Time Out Challenge # 21

One week to go and I'm so excited about Christmas!! The kids had their last day at school today and the excitement amongst the kids was palpable! They were mainly playing games today and found out after lunch who's class they will be in next year. Max is happy but Phoebe is not as she is not in the same class as her best friend......I've told her it will all be fine.

Hard to believe I know but its time for another new challenge at TIME OUT. This time we are taking inspiration from the words:

                              Christmas is love with all the trimmings

You can take inspiration from anything to do with these words and I can't wait to see what you all come up with!

Our Guest Designer for this challenge is the always fabulous Shirley-Bee of Shirley-bee's Stamping Stuff. I'm sure you will have come across her gorgeous cards somewhere in blogland, she is very popular and love's to enter challenges. I highly recommend you visit her blog!!

The word that stuck out for me with the inspiration sentence is 'trimmings' and I immediately thought of a Xmas tree. I didn't want to use a stamp Xmas tree or papers. I wanted my brain to stretch out a bit and come up with something different and amazingly enough it did!

A turquoise Xmas tree, who would have thought! This is my favourite colour, so I'm always looking for a chance to use it.

This was so simple to make and you could use any patterned paper you like. I cut the paper into the same shape and size as the front of the card. I measured halfway across the top of the panel and then used my paper trimmer to cut from that mark to each bottom corner. I heat embossed the 'christmas' sentiment in white and then popped up on the card front with foam tape.

I die-cut the 'merry' three times from white CS and glued them all together for some height. This was glued directly to my tree. The pattern on the paper is actually smooth and shiny (hard to see in photo), so only added a few turquoise sequins so not to detract from that. So happy with how it turned out!!

The patterned paper is from Kaisercraft 'Happy Snaps' (I know, its not even Xmas paper!!). The 'merry' die-cut and sentiment stamp are from WPlus9 'Hand lettered holidays'. And the turquoise sequins are from Pretty Pink Posh.

I'm also going to sneak this into the Simon Says Stamps - Wednesday Challenge where their theme is 'Winter Inspiration' and they have the most gorgeous mood board to inspire you. I was immediately drawn to the top left photo with those beautiful blues and the trees with snow:

You have two weeks to enter your creation and if you need any ideas, please visit the TIME OUT blog where the rest of the Design Team have created some beauties! I hope you have time to join us amongst all your Xmas preparation and I'm so looking forward to seeing your designs.

Merry Christmas!!

Shona