Paper Adventures Team Blog Hop – Non-traditional Christmas

Thank you for being here on our Paper Adventures Team Blog Hop for the month. You may be starting here (hello!) or you may have hopped on over from our fabulous guest designer Carolyn Bennie (how awesome are Carolyn’s creations? I was a little bit star struck when I saw her at On Stage last week).

When you think “Christmas colours” do you automatically think red and green? Silver and gold? Snowy white? I know I do. It’s funny how even though I’ve had Aussie Christmases my whole life, I still find snowflakes and pine trees covered in snow to be quintessential “Christmas” and love a traditional red, green, and gold Christmas palette.

For a few years, I rebelled hard against this. I refused to use anything with a snowflake or a snowman on it. What’s with the fake snow in shop windows when it’s pushing 40 degrees outside? This is Australia, give me six white boomers racing Santa Claus through the blazing sun, thank you very much.

(Image credit: www.meanwhileinaustralia.com.au)

I’ve come to terms with all of this, and while I still think fake snow is just ridiculous, I have no problems with cards of snow-covered pine trees and rugged up Santa ornaments.

But I was thrilled when Kelly suggested “non-traditional Christmas” as our theme for this team hop. Oh, the possibilities this entails! Last year there was lots of beautiful turquoise and silver around at Christmas time, and this year there is quite a bit of delicate pink as well. Stampin Up! have a striking green, black, and white colour theme this year which is proving to be very popular.

As well as non-traditional colours, I’ve also been thinking a lot about non-traditional Christmas elements. One of the things I most love about handmade is having the ability to make custom creations that are really tailored to a person’s likes or to an event. And of course when thinking about this and Christmas I first thought about my kids’ loves.

Heather is absolutely sloth made. She’s animal mad generally but at the moment she has a particular thing for rainforests and sloths in particular. She adores the little sloth from the Quirky Critters stamp set so of course, I had to make her a Christmas card with him.

I stamped him in archival ink and watercoloured him lightly then fussy cut him out, so the sentiment that is part of that stamp didn’t matter (alternatively you could mask that out). The paper is from the aforementioned green, white, and black themed Merry Little Christmas DSP. It is so pretty and I’m sure I’ll use it for more than just Christmas cards.

As for Sammy, he’s all about the vehicles. Anything with wheels. He will play with it, ride it, examine it, line it up, love it. So this pattern from my favourite Christmas Around the World DSP was perfect for him. He will love examining all the little elements. And while black and silver isn’t really a traditional Christmas palette, I think it works rather well, don’t you?

While I was photographing the card Sammy came along and grabbed it to examine all the vehicles. “Car! Truck! Bike! Bike!!” I think it’s a winner.

Of course, then I was really up and running, thinking of all the different custom creations I could make, and also about using non-Christmas stamp sets to make Christmas cards. This brought me to the This Little Piggy set, which is all manner of adorable. My aunt has a bit of a thing for pigs so I just had to figure out how to make a pig Christmas card.

The letters are the now retired Layered Letters Alphabet but I still use them all the time. It’s so useful to have a set of letters so you really can create anything.

Don’t you think that flying piggy looks like an angel?

I hope you’ll hop on over now to Coriana, to see her beautiful but non-traditional creation. This is such a fun theme, make sure you check out the whole team hop!