taking stock...

*CARDSTOCK* that is! and we cannot help but be awed and amazed by how creative our fellow JINGLE BELLES can be when limited in their supplies. "no designer paper? no problem!" seemed to be the response from one & all; and what a gorgeous crop of cards we saw this week! here are a few that interpreted jess' cardstock christmas prompt in especially clever ways:

by kirsty vittetoe of handmade little things

jess says, "I love that Kirsty added so much texture and interest with layering cardstock punches. I also adore that Kirsty’s card has some untraditional colors but is still very festive!"

by jennifer styles of styles ink

jess says, "A card without patterned paper lends itself to the CAS style and Jennifer captures that perfectly here. I love that her sentiment is simple and fun which goes so perfectly with her card!"

by kathe deck

jess says, "I always admire individuals who can make fabulous creations with stamps. Kathe does an amazing job with this beautiful stamped scene. The thing that really got me about this card was the tiny touch of the blue bird which just makes the whole thing that much more beautiful and intriguing. !"

speaking of jessica moyer, who came up with this excellent and challenging idea that sparked us all to think in excellent new ways, we'd like to take this opportunity once again to thank her for being our lovely guest star this week! we hope you've bookmarked out her very cool, very inspiring blog, Basic Jess, and that you'll continue to visit her DT gigs, Just Imagine/Kreaxions and Die Cuttin' Divas, where even more brilliant ideas can be found!

so now you'll be wanting to know who's going to get the rub-on's miss jess has generously offered to bestow, right? let's consult random.org to find out who the lucky cardmaker was this week... and the prize goes toooooooo... number 24:

♥♥♥ SAMANTHA! ♥♥♥

please email us at jinglebellesrock @ hotmail [dot] com with your snail mail address so we can get those out to you poste haste!

a brand new prompt will be live at midnight tonight, so be sure to come back for that; in the meantime, the cards this week were ALL quite wonderful, and we hope you'll take a little time to scroll down and click a few thumbnails!!! ♥

Cardstock Christmas

This week's Prompt comes from the lovely guest star Jess Moyer.

Jess lovev card making and is lucky to work with two fabulous design teams. She designs for Just Imagine/Kreaxions, which sells innovative and high quality punches. She also designs for Die Cuttin Divas, which is a weekly challenge blog that encourages you to use any die cutting machine (manual or electronic) to complete the challenge. She also enjoys scrapbooking & you can find her fabulous creations at her blog, Basic Jess.

So for this week's prompt, Jess thought it would be fun to create cards with ... are you ready ... no designer paper.

Jess said, "I've loved playing along with Jingle Belles and each week looking through my Christmas crafting supplies I realized I have lots of random embellishments that I bought during after Christmas sales that don’t necessarily match up with patterned paper, but I still adore. So I thought why not make a card with just embellishments and no patterned paper and my challenge was born."

I realize this prompt may be outside of some of our comfort zones (it certainly was for both Lauren & me) ... but one of the fun things about creativity is pushing your boundaries and seeing what you can make.

So break out the cardstock, rub-ons, embossing folders, and embellishments ... and show us what you can make ... with no designer paper.

Jess' Card

Jess says, "Looking through my Christmas embellishments, I decided to play with these May Road rub-ons, which I have a hard time using with patterned paper because of the color palette. I thought they would really stand out on the silver cardstock and added some gems from Studio 18 to accent the rub-ons. The background, sentiment, and snowflakes are all separate rub-ons combined to create the design of the card."

Stef's Card

Stef says,"I decided to go digital this week with Hero Arts Season's Greeting Collage printed on blue textured cardstock. I added colored pencil to some of the elements, punched snowflakes, and touches of glitter on the berries & the star on top of the church."

Lauren's Card

Lauren says, "after an absence of color, the most difficult papercrafting challenge you can ever give me is the absence of patterned paper, which is why i *LOVE* jess' prompt so much... it really pushed me to be creative without my usual dependence on lots of designer patterns! this is actually a re-worked version of very first all-cardstock card i made for a core'dinations-sponsored caardvarks challenge in december of 2008 (it's the last card in this post) for which i tore layer after layer of green cardstock (some of which i adorned with the typed lyrics of 'o tannenbaum') and then cut out trees from my 'handmade' paper. this time i used c-bug dies & e/f's as well as some snowflake stickers AND their backing sheet, but i think both versions are pretty cool."

So put away those designer papers this week ... and get creative with cardstock. We can't wait to see what you create. Use keyword JB18 if you upload to a gallery including our Jingle Belles Flickr Gallery.

And, our lovely guest star Jess will be giving one lucky participant in this week's prompt a package of holiday rub-ons.