Merry, Merry, Merry....for Festive Friday, Friday, Friday!

Hi Everyone,
I am here today with some very MERRY cards for the Festive Friday "MERRY" Challenge: FFC04.  As soon as I saw the trigger I knew I wanted to use my Merry word die from Papertrey Ink with the tons of Christmas Paper scraps sitting in my scrap bin!!!!

I got into a card making zone last night after spending several free hours working on purging and organizing some of my crafty items. This zone allowed me to make three cards in the time that it usually takes me to make just one!  Love it when this happens!!!!!

 

This is the CAS card of the three.  I find CAS hard to do....I always seem to get ink on the card at the very end for some reason.  And I did this time too but a lovely white eraser came to my rescue!  Yeah!  

The snowflake is from Folk Art Flurries - WPlus9.  Love how it frames the word!  The embossing folder is from Lifestyle crafts...love those thin diagonal lines! 

 This is the most elaborate of the three.  With sewing (I cannot sew a straight line to SAVE MY LIFE - I think I will pre-draw lines with a pencil and ruler next time to see if it helps - its either that or go FAUX!!), lots of layers, and some lovely tiny rusted jingle bells added to the twine bow.  It uses Folk Art Flurries from WPlus9.  I used kraft and red ink on the snowflakes on the background and on the focal point.  Love this look and will probably try this again soon! 

This was the last card I made....and I am still not sure it is quite right. I started with an idea but it took a turn in the middle.....now I don't like the doily edge on the paper as I don't think it goes with the stars at all....

Also I think I need to put a brown pen line or maybe some red ink around the word  "merry" so that it doesn't look so lost?  It is when I look at photos of my finished cards that I most often see the glaring thing I didn't do even though I didn't notice it while creating in the first place.  I am debating with myself but I will probably do something (change everything about it!) before I ever give it a way.  I am posting it anyway as I think I learn from every single card I make - the good ones and the not so great ones.

This card uses PTI's Background Basics Postmarks and Layered Postmarks Holiday stamp sets.  I absolutely ADORE these two sets - alone or together!

Well that is it for this post....sorry for being so long-winded!!!  Thanks to everyone over at Festive Friday for the wonderful MERRY inspiration!  Love all of your cards!  And thanks too for my shout out from the last challenge with this card:  HERE .  If you didn't see last week's shout outs for Moriah and Sonya as well as all of the incredible "SNOWFLAKE" entries I hope you will go to the Festive Friday blog and check them out!  Also challenge three's winning card is a must see - it has incredible hidden depths!!!  Congratulations to Ardyth Percy-Robb who created it.  You can see her blog post:  HERE 

Bye for now...
:) Jill