Have Yourself a Very Vintage Christmas

We're still creating with a theme of Christmas Past - incorporating vintage elements and/or vintage style into our holiday cards.  

Our prompt is sponsored by Lauren's Etsy Shop Just Enough Stuff with a fun vintage giveaway for one lucky participant.

Here's what we created this week:

Lauren's Other Card

Lauren says, "I found a partial sheet of vintage-themed circle icons from a Ciao Bella holiday collection several years ago, which I matted out with a couple of circle mats, added an older Prima flower in sage green, a wooden snowflake, and a chipboard snowflake circle, then made a background from this gorgeous white Photoplay woodgrain paper and topped it all off with a Tim Holtz sticker sentiment and a kraft card base."

Stephanie's Other Card

Stephanie says, "This week I incorporated actual vintage paper elements into my card.  My tag is die cut from a vintage holiday card I found at an estate sale.  The vintage music on the background is from my collection of vintage hymnals.  And finally, some vintage S&H Green Stamps for good measure.  The layout is this week's Atlantic Heart's Sketch & the sentiment is from Simon Says Stamp Sentiment Strips."

Our luck participant will win the prize below, so link-up below on the original post by 6pm EST on Wednesday, September 6th.

The Spirit of Christmas Past

This fortnight we're celebrating the Spirit of Christmas Past, which is to say, we're creating cards with a vintage or retro vibe. That could mean incorporating actual vintage elements, using new products that have a vintage style, or using stamps or images that convey a retro vibe; whatever says vintage to you.  

And to add a little extra incentive to your endeavors, this week we are sponsored by Lauren's fantastic Etsy Shop Just Enough Stuff, so there's a sweet little pack of vintage Christmassy things for one lucky card member who links-up their vintage design.

Here are our vintage creations for this week:

Stephanie's Card

Stephanie say, "I went with some Tim Holtz papers that are marvelous vintage reproductions.  I paired them with a big bold sentiment in a vintage-like font from Unity Stamp Company holiday. faith. hope. love and stickers frim Simple Stories Vintage Rustic Christmas using a layout from Sketch~N~Scrap."

Lauren's Card

Lauren says, "I recently found a little stash of well-hoarded German Scrap that I had put aside, including this gorgeous Father Christmas. I've made a distressed background from vintage sheet music, accented with red and green patterned papers, set off by a strip of Eyelet Outlet Washi Tape that features images of vintage postcards."

And now let's hear more about that prize!

One randomly selected cardmaker will receive: 

A Deluxe Christmas Assortment of holiday-themed vintage and found papers from Just Enough Stuff, plus a set of Christmas Word Art clear stamps, some very fun holiday Stickpins, and a collection of doilies in various shapes, sizes and colors. 

Link your vintage-inspired holiday creations right here by 6pm on Wednesday, September 6th. Keyword for galleries and Flickr is JB2318.

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

Thank You Santa

We're still creating cards with our new crafty stash items this week. That might mean things Santa brought you... or perhaps you are your own Santa and took advantage of the great holiday sales?

Here's what Santa brought us:

Lauren's Other Card

Lauren says, "I saw Doodlebug's Candy Cane Lane collection online in December and asked my friend Elisabeth from Paper Anthology to order it for me. Nearly everything on this card is from that set: the paper with the cute houses, the dimensional truck and tree stickers, the sentiment strip, and the little hearts and snowflakes. I made a shaker window using ancient heart-shaped Nesties, filled it with a snowy sequin mix, set it all on a blue plaid background from an older D-bug set and called it good."

Stephanie's Other Card

Stephanie says, "I combined a Gel Print, Distress Oxide Ink Blending and the brand new Taylored Expressions Peace on Earth Cutting Plate.  I finished with Iridescent Glitter Dust Spray & a sentiment from Taylored Expressions Simple Strips - Christmas.  One of my resolutions for the year is to make more multiples when I'm creating (so I have enough cards at the end of November), so you can click on through to the blog to see other versions."

And remember, one random participant will receive the Sunny Studio Snowman Kisses Stamps & Coordinating Die Cuts.

Scroll (or click!) down to the original post to link your cards. This challenge runs until 6pm on Wednesday, January 11, 2023.

Walking in a VINTAGE Wonderland

This week we're asking you to create a card that features retro or vintage products, a vintage style, or you can go for extra points and do both.

Here are our Vintage creations for this week:

Stephanie's Card

Stephanie says, "Most of the items in my Vintage mailable collage are Tim Holtz vintage-reproduced items (except for the truly vintage S&H Green Stamps & the Simon Says Stamp sentiments).  I love layering all of those items together for a completely mailable holiday card."

Lauren's Card

Lauren says, "I've used a fun retro 1950's style journal card from Authentique (one of my fave manufacturers for a vintage vibe; Graphic 45 and Carta Bella are good too!) with coordinating distressed gingham background; plus an ancient paper poinsettia, 7 Gypsies velvet leaves and an MME brad that might have been purchased during the last century. The fun and snarky sentiment are snipped from another journal card; and the ribbon, which is new, from Paper Anthology, was impossible to resist because how often do you get to put red AND green gingham on the same card?!"

♥♥♥

One randomly-selected cardmaker who links up with us this time will win a 

Deluxe Christmas Ephemera Assortment 

and a $15 gift card to choose anything else they'd like 

from Lauren's Etsy Shop, Just Enough Stuff

♥♥♥

Link your vintage or retro-inspired card(s) right here by 6pm (Eastern) on Wednesday, September 7th. Keyword for galleries and Flickr is JB-22-18.

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

12 days of Winners

So many awesome cards uploaded for our Twelve Days of Christmas / True Love prompt.

Here are a few of our favorites.

Crafting Junkie

absolutely rocked the True Love/Heart option of this prompt.  

Those snowflakes and white accents are just magical.

Sandy J at Adventures of a StampingWriter

combined wonderful coloring with that fabulous glittery red drum for a 

perfect Twelfth Day of Christmas Card.

A Deena's Card

created a card for each of the Twelve Days of Christmas 

(click through to see the other 10 days)

using a variation on a theme in her design to make each one

slightly different ... we loved the red hearts to.

Now drumroll please for our prize winner ... 

Lucky #1 - Bev of Bev's Creative Path and her two turtle doves.

E-mail us your address & we'll get your stamp set on the way.

And join us back at midnight for some Inspirational fun.

Have Yourself a Very Vintage Christmas

We're still sharing Vintage or Vintage-inspired creations at Jingle Belles this week. 

Remember you have until 6pm EST on Wednesday to link-up your holiday card design for a chance to win a bag of vintage goodies from Lauren's Etsy Store Just Enough Stuff.

Here are the vintage cards we created this week:

Lauren's Other Card

Lauren says, "I'm still in a serious collage phase, so I will basically take any excuse to tear and combine vintage text paper and sheet music! That's what I did here; then I used a Tim Holtz Mixed Media Xmas die to cut poinsettias into the card; and then I added some small paper ones with Eyelet Outlet Poinsettia Brads and some velvet holly leaves. An appropriate sticker sentiment (Simple Stories, I think?) and I was good to go."

Stephanie's Other Card

Stephanie says, "I started with a card base college of vintage papers including a picture of holly & berries from the same vintage ideals magazine I used this week.  Then I found a vintage replica postcard in my stash that coordinated perfectly (and also managed to cover a large portion of the college - you can see the college before it was covered on my blog)."

Days of Old

We're celebrating "The Spirit of Christmas Past" which means we're creating cards with a vintage vibe. That might mean incorporating actual vintage items; OR using new papers, dies or stamps with an old-fashioned feeling. 

What do we mean by "vintage"? Pretty much any timeframe in history! Your "days of old" could be Regency England, Midcentury Palm Springs, or even just the fond days of your childhood Christmases. Just in case you have nothing that will suit, Lauren's scanned a few vintage postcards and some sheet music from her own collection and placed them below. Just right-click and save to your computer, then print them out at whatever size you'd like.

To add a little extra incentive, this week we're sponsored by Lauren's Etsy Shop, Just Enough Stuff, and there's a sweet little pack of holiday ephemera for one lucky cardmaker who links up their vintage card design at the bottom of this post.

Stephanie's Card

Stephanie says, "My go-to starting place for Vintage is my collection of Ideals Christmas Magazines that were rescued from the recycle bin.  I found this image of poinsettias that I detail-cut around the edges.  Next I added ephemera from Tim Holtz the kind of vintage reproduction items to help complete the layout.  The last touch was adding clear Crystalline Drops to the Poinsettia centers and a scattering of golden gems."

Lauren's Card

Lauren says, "Two of my all-time favorite items to use on vintage-style holiday cards are sheet music and doilies. There are lots of modern versions of both, and I love music-inspired patterned paper and doily dies. But in this case, I went with actual OLD sheet music, paired with the doilies I found at a thrift shop over the weekend. The postcard image on my card is also vintage, but in this case I scanned the original and printed it slightly smaller, to be a better fit on my A7 card. Torn mats of patterned paper, machine stitching and a little bit of Eyelet Outlet washi tape add texture and interest."

Vintage items for you to use:

A fun prize from Just Enough Stuff, to be awarded randomly 

to one lucky cardmaker who links up with us this fortnight:

A Deluxe Christmas Assortment 

featuring sheet music, illustrations, 

text paper, playing cards, postcards, tags and more!

♥♥♥

Link your Old Fashioned Masterpiece right here by 6pm (EST) on Wednesday, May 19th. Keyword for galleries, social media and Flickr is JB-21-10.

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

Greenery Greats

 So much beautiful holiday foliage in the gallery ... here are a few that caught our eyes.

Vicky of Crafting Clare's Paper Moments

shared a stunning one-layer poinsettia card.  

The masked shading is such a great way to add visual interest to a CAS design.

Barbara G. of Barb's Creative Corner

made us smile with her holiday garland decorated with 

ornaments and a fat little Christmas Cat.

Susan B. of Cardmaker's Garrett

shared a super-cool technique with her 

boughs of holly.

And finally ... drum roll ... our prize goes to:

Cyndie R. of Reis's Pieces of Paper

We'll see you back at midnight with a *sharp* new holiday card prompt.

Old-Fashioned Fabulousness

We loved seeing all your beautiful takes on vintage and retro style cards this fortnight! As usual, you've made it very hard to feature just a few, but here are three cards that made our old-fashioned hearts especially happy:

Fabiola of Mon P'tit Monde

...captured the vintage spirit with a beautiful monotone image, which she surrounded with subtle details like embossing, lacy diecuts and just the tiniest amount of bling! 

Gail of I Like Paper

...made an absolutely charming vintage postcard image the centerpiece of a truly charming collage card!

Sue of Paper Pleasure

...started with the sweetest old-fashioned lady and surrounded her with just the right elements from her stash! plus... she MADE those amazing flowers! 

♥♥♥

And now it's time to see who wins that fun prize from Lauren's Etsy Shop, Just Enough Stuff! The fine folks at Random.org have selected lucky number...

#10!

which means that

LeAnne Pugliese

is our lucky winner!

Congratulations, LeAnne, please email Lauren at

llaurenb (at) hotmail.com to claim your prize!

Many thanks to everyone who played along, we truly love seeing every single card! We'll be getting down to earth at midnight with a brand new challenge... hope to see you then! ♥

Have Yourself a Very Vintage Christmas

For this prompt, we're asking you to create a card with a vintage or retro vibe … either by using new products that are vintage-in-style or by incorporating actual vintage items into your design... or heck, really go for it and use both!

If you've got absolutely NOTHING to use, don't despair, there are a few scans below, from Lauren's personal collection/hoard for you to use if you'd like. Also, one lucky random cardmaker who links up with us this time will win some fab and funky Christmas Ephemera from Lauren's Etsy Shop, Just Enough Stuff!

Here's what we made:

Stephanie's Card

Stephanie says, "I pulled together all sorts of vintage elements from my stash ... game card, ektachrome slide, trading stamps, postage stamps, wildlife stamps, a doily, and a dictionary page.  I had fun layering it all together and finishing with some modern vintage sentiment strips."

Lauren's Card

Lauren says, "I went with mostly real vintage because it's sorta my thang, lol! I went collage-y for the same reason. But of course there are loads of fabulous brand new stamps and paper lines that will get you a similar effect; for that matter you could use vintage elements in a CAS card! There are lots of ays to go with this! I've combined a poinsettia fussycut from a vintage Ideals Magazine, a collage of sheet music and text papers overlaid with some fun Red Stamps and at the end I added ancient lace and brand new (but I've had them awhile) 7 Gypsies velvetty leaves for texture."

♥♥♥

Right-click and save an old-fashioned Belle-centric image to use if you'd like; print at full-size, as a mini, or anywhere in between!

♥♥♥

In addition, one lucky cardmaker will be randomly selected to win:

A Deluxe Christmas Ephemera Assortment

AND a $10 gift voucher to

Lauren's Etsy Shop

Just Enough Stuff!

♥♥♥

Link up your old-fashioned masterpieces right here, by 6pm (EST) on Wednesday, April 8th. Keyword for galleries and Flickr is JB:20:07.

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

Navy Nativity

We're still celebrating a BLUE Christmas this week at Jingle Belles ... creating holiday cards that predominantly feature shades of BLUE.

Here's what we made this week:

Lauren's Other Card

Lauren says, "I'm utterly smitten with this Hero Arts Poinsettia Ornament die, which I got at Paper Anthology. I cut it from plain watercolor paper and painted the flowers and foliage with ColorBurst in shades of Prussian Blue, Ultramarine and Lime. I layered the finished diecut on top of a scrap of paper adorned with gelato crayons and white modeling paste. I added a large Prima flower to one side, then found the perfect blue patterned paper background with just enough detail. My sentiment is composed of ancient and well-hoarded Basic Grey alphabet stickers, in what I still contend is the best-ever font for cardmaking!"

Stephanie's Other Card

Stephanie says, "The DCWV Arctic Wishes Matstack is filled with beautiful blue papers including this one feature a trio of adorable snow people.  I used this week's Fab Friday Sketch with a cute little Doodle Pops Snow Buddies Sticker and a sentiment and snowflakes from Essentials by Ellen Snow Buds."

Scroll down to the original "Blue Christmas" post to see the amazing reader's gallery and link up your own rhapsody in BLUE!

An Old-Fashioned Christmas

This week at Jingle Belles we're going back in time ... we're asking you to create a card with a vintage or retro vibe … either by using new products that are vintage-in-style or by incorporating actual vintage items into your design (or heck, really go for it and use both).

Here's how we went vintage this week:

Stephanie's Card

Stephanie says, "I recently returned from California where I was able to attend a Print-makers' Fair.  At one booth, I picked-up a few tiny vintage cards including this vintage boot in a roller skate filled with roses.  I wasn't sure how I would use it ... but I loved it.  I love how it paired perfectly with several designer papers with vintage designs including some numbers, text, flourishes and holly.  Sentiment is once again Bluebird Typed Christmas (apparently my go to sentiment set)."

Lauren's Card

Lauren says, "My card was inspired by this week's Sketch Saturday (#562) because that funky-cool angle is just so awesome! My vintage bits are actual vintage, from my stash of goodies, and include that lovely Jingle Bells sheet music from an old songbook, the (well-hoarded!) German-Scrap bells; plus a red doily that may have been "liberated" from my mom's dining room, so shhhhh don't tell her lol! I've mixed in some modern patterned paper in semi-muted shades that went well with the bells, and finished off with loads of dimensional flowers and leaves."

♥♥♥

Just in case you have ABSOLUTELY NOTHING even vaguely vintage-inspired in your stash, here are a couple of scans from Lauren's personal collection of ephemera for you to use if you'd like:

♥♥♥

To further inspire you, we've got a little prize for one (randomly selected) lucky cardmaker who links up with us this fortnight:

A Christmas Ephemera Assortment

 like this one, as well as a $10 credit to select anything else you'd like from Lauren's Etsy Shop, Just Enough Stuff

♥♥♥

Link up as many times as you want, between now and 6pm (EST) on Wednesday, May 22. Keyword for galleries and Flickr is JB:19:10.

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

In Great Shape

We're still Shaping-Up for the New Year ... creating shaped cards (anything other than squares or rectangles will do).

Here are our shapes for this week:

Lauren's Other Card

Lauren says, "Here's another example of choosing a clipart image and re-sizing it to make the perfect customized shaped card. In this case, the mitten is about 6" tall and nearly 4" wide at the thumb. Yes, I raided my treasured hoard of classic Basic Grey papers! I layered up all of my design elements to make the prettiest and most fanciful mitten imaginable, then affixed it to a folded piece of red cardstock and c-a-r-e-f-u-l-l-y cut around the whole thing to make a card that is mitten-shaped but does actually open in a traditional way."

Stephanie's Other Card

Stephanie says, "I turned one of my wonky Christmas Trees into a stand-alone card.  The tall skinny card attached to the back also works like an easel, so the tree can stand on its own on the recipients mantle or desk.  I used four different green holiday papers from my scrap bin cut into triangles and decorated my tree with lots of clear bling and a gold glitter star."

Remember, there's a prize for one lucky participant this week.  Make sure you upload your cards by 6pm EST on February 13th for a chance to win.

Old-Fashioned Perfection

Clearly we are not the only cardmakers who enjoy a vintage vibe at Christmas. Judging by the amazing gallery, everyone was especially inspired this fortnight! Here are a few cards that made us particularly happy:

Sue C of Paper Pleasure
...combined many gorgeous bits and bobs in a beautiful "collagey" style, made even better by the uniquely shaped card base!



Susan B of Cardmaker's Garret
...stamped what might be the Best Sentiment Ever, then let it shine by making it the star of this lovely card!

Barbara of The Knackered Grouse
...posted three of seven (!) cards she made featuring gorgeous vintage Santa illustrations teamed with just the right embellishments!

♥♥♥

And now what about that fun prize from Lauren's Etsy Shop,
Just Enough Stuff?

Prize includes a Deluxe Christmas Ephemera Assortment
like this one and  a $10 credit to select anything else
you'd like from Just Enough Stuff 

The fine folks at Random.org have selected the magic number of...
*22*
which means our Lucky Winner is:

*Janis Lewis*

please email Lauren at llaurenb@hotmail.com
to claim your prize!

Many thanks to everyone who played along this fortnight! We'll be back at midnight with a brand new inspiration we hope will color your holiday cardmaking world in a brand new way! ♥