Jingle Belles: 2024!

It's January first, which means, of course: Time to get going on those holiday cards!!! K, yeah, to civilians this is probably a hilarious statement, but to anyone who has made (or tried to make) 50+ cards amidst the (wonderful) holiday chaos of December, this just seems like good sense. Which is why, in 2011, Stephanie and I started making our holiday cards throughout the year at Jingle Belles and why we are now heading into our FOURTEENTH Jingle Belles season. If you start now, and make one card per week (that's two for each bi-weekly prompt) you will have forty-eight unique holiday greetings finished when we wrap up the year on December 4th. Sound good? Awesome! Allons-y!

We always like to begin with an easy one, so JB2401 is called "Wrap It Up" because many of us have just WRAPPED and/or UN-WRAPPED a gift or two; so before we put away our wrapping supplies, let's pull out some of our favorites (or some of that paper from a present we unwrapped that was just too pretty to recycle) and make a card featuring wrapping paper or gift tags. Here's what I made:

I still have quite a bit of this Santa-centric paper, which has five or six different, easy-to-cut-out medallions, of which I chose four and backed them with plain white cardstock that I'd run through my Xyron machine, then fussycut. I chose four off-cuts of patterned paper in appropriate colors to serve as backgrounds on my 5.5" square cards; them selected four smaller, coordinating pieces to trim into smaller squares, round corners, and back with skinny cardstock mats. I added Tim Holtz Idea-ology Christmas Label Sticker sentiments et voila! My 2024 holiday card stash is already looking pretty jolly. 

Of course I didn't actually need to make multiples, especially in January, but for the last few years, my policy has been to make more than one card any time I had several ideas for the same design and/or any time I had a very simple layout that's easy to mass-produce. This lets me add to the tally without a lot of extra effort involved and just generally works for me. If this is your first Jingle Belles year, it may take you a month or two to figure out what exactly works for you, so try out a few different ways of working and see what CLICKS!

Meanwhile, as often happens with our first challenge of the year, this one runs slightly longer than two weeks, but after that we will be firmly fortnightly once more. Jingle Belles' "Wrap It Up" will run until Wednesday, January 17th and we'd love for you to come and join us!