Simple Christmas

Firstly, I want to apologise for not getting around to comment on many of your wonderful couples cards last months - some of you know but many don't, my FIL is currently suffering from terminal cancer and we are doing a lot of running around to help care for him so we are very time poor at present.  I will get around to look at all your cards to vote in the next few days but please accept my apologies if I don't leave a comment - I will try to keep on top of it this month.

Now to the challenge, it probably comes as no great surprise that we're doing a Christmas challenge this month - the supermarkets seem to have given over half their shelves to cards, wrapping and chocolate already - and we are down to about 11 weeks to go I do believe.  So, here we are with a gentle reminder that you really should start to make your Christmas cards now and if like me, you need to make LOTS of them, then a clean and simple (and therefore quick to repeat) design is definitely the way to go.  So our challenge this month is clean and simple Christmas cards - think clean, graphic and lots of "white" space (open areas of any colour).  Unlike our previously unpopular CAS challenge though - this one does not have to be one layer so you can still layer it up if you like.

We have a gorgeous, and appropriate set from our most regular sponsors this month - Waltzingmouse - with their "Twas the night before Christmas" set which is brilliantly useful for Christmas cards of any style.

Our wonderful DT have come up with some A-MAZ-ING inspirational cards this month which are sure to get your creative juices flowing:

Anne

  

Deborah

Jenny 

Lynne

Sylvie

 Tara

So now, it's over to you - find our your Christmas stamps and papers and get creating.  We'll be back in a few days to announce last months winner and again mid-month to provide you with some more inspiration.

Simple Christmas - Are You Playing?

There's still time to play in our clean and simple Christmas card challenge this month.  We've had some stunning entries to far but you've still got a couple of weeks to get your entries in.

Here's a little more inspiration for you - this year I'm going for a Christmas tree theme in a lot of my cards - all quick and simple and easy to replicate.  Here are a couple of my designs that I just tweak slightly to make them more interesting to mass produce.

With just over 10 weeks to Christmas - it really is time to get those fingers inky - so what are you waiting for?  We look forward to seeing what you come up with.

Couples winners

So, are you playing along with our Christmas challenge?  I do hope so - we're loving the entries that have come in so far.

It's time to announce the winner of the lovely set of LOTV stamps from last month's couples challenge.

Our overall winner was Louise - we really loved your unusual take on the challenge - the lovebirds are gorgeous and the simple one layer layout is fab.

Our runners up were Di - with her cute penguins, Elinir with this gorgeous easel card,  Mary with the cute pairing of dog and owner, and Susan with another fab cosy looking couple.

Thanks ladies - winners badges are on their way........

Couples

It's time for a new month long challenge again - are you ready to get your stash out and play - we do hope so as our numbers seem to be dwindling.   This month we hope you find our challenge easier - we just want to see couples - not necessarily of the romantic kind (although Anniversary and Wedding Cards are amongst our best sellers in the donated cards).  As long as you card features a couple in some form - people or animals - it all counts.

This month we are again being sponsored by one of our regular sponsors - the fabulous Lili of the Valley and we have two super cute boy stamps up for grabs.

Here's the inspiration parade this month - a whole host of couples from the furry, to the feathered and scaly with even a couple of humans thrown in for good measure - check out the links to our fabby DT's personal blogs for more details:

Anne

Deborah

Jenny

Lynne

Sylvie (to follow)

Tara

So now, it's over to you - link your couples up below and do tell your friends to play along too - we love to see new players join in the fun.

Are you getting coupled up?

....Deborah is - she made another card to inspire you to join our couples challenge this month:

You've got until Sunday lunchtime to join in for the chance to win our great prize from Lili of the Valley so go and have a play - it's too wet to go outside anyhow so what are you waiting for?????

Going for Gold Winners

Hi everyone - hope you're all having a lovely weekend.

Sorry we're late announcing last months winner but I've been on holiday for a week so just trying to catch up now.   So without further ado, time to announce our winners for last month.....

We were all really taken with our winning entry last month  - it fitted our theme perfectly and showed lots of brilliant crafting and artistic skills as well as a lot of humour with a brilliant sentiment that inspired it's creation:

We loved your idea Emma and hope you like your gold medal (we've left it blank in case you want to pass it onto your Dad) and hope you find the Waltzingmouse stamp set useful.

As our numbers were very low last month, we decided to just select one runner up - so our second favourite card last month was this brilliantly patriotic entry from America (that would be a person and not whole nation just in case you were wondering lol!)  We loved the theme and the texture on the flag is brilliant and the image looks great in its star filled frame.

Thanks everyone for playing - hope you're working on your couples for us for this month too :-D

Going for Gold!

Well - with all the Olympic hoo-hah going on in the UK at the moment we couldn't really bring you any other theme than "sports" for this month now could we?  So if you didn't get to tickets to the Olympics (well did anyone???) and are watching them on TV like the rest of us then share your joy of all things sporting with a sport themed card.  Doesn't have to be an Olympic sport - any sport -popular or rare (tiddlywinks anyone???) will do just fine.  Don't just think this is one for the boys either - girls like sports too - I think so far the GIRLS are beating the boys in Team GB in the first few days of the competition so do consider making a girlie sporty card for a little something different.

Our prize this month, from the very generous Claire the designer behind Waltzingmouse stamps is another one of their beautiful stamp sets - Blessed By You which is a really versatile set of images and really useful and gorgeous sentiments.

There will also be your very own card making gold medal in the winners prize package this month - can't promise a medal ceremony though ;-)

So are you ready to get under starters orders?  Then we're off with the design teams sporting inspiration.....

Anne

 

Deborah

Jenny

Lynne

Sylvie

Tara

So are you ready to go for gold in our Olympic challenge - no prizes for silver and bronze I'm afraid - just a badge for your blog - so get your competitive scissors, glue and stamps and get crafting to Olympic standards ;-) The judges are waiting with our score cards....