here comes santa claus!

it's time for a brand new prompt at ♥JINGLE BELLES♥ and this fortnight we are celebrating the big man himself, so we'd like to see cards that feature santa, kris kringle, father christmas, pere noel, julenissen or whatever version of jolly old saint nicholas happens to be your favorite! i've gone with a classic, if slightly historical santa:

santa image from a dover postcard reproduction of illustrations by thomas nast; flower tape, paper flowers and pearl brad: eyelet outlet; pattered papers: recollections, blue fern studio, jen hadfield/pebbles, mme; adhesives: elmers brand gluetape, 3m foam tape, sewing machine

one of my biggest tips for scoring interesting, offbeat finds at book sales, thrift shops and rummage sales is to make sure you walk down every aisle, scope out every category and take a peep in every area. why? because sometimes people define things differently than you would. i once found an amazingly lovely MINT copy of an edward gorey pop up book... in the kids' section... for 25 cents! apart from that, it's always possible that other browsers may have changed their minds and put something back incorrectly. i also always look for a "reject" cart or table near where you pay for purchases. people may decide against something right there at the register, and if he cashier hasn't had time to replace it, there might be a pile of COOL things right in front of you. oh and i've never been to any kind of sale where there wasn't a "junk box" in which everything is free or ridiculously cheap. i've found creased (but lovely) postcards, incomplete games, funky union badges, cool single rhinestone earrings and even letterpress in such catchall spaces! why am i mentioning this now? because last fall i found these two pristine books of reproduction holiday postcards in a box with kids' coloring books.

i'm playing along with this week's atlantic hearts sketch challenge (#221), and i thank them very much for the shout out i got for another cool christmas card i made a couple of weeks ago.

once again i was tempted to make all those fab little flags out of washi tape, but i decided to change it up a bit, so i made the pennants out of paper scraps and topped them off with a strip of gorgeous eyelet outlet washi instead. i used this pretty black and white flowers tape, which --as the name implies is NOT colorful-- so i added my own tinting with a few alcohol ink markers. strictly speaking, it's not even a holiday tape, but i liked how it went with the vintage flora on the postcard. i topped the design off with a beautiful EO paper flower stack and a large pearl brad.

stephanie has her own santa-centric card to show off to you. why not head over to ♥JINGLE BELLES♥ and see that right this minute?!