My Christmas Girls

This week's crafty challenge over at The Memory Nest is a color and theme challenge with a twist.

This is the color palette:

The theme is Christmas or Winter - very appropriate for this time of year.

And the twist is to add texture to your page through the use of "canvas, burlap, doilies, lace, ribbon or crochet".

For my layout I used a picture of the girls that we had taken for our Christmas cards this year. This is hands-down one of my favorite pictures of my girls ever. 

The paper I used is from Bella Blvd.'s Christmas Countdown line which I purchased a few weeks back after my unfortunate scrapbooking garage sale experience. The embellishment stickers are from Bella Blvd.'s Christmas line from last year; I had them in my stash and I love how they coordinate so well with the current line. 

To add a little texture to this page, I really layered up my patterned papers and tied some bakers twine around one of them. 

I am so happy with this layout. I love the picture, the papers, the layers...it is one of my favorite layouts that I have done lately. 

Now, as an avid crocheter I was inspired by the idea to add crochet to my paper crafting. In fact, this is an idea that has been rattling around my creative mind for quite some time, so faced with this challenge I decided to go for it and try to combine crochet and paper crafting.

I began by crocheting a red star (using the same pattern that I used for my Crochet Christmas Star Garland) and then I made this card.

I found that a simple, clean, uncluttered design worked best when including my crochet star.

And you know what? I love it. The combination of crochet and paper is really beautiful and it makes for a lovely card. What do you think? Do you like the look of crochet on a card? I do have to tell you that it does make the card a little heavy, which might make mailing such a card a little pricier, but for a hand delivered card, it would work fine.

This beautiful challenge really kicked my creativity into high gear and encouraged me to act on an idea that had been simmering away in my mind for some time. You just never know where a creative challenge may take you, and that is why they are so fun to play along with. 

Thanks for reading, and I'll see you back here tomorrow when I'll show you a few more Christmas cards.