Christmas Kickstart Challenge #3 - Festive Felines.

Welcome to Challenge #3 at Christmas Kickstart Challenge. 

I'm super excited today because we have our very first Guest Elf! Let's give a very warm welcome to Janis from Her Peaceful Garden. Thanks for agreeing to 'Elf Yourself', Janis, it's great to have you here. 

Many of you will already know Janis from her yearly Cat Lover's Blog Hop. I played along in 2017 and 2018, and got chatting with Janis by email after I was lucky enough to be one of her 2018 winners. Janis is a committed Christian; a wife, mom, and grandma. She lives in rural Idaho, USA and loves papercrafting and cats, and is a very lovely lady. 

Janis's presence should give you a big clue about the new theme... 

Challenge #3 is Festive Felines!

Janis's card

I know you'll agree that Janis's card is adorable. I love the plaid, the heart and snowflakes, and the sweet little kitty who is all ready for Santa. Who wouldn't be delighted to be the recipient of this lovely card. For all the details on how she made her card, please visit Janis's blog.

My card is one that has taken me outside my comfort zone. To be honest, I'm not sure it completely works. I knew I wanted to use this image, which I found on the internet last year, and felt it would work well as a masculine make. However, I can't help but feel it's a little bottom heavy. The beautiful sentiment is a die cut from Stampin' Up.

Now let's see what you guys can come up with!

An InLinkz Link-up

Challenge Rules and Guidelines: 

• 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 the Linky tool. 
• 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 fortnightly on a Tuesday. 
• Please enter a max of 3 cards per challenge.
• Preferably no back linking to older projects, please.

.....

Would you like to be a Guest Elf at The Christmas Kickstart Challenge?

I'm looking for someone to to keep me company for Challenge #6. If you'd like to go into Rudolf's Random Raffle, please include the world 'Elf' next to your name when you sign up! The lucky winner, drawn at random by Rudolph, will guest on Tuesday 12th March and will need to be available for commenting in the fortnight following the challenge launch. 

Let's Trim the Tree - Challenge #1

Hi Cardmakers, it's time to 'Trim the Tree' here at Christmas Kickstart Challenge.

Thank you so much to everyone who played along, commented or just took a look at Challenge #1. I've been completely overwhelmed by everyone's enthusiasm for this new challenge.

Your cards featuring Rudolph and Friends have been completely stunning: you guys certainly haven't made it easy for me to come up with my 'Top Picks'! If I could, I'd pick you all as there's so much inspiration on show in each and every entry.

In no particular order my top picks are:

Brenda's twirly-mustachioed Santa and his reindeer buddies.

Greta's super adorable reindeer.

and Marina's lovely Rudolph in his sentiment circles.

Please grab your Top Picks Bauble for your blog.

The winner of Challenge #1 is Sally from Cinnamon Sally Designs. 

I love Sally's card for so many reasons: a cute, beautifully coloured reindeer dashing across snowy die cut letters AND a pretty winter sky on the horizon.

Well done, Sally, you're the first 'Star on the Tree' here at Christmas Kickstart, hope you enjoy your new blog badge.

Once again, many thanks to everyone who entered Challenge#1.

Challenge #2 - Bundle Up! is already live, and I very much hope you'll join me to play along.

Christmas Kickstart Challenge #2 - Bundle Up!

Hi Cardfriends, welcome to Challenge #2 at Christmas Kickstart. If you are reading this you must have made the jump from my personal blog Just a Dotty Pudding.

A very, very big thank you to everyone who played along with Challenge #1. I was completely blown away by how many of you fabulous folk joined the fun. Check back towards the end of this week when I'll pick Challenge #1 Top Picks and a Winner from your gorgeous entries.

The theme for Challenge #2 is Bundle Up!

Yes, we're wrapping ourselves in scarves, hats, ear muffs, mittens, big socks, onesies and any other paraphernalia you can come up with to keep the Winter chills at bay!

My cards for this challenge both feature a set which I first spotted just before Christmas called Winter Wear by Concord & 9th. So cute! The set comes with some lovely sentiments, but I wanted the phrase 'Baby, it's Cold Outside' on the first card.  To achieve this I used some of the sentiment from Lawn Fawn's adorable set Winter Alpaca plus some very old, squishy letters from a nameless clear set I think I bought from Mrs Noah, just before she gave up crafting to help her husband build the ark.

As you can see, you can easily use the images from this set without the sweet girl's face to achieve a completely different look to your card.

I very much hope you'll find time to play along with Challenge #2.

An InLinkz Link-up

Challenge Rules and Guidelines: 

• 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 the Linky tool. 
• 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 fortnightly on a Tuesday. 
• Please enter a max of 3 cards per challenge.
• Preferably no back linking to older projects, please.

New Year - New Challenge!

Happy New Year to all my card making friends - hope you had a great Christmas, and that 2019 is off to a good start for you!

Picture Credit

So, hands up, who fully intended to start making their Christmas cards in January 2018... then it slipped to Easter, July, September and before you knew it December arrived and you were up to your ears in tinsel, wrapping paper and sprouts?
Sounding familiar? Yes, that was me again!

I'm planning that this will change in 2019, but I do need a little help from my friends and that's where you guys come in! My aim is to run a little challenge during the year to kickstart my Christmas card making and I thought I'd share the fun by adding a linky and asking you to play along too!

The themed challenges will launch fortnightly on a Tuesday morning. They will run for two weeks until Monday evening, just before a new challenge commences. I'll try and keep rules and regulations to a minimum and will probably mess up things from time to time, but I hope you'll just enjoy the ride and have some fun!

There will be 53 Tuesdays in 2019 (or so Mr Google tells me), so that will be about 26-ish Christmas cards made if you were to play along in each challenge - Woo hoo!

I'll pick some favourites from the entries (see how gloriously optimistic I am?) and award a bauble or two by way of a little thank you for joining in.

The theme for Challenge #1 is Rudolph and Friends

Here's card #1 from me, hey look, it's January 1st and I already have a Christmas card made and ready to send! This challenge is all about deer - so break out your reindeer stamps or stag die cuts and join the fun.

I'm totally smitten with this little Rudolph by Clearly Besotted from their lovely set Let's Prance! Isn't he just so pleased and proud to be dashing through the snow? BTW, Clearly Besotted have a rather nice sale going on in the UK right now, and Rudolph and his mates are priced at 25% off normal price.

And now it's your turn to play along....

An InLinkz Link-up

Challenge Rules and Guidelines: 

• 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 the Linky tool. 
• 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 fortnightly on a Tuesday, with the previous challenge closing at 23.55pm GMT on the Monday before the launch of each new challenge. 
• Please enter a max of 3 cards per challenge (Thanks for the query, Gail) and try to resist the urge to backlink to older projects.