Thank you Cards and Calendar

Happy New Year! 2012, oh yeah! The years just tootle on by LOL! I changed my blog feed to only show the first part of the post because when I post several cards it makes a large email to people and if they get several feeds it's annoying. On the other hand some people only look at the feed and don't come to my blog to see the rest. So I'm not sure which way is best. Anyway here are the remaining cards and calendar I promised. These are once again cased or inspired from cards Ive seen, when I am in a hurry or want to make several cards I find it best to do this because creating my own design from start to finish takes me 3+ hours for one card! The owl calendar was just so darn cute I had to make them for myself and friends. I love the owl punch from Stampin Up and have used it many times with no plans of stopping! I have made a calendar of some kind every year now for 4 or 5 years so it's become a tradition.

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.

Challenge Card for Hero Arts Blog

There are three challenges this month and this time I chose the color challenge. The colors are pink, blue, green and neutral. They are using pastel shades. I really wanted to make this a Christmas card and I wanted to use the new elegant saying stamp I ordered for making Christmas cards this year. I also used the envelope pattern stamp and the artistic fern stamp. I added snow and berries to turn it into a more Christmas theme. I used an embossing folder on the kraft scalloped mat that is a wood grain, it adds an interesting texture to the card. I like it, I am pretty pleased with how this turned out, I worked really hard on it :)

Halloween Digital Scrapbooking

I have a friend who designs the most awesome digital scrapbooking things! She is really good and I am always in awe of what she comes up with, some people just have such a gift I'm so jealous! But I can buy her stuff so I cant complain :) She made three Halloween pages for me though that are so awesome I had to share them here. This is her creation, not mine. I cant take credit for her great work :) You can buy her kits here and she has many other kits, she also does awesome recipe books that make the cookbooks they sell in stores look so boring. Thank you so much Tracy!!!!

Magnolia and Basic Grey Halloween Card

I've had this cute Tilda by Magnolia stamp for a couple years now and realized I haven't used it! I was looking through my papers to use for this card and found this Basic Grey pack of 6 x 6 papers and look at what I found! These spooky trees with bats hanging in them, how perfect! The moon and bat stamp behind Tilda is also a Magnolia stamp. I ended up making this card 5 1/2 square so I could use all of this piece of designer paper and not ruin the look of the trees and bats. Then I had to do something on the inside since I used black card stock and my son has this cute bat punch so I added it in. I love this card, it was soooo hard to part with but I made it for someone and told myself from the beginning I couldn't keep it. I could always make another one :)

Unity Challenge, Masculine Get Well Card

Unity Stamp Company has a sketch challenge for October that I decided to join. This owl is from an older Unity kit of the month, I love this little guy and am currently on an owl kick :) The designer paper and card stock is Stampin Up, the sentiment is from Gina K. stamps and the dies are Spellbinders.Here is a link to their challenge Unity Blog. Thanks for looking!

Owl Card

I saw this adorable card on the Hero Arts blog and I just had to make one like it! I made some changes as you can see but I just love this card! I used the same idea of the owl in the framed scalloped circle with a wood grain type stamp but the rest is somewhat different. I used a standard A2 sized card, some SU designer paper and the SU owl punch plus I added ribbon and a little tag to the bottom. The hello word stamp in the back of the owl is a Hero Arts stamp called Dictionary Greeting. I made it today and I was so excited about it I am going ahead and putting it on my blog right away - even using my iPhone to take the picture lol! I hope you like it too! Thanks for stopping by :)

Hero Arts Cards

Since I am putting a blinkie link to Hero Arts on my Blog (they are one of my all time favorite stamp companies!) I thought I would post two cards that I CASEd using their stamps. I made these a while back so I dont remember the details but they were quick and fun to make! I made some subtle changes in the top one which is the CASEd one, the bottom one is my second take on the idea. Thanks for looking :)