Friday, January 31, 2014

TEXT ME

This week's Jingle Belles theme is ... TEXT ME ... create a holiday card that celebrates text.  It might mean using letter stickers, book pages, dictionary pages, text patterned papers, or just creating a card where the sentiment is the star.  Get creative, but make sure you get TEXTY.

Here's what we came up with:


Lauren's Card

Lauren says, "I had almost too many ideas for this theme, but after finding this fabulous oversized "NOEL" in a sheet of holiday journaling cards, everything sort of came together in my head. I cut out the letters, swapping the "O" for a cool round Santa sticker; added a few decorative mats, and finally placed the whole thing on some super-colorful "Merry Christmas" text paper. I'm pretty confident whoever receives this card will get the message!"




Stephanie says, "I had saved this card on my texty Pinterest page for years, and this prompt was the perfect time to use it.  I combined leftover brown letters stickers from three different sets with turquoise foam stickers for my focal sentiment.  I added turquoise holly leaves and red pearl berries to finish my texty holiday design."


Now we can't wait to see what *YOU* will do. Grab your alphabet stickers, sentiment stamps, texty papers, and even your wordfetti (remember those?!) then c'mon back and link up with us before 6pm (EST) on Wednesday, February 12th. Keyword for galleries and our Flickr group is JB:14:03.  

Thursday, January 30, 2014

Mega-Merry Christmas

While the designs featured tiny inchies and twinchies ... the Christmas spirit was Mega-Merry.  We loved all of your creating Merry LITTLE creations.

Here are a few that particularly caught our eye:

Sue of random. on purpose. 
created an amazing background covered with the 24 days of December inchies ... what a clever way to use those numbers to create an awesome holiday design.



turned her scalloped glittery inchies into the perfect palette to feature those fabulous wooden embellishments that I find myself hoarding (click over to her blog to see a second version).




use the perfect larger image to turn into an faux tile inchie mosaic ... her coloring is fantastic and the tiny tag sentiment is such a great *little* touch.

If you haven't yet, please click on over to the Inchie Gallery and leave a little Jingle Belles love.

We'll be back at midnight with the next prompt to get those creative Christmas juices flowing.

Friday, January 24, 2014

Celebrating TINY Tim

We're still celebrating TINY things this week ... specifically inchies or twinchies ... on our holiday cards.

Here's our second round of creations:


Stephanie says, "I started with a vintage journal page (the horizontal piece with the holes is trimmed from the edge) and combined it with the layout from Crazy for CAS.  I matted my inchies to vary the size and added a few sequins for sparkle."



Lauren says, "Chalk up a big win for SERENDIPITY this week: i stumbled up the perfect sketch at Christmas Challenges with Sketches AND the perfect palette at Colour-Q, so all i had to do was find a lovely old Christmas card of the correct colors to cut up into a grid, and make a "home" for it using a few choice bits from my stash. Because inchies can be THAT EASY, darlings!!!" :) :) :)

Remember, you have until 6pm EST on Wednesday, January 22nd to link-up your Inchie Card creation.

Friday, January 17, 2014

Have Yourself a Merry *LITTLE* Christmas

For our second prompt of 2014, we're going *little* ... specifically, we're asking you to create cards that feature Inchies (1 inch) or Twinchies (2 inch).

Traditionally, we think of inchies as squares, but you can use other shapes or perhaps even snowflakes or small embellishments.  You might contain your entire image within the *Inch* ... or perhaps break a single holiday image into smaller shapes ... just get creative and go LITTLE.

Here are our creations for this week:


Stephanie says, "My squares are actually 1 1/4" because I wanted a bit more of a frame around my pretty little Hero Arts Snowflake set I found at Michael's.  I decided to go non-traditional with my colors using navy, deep pink and metallic silver from the Sunday Stamps Challenge."

Lauren's Card

Lauren says, "I opted for round twinchies, and layered each of my 2" circles with part of a clear pine bough border sticker, some music note deco tape, red berry rub-ons, and trimmed down dymo label sentiments, finishing off with small florals anchored with Jingle Belle (lol) brads. For the rest of the card I went quite monochromatic... with a pop of red... so the twinchies would be the stars of the show!"

So break out those tiny stamps and show us all of *little* ways you can get creative with your holiday designs.  Link-up your card by 6pm (EST) on Wednesday, January 29th.  The keyword for galleries and our Flickr Gallery is JB:14:02.   


Thursday, January 16, 2014

What's Old and New and Beautifully *YOU*?!

The amazing array of stunning holiday cards made by our lovely *JINGLE BELLES* over the past fortnight, that's what! Holy moly, you guys have certainly started 2014 off right! Here are a few entries we found especially swoon-worthy:


Paired an old stamp with a new die and added in her amazing coloring skills for results as lovely as they are festive!


Combined older papers, a new die and a boatload of gorgeousness to create her incredibly beautiful, layery and detailed ornament!


Gave an older die brand new life with golden cardstock and the subtlest of new patterned paper to assemble her dramatically clean and simple card!


Many thanks to everyone who participated, it's so exciting to start the year off with so many familiar faces *AND* so many new friends! We'll be back at midnight with a new prompt we hope will offer you a little more inspiration! :)

Friday, January 10, 2014

Make New Friends and Keep the Old

We're still celebrating old & new at Jingle Belles this week.  We are so thrilled to have so many people joining us at the beginning of our 2014 journey ... trust us, taking back December one holiday card at a time is the only way to go.

Here are our creations for this week.


Stephanie says, "My sister sent me some cool Fabric Duck Tape for Christmas, which I adhered down the center of my snowflake embossed panel ... those colors were perfect for a vibrant, happy Christmas card.  I paper-pieced my Stamps Happen Jolly Snowman, which I've had in my stash for as long as I can remember.  I've had the sentiment stamp from Stamp Francisco for at least a few years ... and embarrassingly, this is the first time it has seen ink.   I added a little glitter pen and silver sequins for holiday sparkle."
 

Lauren says, "My card has a few fab Xmas presents on it, in the form of the Crate Paper background as well as both gorgeous washi tapes. The brad is quite an old one from my stash, and the poinsettias are old and repurposed... I plucked them from a holiday garland that was hanging in our hallway! But my favorite ingredient is both old AND new: I scanned a beautiful vintage postcard that came in my awesome Christmas box from Stephanie, and I think it makes the perfect focal point for the whole card!"

Remember, link-up your cards by 6pm (EST) on Wednesday, January 15th.  The keyword for galleries and our Jingle Belles Flickr Gallery are JB:14:01.

Wednesday, January 1, 2014

Something Old ... Something New

For our first prompt of 2014, we're asking you to create a holiday card using something old AND something new! For example, combine an item (or two) you've had in your stash for some time with some of the goodies you received for Christmas, or something you've purchased recently. This should be a fun one, because we *KNOW* Santa was good to all of you lovely ♥JINGLE BELLES♥; and heck, we've all got plenty of stash, right?! :)

Here's what we created to start the New Year:


Lauren's Card

Lauren says, "I treated myself to some very nice pre-Christmas deals at Crafty Steals, which is where I got both the super-fun cardstock stickers and the elegant red velvet blossom. The focal image of my card (which, irl, is SUPER-sparkly!) is trimmed from a vintage holiday card in my stash. For bonus points, I've got that gorgeous doily, which is vintage... but was given to me by Stephanie as part of my lovely holiday gift, so of course I had to use it ASAP! My layout was inspired by this week's Super Sketchy Sunday sketch at 365 cards, though you can see it's a pretty loose interpretation!"



Stephanie says, "I received these fun little stickers for Christmas, so I combined them with a Unity Silent Night Stamp from my stash that has never seen ink.  I added a wrap of ribbon and some holly berries to finish.  The layout is from Sketch Saturday."

We're giving you a bit of extra time to get that first card done.  Link-up your card by 6pm (EST) on Wednesday, January 15th.  The keyword for galleries and our Flickr Gallery is JB:14:01.