CCEE2150 - Christmas Around the World

For the CCEE Stampers' final challenge of 2021, Lynn would like for our stampers to select a country or culture other than their own and feature a unique element in that country or culture's Christmas celebrations to feature on their card.

My ancestors came mainly from Ireland and England, so I looked in another direction and chose Germany for my card.  I found this on the website for House Beautiful -- "Decorative nutcracker figurines, commonly made to resemble a toy soldier, is a common German Christmas tradition. According to German folklore, nutcrackers were given as good luck keepsakes to the family to protect their home. It's thought they would watch over the family, keeping evil spirits and danger at bay."  Nutcrackers have found their way into many American homes as well, but apparently they started in Germany.   Fortunately, I had an old stamp set with several nutcrackers the right size and came up with this card.

Check out the CCEE Stampers blog for more Christmas around the world.  As this is our last challenge for the year, I want to wish you a very merry Christmas; and I'll see you next year!

Scor-Pal More Than One Score -- Winter Fun

It's the first of the month again, and this month's More Than One Score Challenge on the Scor-Pal Blog is Winter Fun.  I live in Florida, and we don't get snow very often; but I decided to make a couple of snowmen for my card -- a Center Step Card -- for which I have written a tutorial.  I have seen several versions of the Center Step Card, vertical and horizontal.  My card today is the horizontal version.

Take a 5 1/2" x 8 1/2" piece of card stock and place it longways in your paper cutter.  Come in 1" from the side and start to make a cut from the
1 3/4" mark . . .

 . . . to the 6 3/4" mark.  Repeat on the other side.

Place your card stock longways across the top of the Scor-Pal and score between the cut lines at
1 3/4"  and . . .

 . . . 2 3/4"

At the 4 1/4" mark, score all the way from top to bottom.

Score between the cut lines at 5 3/4" and . . .

. . . 6 3/4".

 Fold your card as shown.  Then you can decorate it any way you'd like.

For my card, I made a background panel, but that is not necessary.  

As you can see on this card, there is no center panel.

This one has a center panel of vellum just for attaching the snowflakes.

Check out the Scor-Pal Blog to see what kind of winter fun the rest of the team is having.

MFP Blog Hop Day 4 - Nutcrackers

Welcome to the Marks Finest Papers, a Heinrich Company

September  Blog Hop! 

This month's New Stamp Set Releases are

 Featured  Sept. 23

Hot Air Balloons

Featured Sept. 24

Witchie

 Featured Sept. 25

Chrysanthemum

Featured Sept. 26

Nutcrackers

Please hop along with us! You have a chance to win one of the above stamp sets! Just comment on today's participating blogs (don't forget this one), each day for more chances to win! (You do NOT have to comment on all the blogs each day! The names are drawn randomly!) All six winners will be announced on 

Sept. 27, 2014 on the Mark's Finest Papers blog. You can go back and comment if you missed a day. (HINT: The more you comment, the more chances you have to win;  and comments on the MFP blog count twice!) 
The deadline for 

commenting is 10 PM EST on Friday, September 26, 2014.

Again I'm not a part of the official Blog Hop, but I'm so glad you stopped by my blog today because this is my favorite project of the week.  During the summer I attended a stamp show in Orlando and saw a card made with a nutcracker and was hoping that MFP Stamps would eventually have one too. The nutcracker on the card that I saw was made using paper tole, and I loved the dimension.  So, when I saw today's set, I was in Seventh Heaven!  Here is my project, which is a Christmas tag box.

There are three layers of the nutcracker image, which you can see here:

When you open up the box, you can see that it contains some Christmas tags, which were made using another MFP set, Holiday Tag.

I am entering this project in Scor-Pal's More Than One Score challenge for September -- fun storage ideas.  I found the directions for this tag box on one of the Technique Junkies Newsletter CDs, which I also purchased at that stamp show.

When I was looking on the internet for nutcrackers to get some ideas of color combinations, I saw a set of very elegant ones.  One of them was done in black, silver and white; and I decided to use that combination.  Here's my version of that nutcracker.

Today's set has several sentiments but nothing that would work with this particular design, so I used a stamp from another MFP set, Dear Santa.  Both words are on one stamp, so I had to improvise a little bit.  I stamped it twice, covering the unwanted word each time.

Be sure to check out the participating blogs for today and comment often for a chance to win a free stamp set.

Here's the Design Team for today:

 Jane C

Pat 

Marilynn
Nancy 
Bonnie 

Sue W

  Pam M

An'Jenic

Marks Finest Papers, a Heinrich Co.

I hope you have found some inspiration from the projects made by the design team this week.  We certainly had fun bringing them to you.

Tag Box

Stamps:  Mark's Finest Papers - Nutcrackers, Holiday Tag

Ink:  Memento Tuxedo Black

Paper:  Mark's Finest Papers - August Greens, Deep Scarlet, Snow Storm Smooth, various DP (unknown source)

Accessories:  Copic markers, Scor-Pal, Ribbon, Foam pop dots, Crop-a-Dial, Velcro

Card
Stamps:  Mark's Finest Papers - Nutcrackers, Dear Santa
Ink:  Memento Tuxedo Black, Versamark
Paper:  Mark's Finest Papers - Black Linen, Snow Storm Smooth; Recollections Silver Glitter
Accessories:Detail Silver embossing powder, Detail Black embossing powder, Copic markers, Ribbon, Star punch, Foam pop dots