Ingenious Inkling

Booze & Berries

These week's theme at Jingle Belles is ALL THAT GLITTERS ...is gold ... or sometimes silver. with the outside possibility of copper, bronze or rose gold! on the other hand, sometimes all that glitters is GLITTER! which is my very roundabout way of telling you that at JINGLE BELLES we're all about metallics and/or glitter!

I went with primarily glittery metals on my card this week with glittery paper and glittery snow on my jar-shaped gift tag, which is tied with a golden cord. 

 

Sentiment is from My Favorite Things Sassy Pants Holiday and sketch is from Fusion Card Challenge (the theme is tea and bouquets ... I'm going with booze and berries instead).

I'm also linking-up at the Holiday Challenge at Addicted to Stamps & More.

Wonky Christmas Tree

We're still SHAPING-UP for the New Year at Jingle Belles.  For this week's card, I turned one of my wonky Christmas Trees into a stand-alone card. 

 

The tall skinny card attached to the back also works like an easel, so the tree can stand on its own on the recipients mantle or desk. 

I used four different green holiday papers from my scrap bin cut into triangles and decorated my tree with lots of clear bling and a gold glitter star.

Marbled Christmas Ornament

We're Shaping Up for the New Year at Jingle Belles ... which means we're making shaped cards (anything but a square or rectangle will do).

I decided to go with a holiday ornament shape (if you click over to the Jingle Belles post, you'll see that great minds thought alike this week). 

First I die cut my Spellbinders Nestabilities Heirloom ornament from a piece of folded white cardstock (overlapping the die slightly so I would have a fold) and then I cut it a second time from a piece of hand-marbled paper I made (my husband affectionately dubbed it a Christmas Radish).  

 

I added a glitter paper topper and stripes and finished with a large Simon Says Stamp Alexis snowflake and tiny white rub-on sentiment.

 

We hope you'll join us this week ... we can't wait to see what creative shaped cards you create.

Pooping Jingle Bells

We're still creating What Santa Brought Us or other brand new products in our stash at Jingle Belles this week.

Santa brought me these fun Sassy Pants Holiday Sentiments from My Favorite Things (I'm already thinking about who might find this card in their mailbox).  

 

I paired it with pink holiday paper and a Jingle Bell Border from Memory Box cut from silver glitter paper. 

I finished with Love from Lizi Pin Stripe Peel-off silver stickers to frame my sentiment ... easy peasy.

I'm also joining the All About Holidays Challenge at Watercooler Wednesday Challenge.

Something New

This week we're creating with the theme of Look What Santa Brought Me ... that means we're asking you to gather up the new crafting goodies you received for the holidays and use them on your holiday card this week. Just in case all you got from Santa was a bag of coal, then break out something from your crafting arsenal that you haven't created with yet.

 

I added My Favorite Things Snowflake Window & Layered Snowflakes Die-Namics to my stash  for Christmas (I am my own Santa Claus ... that way I always get what I want) ... I love how they work together.  I also thought they paired perfectly with another new holiday wrapping paper I added to my stash.  I finished with a wrap of ribbon and a sticker sentiment.

 

I'm also joining the DiesRUs Challenge where the theme is Anything New.

More Time Like the Presents

We're still creating with wrapping paper this week at Jingle Belles ... and after realizing my sore lack of holiday wrapping paper with last week's card, I hit the after-Christmas sales and restocked.

I tend to gravitate to papers that aren't obviously holiday (no Santas or Christmas Trees for me).  I chose this gorgeous paper with snow, greenery and little pops of silver glitter.

 

I used this week's Mojo Monday Sketch and a delicate Snowflake Snippets Die Cut from Spellbinders die cut from water color paper paired with a new holiday sentiment from My Favorite Things Snow Globe Sentiments (PS as I've said before, Gina K. Designs Connect Glue is da' bomb for attaching delicate die cuts like this one)."

 

 

I'm also joining the Holiday Challenge at Addicted to Stamps and More.

And at Happy Little Stampers it's an Anything Goes with Dies Challenge.

I heart SNOW

Yes, we're back for our NINTH year of Jingle Belles.  I still remember when we dreamed-up this idea to keep us connected through out the year ... and to take back our December one holiday card at a time.  Thankfully it has worked so well on both counts, that we're going to keep on going.

Prompt number one is No Time Like the Presents ... before you put that wrapping paper away, pull out a scrap or two and use them to create a card for next year's holiday (or maybe you still have some scraps that were just too pretty to recycle ... well, now's the time to use them).

On the scale of present-wrapping skills, Lauren would be a 10 ... seriously, her presents come wrapped so beautifully I often wait several hours to open them because I just want to look at them a while longer.  I, on the other hand, would be down in the 1-2 range on that spectrum.  Pretty much, I'm a gift-bag or go home type of wrapper (to my credit, they are usually very cute gift bags and often involve yetis ... but hey, they're still bags).

So even though I help determine our prompts for the year, I was ill-prepared to make a gift wrap card this year ... because I bought none (I actually had all my gifts mailed by the first of December and never ventured out into the Christmas shopping mayhem ... yes, I'm that person).  So as I searched through the stash in my gift wrapping closet, I found a couple of pieces of vintage gift wrap from the Veterans of Foreign Wars that my mother-in-law must have gifted to me at some point.

How cute are those patriotic little tumbling snowmen in their stars & stripes.   We're a bit scarce on snow in Iowa this year ... but I'm sure it will come eventually.

 

I covered my card front with the paper, added a few leftover snowflake stickers (one of my goals this year ... use-up those leftovers) and finished with three sentiment stickers from three different sticker sets.  Perfectly adorable ... and mailable.

I hope you'll join us this year ... making one holiday card a week ... to take back your December one holiday card at a time.

5 Favorite Christmas Cards - 2018

Since Lauren & I started Jingle Belles in 2010, I've been recapping my five favorite Christmas cards of the year (you can find 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, & 2017 here) ... I always enjoy revisiting my creations for the year.

Here they are in no particular order:

1. Layering Holiday Style Stamps from Sunny Stamps for the My Sweet Petunia (MISTI) Blog.  I had fun figuring out the color combination to achieve golden bells (a lot of people had figured out silver, but I couldn't find anyone who had done them in gold).  with my MISTI, the end result was perfection ... oh the magic of stamping.

2.  This was a simple card using Christmas Washi Tape and landscape dies, but the end results was so clean and classy ... I want to make lots of these.  Just proof that a card doesn't have to be complicated to be a favorite.

3. I always love making Christmas Tags ... this one for Ellen Hutson's 12 Tags of Christmas really popped with the unexpected inspired colors for my bright purple poinsettia with the vibrant green.

 

4.  This card for the Technique Junkies Design Team Blog was special because I seldom color cards.  For this one, I colored the entire background (over several days) using my Spectrum Noir Markers.  The original intention was to do a little spotlight coloring, but I was having so much fun I ended-up coloring it all ... a very relaxing and meditative process.

 

5.  This Glue-As-I-Go Collage I made for Jingle Belles was so fun ... and the end result combines Vintage Sheet Music, Ideals Magazines (that always remind me of my Gran) and stamps from grocery store reward programs (which remind me of my other Grandma and filling in all of those books to redeem).  Nothing like great memories to make a card a favorite.

 

As always, hard to pick favorites, but fun re-visiting all the holiday cards I made (and gave) this year.  Remember, if you'd like to have lots of holiday cards ready when December rolls around, you can join us for our 9th year of Jingle Belles Mayhem beginning January 1st.

 

Taking Back December

We've finished our year of taking back December one holiday card at a time at Jingle Belles.  I love that most of my holiday cards are done & already in the hands of the recipients.  Lauren & I genuinely have so much fun creating together all year.

I need 50+ cards for co-workers, so Jingle Belles makes sure each one gets something unique.

 

That's a whole lotta Christmas ... love it.

Don't worry ... we're already making plans for our 9th year in 2019 ... hope you'll make plans to join us (so you never have to put away those holiday stamps & papers)

 

 

Sweet But Twisted

We're still creating with the food & drink of Christmas at Jingle Belles.

When I have my eating options, I usually head straight to the candy (okay maybe not straight to the candy ... there's usually a detour for any kind of warm dinner roll on my way) ... which is likely why this Sweet but Twisted Sentiment spoke to me.

 

Love those sweet little filed cookies too.

We hope you'll share your treats with us at Jingle Belles ... there's a chance to win this fun little prize package.