Christmas Kickstart Challenge #94 - Reminder

 

Welcome back, card friends! We have the very talented Julia Aston as our first elf of the New Year, and she's created another gorgeous card to inspire us all.

Our theme is:

Challenge #94 - Bring the Baubles

Isn't it just the cutest! I love that background paper to give the 

effect of the bauble being on a tree.

You can find all the details of how Julia made her card by visiting her blog. 

Please drop over and leave her some love.

Here's a reminder of the gorgeous card Julia made to get the party started!

I'd love to know how she did the gloopy custard!

As regular visitors will be aware I like to make an Inspired by card for the Reminder post. I love Julia's cute Christmas pudding bauble but really struggled to get my head around which elements to include for my card as I didn't want to do a straight CASE. I love the sweet, playful nature of Julia's beautiful card and so here's what I came up with! 

You can find all the details of how I made my card over on my blog.

Rudolph has a beautiful bauble as the prize for our first challenge of 2025!

 

Please don't forget that to be eligible to win Rudolph's Random Raffle prize you need to make sure you read the Challenge Guidelines.

There's still plenty of time to play along, so please come and join Julia and me... and don't forget to Bring the Baubles!

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

Challenge #94 - Bring the Baubles!

 

Happy New Year to all you Kickstarters! It's so good to have you here for another year of Christmas Card Making and fun. 

I'm delighted to say we're kicking-off 2025 in style as we have the very talented Julia Aston as our first elf of the New Year! 

"I am so thrilled to have been asked to Guest DT for the first challenge of Christmas Kickstart in 2025.  I live in Massachusetts in the US.  I have a grown son and lovely daughter-in-law who live 9 hours from us in Maryland.   I have loved doing many kinds of crafts all of my life, with stamping becoming my most favorite after I attended a Stampin' Up home party many many years ago and found out I could create beautiful cards without being good at drawing!   I am happily retired for the past 7 years so now I can stamp during the day as well as late into the night!  I LOVE the friendliness of the stamping community and have been on many design teams over the years making crafting friends all over the world!"  

Our theme is:

Challenge #94 - Bring the Baubles

We want to see baubles/ornaments on your cards for the whole of January!

Here's what Julia made to get the party started!

You can read all about her card over on her blog. 

And what could be better than a sweet Christmas pudding bauble. Love it!

Here's what I made:

You can read about my card here.

Rudolph has a gorgeous Sizzix 3-D Impresslits Cut and Emboss bauble as his prize for our first challenge of 2025!

 

Please don't forget that to be eligible to win Rudolph's Random Raffle prize you need to make sure you read the Challenge Guidelines.

Julia and I can't wait to see what you create!

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

Let's Trim the Tree for Challenge #93

Happy New Year!

I hope that 2025 is being gentle with everyone thus far!

Thanks so much to everyone who played along in the final Christmas Kickstart Challenge of 2024 - it was amazing to see just how many of you linked-up for this challenge. The gallery was chock full of stunning cards and it was very, very tricky to pick just a few to showcase.

My Top Picks for this challenge are:

#26 Pauline

Isn't this a beautiful card - 

so much layered detail and a stunning colour palette too. 

# 69 - Trina

So cute and witty!

#93 - Gundi

I love all the detail on this pretty card. 

Our Winner and Star on the Tree for this week is:

#141 - Birgit

Hop on over and see the full set of these cards. Birgit's attention to detail is perfect.

A huge thank you to everyone who entered this challenge. There were some amazing cards in the gallery and I loved looking through them all. Congratulations to our winners, I hope you'll enjoy flaunting your blog badges for all the world to see!

And finally, here's Rudolph to announce the winner of his Random Raffle for this challenge: 

 

#102 Carol L... It's you!

Congratulations, Carol, please email me a dottypudding (at) aol.com with your snail mail address so I can connect you with your prize. 

The first challenge for 2025 will start next Tuesday and I can't wait for us to start a whole new year of making Christmas/Holiday cards - please come and join the fun!

Rounding up the Year - 2024

A big thank you to everyone who has guested here at 
Christmas Kickstart Challenge.

January 2024

Challenge #82 - The Midas Touch

Linda from Scrappin’, Stampin’ & Singin’

February 2024

Challenge #83 - Out on a Limb

Gail from Crafty Nomad

March 2024

Challenge #84 - Get Your Grinch On!

Meghan from Made by Meghan K.

April 2024

Challenge #85 - Santa and his Sidekicks

Helen from Made by Helen

May 2024

Challenge #86 - Playing with Plaid

Gail from Crafty Nomad

June 2024

Challenge #87 - It's a Gift

Denise from The Crafty Den

July 2024

Challenge #88 - Festive Frames

Leslie from Running with Scissors

August 2024

Challenge #89 - Animal Antics

Gundi from Papierelle

September 2024

Challenge #90 - Embossing Folder Fun!

Jenny from My Paper Epiphany

October 2024

Challenge #91 - Colourful Christmas

Faith from Daffodil Cards

November 2024

Challenge #92 - Wise Men Three

Gail from Crafty Nomad

You guys are the best!

See you all again very soon for the first challenge of 2025!

Merry Christmas Everyone!

 

Wishing you all a 

Very Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!

Challenge #93 - Reminder

 

Only ten days to go to the BIG DAY! Are you ready? Tree up, tinsel twinkling, cards mailed, gifts wrapped, pudding made, cake iced, turkey ordered etc etc... or none of the above? 

We're all about an Anything Goes Christmas for the rest of this month 

here at Christmas Kickstart!

However, if you're still looking for a little card making inspiration why not take a look back through the past twelve months here at Christmas Kickstart: we've had some lovely themes and a whole gaggle of very talented elves! I've just Googled the collective noun for elves and it gives me the AI generated answer of Troupe or Drum. I was expecting something more festive, but then I guess an elf is for life and not just Christmas. 😁😁😁

Anyhooo, I thought I'd just jump in and share my last two Christmas cards for 2024.

You can find all the details for these cards over on my blog. Here's my first card:

And my second card features a sweet little ginger cat in a festive tangle. 

Here's what Rudolph has on offer for one randomly selected winner of his Random Raffle:

 

Please don't forget to read our guidelines before signing up! 

This is a Christmas Card Making Challenge

• Like and/or follow this blog either via Blogger or Bloglovin, or Email. 
• Add the URL link from your project after it has been uploaded to your online craft gallery or blog to 
• Please mention and link back to this post/blog to let people know about this fun challenge!
• I'd appreciate cards made especially for this challenge, but I understand that we all love challenges and the additional traffic they bring, so please link a card that fits NO MORE THAN 8 CHALLENGES including this. 
• New Challenges will commence on the first Tuesday of each new month. 
• Please enter a max of 3 cards per challenge.
• Preferably no back linking to older projects, please.
• Please remember to reference a fellow crafter's creations if your card has been inspired by their work.

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

Let's Trim the Tree for Challenge #92

In between doing all the festive stuff, I thought I'd just drop by and Trim the Tree for Challenge #92. 

Our Elfin muse for this month was the ever-wonderful Gail, who made a fabulous card to kick things off for us. 

We didn't have the biggest number of entries for this challenge, but the cards were of a very high standard and it was fascinating to see how you guys used the icon Christmas imagery. Thanks to Gail for picking this theme back in March! Yes, we had it up our sleeves since the Spring.

Our Top Picks for this challenge are:

#19 - Di

A simple layout that looks so good. 

#22 - Bonnie

A fabulous background that works so well with the silhouette stamp.

#7 - Linda

Isn't this just stunning. Linda's use of papers, images, colours and 

that beautiful die-cut bauble are just perfect.

Our Winner and Star on the Tree for this week is:

#2 - Kath

Kath's fabulous stitching just called to us. Isn't this a beauty!

Congratulations to you all, I hope you'll enjoy flaunting your blog badges for all the world to see!

Rudolph's Random Raffle for Challenge #92 has to be one of my favourite prizes of the year.  

 

Our lucky Random Winner is:

#17 Gloria Lee... It's you!

Congratulations, Gloria, please email me a dottypudding (at) aol.com with your snail mail address so I can connect you with your prize. 

Once again a very big thank you to Gail, and also to all our participants. The final CKC challenge of the year is already open and the gallery is filling up fast. It's an Anything Goes theme, so why not link-up and play along!