it's the most wonderful time of the year...

...because today is the day we start the 2017 version of PINK CHRISTMAS at ♥JINGLE BELLES♥! if you've played along with us in other years, you may already know that stephanie and i always devote the first theme of each october to making pink holiday cards as part of breast cancer awareness month, and that for each card that gets linked up, we each donate two dollars to the breast cancer research foundation. and all of that's true again this time, so let's get right to the cardmaking, k?!

there are no rules for this challenge other than the fact that each card has to be newly made, it has to have a winter holiday theme (christmas, hanukkah, solstice, etc) and it has to feature PINK prominently. does your whole card have to be pink? certainly not. can you combine other colors with the pink? o'course! should you have more pink than say two or three baubles on your green tree set against a snowy white background? yeah... that'd be good... but other than that, we'll leave it to you to decide how much pink, what shade, and how to employ it! i've gone with a bunch of shades, from cerise to salmon to the soft pastel shade my sister calls, "sky blue pink", but i've added in white and cream in lots of lovely torn layers. see?

chipboard letters: prima; patterned paper: basic grey, glitz design, fancy pants, crate paper; label die and snowflake embossing folder: tim holtz/sizzix; washi: october afternoon, doily: from my stash; adhesives: elmers brand gluetape, 3m foam tape, sewing machine

i've had the flowery chipboard letters i think since my niece madeline was 2 or 3 years old. because i'm pretty sure i bought them to use in one of her birthday gifts. for those of you keeping track of these sorts of things, maddie turned *13* in may, lol, so these are definitely "older stash" at this point. but i still really like them and i was pretty psyched that although i didn't still have enough left to spell "merry" i was able to pull off "noel"! the rest of the card is older bits of paper, including some of my favorite basic grey grungy solids, a bit of washi, a bit of doily and a little machine stitching. in other words: all my favorite things in honor of my favorite challenge!

stephanie has also made an utterly amazing PINK CHRISTMAS card and you really need to hop over to ♥JINGLE BELLES♥ and see it right now. then off you go to link up your own PINK masterpiece! ♥