It's that time again

Time for the amazing Waltzing Mouse Christmas Cards Challenge. This year we are doing this a little differently. There were several of us on the WMS forum that enjoy these challenges and we were sad to hear they may come to an end so we got together and decided to do together with each of us hosting a month or two. As per Lynn's brilliant writing here are the details:

What is this monthly challenge all about?

It's our goal to motivate and inspire you to work on your Christmas cards year round - month by month - so that you can sit back and sip your hot cocoa when December arrives, instead of burning the midnight oil trying to get those cards completed at the last minute. We hope that you will agree that "slow and steady wins the race".

On the 10th of each month, the challenge hostess for that month will announce the Waltzingmouse Stamps Christmas Card Challenge theme right here in this forum. We have a variety hostesses, who each possess their own particular creative style and it will be great fun to see what idea the hostess will have for us to spark our own creativity.

Here are a few basic guidelines for the monthly Waltzingmouse Stamps Christmas Card Challenge:

• A new challenge will be issued on the 10th of each month in the Playroom Forum.
• Each card must contain some Waltzingmouse Stamps’ images but need not be exclusively WMS images.
• Once you have created your project, upload it to the 2013 WMSCCC gallery - and if you have a blog, we would love for you to post it there too!
• Feel free to grab the WMS Christmas Card Logo for your blog sidebar and/or your blog post if you are so inclined.
• You may make as many projects as you like for each challenge. We encourage you to make batches of cards since our end goal is to have enough hand-made Christmas cards for each person on our “list”.
• You may play along when and if you want – make it suit your schedule. For example, challenge cards for January may be uploaded anytime in January or in June or even September...whenever you have them completed. There is no monthly deadline.

Let's get the Christmas mojo flowing!! We hope you will play along with our challenge.

This month's was the talented Anya's and she presented us with this amazing sketch as our challenge.

 I love a good sketch challenge and was excited to get to work on this one. I have used up most, if not all, of my stash for this past Christmas so I really need to get to work this year (I need something like 55 cards). That equals to 4-5 cards a month; however, I have only done two for this challenge. I need to get cracking, lol. I combined this sketch with the popular chalkboard technique to get a slightly rustic feel. The hollies and berries came from WMS's Bright Season on the upper panel. The little holly leaves came from WMS's Little Lantern while the sentiment is from Compliments of the Season. The background frame is from WMS's Holiday Label No 14. To add a little something to the kraft frame I stamped it using PTI's kraft ink and WMS's Text It background. Then to add a little more texture since the lower panel of kraft looked so sad and unloved I embossed it with PTI's woodgrain background (after I wiped the kraft ink pad over the raised parts). To get the lines I simply used a white colored pencil. Be sure to check out the WMS gallery for more inspiration and while you are at it, won't you come along and play with us.