High days and snow days

Hello crafting pals!

I've cheered up today. This is quite possibly because I've spent ages staring at the word 'JOY' whilst fussy cutting the letters out of card stock! Subliminal brain training! Come and see what I've been making:

CARD ONE

Here's a Christmas card to add to my stash *gives self a pat on the back*. The snowflake is from Stampin' Up's Festive Flurry (retired) and I've given it an ombre look by inking it up with three shades of blue ink. The word Joy comes from another retired Stampin' Up set, Welcome Christmas, and I've always thought it would make a great alphabet set - although preferably with dies!

It was easy cutting the 'j' and the 'y' but the centre of the 'O' was the tricky bit and I had to cut through from the outside. But hey, what are bows for?!! This bit of twine has covered the join rather neatly I think! The letters are popped up on bits of dimensionals, which was quite fiddly, but I like the effect.

CARD TWO

Yes, you get two for the price of one today! While the stamp was out, I made another ombre snowflake. This time, I embellished it simply, with silver liquid pearls and one large gem in the centre.

It's nice and shiny! To offset the shimmer of the snowflake I added a blocky sentiment from Uniko's Simply Said Blocks Christmas, again popped up on dimensionals.

CHALLENGES
I took inspiration from some of my favourite challenges today:

The CAS Christmas Challenge is asking for cards featuring the word JOY and Just Us Girls have challenged us to add a bow to our cards, so I'm playing along there with Card One.
I'm linking both cards up with Addicted to CAS, where the code word is Ombre and got me quite excited! I'm also entering both at Addicted to Stamps and More, which is looking for clean and simple cards. Edited to add: Actually, I'm not linking up with ATSAM as the list is closed! Aargh!

AND IN OTHER NEWS
I grew up on the middle of a moor in south west England and we were snowed in every winter. One year, we were snowed in for so long, we had to have food parcels dropped by helicopter! Usually, a landrover would collect all the children from the farms on the moor and take us to a village three miles away from our farm, where a coach would be waiting to take us to school 13 miles further on. If there had been a heavy snowfall, the landrover wouldn't be able to get through, so my father would put chains on the tractor tyres and make every effort to get us to the village. My brother, sister and I would all be perched in the semi-open tractor cab, wearing our school uniforms, being thrown around by the motion of the tractor as it negotiated huge snowdrifts. My goodness, can you imagine what 'Health and Safety' would have to say about it now!!!

Did you have an unusual journey to school? I'd love to hear about it!

Hugs,

Sledging through the snow!

Hello crafting friends!

Wow! The sunrises are just gorgeous at the moment - glorious pink skies streaked with grey blue! I can't do justice to that but there is at least a hint of it in today's card, where some lively children are taking advantage of the icy conditions to get a sledge out! Come and see:

To make the background, I scribbled lines of watercolour crayons across a trimmed card panel and used a paintbrush and water to merge them into a wash with a strong horizontal line. While this was still wet, I stamped the pine trees from Stampin' Up's Waterfront, using grey ink stamped off once.

Once the background was dry, I stamped the children from Welcome Christmas (retired) in Memento black ink and matted the panel onto black card stock.

To finish the card, I used a Wink of Stella pen to create glittery details (hard to see in the photos!), added a greeting from Endless Wishes (retired) and then mounted the panel onto the card base.

CHALLENGES
I'm linking this card up with 52 Christmas Card Throwdown, which is running a watercolour challenge. Also, the Happy Little Stampers Watercolour Challenge has an optional Christmas theme, so I shall play along there too. Finally, I used the wonderful sketch at Hand Stamped Sentiments and am so happy to be joining in there for the first (but not last) time :)

AND IN OTHER NEWS
It's the first time I've brought Welcome Christmas out this year and it made me smile. As well as a pretty wreath, a couple of sentiments and the lovely sledging image I used today, it features this interesting stamp:

My daughter once looked at it and said thoughtfully: "Hmm, yes. Nothing says Christmas like a man throwing his child at the Christmas tree!" I've never been able to unsee that!

Now, if you didn't have any responsibilities, do you think you'd be up at sunrise to take a sledge out in the ice and snow? I'd be very interested to hear your thoughts about this!

Hugs,