God rest ye merry

And so it begins. This afternoon is the first carol service of the year.
To be fair, they really wanted it next week but the church will be filled with people being Messy, so it is this afternoon instead. Next Friday I will be Christingling away. I've caved in and bought some Christmas presents today too. I try not to start to early and then panic for a few weeks before I settle again. The thought of doing a December Daily journal your christmas type thing gives me the shivers. I love actual Christmas - and this year 23-25th December will be filled with worship and family celebrations. But the bit before - eeeeeeeeeeeek. Tidings of comfort and joy indeed.

Anyhoo before all of that, Rein, our Daring Cardmakers host this week invited us to join in with some Fun and Games.
I had several ideas going round in my head - most of them daft. But decided in the end to make a simple card game.

I dug out all my cute animal stamps (more than I expected). Stamped each twice and coloured them in with Distress Inks and a watercolour pen. Discovered the card I was using, whilst it stamps beautifully, does not like watercolour. Carried on regardless. I fought the urge to add a black line round each of the cards, but they just looked bare without. I made a pocket on the front of the card with MME Lime Twist papers. I added some paper ricrac and Papermania letter stickers and stuffed some of the cards into it. The others went into a similar pocket on the inside

and the stamping used a Banana Frog stamp set - the best for individual letters. I may have mentioned before that I have two of these sets as I lost the tiny "A" from my first one and so treated myself to a second in the closing down sale as I love it so much.
And here are all the cards

The animals are all either Starving Artists rubber stamps or a cute Hero Arts set that I bought for £1 in a charity shop. I think there are about 12 different animals so the bonus for parents is that it will never be a long game either!

I did make some non religious Christmas cards with some of the sticker left overs from the Basic Grey kit that I bought. Want to see them?
Well I'm going to show you anyway

One of my favourites. I bought a new Nestabilities doily die that is beautiful but you have to learn how to eject the cardstock without breaking it. I call it "Sweary Circles" but I don't think that is the official name.

This one uses the rest of the doily die and two more of the stickers from the sheet. The snowflakes have a glitter paste added to them for extra sparkle.

You can see the paste better on these ornaments which were cut out of one of the BG papers.

And my favourite card which uses one great big sticker and that's it really

I used an embossing folder on the card base but added another layer with the sticker on it, cutting round some of the sticker for effect and added Rangers enamel accents as a feature. No glitter but it is still very pretty.

And do you like the paper I photographed these cards on? It is perfect for white based cards I think - it is from Crate Paper Random and I might have to buy two more just for photos,as I also want to use it in layouts!

Whether you are carolling or preparing to countdown to Christmas or anticipating Advent (now a journal of Advent reflections - maybe I could do that!) - have a great week until I blog again. I'm always hopeful that I will blog more than once a week and then life happens....