I better post something!

With my family home this week and part of the upcoming week, I don't have free time to sit down and make cards! I have been very busy organizing, rearranging furniture after taking down the Christmas tree and decorations and basically keeping house. It is amazing how often everyone eats and dishes and laundry - good gosh go back to work and school, please LOL! I am just kidding but well in a way not ;)

I did make this card, just had to! I was having withdrawals. It is the sketch challenge of the week and I used an adorable stamp that my friend gave me. She gave me a bunch of stamps for Christmas that I have been wanting for so long now, I was so thrilled!

The other card I made a week or so back, I don't think I posted it. It was the color challenge two weeks ago and I think it fits the sketch challenge too. Just a pretty card that goes in my birthday RAK pile :)

I promise to post more once the house has cleared! In the meanwhile I wish everyone a Happy and Prosperous New Year!

My most favorite card

Right now anyway! I love this card. It is cased except a few things, I didn't have the ribbon she used so I used red card stock in it's place. I love the use of the Stampin Up designer paper, love using the daisy punch (three punches, two red and one green) to make a poinsettia. I love using the sahara sand to make the swirls behind the Christmas tree, oh and I had the red star eyelet so I used that. Anyway just the colors and the combo of all of this is so cheery. I have seen and made a lot of Christmas cards this year but for now this one I really like. So to the person who inspired me, awesome card!!!

I made a few birthday cards with the card sketch of the week that I am going to post later, have to get them on the computer :) I used to scan my cards but they just don't look as nice as when I use the camera to take a picture. I guess the lighting and all makes them look more real.

It's almost Christmas! I am getting excited! I am one of those who refuses to run around like a chicken with my head cut off this time of year. I do things as simply as possible. I bought gift cards for teachers, got the presents I needed to get online and made my cards over the last two months. I have nothing to do! No cooking as we are going to my in-laws (although I am making some hors d'ouvres for Christmas Eve but won't do that until then), nothing to buy although I have gone to JoAnn's a few times to wander around the Christmas isles and enjoyed looking. Decorated a month ago, hmmm almost seems like chaos should reign! But it doesn't, I think I will make a small batch of Christmas sugar cookies with my 5 year old this afternoon. Now see even with this I make it easy and non-stressful. They taste just as good too :) I bought the sugar cookie mix. I bought the white chocolate chips and the cherries. All I have to do for this recipe is follow the cookie package directions, dump in some chips and cut up cherries and put them in the oven. Whatever the package makes is fine. I will not go nuts making 6 dozen cookies! When we've eaten them and they are gone, fine. I refuse to be stressed! So please slow down and think of how to de-stress your Christmas and have Peace and Joy this holiday season! Thank God for his wonderful gift :)

Fun little thing

I made this card for the Angel Tree party, this was one of the two designs they got to make and the holder is an idea I saw in Scrapbook Trends Christmas Idea Book from last year. I bought some of these clippy thingies and got the inspiration to decorate it from the book. Kind of fun :) I glued on the little porcelain buttons to the bottom, took one of those circular metal rings you use to make a tag and clipped it with the clip, hung some beaded ribbon from it, tied a ribbon into a bow and had some ribbon with wire in it and curled that around it. That's it! Done in a few minutes. Used diamond glaze to hold the buttons on the bottom, man that stuff works for anything!

From the heart

I have to say, this card was made from the heart. I do not "know" the person I made it for, however this person impacts my child's life on a daily basis. He is my son's afternoon teacher's assistant. He is a stay-at-home dad and his son is in class with my son. His son is mines best friend (according to my son anyway!). All of that being said I wanted to give this teacher a little something for Christmas but mostly for the chance to tell him how much we appreciate his time and effort with our very difficult child. My son has even hit this man! Just for telling him he couldn't do something (and he was right in telling JP). However he has doesn't seem to hold that against him and continues to help. So I sat down and made this card and I really think it came out fantastic. I wanted it to be masculine and yet 'Christmassy'. It is my own design, not a CASE!

I must say in addition, his teachers are fantastic! They have been with him for his third year now (he is in Montessori school) and they are getting gift cards to Borders. I don't want to discount their efforts it's just that this man is there mostly for his son and to help out for a few hours. We are lucky to have so many great teachers in JP's life. I also posted the picture of the tags I made for their gift cards.

CD Case Calendar

Last year all the rage were the coaster calendars and this year it is the CD case calendar. Well both existed both years (and more) but this is the way it hit me LOL! So here is January, made it kind of quick and on a whim but it is kind of cute. I will make the rest of the year when inspired :)

Happy Mistake

Have you ever made a mistake, tried to fix it and made a bigger mess but in the end it came out better than if you hadn't made the mistake to begin with? How's that for a sentence LOL! Anyway I took a lot of time painstakingly applying ink to make this a perfect Bella image and I messed it up! I ran it through the Xyron upside down! So the sticky was on the front :( I don't use it very often as I try to save it for special things, this being one of them. I forgot which way to put it through. So I brilliantly (how do you like that!) thought I would put a piece of acetate over it so it would use the sticky and still be able to see all my hard work! I put the acetate on it and - who would know - the sticky came off onto the acetate! That was kind of a cool thing, so if you ever get Xyron sticky on something you can use acetate to lift it off! OK so back to the image, now the sticky is off and I decided the acetate looked really cool over it so I put it back on and used brads to hold it down. I am thrilled with how it turned out! I used some really pretty older Basic Grey paper and matched the colors to it, did some doodling on it and stamped birthday wishes and here ya go. Oh the ice cream cone image was given to me by the person who RAK'd the SweetieBella image, it isn't part of the Bella image. She just put it together and it is perfect for it! I put a little bit of Stickles glitter on the ice cream. I will be doing a lot of Birthday cards as I have signed up for the Birthday RAK on SCS and will need lot's of cards :)

Three Things to Share Tonight

Wow, I have been busy today! I spent a good part of the afternoon on a field trip to the bowling alley with 25 kids, mostly 4-5 year olds. Oh my, my son had the best time! He loves bowling even though what they do is not remotely what I think of as bowling, but never mind that, right? They had pizza too, it was loud and crazy and I am thankful I survived :) How do people stand this day in and day out? I needed major stress relief when I got home and made some things.

The first one is the sketch and color challenges from this week on SCS. Celery, pumpkin and rose. Hmmmm try to get those to look good together! The key is to use only a tiny amount of one, either rose or pumpkin. I chose rose as the "minor" color. I love the little hedgies, this is from a SU set but now I believe Stampendous (Penny Black) is selling them.

The next is called a quickie. These are little cards that are 3 x 3 well mine is 3 x 4 and you make them quick and simple. I just had to send a check to my SU demo, (sigh, I am permanently in debt to her LOL!) and wanted to send a note.

The third one is a copy (well sort of) of page 8 in the Spring/Summer SU preview. I needed something to hold a check for my cleaning gal who has been with me for years now (and is great) and I wanted something to put her Christmas bonus in. If you pull the ribbon the card slides out and the check is sitting in a lip I folded over of the cardstock. I thought this was a great gift check holder! I see so many gift card holders but not check one's.

So that's it, I do have a couple of Tim Holtz idea tags to post but maybe tomorrow.

Since these are relatively easy

I am making them! I have not had a lot of time to sit down and make cards lately so I have been making these tags. Tim Holtz's instructions are so easy I can make these in only a few minutes versus the hours it takes to make a card. These two are two different techniques. One is just swiping the blue distress ink and stamping the snowflakes on and the other is today's technique of a black background, emboss image with clear, paint over it and wipe away where emboss is. Then I distressed it with the burlap ink and put a few embellishments on. Loving all these ideas! Can't wait to see what tomorrow's idea is, there are only two more days left. Bummer!

Another Tag

Today was a fun day for me. It started with going to Artist Oasis Holiday Open House, it was great! They had make n' takes all day but I was only there long enough for two. However, they had a great sale and I bought some things I have been seeing on Tim Holtz 12 Tags of Christmas blog. There was a lot I wanted to get but I can't have everything! I picked up some ink and some paint and crackle and a few other things and now I can play. So this tag is what I made tonight. The first picture is just the technique itself before I embellished it. I was pretty impressed with it. He writes good directions! I couldn't remember what color paint or ink etc. he used on today's tag (day 8 here) so I bought the right 'names' of the colors, just the wrong mediums! So where I was supposed to have lake in paint and weather wood in ink I had lake in ink and lettuce in paint, etc. So my tag is green even though I wanted to do blue. I am going to go back through his tags and see what else I can make now I have more products to work with. Fun stuff.

Now for the best part of today! My church had the annual Angel Tree party where the kids and their caretakers came to get their presents and have a party. We had things for the kids to do, games to play, crafts to make and make your own ice cream sundae bar but the caregivers had a lot of free time so they asked me to bring stuff to make Christmas cards. Well I am not a demo but I have been to enough classes to get the idea what to do, so I said yes and cut and stamped enough to make 40 cards. It took a while but I had it all ready for today and it was all so worth it. These ladies loved making the cards! They each made two (one of each) and smiled and laughed and had a good time, it just made me thrilled to be able to do this for them. Some were so creative too! They changed the design a bit and stamped in different ways, I was impressed. What a blessing the Angel Tree program is, I was glad to be a part of it. So that is my wonderful day, and my fun tag :)

Inspired

by Tim Holtz and his 12 tags of Christmas. However, not liking mine. I don't have even half of the products he used on the tags he is making but I tried to make do with what I have and well, the results are not stunning. I used his new product though that I love - grunge board. It is like chipboard that is very flexible and you can paint, ink, emboss etc. anything to it and it doesn't rip or wrinkle. I used the leftover piece (the negative if you will) after I took out the swirl piece and used it as a stencil with blue distress ink. I then misted it with water and let the ink spread on the tag to make it all blue (even though it appears as white in this image). I also used one of the grunge board swirls and embossed it with the Cuttlebug and used the blue and vintage photo distress inks on it. I stamped the tree with black ink and painted on Stickles to give it a green and gold look. The Merry Christmas is heat embossed with copper E.P. and I used the Cropadile to put on that giant eyelet. I didn't have a star so I took some gold wire and bent it into a star shape. Had to adhere that with Diamond Glaze. I distressed the edges and inked them in the vintage photo ink. Ok so see how many products I used and own and yet I didn't have near what he is using! Some days I just want to give this craft up because as much money as I have spent I do not have enough. LOL! crazy, huh? Anyway here is his example and check back on his blog daily, today he is on day 6 but you can go back to the first days and see his others Tim Holtz Day 6. No comparison,huh? Well I suppose with practice it will get better.



This image is a Birthday card I had to make in like 2 minutes so I grabbed the catalog and copied a card. The image is not the one in the catalog and the colors aren't the same but the layout is. Love how simple yet great the SU catalog cards are. I have not done any other crafts this week, been out and about - you know it's that time of year! Oh got to mention this, it was cold today, for us - about 40 but in a couple of days it is going to be 75! Sat. 65, Sun. 70 and 75 Monday. Can you imagine? Hot, cold, hot, cold - all Fall has been like that! Weird weather once again.

By the way, the stamps on these are Stampin Up!

A Few Crafts

As I mentioned previously I was supposed to go to a craft class Sat. but had to take my son to a birthday party. So since I had to run to her house anyway to get my order I quickly stamped the images, gathered the supplies and took them home. Later after the party I used what I had at home to finish them. Worked out fine, not as fun as being with all the wonderful ladies she has come to her classes (and chatting away!) but at least I got to do them! So here we go: A tin with tags, an ornament with (and you can't tell really) a sparkly wreath and an on-board (SU chipboard die cut) snow flake that is embossed with I.Ice. Fun!

Martha S I am not, But...

I can buy her products and look like I am! LOL! I am not really trying to be though, that is just not a goal I aspire to. My goals are a little lower than that, like how to get through today without yelling at one or both of my kids :)

However this is and Advent house I bought at Michael's. It is a bunch of flat pieces that you put together to make this cute house. The instructions leave a lot to be desired but for me a picture is a thousand words and I made it through. Not an easy task with liquid glue she gives you though! You have to hold the piece and only do one at a time while the glue dries enough to stay so you can let go. Took over two hours to make. SO you ask why didn't I use some of my scrapbooking tape or adhesive? Because I am stubborn. Flat out cheap and stubborn. She gave me that glue with the kit and i was gonna use it! Why waste my "good stuff" when she obviously thought this glue would work. Reflecting back on it now I should have gotten out the red line tape LOL! A word to the wise, don't be stubborn ;)

All in all I think it is cute, we put goodies in each box in the roof and a bigger goody inside the house for day 25. Which is Christmas day which I thought advent calendars went backwards? I am confused because the space for the biggest prize is called 25 and it is the front door versus all the others are on the roof and the same size. This is what I get for never having done and advent calendar before!

On another note, Cheryl, here is the photo frame with the picture in it now! I scanned my son's school picture this year and made it sepia toned to match better (he had a bright blue shirt on) and resized it to fit and printed it out. I really like it.

Speaking of printing out, I am so frustrated with my printer! I bought the best quality Kodak paper to print out the pictures for the other calendar I am making and I had paper jam after paper jam and then ran out my ink as it uses a ton. I called Kodak and told them that the package says HP printers on the cover but it's jamming and they said sorry and maybe not my specific HP printer. Huh? Then put the specific ones on the cover! It is 8 1/2 x 11 paper and is NOT cheap to just toss in the trash can since it won't work. I called Office Depot and explained and they said once it is opened they don't normally take it back but they would do it for me. Now that is nice. I just have to get back there now. I suppose it means I must buy HP photo paper instead and they didn't have the one I wanted. Now I got to hunt that down. So I am not happy since I am too busy to be running around doing all this! Oh well.

So today I am supposed to go to a fun day of making crafts for Christmas but my son has a birthday party to go to, so the fun for me is out! I always forget to put something on the calendar, ugh. Then my husband wants to go to Christmas shopping after (for himself, oh why not) and I have a bunch of other stuff to do, ahhhhh can you feel Christmas in the air? Fa la lala la lala la la :)