Wishing You Peace & Love

I can't believe it's only two weeks until Christmas. I am nowhere *near* ready! How about you? Mostly, I send out photo cards of the kids, plus as many handmade cards as I can get made, but this year, my completed card count is less than twenty, and I don't have a photo for the photo cards yet. Eeeeeeek! I've been crossing off names on my lengthy "small homemade gift" list -- not because their gift is done, but because they're not getting one! Sigh ... it happens every year.

Today is the last Sketch For You To Try for the year. We'll be taking a short break for the holidays, then returning in January! You may have seen the announcement last week that changes are coming to the SFYTT challenge. I'm going to send you to Jen's for most of the details, but one of the changes is that Jenn Diercks will be leaving the team. It's a sad farewell, as I have loved seeing her take on the sketches! Jenn's departure makes room for a new face, though, so a very warm welcome to ... Kerry Johnson!

This week's challenge, just like last week's, is to pick a favorite sketch from the archives and give it another go.

Here's my card ...

... based on this sketch, from November 13 of this year. (I was a little loose with it,  you can see.)

I just received JustRite's new Nested Frames Custom Dies set and couldn't wait to try them out. The Nested Frames set is one of two new sets of Spellbinders dies, custom-made to work perfectly with all of JustRite's rectangular Nested Frames and Nested Sentiments sets. For my sentiment panel (working bottom up), I first stamped the frame image from Christmas Nested Frames onto Neenah Natural White card stock, colored with Copics, and die-cut with the new dies. I then die-cut another rectangle with the next smaller die. Last is the sentiment, from Christmas Nested Sentiments (say that three times fast!), which I die-cut with a Spellbinders Labels Fourteen die to throw a curve into all those straight edges. The die-cut pieces have all been sponged twice, first with the die in place and second, a light sponging on the outer edge.

The black background paper is from Webster's Pages Waiting for Santa & Sweet Season 6x6 combo paper pack. I know some people are thrown off by black for Christmas, but I love it! Timeless, classy, elegant. This particular pattern has the words to "Do You Hear What I Hear?" in a gorgeous, script font. Here's a close-up:

The first time around with this sketch, I can remember being puzzled by that heart accent being behind the image (I ended up moving it in front). This time, I found that some crystal flourishes worked perfectly! Instead of three separate panels on the background, I chose to visually break the background into three sections with some seam binding. Do you still see the sketch? I hope so!

Have a look at which sketches the rest of the SFYTT sisters decided to re-visit this week:

Jen del Muro
Susan Liles
Amy Rohl
Megan Lock
Amber Hight
Sony Christoph
Jodi Collins
Jenn Diercks
Kelly Lunceford
Leigh O’Brien
Carole Burrage
Kerry Johnson

and Ana and Joanne, too!

[ETA: Sorry! I always just assume others will know how to play. Everyone is invited to participate! Just use any previous sketch for your project, then link it up to Jen's post. If you upload to any online galleries, use keyword SFYTT. That's all! Future guest designers are chosen from current participants, too!]