December’s festive challenge…

Good morning all and welcome to December’s festive challenge!

We’re all feeling the Christmas spirit and ready to challenge you to a month of glorious festive crafting.  Astrid has chosen our theme for December and she’s getting straight to the point with her theme of…

Whatever you are in the world, whatever your religion/faith, whatever Christmas means to you, we’d like to see what you make that has a sense of nostalgia about it.  It doesn’t have to nostalgic in the sense of a ‘vintage’ piece, just something that evokes a memory or a time past.  Whether a card, a tag, a scrapbooking or journal page, altered art, a postcard, 3D or home decor project, in fact any crafty item you care to make is perfectly fine as long as you follow our clear and simple RULES.

We will be posting a project every day throughout the month as we usually do including a sprinkling of guest posts.  You have until just before midnight on New Year’s Eve to enter your project and our lucky (randomly chosen) winner will receive a £20 shop voucher from our generous sponsor, Country View Crafts.

To start us off we have a parade of makes from the DT who are led out this month by our October winner, Samantha…

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Samantha Wade of Craft Room Delights

Hi, my name is Samantha Wade.  I live in the West Midlands with my husband Peter and two ragdoll cats (the girls)
I have always been interested in crafts and addicted to paper crafting and all things creative.You will find me in my craft room in my spare time or the garden which is my other passion.

Ingredients
Card 21cm x 15cm
Pion Papers Days of Winter, church and borders and forget me not (beautiful papers).
Spellbinders floral die used on image, dusted with glass glitter.
Edges of paper distressed.
Christmas vellum, die cut with Sue Wilson French Collection die set.
Flowers are white blossom coloured with distress ink Iced Spruce, cheese cloth, stamens to make the spray.

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Astrid

I made a little tag card out of two matching tags and had great fun making different backgrounds and embellishments. To see a step by step for this project, please visit my blog

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Brenda

Christmas is a very special time in the Brown household and much of my love for Christmas stems from my childhood days when our Mum made it the most wonderful time of the year for Chris and I. These images evoke many of those nostalgic times. Hop here.

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Chris

 With a typical 50s/60s childhood you can imagine that Christmases were quite different but I remember them as magical.  As Brenda and I lay in our beds, the coal embers glowing in the dark and frost on the INSIDE of the window panes, we always thought we cold hear Santa's sleigh bells.  Now how much of that was wishful thinking and how much was real no-one really knows!  No matter how hard we tried to stay awake, we never ever caught him coming down the chimney but a pillowcase full of gifts, fruit, nuts etc was always left at the foot of each of our beds.  With a real tree and lots of fresh, real holly and mistletoe from the garden, and always a potted poinsettia centre place on the table or sideboard - they are certainly times to remember.  Yes, definitely magical..... More details of my card can be found here.  Chris xxx

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Donna

 I love some of the really old Christmas postcards that you see so decided I'd make my own version.  All the details are on my blog  Donna x

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Gabrielle

  I LOVE Christmas! I love getting the decorations out and as I put each one out I remember where each one came from. I love looking at all the presents wrapped up and ready to give out (though the shopping and wrapping can be a little less enjoyable!) and I love the excitement from the children and the anticipation of what Christmas Day will bring. So to add to these memories I made a hanging to join my growing collection. The base is an Art Part and the Tim Holtz stamp was stamped on tissue paper and the back of it painted. As always, there are more details on my blog! Gabrielle x

 

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Jennie

Christmas for me is all about candle light - I love the candle light carol services and the opportunity to sit around the fire musing through a book on Boxing Day with candles alight all around. We have candles lit all year round  these days, but when I was young candles were only lit at Christmas (well in our house anyway - the utility box of candles in the kitchen was for power cuts only!) So for my nostalgic piece I have decorated an LED battery candle which can be alight for the whole of Christmas with no fear of being knocked over.  Please visit my blog if you would like to know more.

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Nikki

For my first Nostalgic Christmas project I made a tag using the wonderful poinsettia bigz die and stamps from Tim Holtz Deco Christmas set. A step by step is available over at Addicted to Art - be lovely to see you there.

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Sue B

Candles and Holly are are nostalgic for me.

More pics on my Blog.

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Sue D

I don't normally go in for the vintage creations, so when I saw that the theme was nostalgic Christmas, I just thought back to when I was small when Christmas was still full of magic, and not an X Box in sight. I've used two different sizes of ceramic tiles to make coasters and a table mat. Full details can be found here at Sue The Iron.

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Alison

I've gone with celebrating one of the oldest traditions there is - the bringing of greenery into the house to celebrate the Christmas season.  I can remember when I was a child going to pick out our Christmas tree from rows and rows of them planted on a hillside, and the tree and big vases of holly and ivy are still the most important part of Christmas for me.  I hope to get some sunnier pictures of this tag to capture the shimmer, so hop over to Words and Pictures to see whether I succeeded!

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We hope you’ll find something in our line up which motivates and inspires you to join in.  You can enter as many times as you like provided that all entries are original and have been posted on your blog from today onwards.  Most if not all of our DTMs have provided step x step posts for you with more detailed photo’s if you’d like to see/follow them.

It’s over to you now, so good luck and we’ll see you in 2 days with another project!

Chris and the team xxx