Holiday Blog Hop and a giveaway

Winter is the time of festivals in many religions! Harvest is done. The days get dark soon and are cold so what better way than to celebrate and mostly with lights. We have the Christmas, Kwanzaa, Diwali and Karthigai in Hindu religion, the Dongzhi in Chinese to name some.
We will also be celebrating the winter here at TheBugBytes in our crafty way by doing this challenge blog hop.

 Please do play along with us. The challenge is  to do a holiday theme of this month - any of your own cultural holiday or use the colors red  or green or silver or blue. Do post your project in the linky
And how is it called celebrating without a giveaway. Yep of course there will be a giveaway - One of my favorite cartridge Martha Stewart cartridges - Elegant cake. Love this cartridge for the borders and designs.

Here is the list of blogs in the blog hop.

1. Pam - http://www.thebugbytes.com/
2. Jeannie -  http://nonnasscraps.blogspot.com/
3. Jen - http://3catsandabug.blogspot.com/
4. Carole - http://www.onmycraftroomwall.blogspot.com/
5. Lisa Brooks - http://thejourneyoflisaslife.blogspot.com
6. Audrey - http://cuteandsome.blogspot.com/
7. Mila - http://milamemories.blogspot.com/
8. Sheila aka sassylady - http://shesasassylady.blogspot.com/
9. Elizabeth - http://217creations.blogspot.com/
10. Kelly Millet - http://www.kamscraftyplace.blogspot.com
11. Dayna Sabrina - http://www.sabrioletdesigns.blogspot.com/
12. Lori - http://www.scrappinmystressaway.blogspot.com
13. Denine Vajja - http://pumpkinspiceblog.blogspot.com/ 
14. Melissa - http://www.melissamade2.blogspot.com/
15. Allison -  http://goodybagdiva.blogspot.com/  

 Here is my card for my festival - "Karthikai" or "Karthigai". I have used silhouette.  We usually light lamps made out of clay and decorated. we pour oil in it and use a cotton rolled wick like which we call "thiri". We draw a design out of rice powder and red clay called "kolam" (also called rangoli in north) and keep the "deepam" in the center. So my card portrays the design we usually draw. I drew the curved square cutting ellipses in silhouette studio and then joining the path by node editing. corners I cut some existing swirl design and welded it. The "deepam" was a trace from clip art and then editing to add layers and shadows for coloring.

Here is what the studio file looks like

Then after cutting I distressed the edges of both the card base and the inner grey solid colored piece and then assembled with glue and dimensionals and of course inked and stickled them and added some bling. The ribbon is a paper ribbon also cut with silhouette. The metal piece under the deepam is a nestability cut from soda can.

And here is my card

 Now for a  sneak peak of  the lovely projects in each blog.

Jeannie - http://nonnasscraps.blogspot.com/  with

Jen - http://3catsandabug.blogspot.com/

Carole - http://www.onmycraftroomwall.blogspot.com/

Lisa Brooks - http://thejourneyoflisaslife.blogspot.com

Audrey - http://cuteandsome.blogspot.com/

Mila - http://milamemories.blogspot.com/

Sheila aka sassylady - http://shesasassylady.blogspot.com/

Elizabeth - http://217creations.blogspot.com/

Kelly Millet - http://www.kamscraftyplace.blogspot.com

Dayna Sabrina - http://www.sabrioletdesigns.blogspot.com/

Lori - http://www.scrappinmystressaway.blogspot.com

Denine Vajja - http://pumpkinspiceblog.blogspot.com/

Melissa - http://www.melissamade2.blogspot.com/

Allison -  http://goodybagdiva.blogspot.com/

Don't they look lovely? Hope this inspires you to create a project and share too.

The next stop in the hop is  Jeannie's blog - http://nonnasscraps.blogspot.com/ . 

After you finish hopping and then make a project please do come back here and post your project in the linky below. Now for the giveaway be a follower and please leave a comment in this post within Dec 17th 2011 midnight (Saturday)and one person will be randomly selected.