MY Jingle Belles prompt! "Snow SOFTLY Falling"

Hi there! I am SUPER excited to be the "guest star" over at Jingle Belles this week! I gave Lauren and Stef the idea for a prompt & they liked it, so I get to be this week's guest star. :) I hope you might make time to come and play my prompt? Oh pretty please?? 

If you read this blog often, you know that lately, my projects have centered around the design work I do for colourQ and those "have-to" projects: scrapbook pages I NEED to get done, birthday cards for my loved ones, etc. But when I do find time to play another challenge? Well, Jingle Belles is almost ALWAYS my "go-to" challenge! I love to make holiday cards! And I LOVE the fun, positive atmosphere on that blog. Lauren and Stef are both HUGELY talented, experienced designers, as well as being so nice. :) 

So, my prompt is "snow SOFTLY falling." When I think of winter, I think of: softly falling snow, snuggly sweaters and socks, mittens, down parkas, warm, soft cookies & coziness in general. So, that was my jumping off point for this idea of making a SOFT Christmas card/project. I recently learned how to do wool felting & I knew that was something I wanted to incorporate, as well as flocking, ribbon, & stitching. But, some other ideas of SOFT items you could use on your projects this week are: batting, velvet, fibers, denim, thick layers of embossing powder, soft silk flowers and snowflakes, pillow stickers & upholstered brads!  Really, anything your brain can come up with that is SOFT, it doesn’t have to be only papercrafting products that you use, either! :) I encourage you to pull out those quilting, knitting, sewing, & flocking skills!

This project started out with the felt snowflake medallions that you see on the giftcard holder and on the card. I die cut the green scalloped circles from a wool felt sheet. Wool felt is different than craft felt, it is MUCH thicker and if you want to do needle felting, you really need the sturdiness and wooliness of the wool felt. The snowflakes were felted on freeform using wool roving. Felting is very simple & I have really enjoyed adding this technique to my crafting skills. The pouch is also felted, instead of being stitched closed. If you go to this link on Spotted Canary, you will see a tab on the right hand side of the page. that says "related videos." Click on that and it will take you to a short 3 minute video that shows that basics of wool felting.

I used some craft felt as my base mat for the card and stitched the cardstock card front to it in the four corners. I gathered some ribbon with a running stitch & adhered that down, too. Had to add lots of white flocking to sweet Santa!  I made a tassel from fibers to my giftcard. 

Well, I hope you like this project, and I hope you will be able to come play with us at Jingle Belles this week! I'm thinking I need to make another set like this so I have one for both Ian and Collin's teachers this year. :)


Have a GREAT day! :)


-Noelle


Supply list: stamp, solid cardstock, ribbon: Stampin' Up!; markers: Copic; wool felt and wool roving: FeltWorks/EK Success; flocking powder: Inkadinkado; die: spellbinders