Penny Black and Flower Soft Challenge

Penny Black Stamps and Flower Soft are having a blog hop and challenge that I had to join! So my other thank you cards and owl calendar will have to wait for my next post :) I used Love Antennae and Make a Wish stamps by Penny Black and Sweet Pea by Flower Soft. The paper and ribbon are by Stampin Up and Basic Grey. There are fruit punch Stickles on her cute heart antennae and a Spellbinders Die set for the shape. I used Spica glitter pen on her stockings and on the flowers in the other image but the sparkle just didnt show on any of the picture I took of the cards. The second picture of the Make a Wish card is to show the cute little mouse is cut out and placed up on a pop dot, hard to tell in the first image. Thanks for looking, keep your fingers crossed I would love to guest design for them!

Thank You Cards Part 1

Well it is almost a new year! 2011 gone, wow was that fast or what? I have some goals for next year but not resolutions. Resolutions don't work for me but goals do. As long as they are realistic. See that's what I think makes resolutions not work, they usually aren't realistic. Like lose 50 pounds or eat better or exercise regularly. All too vague and too unattainable on their own. Anyway here are some thank you cards I made in hopes to send out for some of the Christmas presents the family has received. Or I should make the boys write them for themselves! One of the cards is using the new Apothecary Art stamp and die set from the new Stampin Up Occasions Mini. Also there is paper there from either it or the SAB mini or possibly both. All I know is my friend who is a demo let us use all her stuff on Monday and we had a blast making cards! I made 8 cards in all and one owl punch calendar which I will post next time. My usual disclaimer of there are cards here cased from the web, the second and fourth ones. Although the little bee button idea was all my own :) the person who originally created that card probably just didn't have one!

Last (Maybe) Christmas Card & Box

This card I made last year or the year before at my friend's stamp a stack, it is embossed with iridescent ice glitter. I had to make it again this year. The stamp is by Hero Arts. It is so pretty in person! Just sparkles everywhere. Hope you can see a little bit of it in these two pictures. The rest are the Stampin Up Christmas box, my dear friend gave the kit to me to make for Christmas and brought it over for both of us to make together! What a great idea, we enjoy stamping together as often as possible. Merry Christmas!

Next set of Christmas cards

Here are the cards I made Friday and Saturday with the new stamps. Didnt get to all of the stamps yet and didnt get as much done as I wanted that's for sure! Ended up spending hours fixing my son's Windows computer - ugh its why I bought a Mac and here I am still having to fix Windows issues. Anyway it ate up my time. I have to finish by Weds. night as I am going to visit my family for Christmas and I do need to mail these *before* Christmas! I am posting a picture of my work area chaos too, I dont know how I end up with such a huge mess! I did try to clean it up, I got a box and organized some stuff I needed out in it so it was handy. Plus I watch TV on my iPad while I craft - nice and convenient size to put wherever I need to on my table.

The first card I wanted to have it far more perfect than I should have and spent three hours trying different designer papers and embellishments and layouts and finally ended up with this. I do really like it but it should not have taken so long! The next ones I did in no time. They need more embellishing or something but I got to make cards a bit faster. Too much thinking!

2nd Batch of Christmas cards

I was not happy with my card images looking yellow so I went hunting around the house for a desk lamp (which was on the floor of my son's closet...) and put a fluorescent bulb in it (no yellow with that!). Then shined it straight on my card and took the picture. Wow, what a difference, my images look so much better today don't you think?

I was very productive yesterday! Here is what I came up with, I wanted to color the girl, cat and snowman stamp a little differently so I did a couple more - I just like this stamp! I am using my Stampin Up water color crayons, they are so easy to use and since I am not good with blending or shading they do the trick. I am not real patient with coloring! I have a whole set of those brand new though that I need to sell, the set I have looks like its going to last forever so I don't need the new set. I love the reindeer stamp, even plain like this card it looks great. I got my order in from SimonSaysStamp - oh my gosh were they fast! I am so pleased with their service! So I have six (what was I thinking? Mrs. Scrooge herself bought six Christmas stamps!) so I hope to ink up at least two or three today. It's kind of hard with my son tracked out from school for four weeks but I'm trying :) Hope you like and thanks for looking!

Lori

Christmas cards so far

I am going to quickly post what I've made so far, some of these are using ideas from designers you may see on the web and some are my own. I have a couple more done and need photographed but I am far from being done! I need to make at least 25 hand made cards every year and this year I did not have a "stamp a stack" to go to! Ugh! My Stampin Up friends are losing steam, can't blame them - busy lives and busy times. It takes an incredible amount of work to set up, cut the cardstock etc. and run those. Anyway for some reason I have made an individual card of each, I need to find one I can mass produce and stick with it! But that's no fun :) Ok here they are, will post more later this week. If I get more made LOL! I cant seem to get myself into my "crafting" (as my son says) room.