for Papercrafting

...created an elegant, ethereal winter landscape so magical, it's made us start longing for a bit of cold weather!

Denise of the Crafty Den

...made snowflakes (and frosty bling!) the star of the show on this super-textural CAS card that could not possibly be any cooler!

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Many thanks to all who played along, we loved seeing every single card. We'll be back at midnight with a brand new prompt so we hope you still have some LEFTOVER energy to make more cards! ;)

SNOW Place like Home for the Holidays

We're still creating with SNOW this week at Jingle Belles ... It might be snowmen, snowflakes or just a snowy landscape, but include some snow on your cards.

Here's how we got SNOW-y this week:

Lauren's Other Card

Lauren says, "The other night I had fun ink-blending various shades of blue Ranger Distress Oxides over several panels of white-embossed snowflake backgrounds. But then I couldn't decide which one I liked the best... so I popped a hole into one and layered it over the other... problem solved! The snowman and sentiment are from Simon Hurley's North Pole Sentiments die set by Spellbinders; the Snowflake Brads and Enamel Hearts are from Eyelet Outlet."

Stephanie's Other Card

Stephanie says, "I started with a rainbow GelliArts print and the Lawn Fawn Snowflakes Stencil for the Lawn Fawnatics rainbows! Challenge.  I used silver glitter paste through the stencil and let it dry before diecutting with the Lawn Fawn Stitched Rectangle Die Cut.  Next I cut the Lawn Fawn Giant Be Merry from Silver Glitter cardstock & black cardstock for a drop shadow.  I finished by cutting the Candy Cane from the Lawn Fawn Build-a-Drink Mug Add-on (reversing it for the second one) using a scrap of red GelliArts printed paper and white cardstock.  All dies were attached using foam tape for dimension."

Link your fabulous snow-centric masterpieces on the original post (right below this one) by next Wednesday evening, November 5th! ♥

Dashing through the SNOW

For our next Jingle Belles prompt, we are asking you create projects that celebrate the white fluffy flakes of snow … it might be snowmen, snowflakes or just snowfall, but include some snow on your cards.

Here's how we got SNOW-y this week:

Stephanie's Card

Stephanie says, "I love the new Kristina Werner Snowflake Season Border Die that I cut from a paper sample of brushed silver.  I used the bits that were left to cut out some of the smaller snowflake dies in the set and scattered them around my distressed GelliArts print made using Paper Artsy Forget Me Not Chalk Acrylic paint.  I die cut the Kristina Werner Calm & Bright dies from vellum and a slightly darker  purple cardstock, but the busyness of the snowflakes through the vellum didn't work, so I tried a silver glitter background that was too much.  I ended-up layering both backgrounds together, which was just right.  I attached it with foam tape and finished with a scattering of AlteNew Mother of Pearl Gem Sparkles.  The entire piece was attached to a metallic silver card base."

Lauren's Card

Lauren says, "I serendipitously discovered this blue and purple gelprint (made ages ago, using an ancient Darice snowy embossing folder to left some of the paint off the plate) and added torn sheet music, purple Core'dinations cardstock and snowy washi; before layering on ALL the flakes from my Tim Holtz/Sizzix Stacked Snowflakes die in sparkly white plus various blues and purples."

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JB2522: Dashing Through the Snow runs until 6pm (Eastern) on Wednesday, November 5th. Join us by linking your snow-centric cards right here:

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