Joyful Deer (Jingle Belles, Paper Players)

Hi there! Hope your weekend was great! :) I had an extra hour of sleep Saturday night, so that made me a very happy girl. :) I decided to get my craft on Sunday afternoon & got my pages done for colourQ (you'll get to see them tomorrow!) and finally a challenge card done? Yep, it's true :) I am for the first time ever playing over at The Paper Players, and also at one of my **fave** challenges Jingle Belles with this card. I also got to use some fun, NEW goodies on it! Check it....

Now, sweet Anne Marie is the host at Paper Players for this challenge. Anne Marie is a follower of **this** humble little blog, and I have to admit, I am very flattered she is a follower, because I love her work! :)

Here's the "recipe card" for this week's challenge at PP. Cool huh? Now the challenge at Jingle Belles is a challenge to use something CLEAR, so my patterned acetate card front is (and this being a Christmas card!) are the qualifying factors over there. It seemed like the 2 challenges would mesh well. I have to admit, I'm really not a big fan of when people play 17 challenges with one card. I hope I'm not offending anyone by saying that, but it seems that often the card doesn't "fit" ALL the challenges it's linked to, in that case. I'm a one, or like today, maximum of 2 challenges per project kind of girl. I'll only mix challenges if I feel I can blend them without "watering down" one of the challenges.

I was at a crafts show with my Mom this weekend! Super fun, I love craft shows! Though I don't mind telling you, this one was CRAZY packed, I have rarely seen those kinds of crowds, whoa! At the craft show, there was a booth for The Greeting Farm stamps! One of the "characters" of their stamps is Ian. Well, my son is named Ian, so I had often thought of picking up a couple "Ians" for my stamp collection! But I never had, until this weekend! I got Hello Ian and the stamp you see here is from Forest Friends. Don't be surprised if you see more of these cute stamps join my collection, either! Especially since they gave me a coupon at the craft show. ;) And I had no idea this company is really close to home for me, they are located in Parker, CO! Isn't this little deer precious? :)

Ok, well for layout, I was stumped, I had to include 3 patterned papers, two ribbons, a punch (I actually used 2 punches!), acetate, glitter, and I wanted to use my new stamps, WHEW! However was I going to fit all that on one little card? Well, I found this OLD Mojo sketch that looked like it would work, I didn't follow it EXACTLY, but this was my jumping-off point.

I started out by making my card base. I cut a 2 sided patterned paper to 4 1/4" by 12", and my acetate to 4 1/4" by 6." I used the same border punch on the end of both pieces. Then I trimmed the acetate so the total length was 5 1/2." I scored my DP right below the punched area and measured 5 1/2" from the scored line & cut. Added a little adhesive to the top of the acetate piece and I slipped that underneath the scored flap that now was coming down the front to create that front flap you see on the card.

I then moved on to my dear little deer. I stamped her on white cardstock and colored her with Copics. When I was done with my shading, I used my colorless blender pen to dot some ink along her back and the top of her head, I was trying to make white dots like deer often have along the top of them. It gave a cool look, but not as white as I wanted, so I added a few more white dots with a chalk marker. I fussy cut her out and adhered her to a patterned paper panel. I gave her a jingle bell brad for a collar, because I wanted her to look like a baby Santa's reindeer.

For that blue panel with the sentiment, I cut an Island Indigo scrap to size. I stamped some little snowflakes on it using VersaMark ink, and then I stamped the "joy" sentiment over that using the black Memento ink again. I added a rhinestone flower sticker to the "o" in "joy." After all that was adhered, I adhered a brown grosgrain ribbon around the bottom of the card, and then a light blue thinner ribbon on top of the brown one. The final touch was a very glittery snowflake 3D sticker backed with a punched piece and popped up with a foam dot.

So, I think I got all the recipe pieces, though if you count the patterned acetate, the punched piece behind the snowflake, the piece the deer is on, and the front and back pieces of my card base, I think I have **five** DPs? Hope that is not TOO many! I do think this card ended up a wee bit busier than I would have liked, but I'm leaving it as-is. You know how much I like patterned paper! I also used 2 punches, and I hope the glitter on the snowflake qualifies as a sprinkle since it's not loose glitter.

I hope you like it! Have a fabulous day & I will see you back here tomorrow morning with another colourQ challenge! :)

hugs, Noelle

supply list: stamps: The Greeting Farm & Inkadinkado; DPs: Little Yellow Bicycle; markers: Copic; punches: EK Success; snowflake sticker: Jolee's Parcel; ribbon: The Ribbon Boutique (Hobby Lobby) & Stampin' Up!; snowflake acetate: Hambly Screen prints; solid cardstock in Soft Suede & Island Indigo: SU!; ink: Memento Black and VersaMark

DUST IT OFF!: Uh, that snowflake sticker is from last year, but that's about it... my scrapbook pages for tomorrow have some more fun, older product on them, though! :)