♥ORANGE♥ you glad it's christmas?

this fortnight at ♥JINGLE BELLES♥ we have a really fun and funky inspiration photo which i absolutely love! ...but... i confess i'm a little worried that when you first see it, you'll think the same thing i thought when i first saw it, which was, "omg! i've got NOTHING in my xmas stash that's even close to those colors!" but pleeeeease stay with me here, because it turns out i was able to make a couple of really cool cards anyway, and i bet you can too! because remember you can take your inspiration from ANY aspect of the photo which appeals to you. you don't have to use everything! ok, here's the pic:

yes, it's got quite a bit of orange, and no, you probably don't have any xmas paper with orange in it. but truly, you won't need any, i promise! because although the pops of orange might be the first thing you see, really, the majority of the items in this photo are not orange... they're white! but let's ignore the colors, and start thinking about the elements, instead: there's a fireplace, with stockings hung up! there's a tree, with baubles! there are beautifully wrapped gifts! i'm guessing you've stamps or dies which would work for one or all of those scenarios, don't you? remember: you don't need to recreate the picture! so you could easily rock the colors without the elements, or vice versa! for that matter who says you can only use xmas products to make xmas cards? not me, and in fact, hardly anything in either of my cards is seasonal-- so there! see:

snowflake dies: tim holtz/sizzix; tapes: october afternoon, prima, love my tapes, little b, hambly, freckled fawn; journal card: crate paper; gems and enamels: eyelet outlet; glitter paper: best creation; adhesives: elmers brand gluetape, 3m foam tape, sewing machine

the first thing i thought about when i saw this photo was that i have loads of (non-holiday) washi tape in pretty much every shade shown, so i decided to make a sort of lattice background with the colors and let my centerpiece be a cluster of white and silver snowflakes. then i found this cool crate paper journal card that had nearly the exact same teal as the accent pillow in the foreground-- score! so i scaled back my snowflakes to a slightly smaller size to fit around the journal card, et voila! since there are three of them, and the brief this week on the simon says stamp monday challenge blog is "a trio of something" i'm linking up there.

as always happens when i start playing with washi tape, i wound up with more panels than i needed, so i thought i'd try one more card. i made a white tree-- inspired by the one in the photo-- for the center of this one. i added a little bit of the natural wood color of those ottomans in, as well.

xmas tree die: sizzix; tapes: october afternoon, prima, love my tapes, little b, hambly, freckled fawn;  gems and enamels: eyelet outlet; scraps of patterned paper: basic grey; wood veneer paper: altenew; doily scraps from my stash; adhesives: elmers brand gluetape, 3m foam tape, sewing machine

i hope i've given you a few ideas to get you started on this fun challenge but if you need a little more inspiration, hop over to ♥JINGLE BELLES♥ and see what stephanie has made! then put on your thinking cap and come play!!!