Wednesday, 29 January 2020

Wednesday Wonderland - Jingle Belles {Look What Santa Brought Me!}

This time around on the Jingle Belles blog, we are challenged to use our crafty Christmas presents to make a card - a great excuse to get them to work straight away.

I received a voucher for my favourite local scrapbook store, Scrapabilly, and treated myself to some papers, pretty alphas, a sprinkle of Prima dots and a couple of stamps. I never buy stamps as I'm really not that good at it, but I'm determined to practice and get better. Seemed like a perfect time to start.


My stamping is still not perfect (as you can see here) but these Cats on Apple Trees stamps are so good that I'm sure I can master it before long.



I've kept them super simple as always, going for a standard design and restricting myself to my Christmas paper scraps box. I also made sure to use my stitched effect circle dies which I got just before Christmas and am determined to really make the most of them. I'm usually too stingy to buy these types of products so they really need to earn their keep for me!

Thanks for dropping by and I hope I can continue this effort, even if it's only once or twice a month!

Thursday, 16 January 2020

Jingle Belles Rock! - No time like the presents

I'm not sure how many I'll manage this year after last year's failure but I want to try to play along again with the fabulous girls over at Jingle Belles this year. I created a few cards in the last 12 months but only managed to get a small handful out of the door so I'm determined to try better this time around.

http://jinglebellesrock.blogspot.com/

And Lauren and Stephanie are just the most inspirational Christmas card makers so I know that I'm in very good hands!

Their first challenge of 20120 was "No time like the presents" which is all about recycling wrapping paper, cards or tags from last Christmas onto new cards.

It just so happens that I sorted out my Christmas supply drawers and found three greetings cards from 2018 or even 2017 and decided to just go for it in a very simple way. I ended up creating four cards in total as I also cut out the image from the back of one of the cards! I can't really take any of the credit for these because the original cards were so gorgeous that I knew I just had to use the fronts and voila!

JB:20:01_1&2

JB:20:01_3&4

I really just cut off the front of the cards, matted them with cardstock, glitter or paper and then loaded them up onto a blank base. Done. And off to a good start.










Wish me luck on my Jingle Belles adventures for this year. I'll let you know how I'm doing!


Wednesday, 1 January 2020

January 2020 - Counterfeit Kit Challenge kit reveal and blog hop!

Hello! And welcome to a new month, a new year and even a new decade right here on my very neglected blog!

There's been a lot going on over at the Counterfeit Kit Challenge blog the last weeks but nothing round here so I hope you've been catching up over there instead.

But today, it's a new month and a new kit and a new beginning so hopefully you're back to see what inspiration we have for you to use your own wonderful supplies to make up fabulous kits that you will love to use!

You should have reached me via the ever delightful Leslie and up next is our new team member and talented YouTuber Shannon both of whom will no doubt thrill you with their takes on this month's kit which I had the pleasure of picking out for us all this month.

Don't forget to check out the full hop (at the end of this post) to catch up with ALL the team and our great Guest Designer Melodee too! So many ideas to get your creativity moving this early January morning!

I decided to choose a kit that was predominantly Christmas themed because we don't do a December kit over at CKC and this time of year, I have a bunch of photos from the recent festivities that I'm ready to think about scrapping! However, I think that the Citrus Twist kit I picked out has enough going on that could be taken in a non-Christmas direction with lots of nature themes and non-traditional colours. So if you're DONE with all that holiday cheer, then there's something for you too!

Our kit is the Citrus Twist Christmas Stories 2019 kit which can be found on this link here. There's lots of extra photos and a full content list over there as well. If you'd like to see the unboxing video they made, you can find that here.


I was in two minds about if I wanted to take it down the Christmas route or make it fresher but in the end, my Christmas supplies won out and I went all in on the jolly product selection!

So here is Yuletide!


I started with a new sheet of Christmas tree paper (top left) that reminded me of that tree design in the original kit (bottom left) and went from there.  I picked out some darker colours but made sure to include the reds, greens, blues and pinks - in varying intensity - from the original kit. I know this is a big kit but I haven't actually made a kit for a while and if I have any chance of actually scrapping some Christmas photos, then I will need a lot of choice!


I included some florals, some snowflakes, some repeated designs as well as cut apart sheets and the all-over words and woodgrain that you can find in the original.


There's a lot of newer paper here but also some really old stuff from SEI and K&Co which must be 12 or more years old! It will be good to see if I can mix these together and get them used up.


Then came the list of embellishments which is always the fun bit. Doilies, pompoms, sequins, word stickers, die-cuts, alphabets, twine (although I suspect that I've selected something that isn't real twine - let's see!), enamel dots, stickers and pocket cards.


Again, I think you can see that there are older and new products here so I'm curious to see what comes of this mix. I'm sure all those Thickers will need extra glue to keep them on the page!


Lots of stickers that can be used on cards, pockets and pages. I really need to use some of them up!


Cute puffy stickers - maybe too cute for my style?


A bunch of sequins and a section of random die-cut elements from Pinkfresh.


Oh yes, and a selection of tapes which need starting. Most of these items came from older Shimelle Christmas kits.


And there you have it - Yuletide - incorporating lots and lots of Christmas products from across the years in a way that hopefully bring it all up to date. I'm hoping to scrap at least a handful of festive pages and cards with this so wish me luck.

And the name? I tried to find something that meant more than just the couple of days of Christmas itself and this seems to refer to the period around Christmas which seems perfect to me. I'm not sure how far after Christmas it really relates to but let's just say that this girl is making the rules and for me, that's this first month at least!

Here's the full hop list today to make sure that you don't miss out on any of the fun. Make sure you say hi to all the team as you hop along!

Counterfeit Kit Challenge - http://counterfeitkitchallenge.blogspot.com
Guest Designer Melodee - https://www.instagram.com/melodeeruley/


We always love to see your work, so please share your kits and projects with us. You can use our Monthly Link-up page, post them in our Facebook Community, or share them on Instagram (we are @counterfeitkitchallenge or tag us using #counterfeitkitchallenge and #ckcjanuary2020). 

Thanks so much for stopping by! We can't wait to see your kits and projects this month!


LinkWithin

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...