The 12 Days of Christmas Cards-Day Four

Just a short post on this one. It's getting hard to find the time to make a card a day and then blog about it :) This one is for my brother and SIL. Let's just say I think they appreciate the non-traditional and I think this card fits that description.

The stamp is from a Penny Black set (this and every year) and I stamped it first by coloring it with a SU Bordering Blue marker and then stamped over it again with versamark and added the SU! iridescent ice ep. I don't own a "stamp-a-ma-jig" but I think I might just pick one up today while I'm out. I finally found a use for it. It's REALLY hard to line up a rubber stamp exactly in the same place twice. I improvised with a couple cd cases taped down--long story, suffice it to say, it worked.

I decided to add a little dimension with a QK present die and pressed the ribbon part of the die-cut down on a versamark pad and then coated with the iridescent ice ep and heat set it. The paper is a little bit of BG I had laying around from last year's Figgy Pudding line and the background was run through the cb using the swiss dots folder.

I'm probably going to end up spending a fortune on extra postage thanks to all the added dimension but Christmas is only once a year so why not, right?

The 12 Days of Christmas Cards-Day Three

Today's card is my hubby's favorite. I think it has a bit of a masculine feel to it and might just be given to his male co-workers. This one combines a little Basic Grey, a little PTI, and a whole lotta SU!.

The new SU! Top Note die makes an awesome background and a great addition to any card. The uses for this die are just endless. I actually bought it with journaling in mind for sb layouts, but I've used it to house a title on a sb page and now a nice backdrop for this stamp from the Lovely as A Tree SU! set. The trees were stamped with versamark and embossed with an ep from a little company called Powder Keg. I added some icicle stickles on them too. The ground is coated in Martha Stewart coarse glitter. I did a masking technique on the background using SU! soft sky inkpad and a sponge before stamping the trees.

I used a versamark pen around the outside of the label stamp in the SU! Winter Post set and then embossed with more ep and the PTI sentiment stamp was also embossed on the inside of the label and then punched out with the SU! label punch.

I'm making sure to use that snowflake border punch as much as I can. I had some guilt over buying yet another border punch but it's turning out to be useful.

The 12 Days of Christmas Cards-Day Two

Sometimes the simplest of designs are the truly stunning ones. I saw a card on Splitcoast a few weeks ago (Rox71 is the artist) that was so serene and gorgeous, I just had to try my hand at it. I was fascinated with the little upraised houses on the card and couldn't believe it was a Cuttlebug embossing folder!! I quickly snatched one up on the 'bay and this is my take on her beautiful card!

I used Prismacolor pencils and baby oil to color the houses and added Martha Stewart coarse glitter to the rooftops and ground. The snowflake is a Martha punch and also coated in glitter. Her coarse glitter is fabulous! I wasn't sure how much I would use it(and of course, bought the giant container of it) but now I'm glad I bought it. The sentiment is PTI's Holiday Wishes set stamped on the Labels One Nesties and I am SO happy with these stamps! There's 15 Christmas sentiments and they look fantastic stamped and embossed on the insides of the cards too. I also used the Martha Stewart snowflake border punch on the bottom and added a little holiday ribbon from Michaels.

It's very sparkly IRL and just hard to capture with my limited photog skills :)

The 12 Days of Christmas Cards--Day One

It has begun. The quest for the perfect Christmas card is well under way. I thought I'd have a little fun with this stressful time of the year and attempt to post daily for the next 12 days with a new Christmas card creation each day. Call me a crazy freak but I just can't be happy with one mass-produced Christmas card. I think it has to do with wanting to use the mounds of Christmas cr@p accumulating in my craft room. The guilt of limiting myself to just one stamp set or just one punch is too much to bear. So, let's get this party started.

Here's the first one and quite possibly will end up being my favorite one this year(a little too early to call). This takes a little bit of goodness from a couple of my favorite product lines and a few fun techniques thrown in for good measure.

The background was embossed with the swiss dots cuttlebug folder and the scene background is the Labels One Nestabilities cut out of various cs. The reindeer is from the Stampin Up! Winter Post set and embossed , cut out and pop-dotted. I used the Martha Stewart christmas tree punch and added some puffy paint and pop-dotted them and used more puffy paint for the snow covered ground. The falling snow and the northern star are from the SU! Itty Bitty Backgrounds and Snow Flurries sets. The sentiment is from the Penny Black "this and every year" set and embossed in gold ep and pop-dotted on a little bit of SU! dsp from last year cut out with a scalloped nestabilities. The branches are the Martha Stewart branch punch in SU! chocolate chip cs and the ribbon is SU! Alpine Originals.

It was a little time-consuming but I'll only be making a few of each design and this one was a lot of fun to make and I'm sure will be a lot of fun to give!

A fun timeline of pics

Here is a 2-pager I worked on yesterday for the circle journal I'm a part of on sb.com. We were asked to put together a layout of pics from childhood to present and share some inside info about who we are. It was fun searching through old pics at my parents' house looking for shots that weren't completely and totally embarassing. You just can't do much though about all those high school pics with bad 80's hair (for those of us unfortunate souls who had the great misfortune of being in high school in that less than memorable moment of style and fashion history). I chose to cut it all off in '90 and start over. Good choice, I think.

I love the QK Nutmeg alpha that I used on this one! It's kinda chunky, kinda funky, and makes a statement. This spread is 8x8 so the alpha looks really large on here but would also look stunning on a 12x12 page too. (A great one for anyone on the fence).

Better luck next year guys.

It's a sad sad day here but somehow we found the strength to get up this morning and carry on. I couldn't even watch it last night. Had to keep flipping back on commercial breaks during The Race and The Unit and I just dreaded the moment when I knew Jeff would walk out to the living room and break the bad news. For any of you with a Red Sox freak at home--you KNOW what I mean. There was silence. And more silence. Then we went to bed. This morning was all business getting ready for work and more silence. He should be ok around lunch time. This will be a blip on the radar by next month. Maybe. At least there'll be no more weeknights staying up til 1AM. Can't win em all. But it sure would be cool.

WOOHOO!!

I just felt like saying that. It's Monday, I've been hangin' with hubby all day and doing naughty things like going out to lunch and scrapping! I just love days when the kid has school and the big kid doesn't have to work.

I used a few new goodies on this one that I've been dying to break out of their packages and a few techniques that I normally won't take the time to do. It was fun! I hand-stitched (some of my hand-dyed,hard to find and a little pricey cross-stitch floss--glad it went to good use) around the SU! Top Note die and pulled out the sewing machine too and added some zigzagging. I also love the look of thickers and love that I can make my own with my QK dies so I cut each letter 3 times and glued them together to get that "thicker" look.

I used the SU! scallop punch too. I like this one MUCH more than the Fiskars threading water punch. It's smoother, my Fiskars gets caught up and tears the paper, and I just like the tinier scallop this one gives.

And last but not least, I finally used some BG Boxer. I bought an obnoxious amount of this paper and this was the first time I used it. These are pics of my son on our trip to Orlando this summer. I may have mentioned he was like the girl on the cruise commercial??

The journaling reads:

I love how your dad captured this candid shot of you-the look that drove us crazy, the one that says vacations with mom and dad are just not cool anymore. I think you secretly had fun every now and then and maybe you'll take us up on bringing a friend next time.

Overcoming challenges...

I wish I could say I'm jazzed about the pics I took in Orlando this summer--but I'm not. It's just hard sometimes to focus(literally) on taking good pics when you're too busy having fun. But that's what life is all about, enjoying the moments--not worrying about capturing it on film. So, I started scrapping the pics from this trip a few months ago and I set it as a little goal to just go ahead and finish them up. My guys are excited to see them come to life on pages and that gives me the motivation to continue with these less than perfect shots.

I've really liked using the BG Ambrosia line for these amusement park LOs. These papers make me think of many very different uses like Asian themed pages, Halloween/autumn, and of course, these park shots. I'm sure I'll think of other themes these would be perfect for!

Getting back into it.

Got a little scrappin done over the weekend and it felt good. I think it's definitely time to focus on the hobby again instead of the state of the country. Yuck. If there's one good thing to come out of a recession, it's that I will be forced to use the stash I already have. I'm sure we'll see less product available and stores closing their doors. Hope that's not the case but it sure helps to justify all this stuff I bought and haven't used. I used some BG Ambrosia on this LO and QK Fiesta.

A very simple scraplift

I was pretty excited when I opened up the August issue of CK last month and saw Becky Higgins' very simple yet very classy and totally perfect framed piece on page 49. Yes, it's true. We've lived in this house for nearly 3 years and I have yet to hang one picture (well any piece of home decor at all) on the walls of our master bedroom. We finally got the paint color right 2 years ago and then the bedding came together a few weeks ago while shopping in DC and I found the absolute perfect art piece to hang over the bed just last week. AND-we hung it 2 days after buying it. That's a record around here, folks. Then, I see this classic beauty and knew this was what I have been looking for.

So, I found one of my pics from the desert garden in San Diego's Balboa Park that really showcases my favorite colors of lime/chartreuse green and peach/orange. The frame has a natural linen mat and coordinates perfectly with the other natural elements in our bedroom. And I'm hanging my own version of Becky's piece on the wall at the foot of our bed so I can wake up every morning to this beautiful sight.