Crafty Elves' Countdown To Christmas - September 2019 Edition

Welcome to the Crafty Elves' Countdown to Christmas!  Can you believe it's already September!!  And it's a very busy month around here... work deadlines and lots of crafty stuff going on... it's been so much fun!

If you're new here, then you'll want to know that my friend Debra Davison from Meticulosity agreed that for 2019 we would make a Christmas card a week and on the 25th of each month, we'd share the cards we've made that month!  And by December we'll have all of our Christmas cards ready to go!  We've both stuck to it and have a nice health pile of holiday wishes to send out.

Here's what I have for you today:

You may remember that in the beginning of the month I made a card for the Paper Smooches challenge for September and used the Wavy Wishes stamp set along with the Wavy Pattern dies.  That one was a little bit of a rainbow and after cutting the dies from all those different colors I had a whole bunch of leftovers!  So I created some backgrounds with them and have been sharing cards all month.  If you're interested you can find Wavy Card 1 here, Card 2 here and Card 3 here!  And this one makes 4!  I have a couple more to go too!

I love that Wavy Wishes includes a Merry Christmas sentiment!  I knew I wanted to use it for my monthly Christmas card post.  One of my fave stamp sets, Warm Hearts was just right to finish it up!  And of course my snowman has some coffee!  There's always a coffee cup in my Christmas Card post and always some kind of theme.  This time around the theme is Local Papercraft stores!  I'm so lucky and I have no less than 3 full blown papercraft stores and did you know that Paper Smooches' Artist and Owner Kim also has a Paint & Wine Studio not to far from me in Goodyear, AZ, called Our Creative Escape and up front in the studio there are some wonderful little giftie items, a Paper Smooches section and a limited selection of awesome papercrafting supplies.  It's an inspiring setting and lots of fun!

The rest of my cards today are made using an adorable paper collection called Gnome For the Holidays from another one of my favorite stomping grounds, Scraps of Love!  I picked mine up at the Scrapbook Expo and made a few quick cards for today:

This paper was designed by Scraps of Love and printed by Color Play.  The patterns are fun and there's even a plaid! #madforplaid  It also includes a 12x12 set of images that can be colored (on Copic friendly paper) and cut out (either in just a rectangle or fussy cut or cut with a Scan N Cut like I did!)  The flip side of that sheet has a random pattern that you can also choose to color if you'd like.  And Scraps of Love has some beautiful stamp sets too!  Most are Arizona themed and I picked the Christmas Cactus set!  The Cactus on this one is from the pre-printed images and the sentiment was stamped with the stamp set and fussy cut.  I used a polaroid die from A Jillian Vance Design to frame my images.

I'm playing along over at Double Trouble Challenges Something Plaid AND they are partnering with Use Your Stuff's Frames/Tags (which is also the twist at DT!)... I've used that awesome Polaroid Frame from AJVD!

For this one I stamped, colored and used my Scan N Cut to cut the images and fussy cut the sentiment from the Christmas Cactus stamp set.  I kept my designs simple and just added a few snowflakes from Lawn Fawn and sequins to embellish.

I'm playing along over at Simon Says Stamp's Monday Challenge which is Stitch It (Real or not)... I have some faux stitching in my die cuts!

And the Collection also includes some journal card sized images perfect for a quick and simple bunch of cards!  I used just a few to make these four cards along with more snowflakes sequins and some twine:

Hoping to have some more local shop fun in my next post.

Now before you go I've been choosing one lucky commenter from each Crafty Elves post to win some Happy Mail!  And it's time to announce the winner from last month:

Theresa!

And we're doing it again!  Leave me some love so I can send you some!

Thanks for stopping!  Now be sure to head on over to Debra's blog to see what she's cooked up for you today... there is some real cuuuteness going on over there!!

Paper Smooches Wavy Patterns - Take 2!

You may have seen my card for this month's sketch challenge over at Paper Smooches a few days ago.  I used the Wavy Pattern die and Wavy Wishes stamp set to create a sunny card with a rainbow of Wavy Patterns. (You can check that out here if you'd like!)  I had cut the Wavy Pattern die out of a few different colors of cardstock and one white to create that card and found myself with a whole bunch of extras... I could have just tossed them, but instead I had a lot of fun making all kinds of cool backgrounds and I'll be sharing cards all month using those "leftovers".  I only cut one more white one to use for my sentiments in various places on these cards and in the end I had around 3 extra pieces!

For this one it made me very happy to ink up the Posh Planters stamp set... one of my new faves!!

This stamp set does make me SO happy...lol!  Isn't that little van adorable??  This Posh Planters set is full of adorable images and the die sets even cut out the sentiments included in the set!  I'll be using this one a lot this month as well!

I'm playing along over at Simon Says Stamp's Wednesday Challenge which is Stamp It - use a clear or red rubber stamp-no digis.   And I'm playing along at Word Art Wednesday's current Anything Goes Challenge.  Check them both out!

And here's a pic of all of my backgrounds using my "leftovers"... you'll be seeing these throughout the month!

Thanks for stopping and please do come again soon!