Christmas in July (...technically, a week early...)

But these days there are TONS of awesome events and challenges surrounding the making of holiday cards all throughout July, and what better way to prepare than by stocking up on all your favorite Eyelet Outlet Holiday Brads, Washi Tape and Bling?!

Since my craft bestie Stephanie and I have a fortnightly Christmas card blog called ♥JINGLE BELLES♥, I am no stranger to making Xmas cards through the year. In fact, the only month I absolutely do not want to make holiday cards is... December! But any other time that inspiration strikes me, I will happily sit down and make a couple of cards. In this case my first card was built around these sweeeeeeet Peppermint Candy Brads. In January I had picked up a super-cute gingerbread house stamp set in the post-holiday sales, and when I came across it again the other day and realized I *still* hadn't used it, I got right to work. I stamped the house in white, (thanks to Hero Arts' amazing Unicorn Ink!) added some gel pen details and a few sticky-back Pearl accents. I flanked the house with a Holiday Tree Brad and a Candy Cane, then built a little hilly little landscape, in which it is snowing candy! :)

My second card features these lovely Ornament Brads, which I'm embarrassed to say I don't use nearly enough. Or at least, I haven't until now. But seeing as all I needed to make this card was five Ornaments, portions of one Pearl Bling Strip and a stamped sentiment... I think this is an idea I will be revisiting over and over!

It's never too early to get a jump on the holidays, so I hope you'll be inspired to check out all the fun stuff in the EO Store. And of course we'd love to see you at ♥JINGLE BELLES♥ as well! ♥

a round up that moves around

which seems appropriate for the index card a day project, in which all things experimental... and indeed "mental" for that matter, lol... are fair game. also, getting a whole week's worth of cards into a post first thing monday morning was a bit tiring, lol. so let's see if saturday is a bit more relaxed. ♥

day eighteen: off prompt

sticking with my fallback position of, "when all else fails... zen doodle!" i had fun with the supplies that were already on my table this particular night: a fabulous hexagon stencil that michelle ward designed exclusively for the ink pad and some ranger inks. plus my trusty faber-castell pitt artist pen, the one with the XS (.1mm) nib which i reach for over and over and over...

day nineteen: yellow

a collage of random yellow things, mostly snipped out of old childrens' dictionaries. quite spare for me, but once i had that canary on there, singing to an empty room, i felt like it was DONE.

day twenty: off prompt

something which has been a fallback position for me during every ICAD ever, is random collage. it's my comfort zone. and again, if you're going to start your ICAD at 11pm, it is a good idea to use whatever happens to be on your table at that time. in this case that happened to be: scraps of vintage paper, a couple of butterflies diecut from an old subway map, a pre-painted colorburst rainbow on a gridded card and a wendy vecchi leaf stencil. ta-da. :)

day twenty one: guitar

a less random collage. because i was thinking about the prompt during the day, and i knew i had a loteria card with a guitar. i also grabbed the definition of guitar from a childrens' dictionary and a vintage south american passport stamp. the sheet music and ancient rub-on transfers just happened to be there and then worked. woohoo.

♥♥♥

happy saturday!!!

,it is sunny here for the first time in about a week and 

i'm planning to take full advantage of that fact!

♥

Snow Much Fun!

As you may have deduced from the title, we're celebrating *SNOW* this fortnight at Jingle Belles! So break out your snowmen (and women!), snowflakes, snowy landscapes, or anything else that features the frosty white stuff and get creative!

Here's what I made this week:

This sweet snowman from Prima's "Santa Baby" chipboard has been calling to me since I acquired him last December at my lss, Paper Anthology. Finally I found the *perfect* home for him on this ancient piece of sheet-music inspired patterned paper from October Afternoon. All I needed to finish up were a few mats, a couple of diecuts and some awesome Eyelet Outlet Snowflake Brads!

Hop over to Jingle Belles to see Stephanie's gorgeous card and link up your own snow-centric masterpiece! ♥

Wine (Tape) is the Answer!

Especially if the question is, "How can I make beautiful, fun, slightly silly, wine-themed cards really quickly?!" Because our brand new Eyelet Outlet Wine Washi Tape was custom designed to pair perfectly with our fabulous Wine Brads, as well as our cool new Grape Brads. Just stamp --or in my case, computer generate-- a snarky sentiment and you are practically done already. See?

I love that the Grape Brads come with all three varieties... red, green and purple... in each packet. As for the Wine Brads, you get bottles and glasses of both red and white. Which is super-useful! For my first card I used the Wine Tape to create a fun patterned paper for the lower half of my card. Then added the brads within my diecut sentiment panel.

For my second card, I used the Wine Tape as more of an accent, so I only applied one strip, neatly set off with some Skinny Gold Tape. I used nice tall letter stickers for "Age" which I flanked with glasses from the Wine Brads set, plus bunches of red and green Grape Brads. The small Heart Pearls are a nice accent at the top, but also... they cover a distracting bit which was part of this slightly distressed patterned paper! ;)

Cheers to you for visiting today! Be sure to check out the Eyelet Outlet Blog for even more ideas and inspiration!

SOS398: you're so punny

this fortnight at shopping our stash we are celebrating... (you've already guessed haven't you?) ...PUNS! and since that is one of my favorite ways of making absolutely any type of card* i was spoilt for choice, lol. but what i really needed was a "guy card" for my father in law, so i went with, "BEST FISHES"!

fish: fussy-cut from a vintage nature book; patterned paper: creative imaginations; gold chipboard thickers: american crafts; kraft cardstock: bazzill; adhesives: elmers brand gluetape, 3m foam tape, sewing machine

i cannot even tell you how many times i have used this particular pun. but there are so many ways to interpret it, and it still ALWAYS makes me laugh, so i will probably continue to do so. in this case, i had expected there to be a lot more collage elements, and i definitely tried to add them. but the handsome fish (trimmed from an ancient, falling apart nature book) insisted quite adamantly that all he needed was this seriously, seriously OLD piece of oceany patterned paper, some funky gold thickers and a little bit of machine stitching. so in the end, i just left him to it, lol.

there's lots more funny, punny cards awaiting you at SOS... you should really go see those right now, darlings! ♥

*ok... probably punny sympathy cards would not be good; but other than that... 

round 'em up!

the ICADs, that is. btw, it's not too late for you to join the fun. no need to catch up, just start now and keep going for as long as it is FUN! :) meanwhile, here's what i made in a 3 x 5" size this week:

day eleven: palm

i can't say i'm love with my finished colorburst watercolor of a palm tree, but it was really really fun to paint, so i'm calling it A WIN! :)

 day twelve: tapestry

this is a collage idea i played with last year during ICAD: strips of paper (in this case some are chopped up photos of needlepoint tapestries, lol) pieced a bit like a scrap quilt. i haven't really broken any new ground, but i have ideas swirling around in my head, so i expect you'll see things like this periodically... 

day thirteen: balcony

i did not have any kind of brainwave for "balcony" so i went back to my unused idea from "macaron" last week: pastel gel print punched into circles, then re-arranged. at the moment all i can see is a sort of abstract inchworm. but i do feel like this could at some point lead somewhere! probably i should have either used only one size of circle punch? orrrrrrrrrrr maybe just cut all of the circles precisely in half? i think i need to let the idea simmer a bit more...

day fourteen: thread

more strips. these were from a stripey bit of leftover colorburst, in which i blended lime, pthalo green and indigo. i was playing with the idea of making the shades line up in interesting ways, a bit like woven fabric. kinda.  

day fifteen: storm
following my semi-plan to fall back on zen-doodles when i don't have another idea, here are some stormy zen doodles! :)

day sixteen: chandelier
yes, it's another one-staple collage. what can i say? i still love them!

day seventeen: (off-prompt) mandala monday
i had an entirely different plan in mind, but then my pipsticks stickers came on friday and there were TINY TYPEWRITERS. 'nuff said...

...and thus we wrap up another another index-card-a-day week!

♥♥♥

everybody's waitin'...

...for the man with the bag! santa claus, that is. which is why he and the rest of the north pole's residents: mrs. claus, reindeer, elves, happy polar bears (maybe even a yeti?) are the focus of our ♥JINGLE BELLES♥ fun this fortnight!

santa illustration: authentique; patterned papers: doodlebug, graphic 45; chipboard sentiment: october afternoon; bling snowflakes and swirls: eyelet outlet; adhesives: elmers brand gluetape, sookwang scor-tape

this week i built a tall card around this beautiful vintage-style santa on a journal card from authentique's "jingle" collection. he didn't need much in the way of embellishment, so i contented myself with a few coordinating patterned paper mats, an ancient chipboard bauble sentiment and some eyelet outlet bling!

visit ♥JINGLE BELLES♥ to see stephanie's lovely card and link up your own santa-centric masterpiece!