Bah! Humbug! Nativity Challenge

This week at Bah! Humbug! they're celebrating the true meaning of Christmas with a Nativity challenge. This became slightly more difficult for me than expected when I realized I have NO Nativity stamps and would have to rely on my Cricut. The Nativity I chose came from the Christmas Village cartridge and the figures are designed to be free standing. I welded the figures in DS, hid the contours of the bases and also welded a small rectangle from George at the base of each figure to hide the slit at the bottom where the base fits in. Of course, no shadows again, so I hid the interior contours of the images, cut it in brushed gold card stock and glued them slightly offset. The Star is from Joys of the Season.

I decided to keep it pretty CAS. I thought just the white and gold looked elegant, but a plain white mat look unfinished and it was too large to emboss with a regular A2 Cuttlebug folder. I decided to use the smallest of my Spellbinders Grand Circles to emboss only (tape your die in place and run it through your machine with the embossing pad and plate so it won't cut through) and then added some holographic peelie stars. I popped the cuts and added an adhesive star to the star cut and a few adhesive rhinestones to the manger. I'm actually quite pleased with how it came out. Look ladies, no camels. LOL Really though, the B!H! DT examples are lovely, as always and welcome back, Ann! Oh, and today is my dear friend Barb's Birthday (and it's her final week as a B!H! Guest Designer) so pop by and sing her the b-day song. I'm also entering this in the Christmas Stampin' All Year Long Resist the Temptation challenge, The Crazy Challenge Monthly Christmas No Red or Green Challenge, The Jingle Belles Peace on Earth challenge, the Sparkles Forum Christmas Songs challenge (Joy to the World), Fab's big Christmas Something Shiny (and/or Snowflakes)Challenge for Oct, CHNC Suitable for a Male Challenge.

Bah! Humbug! Christmas Stocking Challenge

This week the Humbuggers are calling for Christmas stockings. I decided to pull out my Christmas Lace cartridge for only the second time. I was so excited about this cart until I saw that the backing for the lace designs weren't shadows, but only a backing for the cut outs, and in some cases I found it difficult to even tell what some of the images were. That's sort of how I felt about the Christmas stocking. Awfully skinny, if you ask me, so I grabbed Christmas Cheer and played around in Design Studio to skew one of the stockings enough to be sort of a shadow and cut the scrolly part out of the center. I then skewed the shadow of that stocking for a backing. It was so large, that unless I wanted to make a 6x9" card I needed to think of something else so I decided to use it as an over sized tag. Large presents look sort of ridiculous with teeny tiny tags, so there you go.

I glued the embossed solid tag to the shadow, cut teeny red foam pieces to pop the lacy bit and added adhesive beads to embellish. The hanging tag is cut from George and "For You", computer generated. I think it turned out pretty elegant, don't you? Be sure to stop by B!H! to see the fab inspiration and read the post for this challenge. It's a hoot! Max is BACK! HeeHee! I also found a fairly new Christmas challenge blog which runs their challenges monthly (for all you guys that can't handle Christmas once a week (LOL). The April challenge for the Sparkles Forum Christmas Challenge is Ribbons and Gems so I'm entering my tag there as well. go check them out.