more Christmas card adventures

There are so many great challenges this week, I'm glad I still need a few more Christmas cards!  Less is More is asking simply for green this week, in a clean and simple style, of course.  Sketch #169 at Clean & Simple Stamping made it easy for me, without even taxing my imagination:

stamp sets - Lovely as a Tree, Teeny Tiny Wishes; ink - Old Olive, Early Espresso; card stock - Wild Wasabi, Very Vanilla; designer series paper - Letters to Santa; Big Shot with Perfect Pennants; Stampin' Dimensionals

At The Paper Players, the new theme challenge is "create something Christmas (or holiday) with non-holiday stamps or colors" and as Cindy Hall pointed out, Lovely as a Tree is a non-holiday stamp, so I was thinking of linking this card there, too.  But then I decided if I just concentrated a bit harder, maybe I could come up with something more original.  My Letters to Santa designer series paper was still spread out on my craft table, and one of the pieces is a Blush Blossom stripe - I thought it would pair well with Early Espresso, and pink and brown are totally non-holiday at my house.  That was as far as I could go on just my own imagination, so I went browsing for a sketch, and remembered Twisted Sketches, so this is what I came up with - I think it's kind of fun:

stamp set - Word Play; ink - Early Espresso; card stock - Blush Blossom, Early Espresso; designer series paper - Letters to Santa; punch - scallop edge border, Big Shot with Top Note; Basic Rhinestones

Then, just today, Shopping Our Stash challenged us to use white, or to represent light.  I could hardly wait to get out the white card stock.  Wait, what was I thinking?  All (or mostly) white was really difficult the last time I tried that.  But I knew there were some beautiful examples saved from my blog surfing, so back I went.  I was at Cindy Hall's Pretty Impact blog again where I've been drooling over this card, so I had to try it.  Well, I tried something like it:

stamp set - The Sounding Joy; ink - Night of Navy, Versamark with Silver Stampin' Emboss powder; card stock - Whisper White, Brushed Silver, Night of Navy; Frost White Shimmer paint; Big Shot with Top Note; Stampin' Dimensionsals

I like Cindy's better - I may try it again.  Oh, and I forgot the little copyright stamp in the photo this evening, something new I was trying yesterday.

In other news, I submitted my demonstrator pre-order for Occasions and Sale-a-Bration - WooHoo!  I can hardly wait.  I was paging through all four catalogs while preparing my order, and some of the samples caught my eye, so I can see many CASEs in my future.  I'm so excited, I already scheduled Stamp-a-Stack workshops for January 26th and 28th!  Be sure to mark your calendars, because Sale-a-Bration starts January 24, so any orders you place will qualify for a FREE item with every $50!  But, don't forget that many of the items currently available from the Holiday Mini catalog are only available through January 3 - don't miss out on them if you've been waiting - call or email me, or shop online anytime by clicking on the 

button on the right!