ABC Christmas Challenge

Wednesday, 12 January 2022

ABC Christmas Challenge - A & B are for?

Happy New Year Everyone!

It's Helen here welcoming you to our first challenge of 2022, and the beginning of our thirteenth (!!!) trip through the alphabet! We hope that you will join us this year in our bid to be prepared for next Christmas! Perhaps you were lucky enough to receive some new Christmas craft bits in your stocking...or snapped up some bargains in the post-Christmas sales...perhaps one of your New Year's resolutions is to have your Christmas cards ready in plenty of time this year...or maybe you just haven't tidied away your Christmas stash away after making last year's cards yet! Whatever the reason, we'd love to have you play along with us all year - we have two (or sometimes three) fun themes each month, with plenty of projects from our design team to help inspire you!

Before I get on to this month's themes, I few admin matters to draw your attention to.

I'm sure that you will all have noticed that we have changed the starting date for our challenges this year...all the info is in a post below, and the rules tab has been updated too...but I've also placed a handy gadget at the top of our sidebar to let you know the dates for each challenge.

We have also come to a decision about our new DT members, and I have emailed the lovely people we are inviting to join us, so if you did enter, please can I ask that you check your emails (and also your junk folder in case I ended up in there!) and get back to me if you haven't already so that we can get you all settled in ready for next month.

And, don't forget to check the post below to see if you were a lucky winner of our last challenge!

Whilst, as our name suggests, we are predominantly a Christmas challenge, we would like to extend a very warm welcome to cards made for other December/Winter Holidays (for example Hanukkah, Yule etc). There may still be some of our themes that are specifically 'Christmas', but many would work for other Winter Holidays and Festivals too, so as long as your project fits the theme, we are happy for you to enter our challenges.

We have noticed an increasing number of entries posted on Instagram...we're very happy to have you on board & you'll find some of our DT members there too...please use the hashtag #abcchristmaschallenge on your posts.

Okay, here we go!
We have two themes for you this month:

'A is for Anything Christmas'
&
'B is for Baubles'

There's a little prize from me for the lucky winner:

A selection of Christmas ribbons & a couple of 'Me to You' clear stamp sets.

And now it's time for some inspiration from our Design Team:

Helen

A is for Anything Christmas Goes

B is for Baubles

Dorte

A is for Anything Christmas Goes

B is for Baubles

Wilma
A is for Anything Christmas Goes

B is for Baubles

Carol

A is for Anything Christmas Goes

B is for Baubles

Lynda

B is for Baubles

Julie T
B is for Baubles

Wei

B is for Baubles

So now it's over to you...this challenge ends on Saturday 5th February at 10pm (GMT).

Please link up your entries below.
We look forward to seeing what you create!

Winner & Top 3 - Y is for Yummy & Z is for Zigzags

Hello! It's Helen here...I'm announcing the lucky winner and top three of last month's challenge. The themes were:

'Y is for Yummy'

AND

'Z is for Zigzags'

The prize on offer was this selction of Christmas craft goodies:

And the lucky winner is:

#20 - Meghan Kennihan

*****

Here are my Top 3 choices:

#8 - Dee

#75 - Lorraine A

#84 - Paper Whims

Congratulations Everyone!

Please email us to claim your prizes.

Unclaimed prizes may be redrawn or worse still lost.

You can find the page for grabbing your blinkie or banner
at the top of our blog.

Don't forget to check back soon for another fun challenge!

Saturday, 1 January 2022

Happy New Year & Challenge News

It's Helen here, just popping on to wish all of our lovely ABC Christmas challengers a Happy New Year, and to update you on some news/changes to our challenges this year.

As you all know, we held a DT Call on our last two challenges of 2021. Thank you to all of you who put yourselves forwards...such a wonderful variety of crafters and styles! We are in the process of visiting you all, and will be in touch with our chosen new members as soon as we have come to a decision.

Secondly...we will be changing the start date of our challenges to the second Wednesday of each month begining this month. Our challenges will still run for a month each, but will now end on the Saturday before the next challenge to give the DT members plenty of time to visit you all properly and get things ready for the next challenge.

I have updated our 'Rules' tab with this information, and you can now find the dates for the next challenge at the top of our sidebar.

Looking forward to seeing your fabulous creations in our gallery this year!
Helen & the ABC Christmas DT x

Wednesday, 1 December 2021

ABC Christmas Challenge - Y & Z are for?

It's Helen here with the final ABC Christmas Challenge of the year (!), but before I get on to this month's themes...don't forget to check the post below to see if you were a lucky winner of our last challenge!

*********

Before we get on to this month's challenge, I have a couple of announcements.

Firstly, as many of you will know, this wonderful festive challenge of ours was the brainchild of Samantha, and after twelve years of inspiring us with her fabulous crafty projects, coming up with awesome challenge themes, supporting her fellow design team members, and generally being brilliant, she has decided that it's time to leave us.

On behalf of the Design Team, I would like to say a BIG Thank You to Samantha for everything that she has done for us - we will all miss you terribly!

Secondly, our Design Team Call is still running on this month's challenge, so if you fancy joining our ABC Christmas Challenge family, read on...if not, don't worry, you can still enter this challenge as normal, but you might want to scroll past the DT call information. If you have already put yourself forwards on last month's challenge, no need to do it again...you're already on our list 😉

DT Call Information

As a DT member, you would be required to make a Christmas Card/Project for each challenge (once a month), and comment on entries to the challenges - we have a rota, but you can comment or more if you wish! So the commenting is shared between us all :0)

We also take it in turns to post the challenges on this blog, and choose the 'Top 3' for the challenges we 'host'.

We are a very friendly and democratic team, and appreciate everyone's input into challenge themes, and have a DT blog, where we chat and share our ideas.

No previous design team experience necessary and we welcome crafters of all styles!

So, if you love crafting for Christmas as much as we do, and fancy joining our team, here's what you need to do:

Make an item for this challenge.
Add 'DT' after your name on the Inlinkz gadget
That's it - GOOD LUCK!

The DT Call will end at the end of this month's challenge, so please don't be shy!

Now, back to this month's challenge.

This month we have two lovely themes for you:

'Y is for Yummy'

(show us some food)
&
'Z is for Zigzags'

The prize on offer for this challenge is selction of Christmas craft goodies:

And now it's time for some inspiration from our Design Team:

Helen

Y is for Yummy

Z is for Zigzags

Dorte

Y is for Yummy

Z is for Zigzags

Wilma

Y for Yummy - Cheese tree

Carol

Y for Yummy

Z for Zigzags

Lynda

Z is for Zigzags

Julie

Y is for Yummy

Lindsey

Y for Yummy

Z for Zigzags

So now it's over to you...this challenge ends on Friday 31st December at 1pm (GMT).
Please link up your entries below.
We look forward to seeing what you create!

Please ensure that you have followed at least one of this month's themes (Y is for Yummy & Z is for Zigzags) before you add your link.

Any entries not following at least one of the themes will not be eligible for the prize draw.

If you are on instagram please use the hashtag #abcchristmaschallenge