Calendar

I've seen lots of sticky note holders lately on Pinterest, and I think they're a great idea and make nice little gifts. I wanted to make some with calendars for Christmas presents. This is my own design.

The calendar, photo and sticky note pad are all removable so that they can be replaced. (The little girl's face is obscured in the photo as I didn't have permission from her parents to show it online.) Printed papers are by Provocraft (they must be about 10 years old!) and the butterflies are cut with Cheery Lynn dies. Here's a side view so you can see how it stands up.

Here you can see how the sticky note pad sits in a tray, so that it is easy to remove if required. A loop of tape, glued under the tray, holds the pencil in place.

 And here it is folded up.

This was my prototype, and I want to make a few more. On the others I may change the photo for a stamped or other type of picture, or the butterflies for different embellishments, but the style will remain essentially the same. Am also still in the middle of making Christmas cards. At the moment my desk looks like an explosion in a paper factory......... 

A Free and Easy end to our Challenge year

Well, it's time for our final challenge of 2013 at Stamping Sensations. If you're like me, you'll be frantically trying to get the Christmas preparations sorted at the same time as keeping up with all the regular stuff. Anyone who has finished making all their Christmas cards by now has my ardent admiration! The rest of you will, I'm sure, be grateful that our December Challenge has the theme of

***** FREE AND EASY *****

so anything goes! If you're still on with the Christmas cards (like me!), you could show us those. If not, we'd love to see what else you've been working on lately.

As usual we've got a fabulous sponsor to help us round off the year, Visible Image, an all-British company with a fantastic range of stamps, no less than 5 sets of which have been very generously donated by them for our prize.

Anyway, on to my card. It's a Christmas one, of course, 40 down, about another 30 still to go!

I treated myself to an early Christmas present of a couple of Memory Box dies which I've had my eye on for quite some time. The one I've used here is called Tessatina Border. I cut it out of both red and green card, and then inserted the green cut-out into the space left in the red card. It was then framed with the X-cut Poinsettia Border punch. That was another new buy! I was delighted recently when The Range opened a new branch not 10 miles away from me, a small oasis in the crafting desert in which I live! Had to go and check it out, of course, and couldn't resist the Poinsettia punch. So pretty, and needn't be confined to Christmas cards!

The card was finished with some flowers cut with the Marianne Design Mini Poinsettia die set, a Spellbinders bauble diecut overstamped with a Waltzing Mouse stamp, and a sentiment also by Waltzing Mouse. The background paper was a freebie from Making Cards Magazine.

My amazing teamies have some stunning samples to inspire you with. Do go and have a look at them on the Challenge Blog. We had a brilliant response to our Christmas theme last month, and I'm sure you'll all do us proud with your entries for December. Can't wait to see them!

Now, back to the Christmas card production line.......