Christmas Gifts

Hope you all had a very happy holiday! I really enjoyed my blogging break and spending time with family, but I'm itching to get back stamping. I've stamped a bit, but my juices are needing a little more help to start flowing. I always find it hard to get back into it when I've taken a break.

This is a frame I made for my brother and sister-in-law. I used the Headline Alpha and All in the Family both from SU. I used a 5x7 frame and watercolour paper to stamp on. Hope you're having a great weekend!

It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year!!

Sometimes it's hard to remember that this is supposed to be the most wonderful time of the year, and why it's wonderful. With all the hustle and bustle of the season, I'm afraid posting has gone by the wayside - so sorry! I haven't made a Christmas card in a while - mine were finished and mailed out a while ago and I haven't needed anymore. I'm so over Christmas cards anyway (for this year!). I've been stamping a little - I've decided to try for a design team and I've been working on my submission. I'm a little nervous to put myself out there and face possible rejection (I'm not good with rejection - I take everything personally) but I'd really like to grow as a stamper and this is a company that I really like.

Anyway, I pulled these out to post - I made these about 3 weeks ago for an order - I ran out of paper for the last five cards and subbed the Basic Grey Figgy Pudding snowflakes for the last 5. I think they turned out cute!

Hope all your preparations are going well! I'm finished shopping and am trying to get all my wrapping finished. I also have a little baking to do and I'm going to tackle my grocery shopping tomorrow! Good luck!

Teacher Notecard Set

As promised, here is the notecard set I made for Riley's teacher. I was inspired by this set on SCS, and by the glitter on this set also on SCS. I used one of my favorite sets - Mixed Bouquet (retired) and one of my favorite colour combos - brown (choc. chip) and pink (regal rose and pretty in pink). I personalized them by running them through my printer (font is Harrington). I outlined all the flowers with my Sakura glitter pen, it makes them all sparkly!

I packaged them up in one of those pop-together acetate card boxes and I will add some ribbon and a gift tag. My hubby was blown away and said I should sell them. I took that as big praise - my projects always get thumbs up, but never to that level of enthusiasm. Anyways, I hope Mrs. Walls likes them (and the Starbucks gift certificate too)!

Gate Fold Take a Bough

I haven't done much stamping lately but I did want to share the final result of the samples I was showing you earlier. I ended up running out of the pretty Cloud 9 paper I had used, and substituted some Basic Grey Figgy Pudding for the last couple of cards. I like the way both of the patterned papers mimic the branch image used.

I did get to stamp a really pretty notecard set for my son's kindergarten teacher. I'll post pics tomorrow - it was too dark and dreary today to get a good picture. We had a big snow storm today - at least 12 inches of snow!

It was also a busy weekend for Christmas preparations! I finished my Christmas shopping, did a big chunk of my Christmas baking, and got some gifts wrapped. My mom arrives on Wednesday and we're going to see White Christmas on stage on Sunday - I'm super excited about it - it's our favorite Christmas movie (well either that or Holiday Inn - it's a toss up!). Hope you had a great weekend! See you tomorrow!

Magic Reindeer Food

My son Riley and I made 20 of these the other day to give away to his kindergarten classmates. I think we'll probably make another couple to give to some friends as well. I simply printed the poem on SU Kraft cardstock, swiped the edges with a Cat's Eye ink and adhered my reindeer. I don't own any reindeer stamps so I went with a Quickutz die instead - which I ran through my Cuttlebug. I swiped the edges of the reindeer's head as well and added red stickles to his nose. My son filled the bags with oats and glitter and wrote his name on the back of the toppers.
We're off to his school Christmas concert tonight - so no stamping time. Hope you have a good evening!

Our Family Christmas Cards

Here is what our family Christmas cards look like. I used Amuse stamps and Stampin' Up Blue Bayou, Soft Sky and Kraft cardstock. I totally cased this from someone on SCS, can't remember who - so sorry! This is not an original idea at all - but it caught my eye and was easy to mass produce. I only made 50 - so not so bad, but still time consuming. The inside is stamped with "from our house to yours". My ds and I made Magic Reindeer Food for his classmates today - I'll post them tomorrow for you to see - they turned out so cute!

People to see, places to go, things to do.....

So sorry I haven't been around. So much is happening that I just haven't been able to make time to blog (or stamp). I've been busy getting gifts finished up (mostly handmade) as the shipping cutoff is tomorrow for regular shipping through Canada Post. Most of our family live across the country, so it was a big job. Unfortunately, said family members tend to frequent my blog, so I can't share pictures of my projects until after Christmas.

Can I share more about what I've been up to? If you only came for the stamping pictures, this would be a good place to stop reading.

If you're still with me, look at what my awesome small group from our Church was able to donate. We sponsored two families and raised over $940. We were able to not only meet the needs of our Christmas families, but spoil them!! These are the two packages for our two families - I had such a great time shopping for them. I am so blessed to be part of such a generous and loving group.

In other news, our house is finally decorated completely. Our poor tree had been standing completely naked for more than a week. I keep telling everyone that I was waiting for this.....

It's our new fireplace!! The silly thing is, my husband is in the fireplace business, and we've been in this house for almost a year now. I am so looking forward to Christmas morning in front of the tree and the fireplace. Here's what our fireplace used to look like:

I think it's a big improvement! Plus we got rid of the shelving and the ugly blue carpet before we moved in.

Well if you've stuck with me this long - THANKS! I'll hopefully be back soon with some stamping stuff! Hope you have a great week!!

Some samples

These are some samples that I made for a Christmas card order. We ended up keeping the design (gate fold) and patterned paper and colours, but changed the image panel. It will be the branch from the Papertrey Take a Bough set with an ornament and a page pebble. It will also be in a circle rather than the square. I'll share the completed version tomorrow.

This pocket card is a rejection. And that's o.k. - cause it will go to someone else! I love this patterned paper - it's by Cloud 9 and the berries are embossed and the whole thing is sparkly. It's so pretty!!


Hope you have a great day!!

Seriously!!

If you haven't been yet, you need to go check out Tim Holtz's blog! SERIOUSLY!! It's awesome! I am learning so much and am itching to buy some products and play! Smart man - making me want to buy products and all! Plus he's having daily giveaways - now mind you, chances are 1 in about 600, but still. Go check it out!

Back to our Regularly Scheduled Programming....

O.k. back to Christmas cards...I made some fun cards last night that weren't Christmas cards but haven't managed to take pics yet so I'll share them another day. Oh and I have been a lucky ducky lately!! I won dreamy treats on Michelle's blog - Stamper's Dream!!! Gina K.'s set with the sentiments - I am excited as I don't own any Gina K. sets yet (although I have my eye on the toilet set!!). And I also won a background stamp from my SU demo Jenn. She had a contest to guess which sets would retire and I won!! Now I just need to pick one! Oh and my best friend in the whole world ordered me some Papertrey Ink sets for my birthday and they arrived last week!!! Green Thumb and Little Lady - I can't wait to play!

This is a quick Christmas card I whipped up using one of my bellas. There was no reason that she couldn't be holding Christmas presents right? I coloured her with Prisma pencils and gamsol. The background paper is Basic Grey figgy pudding. I am so loving those Bella baubles - the green beads on the corners. They are cheap and look wonderful! The felt flower was a dollar store find. Hope you have a wonderful day and thanks for reading!

Need a Break?

It occurred to me that seeing as I was needing a break from Christmas cards, maybe you do too?? Here's a card that's not Christmas related at all! I absolutely love this stamp from Stampendous - Tiers of Treats. It's a big image so I just added some Basic Grey patterned paper, some ribbon and some flowers and brads. The sentiment is from Stampin' Up - the Very Punny set from Sellabration last year. This reminds me of Christmas baking though - which I love to do - even more so now that I have my new mixer! I'll be making a double batch of Mocha Viennese Shortbread (from the Dec. Canadian Living magazine) tomorrow as I'm having some women from our home church over to make cards on Sunday. I may not be around much this weekend as Riley's at Beaver camp and I'm prepping for Sunday. Hope you have a wonderful weekend!

Candy Cane Stripes

I absolutely love this Basic Grey figgy pudding paper - I can't remember the actual name - I just call it candy cane stripes! Just a simple card using Amuse stamps and some ribbon and bella baubles. I machine stitched around the patterned paper using a small zig zag stitch. We have a busy day today so I've got to get going - hope you have a "magical" day!

Origami Tree

I saw a tutorial over on SCS for an Origami tree and have been wanting to try it out. I'm having a bunch of women over on Sunday from our home church to make Christmas cards and I thought it would make a fun card - if I could only figure out the directions. It was actually quite easy and I think it turned out pretty good! The card itself didn't turn out quite as I envisioned, but I really like the tree anyway and I think we'll do a version on Sunday. I'm looking forward to getting some more of my decorations up this week, baking some cookies (I bought a cookie press to go along with my new mixer!) and working on my cards as well as some card orders!

Post it Note Holders

I've been wanting to make some Post-it Note Holders ever since Emily started making them and posting hers, and I finally got around to it! I followed this tutorial written by Emily and they were easy-peasy (as my ds likes to say!). This is simply chocolate chip cardstock, some Basic Grey paper, and Changito. I used mono-multi (of course!) to hold the post-it notes to the cardstock. I only stamped the first page of the post-it note pad - in case you were wondering exactly how much time I have on my hands.
Sorry for the gap in posting - my sister-in-law was visiting from Winnipeg and I took a blogging break for my birthday. I got some new stamps for my birthday and hopefully will be inking them up soon - I have a couple of card orders to get out first. Hope you had a wonderful weekend!

Holiday Spirit Box

I got the idea to make one of these boxes from Ali Edwards blog. She has wonderful ideas and I love her scrapbooking philosophies. She offered these holiday spirit prompts in a PDF file, courtesy of one of her blog readers. I decided it would be a neat project and a great gift for one of my good friends. We had recently been talking about Christmas and how to create memories and experiences and how to downplay the materialism of Christmas - so this idea was very timely. I do plan on using these when I make my own advent calendar - my son doesn't like chocolate anyway, so these would be perfect for the days of advent.

I started by printing the PDF onto cardstock - I then stamped over the prompts using an older Stampin' Up set (holiday blocks - I think?) in different colour inks. I cut the cardstock into squares and stamped images on the back as well. I scored the squares so they would be easy to fold in half. I matted a strip of patterned paper (Basic Grey Figgy Pudding) and used sticky strip to adhere it to my dollar store jar. I made the label using my scallop punch and made a little additional label for the lid using my All in the Family set. Next time I'd like to design a couple labels on the computer and print them out.

Thanks for looking!

Spoiled Rotten!

I'd like to introduce you to the newest member of our family:
How lucky am I? This is an early birthday present from my hubby. I've been dying for a stand mixer for years and my trusty hand mixer finally bit the dust a couple of months ago. Normally I'm not a big fan of appliances for gifts, but this one is just fine in my book! I had my heart set on a Kitchen Aid, but hubby did his homework and surprised me with this one. 1000W motor baby!! I'm psyched and can't wait to start making all kinds of things - I made cookies last night - just to try it out! Ain't it purty??

P.S. Thanks for all the well wishes for my kiddos - unfortunately they're still sick and I was up again with them last night. Wishing you all good immunity and healthy children!!

Stamping Club Samples

Sorry - no stamping yet today! I was up many times last night with sick children and we had family nap time this afternoon. Hope to be stamping tonight though! With permission of my amazing Stampin' Up demo Jennifer (link on the left), here are the projects we did at our first Stamping Club meeting on Tuesday.

This snowman is so pretty and sparkly in real life - even if it doesn't show in the picture! I loved watercolouring on the confetti white paper - I've never used it before, just regular watercolour paper.This one is a cello bag full of gift tags - isn't it cute!! The river rock ink we used for the background image goes so well with the gold cardstock that the vanilla circle is mounted on. All the ladies really liked this project!

I think the Peaceful Wishes set is now officially part of my wish list. There's just so much you can do with it. This card is gorgeous and was so easy to make. That chocolate chip satin ribbon is just amazing!

Go see Erika!!

Go check out Erika's blog for a chance to win some awesome A Muse blog candy! I'll be back tomorrow - hopefully with some cards to show you!

Yet another shameless CASE

In my quest to quickly produce Christmas cards, I have resorted to shamelessly CASE'ing again! I loved this card by Willow01 and changed it up slightly (not very much though!) to come up with this! I am absolutely in love with this Papertrey set and can't wait to get some more of their stamps to play with.

101 posts and counting!

I missed my 100th post and didn't even know it! This is my 101st post and I'm hopefully still going strong.

This card is a shameless copy of Jen del Muro's card. I usually don't do this quite so literally but I fell in love with Jen's card and it was perfect for the Michaels $1 stamp I was trying to use. She does amazing work - make some time to peruse her blog - you will not be disappointed!! I used the Cuttlebug snowflake embossing folder for the background and the snowflakes are from the Michaels $1 stamp bin. The Noel sentiment (Merry Messages by Stampendous) is stamped twice, once in Cool Caribbean and once in black and there is a rhinestone brad in the middle of the O. Some ribbon and stickles finish off the card. Super elegant and super quick to make! Thanks Jen for sharing your work!

Rejoice

Here's a card I made using some of the Michaels $1 ($1.50 for us Canadians) stamps that I bought. I didn't have any religious stamps so snatched these two up. Can you see the 2nd one? It's hiding amongst the holly in the lower left hand corner - it's embossed in gold. I wish it showed up more and I don't know what the right hand corner needs. I tried different patterned papers and stamped options and they just didn't look right. Perhaps I should have just used the patterned paper the whole way across instead. Thanks for looking!

Amuse Christmas

My stamps from Amuse arrived the other day from Michelle at Stamper's Dream. These are the stamps I ordered to make our family Christmas cards but figured since they were here, I might as well make some more cards from them (hey any excuse to dirty up new stamps!). I love the way this one turned out and I'm pretty sure this is the same colour combo I will use for our family card as well. This card came together super quickly (which is why I decided on these stamps for our family cards!) which was a nice change. I'm off to take my daughter to the dr. - she's been under the weather for a while now and I want to get her checked.

Oh and I started making my Christmas gifts last night! My good friend Becky and I decided since it was November that we'd better get started. Not sure what I can share on my blog before Christmas, but I'll definitely post them after.

Take a Bough Ornaments

M'eh....this pic is funny too! I'm still working on my editing skills - better results to come hopefully! This is another card I made with my Papertrey Take a Bough set. I love that you can mix and match the middles to make different coloured and different looking ornaments. I used a page pebble on each one for dimension and I drew the "string" for the ornament with my versamark pen so I could emboss them in silver. I also tried to stitch the paper (Basic Grey Figgy Pudding) on with silver thread - but the tension was all wacky so it didn't turn out too well. I must practice some more before I try again. I managed to get another couple cards made today so I have much more to share!

Take a Figgy Bough

That's what you get when you combine Papertrey's Take A Bough stamp set with the yummy Figgy Pudding paper from Basic Grey. This is the first card I've made with this set - although certainly not my last. These clear acrylic stamps are so much fun to work with and so versatile. I've now got a wish list a mile long for Papertrey! I did some freestyle stitching around the card and used a page pebble over the ornament to give it some dimension. Some bella baubles in the top right corner finish it off! Fun, fun, fun and more to show tomorrow! Have a great day!

P.S. (can I use that term in a blog? oh well I just did!) Sorry for the funky looking photo. I tried to edit my picture in photoshop and I used auto-levels. While the pic now looks so much better - it also looks a little freaky! So now I'm going to read about levels so I can do a better job with the manual settings next time!

Baby Shower card

Finally the last of the baby cards! This is the card I made for our children's pastor to go with the thank you cards that I made for her. By the way, she loved the cards and I decided to leave the stitching showing. I did stamp a small something in the bottom right corner of the stitched square.

This card again has no stamping - another Basic Grey rub-on with some Wild Asparagus paper, chocolate chip cardstock, pretty May Arts ribbon and some freestyle stitching. I meant to post this earlier but I was having technical difficulties, I think my USB cord is kaput.

I have more Christmas cards to share tomorrow - I've been working hard and I picked up a couple of new $1.50 Christmas stamps at Michaels.

Baby cards squared!

Here are two baby cards that I made to sell. They are basically the same other than the colour scheme but came together quickly and easily. I'm off to a baby shower - tomorrow I'll show you the card I made for the expectant mom!

Baby Card a la Tiffany

My good friend Becky hired me to make a baby card for her husband's work. Some employees went together and chipped in to buy the boss a baby gift for the birth of his first child. They bought the gift at Tiffany & Co. and Becky asked if I could use Tiffany blue for the card. This is what I came up with.
True confession time: there's almost no stamping on this card!! The only part that is stamped is the "Congratulations" sentiment on the inside of the card. The middle circle is a Basic Grey rub-on that I used on a Close to Cocoa piece of cardstock - it fit my mega circle punch perfectly. I have more baby cards to post tomorrow - you're going to be sick of baby cards! Have a wonderful weekend!

Out of my Box!

This card is so far out of my box - it's almost funny. I was inspired to make this card by Michelle's blog. She often posts cards that she says are not her style - but I always love the results of the ones that are out of "her" box. Michelle also owns Stamper's Dream - an Ebay store where I buy my Amuse stamps and other things - the link is on the left side of my blog - check it out! So I needed more masculine stamps and this is one of the ones I chose. When I first stamped it, I was a little intimidated, but as I coloured (prisma pencils and gamsol) I started having a lot of fun with it. I'm pretty pleased with the way this one turned out - now I want to try and watercolour it!

In other news, I'm cleaning and re-organizing my stamping area - eeek! I was motivated by my friend Becky who suggested I turn my desk so it faces the kids play area and t.v. She's so smart!! Maybe I'll post the before and after pics later this week.

Opinions needed!

I'm going to a huge baby shower on Sunday afternoon and wanted to bring a little gift. It's for our children's pastor and seeing as all of her volunteers and home church members are invited, I'll be one of many. I decided to make a set of thank you notes. I'm always a little unsure of giving thank you notes - it seems a little presumptuous to me, but they're always really appreciated so I'm going with them. So here's my dilemma - I really like the way this card turned out - but I did something that I don't normally do. Usually I make a card front and adhere it to a piece of cardstock that I score and make into a card. In this case, I wanted to use the card itself as part of the design and I wanted to sew the panel on. So the inside of the card shows the backside of the stitching. I kind of like the look, but my hubby didn't. What do you think? Be honest! Is it o.k. that the stitching is showing or not?

Mellow Bella

First off - this isn't the card I was referring to yesterday. That one isn't "quite" ready but hopefully later tonight and then I'll post it. I needed some fallish birthday cards so I used another one of my previously coloured bellas and matched it up to this beautiful Basic Grey Mellow paper. I made the scalloped border with my corner rounder (guide removed) and added a felt flower for embellishment. The sentiment is from My Favorite Things - I really like their sentiments and fonts and they're coming out with a new sentiments only set on Nov. 1st - can't wait to see it.

Posie Bella

This is one of the bellas I sat down and coloured the other day. I think I coloured about 10 of them so I wouldn't have to do them one at a time. I matched this one up to this pretty paper from the DCWV Posie stack - it's really glittery in person although you can't tell from the picture. A little sewing, a prima flower, rhinestone brad, ribbon and some bling in the corner and it's all good! Sentiment is from My Favorite Things and the cardstock is Stampin' Up Pumpkin Pie and Certainly Celery. This one is to sell and so I've been trying to cut my patterned paper in 4x4 squares to make them go farther as Michelle Wooderson does (I so want to be like her when I grow up!).
We've had a busy day today and it isn't over yet! This morning we had friends over to ice and decorate halloween cookies. Tonight we need to carve our pumpkins as we're out tomorrow night and Riley has Beavers.
I have a card to post tomorrow that is so far out of my comfort zone - but I'm really pleased with it. Thanks for reading!