The start of Christmas

Good morning everyone and happy December. Today I regard as the real start of Christmas and it is my absolute favourite time of the year. I love counting down the days with one of my vintage advent calendars. This is my choice for this year.  

I have gone for my biggest as I thought of all the years to have the most spectacular of them all it had to be for 2020.

It opens out from 3 pieces

A close up of the top

The middle

and the bottom

and what is most unusual is that is the only 1 of 2 advent calendars I have ever seen that has a No 25 door. The only other one I ever remember was one my brother had when he was about 10 (in 1968) , it was a clock face and had a No 25 too. 

Take a peep...it has a blue door.

I just adore the artwork on these German vintage pieces. My whole 1960s childhood Christmases is wrapped up in these images. 

Today is also the start of our last challenge of 2020 over at Country View Challenges. The theme is of course "Christmas" it really couldn't be anything else could it!

As always there is a fab £20 voucher up for grabs for one lucky randomly selected winner to spend on the website. What a cool pre Christmas treat that would be. You can find all the details of the challenge and more examples made by my talented teamies here.

My makes for December just had to be Christmas cards using stamps and dies by Tim Holtz as to me they epitomize the perfect vintage Christmas. They scream Christmas past, present and yet to come to me. 

This is what I got up to;

I made a background using these distress oxide sprays

I die cut some festive greenery using some inky mop up card.

I made a lantern using one of my very old Tim Holtz Bigz dies. I also stamped a Christmas sentiment.

and then assembled everything.

Here is my finished card

with a close up

and one last shot.

I would like to link my card up in the following challenges;

Simon says stamp anything goes

Crafty Hazelnut's Christmas #518

Dream Valley 1/3 Christmas

I hope I may have inspired you to join in with our December, "Christmas" challenge. You can use any stamps/products, the choice is yours. 

You can enter our challenge as many times as you like and combine with other challenges. There is also a £20 crafting voucher up for grabs to the lucky randomly selected winner to spend over on the Country View Crafts on line store. Remember that UK postage and packing from CVC is free on all orders over £7.50! Once again all the details for the December challenge can be found here.

I will be back this Thursday, 3rd December, to share another of my vintage inspired Christmas cards

Thanks so much for stopping by today.

Back soon

Bye for now

Jane x