Late for a very important date!

Hello, crafting friends!

Welcome to another crafty challenge at CAS Colours and Sketches. Our host Holly has come up with a sketch for you to play with this week:

Everyone seems to be talking about 'Christmas in July'  this month and it must have rubbed off on me because I've come up with a fun festive card for my stash - and just look at the expression on this little cutie's face!

Most of my card front was masked off, leaving a two inch section for my scene. The goofy looking Rudolph is from Funky Fossil's Christmas Characters and I chuckled as I stamped him because he really does look like a reindeer who has forgotten the time and is late for a very important appointment with Santa and his sleigh!

I coloured him with coloured pencils adding in a basic blue background. The snow was added with a Posca white acrylic paint pen and I stamped a sentiment along one of the diagonals. The final detail was to draw a red line on the two lefthand edges of the scene to add a bit of depth.

So now it's your turn! There's some fabulous inspiration at the CAS Colours and Sketches blog from the design team as well as this week's special guest Michal of Scrappy Hour. You'll find the Linky Tool at our website too so  that you can upload your own creation when you're ready. Have fun - but don't forget to keep your card nice and clean and simple with plenty of that all-important clean space!

CHALLENGES

I'm linking up with some challenge sites that are asking for Christmas themes: AAA Cards has a Twinchie theme with optional Christmas in July; Less is More is looking for clean and simple cards with a Christmas theme; The Male Room wants to see Christmas cards suitable for the males in our lives; and I'm joining in with Happy Little Stampers Christmas where there's an optional Jingle Bells theme.

AND IN OTHER NEWS

I think I am just about getting over the disappointment of the England football team missing out on the European Cup trophy on Sunday night. It has been a lot of fun to get together with family and friends to watch the key games in the tournament and I applaud our wonderful team for doing so well. 

Sending hugs,

Love from the kitty cats

Hello, crafting friends!

When is a Christmas card NOT a Christmas card? When it's a Hello card of course!

For this card I used a Christmas stamp set called Sing It's Christmas by Clearly Besotted. These adorable little puss cats normally wear santa hats and hold hymn books but, using a stamp platform and carefully inking up selected parts of the stamp with a marker, I was able to dispense with those! I doodled in hearts where those hymn books had been and carefully joined up the lines where the missing hats had left gaps.

The kitties were given little pink ears and noses and I added some black and white stripes. The hearts were coloured with bright pops of colour. I added a sentiment and trimmed the panel with one of my favourite stitched rectangle dies from Heffy Doodle before attaching it to a card base with dimensional pads. I stamped one of the kits again, fussy cut him and popped him up in front for extra interest.

CHALLENGES

The starting point for this card was the inspiration pic at Inspired By so I'm linking up there; Just Us Girls' theme this week is Animals so I'm joining in there too; As You Like It wants us to show our favourite card to send and why. Mine, at the moment at least, are hello or missing you cards as they really help to connect us all, and lots of people have told me how special it feels to get an actual card through the post.

AND IN OTHER NEWS

Eva has been sitting on the sofa beside me as I type this post and I've turned the screen away so that she can't see how I'm celebrating felines in this treacherous way! Won't be long before they're carting me off to the funny farm I'm sure!

Sending hugs,

A bit of caterwauling

Hello, crafting friends!

Caterwauling is not a new technique, just a word that means, according to the Oxford Dictionary, 'a shrill howling or wailing noise like that of a cat'. 

These little angels don't look as if they're capable of such a racket do they, but I'm inclined to think their singing is a tad imperfect! They come from Clearly Besotted's Sing it's Christmas and I've stamped them in neutral ink and then coloured them using coloured pencils.

I thought I'd put them in church, so I positioned the Arched Window stencil by Funky Fossil over a card panel and sponged blue ink through it. To create the falling snow, I wet my hands and clapped above the window a few times. Once the panel was dry, I trimmed it with a stitched rectangle die by Heffy Doodle.

Finally, I added one of the sentiments from Sing It's Christmas, attached the cats to the bottom of the window and embellished with a tiny punched star. I suspect a silent night is what many of the congregation are hoping for!!

CHALLENGES

I've been wanting to join in at The Paper Players this week where LeAnne's theme is to use a feline on our cards so I'm hoping I can just squeak in; I'm joining in at Watercooler Wednesday too, where Marsha is hosting the Occasions challenge. I'm also linking up with some Christmas challenges: the new-to-me Christmas 24 challenge, where the theme is Cute Animals (It's run by my friend Jacqueline, so do go and check it out and show her some love!); the Christmas Crafts All Year Round Challenge, where the theme is Something Beginning With C or D; and The Ruldolph Day challenge where we make Christmas cards on the 25th of every month.

AND IN OTHER NEWS

Would you believe that after announcing that Mr Mojo had come back with a vengeance, he thumbed his nose at me and went AWOL for the last couple of days! I made a real effort to make something but only succeeded in making a mess! Eventually I gave up and did some gardening instead as it's still unseasonably warm here.

I was of course aided eagerly by my fluffy little helper who took all my prunings from the tarpaulin where I'd neatly placed them and examined them before spreading them around the garden.

Sending hugs,