happy ♥HULA♥ days!

if you've been suspecting that the current "MELE KALIKIMAKA" prompt at jingle belles (in which we're making holiday cards with a "tropical" or "hot" theme... in ANY way that appeals to you from a beachy theme to tropical colors or... whatever way you'd like to!) is down to me, you're quite right! jeff and i came home from hawaii last year about a month before christmas with lots of fun hawaiian themed christmas presents for our family and friends, and i had sooooooooo much fun giving "island style" to my gift-wrapping and cards, that i thought i'd share it!!!

something else we brought home from our vacation: plenty of souvenirs with an adorable island dancer on them, including coffee mugs we loved using all winter long, and a deck of playing cards i knew from the start were destined never to play a single hand of ANYTHING! this holiday greeting was built entirely around one of those, and i have so say (a bit immodestly!) that i'm pretty pleased with it: 

(hula honeys playing card from one of the verrrrrry mannnnnny ABC convenience stores in waikiki; patterned paper: creative imaginations, we-r-memory keepers, echo park, basic grey; alphabets: creative imaginations, american crafts; florals: prima, imaginisce; leaves: oriental trading; stickers: basic grey, fancy pants, sandylion, love elsie, recollections, american crafts;  stick pin: making memories; brads and twine: doodlebug; pearls: kaiser; ribbon: michaels; pen: copic outliner; ink: colorbox; adhesives: tombow monorunner, 3m foam tape) 

for the layout of my design, i was inspired by unscripted sketch #163...

...and for fully five minutes i truly believed my my finished card might actually reflect the clean and simple lines of the sketch, because it looked very nice with just the background paper, playing card, flowers and sentiment panel. but a leopard can't change her spots... and i can't resist an opportunity to embellish! so i added A BUNCH of tiny stickers, brads, pearls, twine, chipboard buttons, etc; both from my holiday stash AND my hawaiian goodies, until i had my customary laureny sense of "island overload", lol!

remember that ♥YOU♥ do not have to assay anything overtly hawaiian to play along with us at JINGLE BELLES this week. you can tackle our islandy theme by incorporating a few "tropical" flowers or even just by using "hot" colors in your design. take as little or as much inspiration from this prompt as you'd like... and then c'mon over and link up with us before next wednesday night! in the meantime, 

♥aloha, darlings!♥