Yes, it is true, it may be end, not of me, but of the mad dash for holiday cards.  I think I am almost there.  So these may be the last of the forced challenge cards for this holiday season.  (I’m sure a few more will pop up here and there, but now I at least have what I need to send people for the holidays this year.)

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Our first holiday card is brought to you by Stampin’ Celebration who gave a really fun sketch to interpret.  I knew immediately I wanted to use two different papers with patterns on them, but was a little lost at what to use for the word bubble.

I found this old time saint nick stamp page scrape paper from my decades old xmas paper stash, and re-fell in love with that old time faded feel of the page.  However, finding a coordinating paper that wouldn’t deter from the coolness of the saint nick page was proving to be difficult.  The cream page wasn’t ideal, however, when I distressed each paper with a little frayed burlap Distress Ink suddenly things started to work.  I’m still not sure the bronze pigment ink worked  with the overall feel, nor the stamped trees, but, I like how the two sentiment stamps worked out together to say, “Season’s Greetings, from Santa.”

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Next we have hands down my favorite card I’ve made this week.  It was crafted using Cupcake Inspirations photo and color theme.  The challenge asked for the use of the colors gold, midnight, and aquamarine.  Yes, I realize these are not traditional Christmas colors, however, look at those cupcakes.  How can you not do a christmas card when they feed you ornament cupcakes?

I grabbed my Art Impressions Better with Wine stamp set and stamped out our drinking friend, and colored her in using my Spectrum Noir markers.  Then I grabbed another Art Impressions holiday sentiment (may favorite one right now) and stamped it twice, once with tuxedo black ink from Momento, and again with gold ink from Brilliant.  I added the same gold pigment ink to a random holly stamp, and ink up the edges with my E9 Spectrum Noir.  No, I don’t think this is my best card I’ve ever made, but I love her, cause she’s so me.

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Sunday Stamps had a fun sketch this week, that made me want to press the limits of what a line really meant.  No, that’s a lie, I just really wanted to use my line of penguins from Penny Black Christmas with Mimi.

I stamped out the line of penguins, and use from Penny Black’s coordinating stamp pack, Mimi’s Christmas, the girl and her penguin friend and colored everything with my Derwent water colored pencils.  I had a

real problem however finding the right back ground paper for the top half of the card.  Frankly, I had several evolutions of back ground paper.  First I smooched (yes, that’s a technical term) Distress Ink colors onto some watercolor paper trying to create aurora borealis look.  Fail.  Then I just tried the printed paper I ended up using, but at first it too was a fail.  I tried just blending in some Salty Ocean Distress Ink onto with card stock, but it also did not work.  Finally when I blended the Distress Ink onto the printed paper, I had the look I wanted.  I added a few snowflake sequins and the sentiment from the same stamp pack and had a cute little snow scene.

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Finally we have a simple little card, that I missed the deadline to link up to the the Paper Players, but I am going to share it anyway, cause I like it.  This week they had a Tic Tac Toe challenge letting you pick three items in a row to work with.  I picked the first column, Snowflake, Blue, and Ribbon.

Cause apparently it was a big Distress Ink day for me, I pulled out four shades

of blue Distress ink and blended them into a piece of 4.25×5.5 card stock.  I did not hand dot in the silver snowflakes, but instead used a random stamp and some silver pigment ink to stamp in the small snow flakes.  I glued on some silver sequined snowflakes and wrapped the whole thing in several rotations of thin blue ribbon and added the blue and sparkly gem.  The sentiment reads, “All that glitters is snow!”  I know it is simple, but sometimes simple works.

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Now that my christmas cards are all made we can see if we can keep up with the challenges, or more importantly , what fun designs I can come up with.