Festive Fridays is Back! (FFC #230)

Good morning friends.  Festive Fridays challenge is back and I am one happy Grandma to be!! (THANK YOU for all the kind comments yesterday on my wonderful news!)  I stumbled upon Festive Fridays through Melissa Phillips blog last year and happily played along the whole year and had a wonderful stash of Christmas cards ready to go (except for the insides (grrrr!), but I'm rectifying that problem this year!) at Christmas time.  This year Festive Fridays has changed how they're playing a little bit, by simply providing an inspiration photo (see below) and then asking you to interpret it into a Christmas card.  I'm really liking this idea and the first photo for this year is absolutely beautiful (ALMOST makes me think I like winter!).  I made a small card (4 1/4 x 4 1/4), but I think I packed a lot of punch into just a small space.  Take a look:

Definitely click on this picture to enlarge it, so you can see more of the detail.  For my background layer I used SU!'s "Weathered" background stamp with Crumb Cake ink, and then embossed it with a striped SU! ef...did this to mimic the barn in the inspiration photo.  Used my Rustic Wreath (PTI) die again (LOVE this die!!) with kraft cs and also layered a Christmas tree (PTI - "In the Meadow") under the wreath using design paper with the words from Silent Night on it.  I added a couple red birds (PTI - "In the Meadow") to the wreath and then finished with a seam binding bow that I dyed with Real Red ink, some twine, and a couple gold jingle bells that I frosted with Dazzling Diamonds glitter.  Oh, and some gold sequins to decorate the Christmas tree! :0)  Here is the photo that inspired this card:

Isn't that such a beautiful picture, and wouldn't you love to live there?!  I love seeing old barns and school houses renovated into homes. 

I am also going to enter this card into Merry Mondays challenge this week, which is to use red, vanilla, kraft, & chocolate with a ribbon...thought my card fit this challenge perfectly too.  (the poor lighting in my photo makes my Early Espresso cs layer look like black though, instead of the chocolate color it should look like!)

 

Thanks so much for stopping by today, and I hope I've inspired you to play along and get a head start on your Christmas cards this year. You can play along with Festive Fridays here and Merry Mondays here.   Have a wonderful Tuesday and I'll be back with some more Valentine inspiration later this week. :0)