The Spirit of Christmas Past

This fortnight we're celebrating the Spirit of Christmas Past … which means creating a card with a vintage or retro feeling. That could mean incorporating actual vintage elements, using new products that have a vintage style, or using stamps or images that convey a vintage vibe – whatever says vintage to you. 

And to add a little extra incentive to your endeavors, this fortnight we're sponsored by Lauren's fantastic Etsy Shop Just Enough Stuff, so there's a Deluxe Christmas Ephemera Assortment of vintage holiday goodies (see photo below) for one lucky card member who links-up their vintage-inspired design.

Here are our vintage creations for this week:

Stephanie's Card

Stephanie says, "I built my card around the vintage photo image from Tim Holtz Layers & Paper Dolls that I covered with clear Gesso and then colored with Derwent Inktense Pencils.  I layered it with a vintage doily, vintage dictionary page and vintage trading stamps.  I finished with a combination of vintage-like elements from Tim Holtz and sticker sentiments."

Lauren's Card

Lauren says, "This week I chose to use only commercial products to make my vintage-inspired collage, but the absence of actual OLD stuff didn't slow me down at all! I raided my stash of Tim Holtz/Idea-ology Pocket Cards, matted them on red shimmer paper and arranged them into an interestingly stacked compilation. A trimmed down TH Vignette Box Cover frames up a beautiful Authentique old-fashioned Santa journal card as focal image. I added everything to a background of older Ciao Bella plaid patterned paper, and finally affixed the whole thing onto a brushed gold A7 card." 

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But what about that PRIZE we mentioned??!

One lucky cardmaker will be chosen randomly to receive a Deluxe Christmas Ephemera Assortment like this one, full of vintage holiday goodies from Lauren's Etsy Shop, Just Enough Stuff. All you have to do is link a newly made vintage- or retro-inspired holiday card using the linky tool below!

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JB2517: The Spirit of Christmas Past runs until 6pm (EST) on Wednesday, August 27th. 

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

Sensational Sketch Cards!

It's no surprise that Stephanie's beautiful sketch inspired gorgeous cards, but that does lead to our favorite Jingle Belles "problem" of narrowing down to just three cards in the shout out post! If you haven't seen ALL the cards we highly recommend the trip, but in the meantime here are a few that especially caught our eye:

Valerie Kaye of Inkspirations

...says she had the entire idea for her wondrous card as soon as she saw the sketch and what a FAB idea it was; in retrospect, that circle is so OBVIOUSLY meant to be a moon with the silhouette of Santa's sleigh stamped onto it!

Lee Ann Barrett of Greyt Paper Crafts

...used soft stenciling and subtle paper-piercing to add extra texture and interest without taking anything away from her lovely (& beautifully colored) focal image. Bonus points for clever stacking and framing of diecuts that perfectly fit the sketch!

Jenn Borjeson of Stampin Angel Jenn 

...swapped this adorable donkey on a bauble for the sketch's circle shape, then added bold patterns and bright colors to every layer, for a card that is as fun and festive as it is fanciful!

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And now we all want to know where that fun Uniko stamp set will be heading off to, right?

The fine folks at Random. org have chosen

Lucky Number 7

and thus...

Jenn Borjeson of Stampin Angel Jenn 

is our lucky winner, congrats!

♥

Jenn, if you could send your snail mail info to

llaurenb (at) hotmail (dot) com

we will get that prize to the post office ASAP!

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Once again we thank everyone who participated, we loved seeing ALL of your clever and inspiring sketch cards! We'll be back at midnight with a brand new prompt that we hope will send your vintage-lovin' vibes into high gear, so stay tuned!

Merry SKETCH-mas

The Jingle Belles are still getting SKETCH-y this week.

Here is how we celebrated SKETCH-mas this week:

Lauren's Other Sketch Card

Lauren says, "This week I raided my stash of holiday cuuuuuteness, including some adorable Doodlebug stickers and papers, plus coordinating items from Elle's Studio, Carta Bella and Pebbles. My card is all about Santa getting ready for the holidays at the North Pole and I've been about as faithful to the sketch as I could possibly be! (Of course *YOU* do not need be as literal as this; feel free to swap shapes; flip, rotate or stretch the sketch; just so long as we can see "the bones"!)"

Stephanie's Other Sketch Card

Stephanie says, "My Sketch Card started with a Concord & 9th Cup of Kindness adorned with an Eyelet Outlet Retro Christmas Tree brad.  I paired it with papers from Pebbles Cozy and Bright and a sentiment from STAMPlorations Caffeinated Christmas.  I finished with two enamel dots. I'm also joining the Caffeinated Christmas Challenge.

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Remember there's a fun little prize for one lucky random cardmaker who links up with us this time. Check it out (& find the Linky Tool!) on the original 'Twas the Sketch Before Xmas post, directly below this one.

'Twas the Sketch Before Christmas

...and all through the blog, we're busy making new holiday cards based on this clever and inspiring layout by our own Jingle Belles Sketch Diva, Stephanie! 

As always, you can interpret the sketch using any colors, stamps, papers or supplies; and you can flip, rotate, stretch or smoosh it; even swap the circle for a different shape... just make sure we can see "the bones" of the sketch in your design!

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

Stephanie's Sketch Card

Stephanie says, "I went searching for a circular tag in my stash to use for my sketch, but instead fell in love with this round-topped penguin gift tag.  I paired him with a coordinating teal scrap of designer paper and some red glitter paper.  I finished with a vintage woodblock Memory Box sentiment ... because clearly he's too cool for yule."

Lauren's Sketch Card

Lauren says, "As you can see, I flipped the sketch upside down (unintentionally) and I shifted things (on purpose) a bit to the righthand side to accommodate my square card format, but otherwise I was quite faithful to Stephanie's beautiful sketch. Unusually for me, ALL of my items not only come from one manufacturer (49 & Market) but from one collection, "Christmas Spectacular" with which I am a bit obsessed. I used parts of three patterned papers and built my focal collage from the "cut outs" sheet that's included in the collection. I did lots of distressing and a bit of machine stitching and called it a day."

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And we've got a fun little prize for one lucky (randomly selected) Sketch participant - the Winter Foliage Stamp Set from Uniko.

Link your Sketch-centric card(s) right here by 6pm (Eastern) on Wednesday, August 13th. 

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

Tic-Tac-Toe Triumphs!

We thought our crafty holiday Tic-Tac-Toe board might be TOO challenging, but as usual, our fellow Jingle Belles rose to the cardmaking occasion! ALL of the takes are worth seeing, but here are three that especially caught our eye:

Julia Aston of Create with Me

...chose the lefthand column of Animal + Diecut + Red by adorning a beautiful pine frond with perfectly pieced male and female cardinals!

Sandy J of Adventures of a Stamping Writer

...went with the top row which she populated with an adorable House Mouse (Animal); a vibrant dotty pattern (Designer Paper); and an accent that is perfectly on point: Ribbon with twinkly lights!

Meg of Bits and Pieces

...did a most impressive job of CAS cardmaking with the challenging bottom row which consisted of Red + Santa + One Layer: Nailed it!

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As we mentioned above, the Readers' Gallery for the Tic-Tac-Toe Challenge (on the original post RIGHT HERE) is definitely worth the trip, so we hope you'll check it out. We'll be back at Midnight with a brand new prompt you might think is just a teeny bit *sketchy*... ;)

St. Nick Tic-Tac-Toe

We're back this week continuing our game of Tree Skirt Tic-Tac-Toe.

Here's how we played the game this week.

Lauren's Other Card

Lauren says, "My stash of classic Basic Grey holiday papers is dwindling, but being a top-notch hoarder, I do still have some medium-sized pieces (from which my two background pieces hail) and lots of little scraps (from which I diecut all of the shapes to paper-piece these adorable Impression Obsession Retro Ornaments. By which you may well have already deduced that this week I chose to work the middle row of Diecuts + Paper Piercing or Piecing + Ornaments."

Stephanie's Other Card

Stephanie says, "This week I went vertical down the left side with Animal, Die Cut & Red.  I stamped, colored & die cut Big Grumpy from Taylored Expressions and positioned him on my Red background created with the Taylored Expressions Take Two Stencil and Picket Fence Studios Silver Paper Glaze."

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JB2515: Tic-Tac-Toe runs until next Wednesday evening, July 30th. Check out the original post for all the info and the Linky tool to add your own Tic-Tac-Toe creation(s)!

Tree Skirt Tic-Tac-Toe

This fortnight, we're playing Tree Skirt Tic-Tac-Toe, which is kind of like "Beach Blanket Bingo"... but Christmassy... and with a lot more embellishments! We'd love for you to join us; all you have to do is pick a row (horizontal, vertical or diagonal) and create a lovely new holiday card featuring all three elements in that row. (Please note that you can, of course, use more than one animal, more than one ornament, etc etc.)

There are *lots* of possibilities, so let's get started!

Stephanie's Card

Stephanie says, "My Tic-Tac-Toe is vertically down the right side with Ribbon, Ornaments and a One-Layer Card.  I started with a large Dina Kowal Large Pixel Christmas Tree background image from Impression Obsession that I stamped in green inks on natural ivory cardstock.  I used watercolor markers on the red berries and the brown pinecone.  For the ribbon element, I added tiny gold ribbon bows to two of the ornaments hanging on the tree."

Lauren's Card

Lauren says, "I chose the left-hand column, which gave me: Animal + Diecut + Red, so I went with the sweet bunny (plus a couple of trees) from Pretty Pink Posh's Holiday Pals stamp set; Diecuts in the form of Penny Black's Trees and Hills in the background and MFT's Happy Holidays frame; and three different patterned papers (plus a mat) in Red."

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Link your Tic-Tac-Toe masterpieces right here by 6pm (Eastern) on Wednesday, July 30th.

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter