The Christmas Kickstart Challenge #25 - The Christmas Story

Welcome to Challenge #25! Are we feeling Christmassy yet? Not long now until the big day is finally here - thank goodness we've all been making Christmas cards for so long! Just need the time to write them now...

This is a very special challenge; first of all I'm delighted to welcome back the lovely Janis from Her Peaceful Garden who was my very first elf all the way back in January.

 

The second reason this feels special is because of the theme:

Challenge #25 - The Christmas Story

What better challenge as we count down to that most special of days, remember the reason for the season and celebrate the birth of that very special baby.

Janis has created a glorious special-fold card in blue, cream and gold for this challenge.

Just look at that stunning inside with the sky filled with stars above that beautiful manger scene. You can visit Janis's blog here to find out how she created her beautiful card.

Here's my card for the challenge. You can find the details on my blog.

We'd love to see your Stars, Wise Men, donkeys, shepherds, angels, cribs and anything that links to the Christmas story.

Rudolph is cock-a-hoop to announce that we have a very special prize

 for his Random Raffle for this challenge.

The lovely Jane from Jane's Doodles is offering a $25.00 voucher. Jane has a gorgeous range of stamps, including some beautiful Christmas images and I'm very grateful that she's agreed to sponsor Challenge #25. BTW, she currently has some of her Christmas sets on sale!

Hope you will join us and play along!

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

Let's Trim the Tree for Challenge #23.

Welcome to the tree trimming ceremony for Challenge #23 - SNOW!

A big thank you to everyone who played along and completely blew our mind's with your fabulous snowy creations.

A very big thank you to Rebecca for all her help for this challenge; it was great fun sharing this theme with you!

There were some beautiful entries for this challenge and narrowing it down was very, very hard.

Our Top Picks are:

Michele

Sarah

Nance

Topping the Tree for this challenge we have:

Marieke

Congratulations to you all, please grab your blog badges and flaunt them brazenly for all the world to see!

Finally, Rudolph is here and his Random Raffle winner is 

Jenny Martin from My Paper Epiphany!

Big congrats, Jenny, please could you email me at dottypudding@aol.com to claim your prize.

There's new challenge on offer and a returning elf, so why not come along and play!

Christmas Kickstart Challenge #24 - Show us your Santas!

Well, Rebecca and I are completely amazed at the bumper number of entries in the linky gallery for Challenge #23 - SNOW; let's see if we can smash that total for Challenge #24! Thanks so much to everyone who played along, we'll be back to Trim the Tree very soon.

Once again I'm delighted to be joined by the lovely Gail from Crafty Nomad. When I went over to Gail's blog to grab her blog link I noticed she has this sweet phrase on her blog header:

"Smile when it goes right. Smile when it goes wrong. You might get wrinkles but they will be happy ones and whatever the outcome a smile restores the soul."

Nice!

Gail and I have been waiting to share this one for what seems like ages and ages; quite how we've sat on this theme for nearly a year I'll never know! For Challenge #24 we'd like you to...

Show us Your Santas!

Well, it just wouldn't be a Christmas card making challenge without a visit from the man in red!

What a beautiful, vintage Santa Gail's used for her card!

So much colouring on my card!

Rudolph's been shopping over at Clearly Besotted again and look what he's chosen as the prize for his Random Raffle - so cute!

Please come and join us and Show us Your Santas!

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

Let's trim the Tree for Challenge #22

Welcome to the tree trimming post for Challenge #22 - it won't be long before we all start trimming our Christmas Trees for real as the festive season is only a few weeks away!

A big thank you to everyone who Jingled all the Way with Dawn and myself. 

We both loved seeing all your beautiful entries in the linky gallery! Thanks for all your help with this challenge Dawn, and for using your tea break to help choose some stand-out cards for winner and top picks!

Our Top Picks for this Challenge are:

Sally

A trio of sweet jingle bells and a smiling reindeer!

Linda

What a gorgeous little scene!

Bonnie

Sweetness!

Susan

Lovely design and such crisp embossing!

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

Jenny

We both loved the design of this card, the plaid, the greenery and the silver bells.

Big congrats to you all, please grab your blog badges; we hope you enjoy them!

 Our Rudolph's Random Raffle prize for this challenge goes to:

Arlene Rose

Congrats, Arlene! Please could you email me at dottypudding@aol.com with your snail mail address.

Thanks again to everyone who played along. There's a shiny, new elf and a shiny new challenge to play along with, so why not come and join in the fun!

Christmas Kickstart Challenge #23 - SNOW!

The previous fortnight seems to have flown by and it's starting to feel like a down hill toboggan race to Christmas and the Holiday Season! 

Thanks to everyone for playing along in the Jingle All The Way Challenge, Dawn and I will be back very soon to Trim the Tree.

We have a new challenge and another fabulous elf on board - it's the lovely Rebecca from Mellymoo Papercrafting!

"HELLO, my name is Rebecca Hoy, I'm based in Lancashire and I’ve been crafting since I was a child, but got into card making around 15 years ago and I started writing my blog, in 2011."

Rebecca is my go-to Stampin' Up! person as well as a long term blogging buddy. Welcome to The Christmas Kickstart, Rebecca, it's great to have you here to join the fun!

So, what challenge do we have on offer for the next two weeks? It's...

Challenge #23 - SNOW!

Whether it's snowflakes, snow balls, snowmen, a light sprinkling or a raging blizzard, we'd love to see your cards featuring the stuff we either love or hate!

Here's Rebecca's gorgeous, CAS card for this challenge...

My card

You can find all the details on my blog.

Rudolph is here again and this time he's got a lovely, big bear on offer as his Random Raffle prize.

He's a whopper of a stamp measuring 9cm tall.

Hope you can come and play along for this challenge - Rebecca and I can't wait to see your snowy creations!

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.
• 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