Happy Thanksgiving!

No card today, I have my family from out of state here and we have been spending lots of time together. It is early in the morning and I am starting the cooking for Thanksgiving dinner. I have my husband's family coming over today also and my mother-in-law is bringing her Southern style dressing, pecan pie and a cake of some sorts and she is an awesome cook. So her goodies are a big help and we will have a complete table of traditional fares from both sides of the family :)

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. It to me is more about family than any other. It is the one holiday I have always cooked at my house, I have it down to an art now! I just wanted to take a moment before today moves on too fast and wish everyone a Happy Thanksgiving. I am so thankful for so many things I can't even begin! God has blessed my family so much I want to acknowledge and give him glory for it. We are all healthy, happy, well fed, well clothed, roofs over our heads and we all have jobs. During this time in our country that is something to be very thankful for. I am thankful for all of my friends because that is what makes each day better. Friends keep me sane! I am thankful to all of you who come to my blog and check out my cards and read my little notes here. I hope that each one of you has a great day and I am sure you will take a moment to ponder on what you are thankful for, it sure lifts the spirit! God bless you!

Lori

Give Thanks

Here are a couple of Thanksgiving cards. I haven't really made many as I don't usually send out Thanksgiving cards. The first one is a beautiful stamp by Northwoods that I purchased a few months ago with a gift certificate I received for my birthday. I thought it was so pretty and I have nothing like it! It is very detailed, takes a long time to color but it is really pretty. It is large so to mount is on a 1/4 sheet sized card (A2 or 4-1/4 x 5-1/2) you really don't have much room to make any sort of arrangement with it. However I really like how it came out and the papers I used with it worked nicely.

The second one is the same stamp however I framed it with a circle frame I made with a corner punch. You take the corner piece off the corner punch and take a circle and basically punch it eight times evenly in a circle and trim where they meet and the center piece falls out. Then you have a frame! It looks so cool. You can see the tutorial here or video tutorial here.

The bottom image is of some Fall cards I made last year at a Stampin' Up class. I just thought I would post them for ideas for this season.

Love Lovely as a Tree

If you see my gallery on SCS than you have seen this but for those who don't go there I had to share this card. I have seen so many cards with Kraft paper and white embossing for the stamped image and it looks so nice! So I had to try this for the color challenge of Kraft, Black and Red. The trees are from Lovely as a Tree set and I do love all the lovely trees in the set! After I stamped the trees and dots for snow I embossed with white e.p. and then used dazzling diamonds on the trees. I also used a corner punch for this and it makes a nice frame for the image. The background paper is from SU's last year's Christmas designer paper. The tag and snowflake are new from Magnolia (the company that makes the Tildas) and came with the set that Edwin comes from. I also used white embossing for them. Which on red looks awesome too! The sentiment tag is a die cut from Cuttlebug, the set called "tiny tags". I will say I do use the products I buy :) Thanks for looking!

I received this cute little Gruffie from either a RAK or a PIF swap on SCS. I just happened to be going through the images I have on hand and saw this. Perfect timing for making a Christmas card! I have this thing, I like to make cards that say "Merry Christmas" so it keeps Christ in Christmas so I don't use Happy Holidays on my own very often. However this seemed to fit the Gruffie stamp better in this case. I do send these type out to people I know who don't celebrate Christmas but this one does have a Santa hat so that is out too! Anyway... The snowflakes are made from felt, I picked them up at Archivers a week or so ago. I used rhinestone brads in the centers. The snow has dazzling diamonds glitter on it and the sled has diamond glaze on it to make it all sparkly and shiny in person :) Otherwise it is just real red and wild wasabi cardstock. I still like wild wasabi as a color better than this year's kiwi kiss. Oh, well. It was a fun card to make for no reason at all (no challenges, swaps etc!). He's a cute bear :)

My First Edwin

I was trying to follow two challenges, the weekly SCS sketch challenge and a color challenge on a blog I saw while blurfing (yes blurfing - blog surfing). The colors for the challenge are eggplant, saffron, pumpkin, white and cocoa. The colors could be really good together if I had a different subject I think. I just wanted to use my new Edwin! I received the Winter Stamp Club from Magnolia and it has some really adorable Tilda's and Edwin's and I just wanted to ink my new rubber LOL! So this is it, not my best work but it is kind of cute because Edwin is so cute :)

The cake is stamped with white embossing powder (there is my white!) on saffron card stock (there is my saffron, well it was) but it didn't look good so I colored it in with pumpkin but left a little saffron. I used Stickles glitter glue on the flames from the candles. I used more of those chipboard flourishes, painted them in Lake and then swiped pumpkin and eggplant on them. I didn't saturate them because I thought they looked good with the faded or distressed look.

OH! I stamped Edwin on kraft cardstock and used water color crayons to color him in (I do have white!) and I really like how it looks. I think it looks better than stamping on white! I am going to try that again. I have a cute Christmas card for next time :)

Lori

Crayon Box and Triangle Fold Medallion

I saw this box on Courtney's blog and wanted to try it. It's quick and easy and would make a great gift box. I made the triangle fold medallion for the technique challenge on Splitcoast and put the two together and ta-da! Looks pretty cute, huh? I used a build a brad for the middle, I cut a circle of real red and then put Stickles on it before I put the top button part on. The tag is from my new set of goodies from Magnolia. I ordered the Winter stamp club and then canceled it and apparently she didn't get that email! I am not too upset, I LOVE what I got I just didn't want to spend the money. I ordered it back in August! I got some Tilda's and some Edwin's and some miscellaneous stamps with it so it will all go to good use. I made an Edwin card today (my first) and will share it tomorrow. Thanks for stopping by!

Just a quick note today, I wanted to get something posted but I have a lot to do today and I am still on the computer. I am surfing all the blogs I subscribe to which now is too many! Lots of talented people out there :)

This is using Pacific Point cardstock which is one of the new "Incolors" from Stampin' Up. I stamped the background halfway down with the print pattern stamp in p.p. and then stamped the Psalm verse in black ink. I used a Nestabilities die for the scallop around the lighthouse and then a Cuttlebug die to make the corners. It is actually a square die I cut diagonally to make it work for corners. Just an experiment that I think worked nicely. The ribbon is p.p. also and well, that's it! See ya later ;)

Snowman

 

One of my dearest friends gave this stamp to me last Christmas and I love it! I love snowmen and this one is adorable. I found it today when looking for another stamp and then pulled out all of my Christmas stamps, I do indeed have enough! So why did I just order one from my SU demo? OK, because it's different than what I already have LOL! If I used that reasoning every time I wanted a stamp set this house could not hold them all :) I enjoyed coloring this one, I first embossed it with black e.p. which helps hold the water color in the lines, yep like that trick. He is quite detailed actually. I added gray around the edges of his body and the edges of the snow and then put dazzling diamonds glitter on the areas. It made a nice effect in person, the camera doesn't quite get the sparkle it has. I was trying to fit this in the color challenge of certainly celery, pacific point and basic gray. They work very well together! I ran out of room to put ribbon on so I punched the ribbon slots on the image and tied it through. Not sure I like that part. I made a tag with a die using my Cuttlebug and tied it on with iridescent cording. The little birdie and the berries have diamond glaze on them too. I had fun with this one!

Noble Deer

This set is so awesome for masculine cards, seems there are so many flower sets it's nice to have one of these. I made this card for the Monday lunchtime sketch challenge, another great sketch! I made this without the embellishments and wondered what I was thinking? It was so plain! I should have done something with the green piece, like emboss it or background stamp it but too late it was adhered. So I went on a search to figure out what to do to spruce up the card. I already had the grommets as that was part of the sketch :) So I got out my package of these chipboard flourishes and good heavens that turned into a 2 day struggle LOL! I first used crackle paint on it, which looked rather cool but it was the wrong color. So then I tried to sponge it with brown, not good either. Then I painted it with Lake color sponge dauber by Ranger and ewww again - didn't match. So today I am hunting through my stuff and I have green distress ink! It is called peeled paint, on it went and it matched. Now I am happy :) Then I was told by a gal on SCS that the branch punch I wanted was on sale at Michael's so off I went today to hunt it down. Once again not easy, it wasn't with all of the Martha Stewart stuff, it was on a island display with the Christmas MS stuff. Just happy I found it. So now I can be like all the other SCS'ers and have this leaf next to my Prima flowers LOL! It's all fun, I suppose it seems silly to people like my husband who said, "that card looks like all your other cards, ho hum" when I showed him my proud creation. Oh well, I don't like watching his "Tap Out" shows on TV so we just have different taste.

Fluffles

I love this stamp! I just felt like using it this weekend. I used diamond glaze for the balloon and the flames of the candles. I distressed the edges with one of those razor blade tools and sponged with vintage photo distress ink. I am on a roll with sponging the edges again! I also have these flowers sitting around in this teal/turquoise sorta color so I need to make cards with this color to use them. It goes ok, at least it goes with the "spot" theme. Anyway it was a fun card to make.

I am trying to keep up with my birthday fairy duties, the Survivor cards I need to make for my picks that get voted off and my House Mouse swap and now I have joined a Christmas Elf swap and a Magnolia card kit swap. Plus the challenges :) Keeps me busy!

I'm a Winner!!!

Yeah!!!!!!!!!! I am so happy LOL! It is a big prize too so I am doubly happy between my card getting picked and the prize :) Here are the details:
http://sheetload.blogspot.com/2008/11/and-winners-are-october-show-us-your.html

Remember the cards I have been making and posting for sheetload of cards? I entered one of them and won the prize (one other person one also). I am working on my November sheetload and will post one of those when I am ready. I just had to post this real quick as I just found out. I will post a new card a little later.

Just Pretty :)

This of course, was made for a sketch challenge, the basic idea was the three squares on the right and I knew immediately I wanted to use this Cuttlebug die for it. I haven't used it in forever and when I made that card a few days ago with the corner loopy die over the 4 corner edges (does that make sense?) this is in that set and it was on my mind. I punched out the flowers, used my new dew drops for the centers of the flowers and embossed the background of the eggplant piece. I added the black brads as it needed just a little something else in that area where the sentiment is. The squares are on pop-dots (or dimensionals) so the light shines through it and gives it a nice effect. It was fun to do but took me a whole week to figure out the color scheme! I had cut the dies in the eggplant and then I was going to use gold shimmery paper but it didn't grab me. I had the celery sitting on my desk and light-bulb moment, it all came together :) Sorry the picture is kind of crooked and blurry, I was trying to get an angle you could see the shadow through for the lacey edges of the squares.

Sponging

I saw a card the other day that was heavily sponged and so pretty! I used to sponge the edges a lot and got away from it. This card is vanilla cardstock sponged with so saffron and more mustard. I stamped the background in old olive, so saffron and river rock. The bird is covered with diamond glaze and those are my new dew drops in the center of the flowers. Speaking of dew drops, I finally got some. Long after the rage but that's ok. Thanks for stopping by! Tomorrow is color challenge :)

Roses in Winter

I saw a card on Amy Sheffer's blog that was so gorgeous I wanted to make one. This is pretty close to her card but I used different stamps, colors and ribbon. I think it came out pretty but not as pretty as hers! It was time consuming to make though. I stamped a couple of different roses to get one I liked and then I made the second card with a left-over. It is the sheetload card kit of the month from October. Their November kit is on their site now for free download by the way. It is a pdf file around 13 pages long with the cutting instructions and samples. Very well organized. Sorry about the 2nd image color, I didnt have enough light and when I adjust color on my lap-top it looks funny on everyone else's computer so I just let it be. It is with the Bella Rose paper and Kiwi Kiss card stock.