Getting a headstart!

I joined a group of ladies over at SCS who have a running challenge to make 10 holiday cards per month so that by Christmas of 2008 we'll be all done. Now if I can just stick with it, I won't be scrambling next year!

Here's my January card:

Merry Christmas!

My Christmas wish for you (this was shared by Joni Fields, aka jstarbright on SCS) and I can't think of any gifts that I'd rather have!

Merry Christmas!
If I were ol' Santa, you know what I'd do?
I'd dump silly gifts that are given to you,
and deliver some things just inside your front door ,
things you have lost, but treasured before.
I'd give you back all your maidenly vigor, and to go along with it, a neat tiny figure.
Then restore the old color that once graced your hair,
before rinses and bleaches took residence there.
I'd bring back the shape with which you were gifted,
so things now suspended need not be uplifted.
I'd draw in your tummy and smooth down your back,
till you'd be a dream in those tight fitting slacks.
I'd remove all your wrinkles and leave only one chin,
so you wouldn't spend hours rubbing grease on your skin
You'd never have flashes or queer dizzy spells,
And you wouldn't hear noises like ringing of bells.
No sore aching feet and no corns on your toes,
no searching for spectacles when they're right on your nose.
Not a shot would you take in your arm, hip or fanny,
from a doctor who thinks you're a nervous old granny.
You'd never have a headache, so no pills would you take.
And no heating pad needed since your muscles won't ache.
Yes, if I were Santa, you'd never look stupid,
You'd be a cute little chick with the romance of a cupid.
I'd give a lift to your heart when those wolves start to whistle
And the joys of your heart would be light as a thistle.
But alas! I'm not Santa.
I'm simply just me, the matronest of matrons you ever did see.
I wish I could tell you all the symptoms I've got
But I'm due at my doctor's for an estrogen shot!
Even though we've grown older this wish is sincere Merry Christmas to you
and a Happy New Year.

Crafter's block

Sorry I haven't posted in a while - like everyone else it's been busy, busy, busy!

Hopefully things will get better after next week!

Hope everyone has a wonderful Christmas!

Thought I'd leave you with a "cheerful" card - I'm sending this to a little girl who has a Christmas birthday and has just begun to figure out that most people will unfortunately combine her b'day with Christmas. I hope it brightens her day a little!

Christmas grumps

Ever have one of those days when everthing you touch seems to be messed up? That's the way the past week and a half has been for me! It started with our first snowstorm during which I ended up in the ditch, not once mind you, but twice in the same night!





I've been playing around with new technique look which is frustrating me to no end, I haven't been happy with anything I've made, and my normally sweet, loving, supportive husband turns into the Grinch! He hates Christmas, the whole Christmas season, the presents, the wrapping, the trimming, the trappings, and the noise, noise, noise!!! Sound familiar yet? I'm telling you Jim Carey hung out in my neighborhood the Christmas before making that movie and patterned the Grinch after DH! I think Mr. Carey should send me half the royalities for that movie just for my aggravation!!!





Anyway, I sat down tonight to try to come up with something for my weekly Demonstrator Workshop Wow Challenge over at SCS (since the technique I'm working on doesn't seem to want to cooperate) I decided to go with a Faux Tearing look. This is what I came up with...

For "Faux Tearing" you just tear a piece of scrap paper, lay it down on your cardstock, stamp your desired image, the slide the scrap paper down about a 1/2 inch and then sponge heavily using the scrap paper as a mask.

Then, just because I wanted to share the love, I thought that wasn't enough of a challenge and I decided to make it mono-chromatic with just a touch of metallic and glitter.

So I ended up with a triple challenge:

You must do the Faux Tearing technique

You must make it Mono-chromatic

You must use a touch of metallic/glimmer

What do you think, good enough challenge? Will this break my Christmas Grumpy streak?

Stay tuned, I'll let you know!

Watercolor TieDye Paper

So many people have asked me how I make my Watercolor Tie Dye paper, that I decided to attempt a tutorial on how to do it, please be gentle with me cuz I'm not really sure how to do this!!!!

Step 1: Gather Supplies, you'll need re-inkers, a spray bottle of water, a palette, and a brush.

Step 2: Spray your neutral paper with water until water runs off from it.

Step 3: Add re-inkers into palette.

Step 4: Randomly adding color to your paper, starting with your lightest color, working toward your darkest color.

Step 5: Continue to add color until you have the coverage you want.

Step 6: After you have all your colors added, spray the paper again. At this point you may wish to spray with a mixture of water, Pearlex (SU no longer sells this) and hairspray. You could use plain water, the Pearlex just gives it a nice shimmer.

Step 7: Finish your card as desired. This card is a CASE of the card on page 59 of the current Stampin' Up! catalog.

Burnished Velet

I found this super cool technique on The Scor-Pal site, check it out it is to die for!!!!

They have a much more detailed tutorial, and the most beautiful examples (much prettier than I'd attempt lol!)

But basically you made a design with sticky strip or other super sticky tape and burnish glitter into the tape - just beautiful!!!

Here's the link to Scor-Pal http://scor-pal.com/oct_magazine/index_files/Page428.htm

My favorite things

At the beginning of this year a friend took a chance on me during what Splitcoast calls Virtal Stamp Night - I'd never even played along let along ever thought to hostess a challenge! What a year this has been for me! Since that time my gallery has grown by leaps and bounds, I've gotten much more confident in my work, and I've made some great friends!

These cards are for them!

This is a set of Christmas cards I made using the Flaky Friends set

Cuz we tend to get a little flaky sometimes!

This is a set of cards all made with the song "My Favorite things" as that was our theme for VSN at that time. The saying is printed onto a transparency, which has layer of shimmery paint on the back side of it, it's layered onto a background with Baroque Motifs, with a touch of "Burnished Velvet" down the side.

They are much prettier in real life.

Early Christmas Gift

Stampin' Up sent their active demonstators a free Level 3 hostess set as as free gift this year! WooHoo! How cool is that? Although I don't really lean toward "cutesy" kinds of sets, I had to at least play with!

I made a One Sheet Wonder gift set and I must say I'm quite pleased with how it turned out!

Pretty Pirate Girl

Here's some pictures of Katie hamming it up for the camera! She went as a "lady pirate" for Halloween.

She was mocking Captain Jack!!! No one should mock Jack Sparrow!

November Stamp Camp Projects

As promised here's some pictures of the projects from my latest Stamp camp

Ornaments done with the SU Scallop punch, Wintergreen papers were used for one, and Holiday Harmony for the other.

A gift card holder done with the dots wheel, an envelope, and the new holiday Accents and Elements tin.

A "Z Fold" card with Celery, not quite navy, and Polka and Paisley set.

Lovely as a Tree in shades of white and Vanilla, I cased this one from "11Valerie11" on Splitcoast, I love her work!!!!

Peaceful Wishes, simple card done in Pomegrante, Basic gray, black and White naturals.

Ghosting done with Fabulous Flowers, canvas, in shades of Guava and Burgundy

And a group photo of all of them.

Busy, busy, busy!

I've been trying to help arrange a Split coast stampers Michigan get together and it's kept me much busier that I ever thought possible!!!

I'm having a lot of fun doing it, but oh boy is there a lot to think about to take on something this large!

Finding Inspiration

One of my favorite challenges on SCS is the Inspiration challenge! I love trying to make "art" out of everyday things!
This week's challenge was actually a vintage Halloween image, but I liked the layout so my Whipper Snapper joyful pup was born!

Last weeks challenge was a painted gourd, so I used a C/B image for the background texture and the focal image from Baroque Motiffs.

Considering that I "through" them together within the last hour, I'm pretty happy with both of them :)

What do you think?

I was playing around tonight and came up with this. I'm not sure whether I like it or not!

I know that there is probably a name for this, it isn't a new technique, but I don't know what it's called. So for lack of a better name, here's my "Chalk De-Coloring" directions.

1. I started my background on More Mustard C/S.
2. I used a cotton ball and "swiped" chalks, quite heavily over it. I used Garden Green and Elegant Eggplant chalks.
3. Then I inked up my stamp with VersaMark, stamped the image and "pulled" the chalk back off the C/S.
4. "Seal" the chalks with cheap hairspray.
5. I finished my focal image by stamping the same stamp into my VersaMark, then onto my Garden Green pad - tada! Instant "embossable" image!
6. Then I embossed with clear embossing powder, sponged around it, added the ribbon, and punched out the word with my 3/4" circle punch and matted it onto a 1" circle punch

That's it, whadda think?

YIKES!

Well world, ready or not I've decided to share the link to this site with some of my customers and friends!

If you're reading this, I'd really like some feedback on what you'd like to see me post on here!

Anyone up for a challenge???

What about this color combo? One of my favorite color combo's right now is:

Purely Pomegrante

Basic Gray

Basic Black

Whisper White

So here's the challenge folks, make a card that is done in these colors and let me see what you come up with!

For this card the background is a Cuttlebug b/g (another WishRak wish) the Coffee for the focal image is from the Like it a Latte set (another granted wish.) The "foam" on top is Liquid Applique' that I sprinkled just a touch of glitter on before heat setting it. The cup itself is covered in Crystal effects which I had let dry overnight, but the strangest thing happened when I added the L.A. and heat set it. The dried C.E. began to "bubble" and "texturize" so I just kinda went with the whole thing, I'm really liking all of the texture in this card.

Now...What should I do with this?

Cute House mouse

Isn't this guy just to sweet?

He's a House Mouse imaged granted to me through WishRak over on SCS. See the awesome background paper? Also a granted wish from WishRak, along with the fibers as well.

I'm planning to send this card to my niece in TX and I wanted something sweet and simple that wouldn't cost a bunch of extra postage. (don't get me started on postage cost, what a crock!)

Anyway, back to this card...I have no idea what company makes this B/G paper but the "bling" of this card in real life is so bright that my DH says our niece will need sunglasses to look at it!

New work

A few of my friends will be seeing this card in action next week at my monthly technique club.

As all my friends know I've been coveting a Cuddlebug, however it just hasn't been in the budget! So in the meantime I've dusted off my light box and my Brass templates. The background of my focal piece is what I'm calling "Watercolor Rainbow" for lack of another name. I'm sure some other wonder stamper has already done this but I'll share what I did.

1. The Celery base is stamped with the Canvas Background stamp.
2. The Turquoise layer is Dry Embossed with the Classy Brass Circles Template, then over stamped again with the Canvas Background.
3. The Apricot layer is also stamped with Canvas
4. The Focal layer is Watercolor paper, which I scribbled all over with my Watercolor crayons, then sprayed with water until it was very wet. Then I just used my fingers to move the color around where I wanted it.
5. I then just stamped and embellished as normal!
6. Ta Da!!! This all there was to it!

Soon I hope to start posting card and Scrapbook sketch challenges for you, so stay tuned....

I'm a Reese's Peanut Butter cup ~ what are you?

http://www.blogthings.com/whatkindofcandyareyouquiz/

The top is my Daisy May, the bottom is our DUDE aka Dewy

One of the new goodies that I've made...This was this week's Inspiration Challenge on SCS, it inspired me to try a no layers card, which is something I have a hard time with!

Welcome!

This is my first time at posting to my blog. I hope I can learn to navigate this!!!