Dashing Through the Snow (Wrap-Up)

Many thanks to everyone who played along in our special Christmas in July crossover with the Double Trouble Challenge Blog, including the Double Trouble Design Team whose cards are incredibly inspiring. It you haven't had a change to check out the Readers' Gallery here at Jingle Belles and also at Double Trouble, we highly recommend the trip. Meanwhile, here are a few SNOWY masterpieces that especially caught our eye:

Lia of Lia's Design

...constructed a beautifully intricate and detailed snowy landscape scene with a fully functioning window and a sleigh-load of vintage style!

Jacinda of Lazzie J's Crafting Corner

...has completely mastered the art of "flat layers"! By virtue of foiling, ink blending, masking and stamping she's created an impressively dimensional-looking scene, that's entirely postal-friendly!

Jeanne J of A Kept Life

...proves that snowy cards can totally embrace lots of BRIGHT colors; while incidentally also presenting perhaps the best ever version we've seen of the Postal Collage trend!

♥♥♥

Now we need to know where our fun little snowy prize pack will be heading off to! 

The Random Number Generator has chosen... 

Lucky Number 16 

which means that Susan Sudbury of Eden Land Designs is our lucky winner!

Congrats, Susan, if you'll send your snail mail info to llaurenb (at) hotmail (dot) com those goodies will be on their way ASAP!

Stay tuned because we'll be back at Midnight with a brand new prompt we think you'll find especially useful right after all the wonderful Christmas in July festivities we enjoyed this summer!

Dashing Through the Snow (Week 2)

It's week two of our snow-centric Jingle Belles challenge for which we've teamed up with our friends at The Double Trouble Challenge, thus giving you a chance to participate in TWO challenges with ONE card! As the title implies, for "Dashing Through the Snow" the brief at Jingle Belles is merely to make a card that features SNOW, whether it be snowflakes, snowmen or a snowy landscape.

As you may know, the "Double" in "Double Trouble" refers to the fact that there are several parts to their challenges, though the only requirement is to play along with Thing 1, which in this case is to make a window or aperture card. But the Double Trouble Gang encourage you to add some fun... try their options by participating in Twisted Sister's Thing 3 and/or Double Dare's Thing 2 to earn additional chances in their random drawing. This time, those twists are as follows:

And here's what we made this week:

Lauren's Other Card(s)

Lauren says, "I had made a few extra white-embossed panels during our Jingle Belles' "EMBOSSING" challenge, and since they happened to be snowy, when I found them again, I decided they were perfect for making an aperture card. I used an ancient set of Nestabilities' Labels 20 to cut the largest size from a panel I had inked with Wendy Vecchi's Night Sky Archival; then the next size down to cut a smaller version of the same shape from a  Sky Blue Archival Panel; then I layered both of those over a third panel inked with Violet Archival. I embossed the "Noel" from Wendy's Statements Chippies, inked it with Night Sky, added it on top, embellished with a few diecut snowflakes, et voila. Since all of my supplies were still sitting there, including the beautiful label shapes cut from the apertures of card one, I decided to build a second card with the leftovers and another Chippie from the same set."

Stephanie's Other Card

Stephanie says, "For this week's Double Trouble window card, I used Lawn Fawn Stitched sentiment banner to die cut the sentiment (which I attached to the inside of the card) and again on the front of the card, so the sentiment could peek through.  The sentiment & snow jar are both from Woodware Snow Jar stamp set."

Scroll down to the original Dashing Through the Snow post to find the linky tool, not to mention a photo of the fun little prize one random cardmaker will receive, just for linking up a snowy card with us here at Jingle Belles. If your card is snowy AND has a window, be sure to link up at Double Trouble Challenge #171 too, for a shot at their prize!

Dashing Through the Snow

It's the middle of July, which seems like an excellent time to team up with our friends at The Double Trouble Challenge, so that you have a chance to participate in TWO challenges with ONE card! As our post title implies, for "Dashing Through the Snow" the brief here at Jingle Belles is merely to make a card that features SNOW, whether it be snowflakes, snowmen or a snowy landscape.

As you may know, the "Double" in "Double Trouble" refers to the fact that there are several parts to their challenges, though the only requirement is to play along with Thing 1, which in this case is to make a window or aperture card. But the Double Trouble Gang encourage you to add some fun... try their options by participating in Twisted Sister's Thing 3 and/or Double Dare's Thing 2 to earn additional chances in their random drawing. This time, those twists are as follows:

Remember, you need only make a card featuring some sort of SNOW to enter here at Jingle Belles; and the only requirement at Double Trouble is to make a window or aperture card. BUT... if your card has both SNOW and a WINDOW... you can link up on both blogs for a chance at two different prizes!

Here's how we approached the challenges this week:

Stephanie's Card

Stephanie says, "This card started with me needing to clean & re-ink my gina k. designs white ink pad.  I had accidentally transferred some red ink onto the pad, and when I tried to use it for emboss resist last week, I kept getting ink instead of white.  I rubbed the ink pad direct to a piece of light blue cardstock until it appeared to be gone, and then re-inked.  As I went to throw the inky cardstock away, I thought - what if I embossed it with Hero Arts Iridescent Lavender Embossing Powder .. and voila.  

I decided to stencil that clean white craft ink through the gina k. designs Snowflake Mandala Stencil and emboss with white detail embossing powder.  Next I used the smallest of gina's double stitched circle die cuts to cut create the *window* in the center of the snowflake to create a shaker card (positioning the center cut portion at the back of the shaker).  The Pretty Pink Posh Winter Clay Snowflake Confetti fills the shaker and the sentiment is gina k. designs Sparkle and Shine.  With my shaker *window* and snowflake, I'm going with Double Trouble."

Lauren's Card

Lauren says, "Generally speaking, if I'm making a window card, I go all out and make it a shaker; so that's what I've done here. Stephanie gave me an adorable set of Doodlebug Winter Wonderland stamps and dies for my birthday, and I was excited to be able to use them so quickly. I found a few sheets of D-bug's Polar Pals patterned paper to coordinate and used an older set of Spellbinders' Nestabilities to build up that fun scalloppy frame. Inside the shaker I placed a background of pale blue snowflakes, a glittery hill, a handsome yeti and a mix of Eyelet Outlet Snowflake and Round Sequins."

♥♥♥

To make this gala Christmas in July celebration even more festive, we have a fun little prize for one randomly selected cardmaker who links a snowy card up here at Jingle Belles:

Sunny Studio 6x6 All is Bright paper pad, Inky Antics Winter Song stamp set and some gorgeous Crafter's Square gems.

Link your SNOWY masterpieces right here, by 6pm (Eastern) on Wednesday, July 31st. Keyword for galleries, etc is JB2415.

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter