It's my very favourite time of the year

Oh wow it's December 1st and the start of my very favourite time of the year...the countdown to Christmas. It's time to open the first window of my advent calendar,  to light the advent candle

and to go up to the nursery to buy our Christmas tree tomorrow.

It is also time for the last Country View challenge of 2018 and of course the theme just had to be "Christmas". You can enter our challenge as many times as you like and there is combine with other challenges. There is also a £20 crafting voucher up for grabs to the lucky randomly selected winner. You could treat yourself over on the Country View Crafts in the new year to any crafting goodies that Santa forgets to leave you on Christmas Eve 🎅 All the details for the challenge can be found here.

For my first design team make I decided to use the fab new Tim Holtz stamp set

Yule tide. I ummmed and arrhhhed about buying this set in November and finally succumbed as I genuinely believe this is the best vintage Santa stamp available at present. To me it epitomizes the classic Father Christmas at his very best. I coloured a few up with watercolour pens.

I added some glitter to the fur and his beard for some magical sparkle. I also die cut some greenery with some inky card. 

I used Tim's snowflake stencil and some crackle texture paste on top of a distress ink background. 

The dried effect was awesome.

I also die cut some stars and his paper snowflakes.

So then it was time to put my design together.

with some close ups

and one final shot

You need to keep this under your hat for a couple of days as shhh this is my Hb's Christmas card..and he hasn't seen it yet!

I would like to enter my card into the following challenges;

Simon says stamp Wednesday anything goes

Crimbo Crackers 3/3 anything goes
Sweet stampin' 3/3 whatever the weather

Crafty Halzelnut's Christmas 3/3 #413
Addicted to stamps 3/3 anything goes
Try it on Tuesday 3/3 winter wonderland

Thanks so much for stopping by and for the kind comments you take the time to leave me, espeically at such a busy time of the year. I am really looking forward to sharing lots of my "Countdown to Christmas" posts over the next 24 days. Billy is warming up his paws to type his Christmas tree post too. This really is my very favourite time of the year....ho ho ho!! 🎅🎄🎅

Back soon,

Bye for now,

Jane x