Season's Greetings

Not only did hubby feel the need to vocalise the fact that this week saw us nearer to next Christmas than last Christmas but Jo (fabby though she is) only went and landed a Christmas card dare on us for this week's Daring Cardmakers challenge.

Now I really don't like to even think about making Christmas cards till the end of September. I do like to start buying the odd thing to put away for Christmas presents, but that's different because it doesn't feel like the dreaded Christmas shopping when you're only buyin the odd item.

Sometime around April or May a CJ arrived asking me to do a couple of pages about Christmas too, so I think the Christmas goblins have it in for me this year!

Anyway. After the shock of reading Jo's dare subsided I decided that it would be fun to go along with my current love of chipboard birdies, branches and circles. Here's my card

I drew the basic birdie shape on "cereal packet chipboard", then used paper from the BG Figgy Pudding 6x6 pad to cover the bird's wing and background paper circle. The red card is just made from a scrap of dark red Bazzill
The branch is from Bubbly Funk and I just inked it up with shade of brown, orange and red inks - the leaves are supposed to look like those last few that hang on all through the winter. I added a bit of glitter for a frosty look
The letters are rubons - they are teeny tiny Doodlebug ones that came in an old Self Addressed kit. Yet again a little bit of unwanted rubon attached itself to the corner of the little card - but I disguised it this time by popping the corner under Robin's beak
It all looked a bit too naked so I put a dotted border around the card

I quite like the idea of this one so it might be one of my card designs for this Christmas. Usually I hate any cards I make ahead of the real Christmas card making season, so I've surprised myself with this one!
A real scary dare Jo - thanks for that, Mate! :-) :-) :-)
I've got a few commissions on the go at the moment. This one is for a 30th Wedding Anniversary. As that's the "Pearl" anniversary I've used a string of pearl beads around the message. I've also used gold heart-shaped brads, heated up and dipped in pearl UTEE. I didn't really want a very in-your-face gold effect on this card so UTEEing the brads worked quite well. I used a really soft gold coloured and slightly glittery card to cut the fancy bits of the Cuttlebug hearts. That beautiful ribbon from Ribbon Oasis (of course....) is cream, but with tiny gold spots.

The gorgeous papers are from Dream Street Papers, this set is the Carrinna Rose collection, which I love for it's soft colours and elegant designs. They do seem to have a paper collection for every possible style and occasion whcih is probably why I've been tempted into acquiring quite a lot of their stuff recently!

Last up for this time is cj entry I've just finished. This one is for a tiny book - I think it's cut with a sizzix die - so I've tried to keep it fairly simple. Hard for me as I do have a tendency to throw a lot of stuff at my LOs! The theme of the book is "My Name" and I've gone along with what others in the group have already done and kept the journalling hidden away on tabs and tags.
Now that the Bubbly Funk June kit, and access to the fabby Bubbly Scrumptious e-mag is already in the sticky mitts of the subscribers, next time I can show the things I made for the May kit. The sneak peeks are here and hereif you want to see them again

Thanks for visiting. hope you'll come by again soon