Christmas Stockings Challenge & December Stencil Fun

I had been wondering which stencil I would use that would work for both these challenges and didn’t really have anything in my stash. Even my stamp sets are limited as to stocking choices. Then at the local dollar store I saw a couple of stencils that would work so I bought them. The image is quite large so my card is on the larger side, but as I’m hand delivering this last batch it doesn’t matter. I couldn’t find my scraper and what I ended up using wasn’t the best choice so my stencil butter did get slightly underneath in a couple of places. I decided to go with it anyway and the section where the top of the stocking and the bear meet got covered up with the sentiment so the worst of the problem was solved that way. I bent the sentiment strip slightly and added double tape in the middle so it stays curved. Stamp used is from StampinUp. Poinsettias are from Dees Distinctively and I cut several colours and then pieced them together. I added a few embellishments from my stash after I had added the layer to the card front. Except for a couple of cards for my neighbors I am done with Christmas cards for now.

Our good friends arrived from Vancouver for a couple of nights and they spent all of yesterday helping with our decor. Ron helped outside and Dale, who is a Christmas mall designer, did the inside. I had already done the tree, but she finessed it a little bit. Our home looks amazing and the best part is that everything is fixed in such a way that all I have to do is lift it, cover it and store it then next year do the reverse. When we had the unexpected early snow fall, we thought we wouldn’t get any outside decor sorted, but we had enough rain last week that the area where the bigger items have to go, was clear. It was really good of our friends to help us with this as it is quite a big job and my hubby is dealing with tennis elbow (very painful) so he was dreading doing it alone. Finally I feel in the Christmas spirit and we also feel very blessed to have friends such as these.