On Dasher, on Blitzen...

Hi there! Surprised to see me? You should be, LOL! I actually have everything pretty much ready for the open house tonight, so I had time to squeeze in the limited supply challenge for today. I know I have a whole lot of other things I probably should have been doing, but it felt really good to do a challenge card after so many days of... not doing one. I had intended to use Beate's weekend sketch challenge (welcome back, Beate!) but I think I strayed too far. I'll have to try it again next week!

The challenge was to use some unloved paper, stamps, and embellishments. I decided to knock out a Christmas card since I knew I had a ton of Christmas stamps that had rarely (or never) seen ink and have been sitting around since last fall. To fill the large circle on the sketch, I chose this collage stamp by Inkadinkado. To go with it I pulled out my huge stash of Christmas paper and settled on the Dasher collection from Basic Grey. I love that it has some of the new In Colors in it! I'm sure I'll be using it more this Christmas.

I first stamped the image with old olive on whisper white cardstock. Then using my circle Nestabilities and my new Big Shot that Stampin' Up! is now selling (woohoo!), I placed the die onto the image so that the entire circle would have some of the image and the "Merry Christmas" words would fit. I layered with baja breeze and kiwi kiss circles; I embossed the scalloped circle but I think I need to experiment some more with my "sandwich" because it's too faint. Once all the layers were together I sliced off the right edge. I also added a little sparkle to the image with my Sakura clear glitter pen.

For the background I chose two of the Dasher prints; I should have put the larger striped panel on the left, but I think it works better this way. Sometimes mistakes work out! When I went back to look at the sketch, I realized I'd forgotten the horizontal panel that crosses the circle. I didn't want to cover any of my circle, so I went with white organdy ribbon instead. I can't tell you the last time I used my organdy - since SU doesn't sell it I don't often reach for it. This is wide organdy folded in half so that it would take up just a little less room.

I put this all together on a 4 1/4" square olive card. I've never made this size before - it's cute! When I looked at it, it just seemed to need something in that upper left corner. I went to my embellishments to see if I had anything I'd been hoarding, and right on top were these A Muse twinkle stickers. They were the perfect thing!

So glad that I got a little time to play - now I'm really in the mood for some stampin' fun tonight! I'll post the projects we're making tonight sometime over the weekend, and hopefully be back with some more challenge cards also. Lots going on, as usual!