Not Christmassy. but Christmassy...

...that was the general idea of the challenge I was set for this week over on Crafty Cardmakers where I've been very kindly asked to be guest artist this week.

The theme title is 'An Alternative Christmas' and they say...

1. Create a card/layout/project etc using christmas images in NON TRADITIONAL COLOURS so no red, green, gold combos on a christmas image. I know some of you will take to this like a duck to water as Ive already spied some of you doing it. Have a try at lilac themes, blues, pinks anything but red/green/gold

OR


2. Alternative route is to use a NON CHRISTMAS IMAGE using TRADITIONAL COLOURS so maybe look at your sumer tildas and do them in traditional red/green/gold. I know this works very well for the shopping Anyas.

The challenge site is for those of you just stepping out into blogland or that are fairly new to stamping and paperarts and have some excellent tutorials (ie setting up a blog, linking, working with Promarkers) and challenges to give inspirational ideas.

I love to look for as many ways as possible to use an image - it make your stamp images 'go further' and you can pretty much guarantee that it will be an individual piece of work, at least for a little while. By using non Christmas images for Christmas cards is one way of doing this.



The stamps I used on this occassion are from Stampotique Originals. I used the Polka Dot Swirl and The Crafter and placed her in a Christmas setting. Just by adding a few sprigs of holly and using Christmas colours helps convert the image into a seasonal one.



In the photo above it looks like a normal style card, but as you can see in the photo below its a twist on the easel card opening in quite an unusual way.



I'm hoping to make quite a few 'Christmas, but not as we know it' cards over the coming weeks. You never quite know whats going to appear on the table in front of you when making something like this until its finished lol. Its good fun, you should try it.