Bah! Humbug! Day is here at last...

Today sees the start of our first challenge of the New Year. How excited are we?

This week we have the theme of Holly - Fairies and Magic, which is a perfect accompaniment to our prize giveaway of a Holly Fairy rubber stamp and matching CD by Crafter's Companion.  I've made two cards for the challenge.  One to show case the Holly Fairy and another very simple card and gift tag.

Both the holly die cut on the card and the holly bauble tag were cut on my Cricut machine using the Joys of the Season cartridge.   The gold berries on the card are my own version of card candy.  I used the smallest circle die in my set of original circle dies by Spellbinders (any small circle or waste from hole punch would do the job) to cut a circle.  Then with the circle die cut face down in the palm of my hand I rolled a round ended pen top on it until a lovely indented circle was made.  Attaching these shaped circles to the holly with Pinflair or silicone glue means that the lovely rounded shape is supported and doesn't get flattened.  On the bauble gift tag I used a gem stone, but I wish I hadn't as really I preferred it plain.

To create the inner I used computer generated text and the waste from the bauble die cut to decorate the page.

My card and bauble tag are also for the challenges at ...

• ABC Christmas Challenge - Anything goes for Christmas
• Anything Goes Challenge - the letter C (for Christmas of course)
• Cupcake Challenge - Predominantly white
• Aud Sentiments Challenge - Only have two words (Merry Christmas)

Card number two uses an image and backing paper from Crafter's Companion CD 4 in the Flower Fairy Friends range.  I printed the image and backing paper on to beautiful white paper with a gold opalescent sheen.  Unfortunately in a photo it looks dire, but in real life is quite effective.  Honestly!
The layout uses the fab sketch from the challenge at Sketch and Stash.  I used holly border punch to create the border across the front of the card and also to fancy up the inner.  Yes, I'm still succeeding in sticking to the plan of doing the inners at the same time as cards.  It nearly drove me mad doing them all last December and I decided that no way did I want to face a marathon like that again.

The inner on this card is in two layers with a plain green base and then the white with gold pearl finish paper printed with a sentiment and then punched to give a holly patterned edge.

My card is also for the following challenges...

• Crafter's Companion - sketch (have wavered slightly as I couldn't find my corner rounder punch)
• Papertake Weekly - Anything goes plus lace (punched lace is allowed)
• Flutter By Wednesday - Anything goes but remember your fairy, angel or butterfly.

Well have a great Friday everyone and I hope we'll see you over at Bah! Humbug! sometime soon.  Check out Max's beautiful card and Carol our Guest Designer for this month has created some wonderful works.  Unfortunately, my friend and team mate, Irene is not well at the moment and has been unable to join in.  If you can spare some hugs for her then I'm sure they would be well received.
Ann xxx