I'm a Christmas Kickstart Guest ELF!

My fellow Jingle Belle, Stephanie Severin and I are excited to be Guest Elves for the latest Christmas Kickstart Challenge with our friend and fellow enthusiastic holiday cardmaker, Jo. The theme this time is... Friendship, which seems especially appropriate!

I had a lot of different ideas for the theme, but when I saw this super-cute Doodlebug journal card, I knew it was The One:

I matted the journal card on glossy white, added some fun patterned paper flags, and mounted the whole thing on this fun gingerbread themed patterned paper, which is also (older) Doodlebug Design. I thought it needed one more thing, so I did a bit of machine stitching which always makes things feel "finished" to me!

We'd love for you to join in this month's Christmas Kickstart Challenge #113 A Friend is for Life and Not Just Christmas, so please hop over and see Jo's card and consider linking up one of your own! 

It's a Big, BIG, Mixed Media Mandala Monday

After two months of index cards, working in my fabulous BIG (7x12") Dina Wakley MEdia Ledger Journal is quite a leap. Luckily I had some of Dina's new colorful Chroma Transparencies (this set is called Painted Elements) and Flutters Rub-On Transfers, which I couldn't wait to break open... so I did!

I used some older Dina goodies too, including an older set of her Washi Tape, my new favorite color of Acrylic Paint (Mineral), and Gloss Sprays in Fuchsia and Marine.

I had so much fun making this! I'd write more about it, but I think I'd prefer to go back and play with more of these amazing, colorful, exuberant elements! Meanwhile, I hope your week is off to a beautiful start!

ICAD2026 Wrap-Up

Hard to believe the entire 61 days of the 2026 edition of the @IndexCardaDay Creative Challenge have already elapsed, but the calendar says August 2md, so I guess we have to believe it's true. I am so grateful to Tammy @gypsy999 for starting this inspiring shindig sixteen years ago; and I am proud to have completed the last fifteen years. But honestly, the numbers are really the least of it; the point is to co spend some time prioritizing process over outcome, experimenting, and just generally making art on a regular basis for oneself. So if you participated, whether you made 61 cards or 16 or 6... I salute you!

Many thanks to all who followed along, left comments, dropped hearts and generally acted as cheerleaders to your fellow ICADians and ICADettes. I didn't do as well at that part as I had hoped to, but I truly loved seeing all the cards that came up in my feed and interacting (however limitedly) with this fab community!

Here's my #icadeverything photo. Each year I like to make a small ring-bound mini-book, which I fill up with finished cards as the challenge progresses. I like this format because it allows me to keep my cards together and in order as I work; also, on days when my time or energy is limited, the thought of adding another card to the ring kind of keeps me going. Plus I confess I really love taking this "fan" photo of the finished book each year!

PS: I'm already looking forward to #dyicad2027 ♥♥♥

Here are the last few cards from the past not-quite-full week of ICAD2026!

Day 62: Bonus Card

I always like to finish the ICAD festivities with a big bold THANK YOU (on an index card, obvs) to Tammy @gypsy999 and all my fellow ICADians and ICADettes for making this June and July the best @indexcardaday event so far! ♥

Day 61: Off-Prompt

Could not resist making one more freestyle collage that combines ink, a little stamping, some ancient rub-on transfers and a few vintage goodies.

Day 60: Beatles' Song

Octopus' Garden is one of my favorite Beatles' songs, not just because it's one of a very few written by Ringo, although the older I get, the more I appreciate his sense of humor and whimsy. I made a "smooshed" background with Isopropyl Alcohol and some analogous shades of Stellar Ink, then added bubbles and ripples and coral and flowers. (The last is not technically correct, but if an Octopus had a garden, I think there'd be flowers in it. So there.)

Day 59: Cobblestones

There is something really soothing about filling an entire index card with a semi-realistic pattern, then adding depth and color and shadows, etc and these cobblestones were especially fun to draw!

Day 58: Off-Prompt

This card combines three different half-finished, temporarily abandoned pieces that serendipitously added up to more than the sum of their parts. The sewing pattern lady collage layer was part of a bigger piece that I didn't like much... so I tore away the "excess" and started over. The layer beneath that is a  flower(ish) illustration from a book of fabric designs that I had outlined but then got a bit stuck, and set aside. Oddly enough, the colors match the SPL's flower perfectly. The tabbed card has some Perfect Pearls doodles that (once again... almostly spookily!) match really really well. You can't see much of it, but both structurally and design-wise it makes a perfect base for the rest. 

JB2616: Tree Skirt Tic-Tac-Toe

This fortnight at Jingle Belles, we're playing Tree Skirt Tic-Tac-Toe, which is a bit like "Beach Blanket Bingo"... but much more Christmassy... and with a lot more embellishments! We'd love for you to join us; all you have to do is pick a row (horizontal, vertical or diagonal) and create a lovely new holiday card featuring all three elements in that row. (Please note that you can, of course, use more than one snowman, more than one diecut, etc. etc.) Sound like fun? We thought so! 

Here's how I played the game this week:

I chose the center horizonal row, which gave me: Flowers + Red or Green + Ribbon. I couldn't wait to use my new Simon Hurley Festive Holly Layering Stencil set for the "red or green" portion; I used Simon's Iced Out and Tropical Tango Stellar Inks for the holly leaves and stems, with Prom Queen for the berries. My "flowers" consist of the single white silk poinsettia I had left, stacked with two layers of Tim Holtz's Tattered Poinsettia die, which I cut from deep pink felt and held on with an ancient holly themed brad. For "ribbon" I used two different patterns from an older set of Doodlebug Design holiday ribbons. At the very end I sewed around the perimeter (those ribbons are ON THERE lol!) and added a couple of mulberry paper ivy leaves of unknown origin.

JB2616: Tree Skirt Tic-Tac-Toe runs until 6pm (Eastern) on the evening of Wednesday, August 12th. Link your totally terrific Tic-Tac-Toe cards at Jingle Belles!

Snowflake Kisses: NEW Holiday Jumpstart

 

Visit the Paper Anthology Etsy Shop or CLICK HERE to get your copy of the Snowflake Kisses Holiday Jumpstart Kit!

Holiday Jumpstart: Snowflake Kisses is Paper Anthology's newest holiday card kit, which features a fabulous fall of flakes and flourishes.

Paper Anthology’s Holiday Jumpstart Card Kit is our pre-packaged kit that includes everything you need (except adhesive and optional ink) to complete FIVE copies of this new original holiday card design. This edition is called “Snowflake Kisses” because of the abundance of delicate snowflakes and the soft color palette of pink, white and silver.

We all love the IDEA of making holiday cards throughout the year, instead being overloaded in November and December; but sometimes it’s hard to be inspired during the “off-season”. That issue is solved by this pre-packaged kit, which features everything you need (except adhesive and optional ink) to complete five copies of this original design. Also included are complete written instructions (not pictured, but included!) and a nice big photo for reference.

This kit contains:

Five 3.75 x 5" sturdy white cardstock panels embossed with fluttering birds and text
Five 4 x 5.25" mats of light pink floral cardstock
Five silver glitter diecut Snowflake Corners
Five medium pink diecut Snowflake Clusters
Fifteen matte silver small snowflakes
Five silver diecut label shapes
Five pink floral Peace diecuts
30" of pale pink ribbon
Twenty-five white stickyback pearls
Five white A2 cards

Visit the Paper Anthology Etsy Shop or CLICK HERE to get your copy of the Snowflake Kisses Holiday Jumpstart Kit!

Tulips in Bloom

Eyelet Outlet Tulip Brads look bloomin' beautiful wherever you use them. On this card they're planted in front of quite a fancy greenhouse, where they're attracted the attention of three curious Dragonfly Brads.

Gorgeous Garden Shopping List:

Tulip Brads

Dragonfly Brads

Click the Flower, Fruit and Trees tab on the sidebar of the Eyelet Outlet Home Page to see ALL the bloomin' beauties in the EO garden.

SOS579: What's the Good WORD?

The new challenge at Shopping Our Stash is called, "What's the Good Word?" for which we'd like you to design a card around a WORD. You could use a Word Die, Stickers, or a Word Stamp - just make sure it's clear what your WORD is.

I have A LOT of alphabet die sets, so I used this opportunity to break out half a dozen of them, diecut the letters for "HAPPY" from a cool old street map, and make a super wordy background for a birthday card that also features fun vintage car illustrations and an Eyelet Outlet Compass Brad. 

Alphabet Die sets used:  Altenew Bold Alphabet Lowercase; MFT Essential Alphabet and In Stitches Uppercase; Sizzix/ Tim Holtz Alphanumeric Thinlits and Typo Lowercase; Impression Obsession Typewriter Lowercase. 

While I had all my car-related stuff out, I made a gift bag to coordinate: It's got pieces of several maps, a map index, the title page of a vintage Road Atlas to Britain, loads of (out of print) washi tape, some cool tape measure ribbon, and Eyelet Outlet Classic Car and Driving Brads.

SOS579: What's the Good WORD runs until the evening of Monday, August 10th. Head on over to SOS to check out what the rest of the Crew have made, it's definitely worth the trip!