Christmas in July Blog Hop

Hi all and welcome to my blog! I am sorry for being a couple of hours late with my Simon Says Stamp Monday post, but we just arrived back from a cabin at the sea. My post was ready to go, but when I edited a small thing on my phone this morning, my phone somehow deleted the entire post. Not fun! We had a lovely time at the sea though with lots of swimming and fun outings.

This week we have a special even at the Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge, namely a

Christmas In July Blog Hop!

Did you know that there are only 21 weeks left to Christmas? Time to make a couple of Christmas cards or other projects perhaps?

We are showcasing the fabulous Tim Holtz Products this week. You don't have to use them to join in, but I think most, if not all, of us have at least one of his products in your supplies so please use them.

The lovely folks over at Simon Says Stamp have been busily packing 4 surprise Christmas gift boxes for 4 lucky entrants!

All you have to do is hop around all the stops along the way and find where the hidden gifts are, leaving comments along the way AND you must enter the challenge to be eligible to win.

All winners will be chosen randomly from the comments on the blogs with the hidden gifts. Good Luck to everyone! The Design Team is looking forward to seeing your Christmas makes and will pop around to visit you ASAP!

You should have arrived here from the wonderful Andrea, if not then you may need to start at the beginning on the Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge Blog .




I decided to make a kraft tag this week and to use colored pencils, which is a technique I haven't done in a while. I liked the resulting vibrant colors on the neutral kraft background. I used four different stamp sets by Tim Holtz for the tag.

Baubles from Tim Holtz's Festive Sketch were stamped on the tag.

Then I used Prismacolors pencils to color it, adding white to lighten the areas where I wanted highlights.

Since the stamped image have a sketch look, I also added some lines with a black marker, to make them look even more sketchy.



The shadow was done with a grey and a black pencil.

The entire background was stamped with Tim Holtz's dot matrix stamp and Ranger's white pigment ink. I wanted a snowy and textured effect.

I pricked holes to hang the baubles with silver thread. There are also some mirrored stars.

On the metallic areas, I used a silver pencil and then added some Stickles.

I used a sentiment from Tattered Christmas and also stamped the border with a pretty stamp from the Ornate Trims stamp set. It was colored with the same pencils used for the baubles.

From here you need to go to the very creative Barbara for more fabulous Christmas Inspiration.

Hop List 

Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge Blog 

Karolina

Andrea

Anna-Karin (you are here)

Barbara

Cheiron

Emma

Kath

Lols 

Macarena   

Maura

Sandra

Zoey

Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge Blog 

So now it's YOUR turn to get out your inks, paints and all things arty and start Christmas creating! We are looking forward to seeing what you make! I hope you will be able to join us! You have until next Monday 8am Ohio time. 1pm UK time, 2 pm CET to join in.

Don't forget to follow Simon Says Stamp on Instagram, they post great stuff daily. 

Do you use Instagram? If so please add #sssmchallenge so we can see your entries there too.

Thank you for taking the time to stop by my blog today!  

Happy crafting!

Anna-Karin

Supplies:

* Please note: the links are affiliate links, for which I receive a small percentage of sales generated by the link, at no extra cost to you.