Happy Holidays!

Season's Greetings to all of you, and Best Wishes for a happy and prosperous New Year!



I'll be taking a break to spend time with family over the holidays. I won't be posting much (if at all) over the break, but rest assured, I'll be back after the New Year.

This last holiday card of the season uses a Technique Junkies technique from the latest newsletter called Watercolor Resist. The snowflake background stamp is one I've had kicking around for years, and I'm not sure who manufactured it. The snowflake stickers are K and Co.

Merry Christmas!

Hey, Honey...Do you have any more cards made?

I thought I was through making Christmas cards days ago, but oops!, not so. The deal I have with my DH is that I make the cards, and writes them out and addresses them {bless his heart!}. Everything was going fine until I heard him utter those dreaded words, "Do you have any more cards made? I need like 8 more." Huh? Oh no!

I needed some cards, and I needed them fast, so I CASEd a few of the cards I had already made. This one is a rework of the "Snow" card a made a couple weeks ago. I used the same layout and technique (Technique Junkies Faux Designer Paper), but I changed the stamps and colors. The stamps on this card are from Inkadinkado, Memory Box, and I Brake for Stamps. I used a variety of inks, but the basic colors are gold, cocoa brown, olive green, and brick red.

Enjoy this last weekend before Christmas! We got about 8" of snow today and there's another storm headed here for Sunday, and then a little more snow forecasted for Christmas Eve. Looks like were definitely going to have a white Christmas here! My plan is to get my last minute shopping done tomorrow and spend Sunday snowed in and doing my Christmas baking.

Holiday Tea

Today is Tea Party day at smARTworks. Design Team member Peggy Lamb picked the theme for this one...ovals. I managed to sneak some time to make a quick card using a couple of my favorite smARTworks stamp sets, Chickadee Wishes and Pine Bough. I did a masked frame technique from Technique Junkies with the pine bough stamp and Fluid Chalk ink in warm green and chestnut roan. I stamped the chickadee with chestnut roan and watercolored it with various dye inks. The printed paper is from Memory Box.

Have a great day!

New Challenge at Starving Artistamps!

I hope you can join us! The challenge this time is to design an incredibly cool CLEAR card using acetate or transparency film. It's your choice what size and shape to make your card, and you can interpret the "clear" requirement as you wish. As long as it contains a clear element it counts! You card doesn't even have to contain Starving Artistamps or DoodleFactory image. But... all cards using Starving Artistamps images will be posted in our gallery.

Everyone who participates will be entered into a drawing for a Santa's Sweet Shoppe set with matching Sweet Shoppe sentiments. Don't worry, if you already have the set...if you are the winner Tracey will substitute for other stamps of equal value! All you need to do is head on over to the Starving Artistamps group on Paper Craft Planet, post a reply to the challenge thread, and attach the photo or post a link to where your card can be found. If you can't post for some reason you can also email your card or blog/gallery link to strvingartistmp@aol.com

Here are a few more details: All cards must be submitted on or before December 30th. The drawing winner will be randomly selected and posted no later than December 31st. The tag or keyword for challenge cards in the Papercraft Planet or Splitcoast Stampers galleries is SADF1208.

For my card, I used the gingerbread house from the Santa's Sweet Shoppe set and colored it with Copic markers. I made a window card using a piece of acetate that I embossed with my Cuttlebug, and then filled in the debossed areas with Star Dust Stickles. The white accents are done with a white gel pen and Magenta Peel-Offs stickers. A few rhinestones here and there just seemed to add the proper amount of bling.

Come on...show us your stuff!

Are you Ready?

Are you all ready for Christmas yet? I'm not. But, at least I think my cards are done. Maybe. I've made about 40 of them, and almost all of them are different. I did make a few duplicates toward the end just to speed thing up a bit, but I really don't like "mass producing" like that, LOL!

I made this card today, and it's one of my absolute, all-time favorites. I just love the bright colors and the black and white accents and those cute little elves...makes me giddy just to look at it. The stamps are all from Starving Artistamps: the images are DoodleFactory Santa's Sweet Shoppe, the sentiment is from the Casual Holiday Greetings set, and I also used the Dots and Circle backgrounds. I stamped everything with Adirondack Pitch Black ink and colored with Copic markers. The green patterned paper is from Cosmo Cricket.

Enjoy the rest of the weekend. I think I might do some holiday baking tonight.

Pretty Slick!

I got Photoshop Elements awhile back, and I was happy with it then, but now that I've learned to use it a bit better...Man! Is that software slick! This was a pretty lousy photo; it was taken at an odd angle, the colors were washed out, and it had a serious case of fish eye distortion. But, after a few quick adjustments...not bad at all.

This little cutie, I call her Clara, is from the DoodleFactory Winter set available at Starving Artistamps. The sentiment is also from Starving Artistamps. I colored my Clara with Copic markers, and since she's wearing her jammies, I popped her up on an embossed background panel that reminds me of a bedspread. So here she is, ready for bed on Christmas Eve. When she wakes up in the morning, she'll finally get to see what Santa brought. Little Clara sure looks wired, doesn't she? She's not going to sleep a wink. Oh yeah...she believes!

Happy Holiday!

'Tis the Season...

to be behind on everything! Just a quick post tonight because I really should be making cards rather than posting cards.

This one uses two techniques from the latest Technique Junkies newsletter: Painted Mesh and Torn Frames. The focal image is from Inkadinkado, and the Canvas background on the card base is Stampin' Up. The patterned paper is from Prima Marketing.

Have a great evening!

Snow

It snowed here today, so it's actually starting to look like Christmas!

I made this card using the Card Positioning Systems sketch for this week (CPS-94). This card also uses my new favorite Technique Junkies technique: Faux Designer Paper. The only thing I don't really like about the technique is the name. It should be "Real Designer Paper", LOL! I used a variety of inks on this one, and a variety of stamps: the flourish is from Stampinback (I Brake for Stamps), the snowflakes are Rubber Stampede, and the sentiment is a Memory Box stamp.

Why are you still sitting there? Go stamp something!!!

Aaak! Only 19 Days 'til Christmas!

I really need to get cracking on my Christmas cards...I'm only about half done, and they still need to have inside verses added and get addressed and stamped and mailed out. Yikes! Can you guess what I'm doing tonight?

Here's a card I made the other day. The stamp is from Memory Box, colored with Prismacolor pencils. I love MB images, and because they're small, they are also quick to color. I used my new nesties to cut the ovals, and my new Score-It board to emboss the gold panel. How in the world I lived this long without a Score-It Board, I will never know. I seriously love the thing!

The light green panel behind the gold one uses a cool Technique Junkies technique called Pearlized Gesso. I did it on a piece of printed paper that I wasn't too crazy about, and I just love the results.

Enjoy the day! I'll be back with another card tomorrow.

Coco

I didn't realize it while I was making this card, but it looks an awful lot like a card Lisa Somerville made. Thanks for the inspiration, Lisa!

I used yet another great technique from the latest Technique Junkies newsletter, called Masked Frames, and all of the stamps I used are available from Starving Aristamps. I layered my frame onto a mat with a scalloped oval cut in the center. Then, I mounted the frame layer with foam tape onto a piece of cream cardstock stamped with the Dots background. I stamped Coco the bear onto white cardstock, colored him with Copic markers, cut him out, and mounted him with foam to the cream background. I finished everything off with a pretty snowflake sticker from Kay and Co.

Enjoy!

Like Magic!

I followed the directions for the Faux Designer Paper technique in the latest Technique Junkies newsletter, picking my colors and stamps as I went. Like magic, I ended up with the swirly, pink, shimmery paper goodness that I used for the background on this card. I used shimmery cardstock as a base and Versamark Dazzle for the resist part of the technique so the whole piece has a soft shimmer that I wish you could see in the photo.

The green glitter swirls at the top of the card were my own brainchild. I had just taken my new Nesties out of the blister pack and wondered if the thick acetate would emboss. Yeah, it embossed great! Don't throw that stuff away! I flipped my piece over and filled in the debossed areas with green Stickles. Way cool, if I do say so!

I used a variety of inks on this one, and the stamps are from Inkadinkado. And of course, I couldn't resist adding a few Dew Drops. And speaking of Dew Drops...I know they seem pricey, but I have only two bottles of them, and I used them all the time. Both bottles still look full. Seriously. They go a loooong way!