Last of the Christmas cards

This is probably the last Christmas card I will make since Christmas is nearly upon us.I finally used a Hero Arts card for the base. I should have used one sooner because it's nice and white on the inside to write a message. This year I have been reading along with Tim Holtz's 12 tags of Christmas and in the video, he was demonstrating a neat way to ink the embossed image with ink directly on the embossing folder. Except I didn't visualize it correctly and actually inked the back of the Cuttlebug snowflake folder, oops! Luckily the ink wasn't too dark and I could just turn it over to use the other side for my card. I also tried the distress ink as embossing ink with clear embossing powder for the sentiment which I also saw on a Tim Holtz video somewhere. The candy cane is a Sizzlit, don't look too closely, the leaves and berries were hard to cut out nicely for layering. I colored the candy cane stripes with a "cherry" marker, I didn't realize it was going to be such a dark red.

And now I will leave you with gratuitous Santa pictures from our Polar Express train ride experience.It was fun! I told my son that I think that bell is his Santa present for this year. He wasn't impressed, saying he didn't even write that on his list! Well, hope everyone has a nice Christmas holiday! Long weekend, yay!

Christmas Snowflake Cards

So I made a few more quick Christmas cards. I don't usually buy too many Christmas themed things because I don't typically make things to give away at this time of year. Even all those well intentioned Christmas layouts are still in the "photos have been downloaded but not printed" stage. Maybe one of these years I will try a December Daily album... that I should probably start preparing in January. But for now, this is about all I can do.Last year I bought some clearance Sizzix dies (which I almost forgot about until I was cleaning my craft area) and now I have some Hero Arts Christmas stamps. The huge snowflakes are supposed to be ornaments, but since they were so huge, there wasn't much more to add to decorate a card.

The green paper is from a Christmas paper pad from We R Memory Keepers that I got during their Black Friday sale. I inked the edges of that and the snowflake with some distress ink, it might have been Frayed Burlap. Then I added a "ho ho ho" gromlet which happened to conveniently fit the hole in the snowflake. The sentiment was embossed with white embossing powder.

Same idea for this one, except that star cut out in the middle was kind of huge so instead of a gromlet I used some stickles. Which wasn't very easy to apply neatly to such a large area. I even used my finger to try to spread it around and flatten it out which made it messier. Again sentiment embossed with white embossing powder. I also stamped the little snowflakes with the watermark embossing ink. Now that I'm looking at the photo, it looks like I might have forgotten to ink this green paper, oops! I hope I haven't forgotten to do anything else before Christmas. Or a birthday, our family celebrates 3 birthdays in the space of 2-3 weeks together with Christmas and New Years, crazy times.

Well, that's about it for now, bye!

Have a Joyous Holiday!

I actually made another holiday card! Kind of the same idea as the other one, pretty much using the same things. I used the same snowflake stamp set from Hero Arts. However, this time I used white embossing powder on PTI Pure Poppy cardstock. Again, it was a little messy, hopefully the little specks of white, aren't too obvious in the photo. Again, same Sizzlit die cut set for the sentiment. This is the one I initially tried to emboss in black but it came out way too spotty with black embossing powder all over the place so I just stamped it in black ink. The sentiment also came in the Hero Arts prize package.
I just noticed Jennifer McGuire's blog entry about a powder tool that she said she uses prior to embossing. Maybe I'll just try more baby powder next time.

The snowflake is a chipboard piece from Maya Road that I pressed into the versamark ink then sprinkled with white embossing powder. I think the embossed layer wasn't thick enough, but I covered the whole thing up with some Stickles. Then there's a button from PTI and some sheer white ribbon tied on. I guess the whole snowflake looks a little white, but oh well, I didn't have any red buttons and I didn't look too hard for red ribbon since the white one looked easy to thread through the button.

Gee, where has November gone? Now I have to remember to buy our Christmas tree at some point soon since Eva reminded me with her already nicely decorated tree!

Enjoy the Season

Finally, I started on some Christmas cards! Which is unusual in itself because I pretty much send only Christmas photo cards...just have to make one, then print out multiple copies. Again, reminds me that we haven't even taken our family photo for this year yet. But I thought I should make something because I actually won the Hero Arts prize from Kristina Werner's blog! I couldn't believe that, that was totally shocking. I randomly enter things like that here and there, but I don't really expect to win anything. So here's a card using the snowflake set, "Enjoy the Season." It is just PTI cardstock in Aqua Mist and Hibiscus Burst. (I should have used the Hero Arts cards that I also received, but I thought if I messed up, at least I have relatively more sheets of cardstock than wasting the real cards). I was mostly playing around with embossing powders, which got a little messy. I don't know how people keep their powder from sticking to the cardstock. It came with instructions to dust cornstarch over the paper prior to using the powder, but maybe I didn't use enough. I was being a little stingy with the baby powder since I have a cute little mini bottle which I don't think is refillable. Whatever the case, the sentiment is in a distressed type font so most of those extra specks of white are actually supposed to be there, I realized afterward. Not so much for another sentiment I tried to emboss in black, but that's another story for another day.

The snowflakes were stamped in Versamark ink, then I used Ranger embossing powder in Holographic. It's hard to get a photo of it, but it's kind of a cool effect. It's glittery and when you angle it in the light a certain way, it does indeed look shiny and holographic! So of course I didn't want to cover up my cool snowflakes too much (not, actually I didn't know what else to put on the card). But I figured a sentiment might be nice, and then remembering Eva's cute pink gingerbread matchbook, I picked pink. The die cut is from a Sizzix Sizzlit set that I got from Michael's on Thanksgiving Day. Yes, Michael's was open for about 4 hours in the evening and I was crazy enough to go shopping with my 30% off (mostly) everything coupon. Plus who am I to pass up an opportunity to go shopping without the kids! When I got to the Sizzix section, there were signs that said 40% off, so I'm thinking wow, plus an extra 30% off. But then when I got home, I realized they only gave me the 30% off. So on Friday, I thought I might as well return it and possibly use my 50% off coupon. But then I thought maybe I should ask if the Sizzix's were supposed to be on sale the day prior. Which the cashier didn't know so the manager or whoever that was actually there on Thursday had to come over and said the signs were mistakenly up...but they actually gave me both discounts! Maybe I should have bought more stuff then! Although I think they gave me the discount because I only bought that one Sizzix. I'm so bad, I'm a crazy shopaholic!

Anyhow, I'm going to try and make another card (while the hubby is home and at least one kid is napping). Bye!

Hello Kitty birthday card

Here's a pretty simple birthday card, actually I guess all my cards are pretty simple, because after putting together the Hello Kitty, I was exhausted! The Hello Kitty is from a Sizzix die, paper pieced using PTI plum pudding cardstock and patterned paper from one of the paper pad collections. I tried paper piecing the whiskers on this one, it was a little easier since the Hello Kitty is rather large. She is supposed to be holding a "happy birthday" flower. I used a swirly border die for the stem. The sentiment is a Stampin Up stamp, plum pudding ink on sweet blush cardstock, don't know why I picked that color. And I don't know why the bitty dot paper looks like a slightly different color than the plum pudding cardstock, but they seem to match better in person. The background is lavendar moon cardstock cut from a Nestability label.

I appreciate you!

Well, that is the sentiment on my latest card.  But I also wanted to say thanks to Eva, for keeping up the blog, making so many beautiful and creative crafty things, and inspiring me to actually use my supplies (but then buying even more things too!)  I can't believe I lasted a year, even if I only managed to make things sporadically.  But it has actually been a pretty productive year for me...recording it all on our blog has been motivational.

Anyhow, I can't believe I didn't look at all these challenge blogs earlier, especially the sketch and color combination ones.  They help me out a lot with design ideas...I am the crafty-challenged one on this blog, I mostly enjoy the cutting and pasting parts, not so good at the creativity part.  Let's just say I'm lucky this is not my day job.

Anyhow, I'm playing along this week at the Play Date Cafe... 

And Card Patterns

 It's basically all PTI...cardstock, polka dot paper and stamp set, and Spellbinders...labels and tags.  I did cut the border with a Hello Kitty sizzlit border.

The ribbon was probably from Michaels.  I added some to the ends of the tag and stuck it down with a glue dot which was kind of difficult to place, I should probably try a different adhesive next time.

 I used the Bow-Easy again, somehow my bow ended up a little twisted.  I might end up gluing part of the tails down.

OK, after I saw the photo, it looked like the sentiment tag was too high up.  Luckily I didn't use much adhesive and could take it off without ripping any paper.  So I moved the tag down just a little, there was still old adhesive there so I couldn't really go any lower.  Was that being too picky?  That's why it takes me forever to make things too.

Have a nice rest of the weekend!

A Hello Kitty Happy Spring

I actually have another card!  I was debating about posting it, but I figure since I actually spent time making it, I might as well, otherwise who knows when I'll get a chance to make anything again.  Plus it took me so long to die cut the Hello Kitty.  So again, I found a sketch, this time at Card Positioning Systems #213.

I wanted to use my Sizzlit Hello Kitty that Eva got me probably from a year or 2 ago, along with the Easter eggs.  I actually used this die cut last year, but my son used it for his own crafts, then before I knew it Easter had passed.

So I mainly got to work first on die cutting Hello Kitty and giving her a hot pink bunny suit.

And then I pasted her suit on and realized I had forgotten to color her whiskers!  So I penned it in and it looked messy...so I had to cut everything again!  The second time I used a tip I read on someone's blog a while ago, and sorry, but I forgot who it was.  I think it was someone from Hawaii and I found it by googling something to the effect of "how to Sizzix Hello Kitty whiskers."  But essentially she recommended die cutting the face first in black, then layering a white face with the whiskers cut out over the black layer.  Although I guess since these whiskers are hiding under the bunny suit, I could have just taped a black piece behind the cut out whiskers.  Hello Kitty was also holding a cute basket full of flowers, but there didn't seem to be enough room on the card.  Plus those flowers were tiny, my stubby fingers and nails would have had problems trying to glue them down.

Anyhow, then I used PTI New Leaf cardstock for the base and some Spellbinders paper that I had bought from somewhere, possibly the Bazzill warehouse sale from years ago.  The main problem was deciding what kind of paper to use for the rounded rectangle.  Initially I considered a PTI bitty dot paper in light pink, but wanted something more contrasty, then ended up using the embossed lemon tart cardstock, which blends in with the green paper too much.  So I don't know, I should have looked up a color challenge somewhere to help me out with colors, or else I shouldn't have glued down the green paper so soon and picked a different pattern.  I inked the embossed parts with Antique Linen distress ink, but I guess it's not too obvious in the photo.

I used another PTI Tag-Its sentiment on the egg.  Then added some stickles to the wavy strips.  I am also going to add this to the Simon Says Stamp Challenge: Spring/Easter.

More babies!

Hello again!  I have another card!  Well, it's been a busy baby season for a lot of people I know, and everyone's having a boy!  So here's another baby boy card.  I need 2 more of these now.  And the only baby stamp set I have is this Greeting Farm one.

Colored and cut out all the baby accessories.  Mounted it on a My Favorite Things Die-namics doily.  Embossed the card with a circles folder from Tim Holtz/Sizzix.  Sentiment and banner die cut is from Papertrey Ink.  Going to enter this in The Greeting Farm's Retro Fresh Boy Challenge, embossing challenge, and Simon Says Stamp Anything Goes.

Have a great weekend!

Happy 4th Birthday!

So here's another card based on the Saturday Sketch over at the Club Anya blog. I know, I keep doing Saturday sketches, I feel like I should mix it up at some point, but these conveniently come out on the weekend which is when I do my card making. Anyhow, this is My Favorite Things Amelia. I'm slowly working through my new stamps, I'm hoping I can stamp and color every single one at some point. Or at least try to make and send more cards this year. The paper is from a KI Memories pack. I used the same Martha Stewart border punch but covered up about half of it with the patterned paper. Here's a close-up, mostly of the stickles that I added to the strawberry, cupcake hearts, and stars, which doesn't seem to show up very well in my photo. The coloring usually looks best standing far far back. :-)

And finally, my felt flower! I finally got some PTI felt and yes, it cuts very nicely! Unfortunately the felt flower is Raspberry Fizz and the pink cardstock is Hibiscus Burst so they're not quite matching. If only I had thought about the flower before I stuck all the papers down... I used a number "4" Sizzlit die from the Round-a-Bout font that I've been pretty much using on every single numbered birthday card. The leafy branches are from a Tim Holtz alterations die. Now I'm thinking I should have just cut those out in non-patterned paper or cardstock, oh well. I think I'm getting better at letting go, even if it looks a little strange. By the way, there is a free online class at Big Picture Classes called Embrace Imperfection. That should be my motto.

Have a good rest of the week!

Happy 39!

Quick and simple birthday card. Just trying to get it out in the mail on time. And I wanted to use my new PTI stamp set. Initially I was going to make a little kid birthday card, but then I thought maybe I should color some cute image. I think the Big Birthday Wishes works well for adult birthdays. Who of course like to be reminded of how old they are! :-) Did I pick a rude sentiment? I wouldn't actually send it to a friend, it's going to my brother. I had to think twice about the age, I initially die cut the wrong numbers, geez, how the years fly by as we get older...

Everything is PTI, cardstock and polka dotted paper. The numbers and label are Sizzlit dies. And I used a Tim Holtz embossing folder. I attached the eyelets with my crop-a-dile, and they turned out kind of smooshed. I think the crop-a-dile works better on larger eyelets and the gromlets, or else I don't really know how to use it for the small eyelets. Anyhow, that's OK, I don't think my brother will notice.

Well, I better go to sleep early tonight, I feel like I'm coming down with a cold, but I've been sneezing a lot with an itchy nose this past week so maybe it's my allergies too, I don't know.

Birthday card

So here's a birthday card I made for Farm Fresh Challenge Friday Spyday #15.

I used Fancy Anya, (thanks, Eva, I think you gave me this a long time ago...finally getting around to using it...).  The patterned heart/flower paper is from Doodlebug that I got from a local scrapbook store.  The rest is Paper Trey Ink.  Die cut and stamped the tickets, again from Papertrey Ink.  Embossed it with white embossing powder...it got a little messy.  I had inked the edges of the white cardstock with spun sugar distress ink, but I guess it's hard to see in the photo.  The heart is a My Favorite Things die with a Sizzlit #5.

Short post.  Gotta go clean the house now.  Bye!