My Favorite Cards of 2012

I like the idea of a post at the end of each year showing my favorites.  We're having some light snow to add to what we got just after Christmas here - a perfect day to be retrospective!

This has been a banner year for me; being published for the first time in January's Paper Crafts has given me the confidence to try again, and every once in awhile, I get another one - so thrilling!  Look for upcoming cards in Create Stamping in February, CARDS in February and March,  CardMaker in March, and Paper Crafts in the March/April issue.  In April, Cath chose me as one of her Moxie Fabbers of the Week!  And as a door closed on my DT work at Lily Pad Cards, a huge one opened as I was one of the new DT members chosen at Simon Says Stamp in June!  I love this team!  Also, in October, I was chosen as a DT member at The Craft's Meow, and have been enjoying getting settled in there, too.

 So get comfy with a hot coffee or tea - I hope you enjoy my favorites from this year!  You can click on the picture to go back to the original post.....

 January

This one was part of the Hero Hostess Blog Hop last year, using new Hero Arts stamps:

Made while I was taking the Clean & Simple card class:

February

Made for a color challenge:

This one got me a Fab Five challenge shout-out at Hero Arts!  Love the colors together!

March

A card using Purple Onion Designs stamps as part of my DT work for Lily Pad Cards:

Made for a CASE Study challenge:

April

 Using some of my favorite Hero Arts stamps:

Love this darling Flourishes silhouette:

May

This one was for A Blog Named Hero:

For a CR84FN challenge:

June

I think this is my first use of tapes, using a Hero Arts sketch:

LOVE these Bo-Bunny papers:

July

The yellow and gingham here make me happy!  Made as a member of the Simon Says Stamp DT, a dream come true!

This may be my favorite of the year, made for another CR84FN challenge. LOVE Ali Edward's sentiment:

August

Hero Arts gave us some sketches this month, and this was my favorite.  When I'm stuck for an idea, this is my go-to lately:

This was a CASE of a card by Clare Buswell:

And this one made me a Moxie Fab World winner in the Minty Fresh challenge:

September

Another DT card for Simon Says Stamp - love these Amuse dotted papers!

And this sketch from Mojo Monday:

October

More Die-Namics Chevrons, using Crate Paper dps. I made this for World Card Making Day:

There's that Wallpaper Flowers stamp again, and I love the felt rose:



November
One of my DT cards for The Craft's Meow, using a Nina B sketch:



More Martha Stewart tapes:






Here's that sketch again!



December

Using my favorite Christmas papers, Basic Grey's Aspen Frost:





CASE-ing a Jennifer McGuire tag:

I'm happy to say that I am still loving this blogging and making cards; it is still a joyful thing for me.  Thank you always for your kind and thoughtful comments; it's the way we stay connected.  In the New Year I hope to do better visiting all of your blogs.

May 2013 be a fulfilling, wondrous year for all of us!

Anything Goes at Simon Says Stamp

Hello, everyone, and welcome to our regular mid-week Simon Says Stamp challenge!  I hope you've all had a wonderful Christmas celebration yesterday, and are rested and relaxed and ready to create!

The ladies on the Design Team at Simon Says Stamp had a little gift exchange between us; the rules were that we should make a gift, and then add some crafty goodies to it.  Today we're sharing our gifts.

I had Joy Taylor's name, and I decided to knit her a ruffled scarf in her favorite color to frame her sweet face.  Joy lives in Australia, and it's summer there, so this little scarf will have to wait to be worn until it's a bit cooler.

Since she is on many design teams, I knew she probably has almost everything there is to have in the crafty category, but since we live half a world away, I thought I'd shop for her in our local stores here in Ohio, hoping that I'd find something she may not have access to there.  I kept everything in the blue family for them also.  Then, to give her a little taste of our Christmas here,  I wrapped them all in a thin snowflake/music patterned scrapbook paper, tied them up with natural twine, and added various snowflakes and the die-cut "Joy" from Wplus9's Seasonal Sentiments to all of them.

And finally, I used the same patterned paper and a die-cut snowflake for the card I sent along with everything.

The card base was the medium color from Hero Arts Pool Layering Papers, and I also used some of the Wplus9's Christmas Pretty Patches stamps, and Hero Arts Splash chalk ink for stamping.

Okay, so it's Anything Goes week here at the Simon Says Stamp challenge.  I hope you'll visit and see what everyone made each other, and then add something to our gallery this week!

Heidi has provided another $50.00 voucher for shopping at the Simon Says Stamp Superstore for a lucky random winner!

                        

A Merry Christmas

.....and Happy Holidays to all of my blog followers.  This will be my last Christmas card, and I'll be quiet now until my Simon Says Stamp post the day after Christmas.  Wherever you may be, I hope that you are surrounded by loved ones, have lots of yummy treats, and that Santa brings you your heart's desire!

supplies: white, green and red cardstock, Hero Arts CL630 Miracle of the Holidays, Adirondack cranberry ink, Darice snowflake embossing folder, Nestabilities circle die, Spellbinder's Poinsettia die, Hero Hues sunshine dot for center

Always.....

Ellen Hutson has several challenges going on over on her blog to celebrate the arrival of the new 2013 Hero Arts stamps.  Here is my card made for her Ellen Hutson LLC Hero Arts Wood Take 'n Make challenge:

supplies: white, kraft, and deep burgundy cardstock, Hero Arts K5185 Wallpaper Flowers, VersaMark ink and white embossing powder, Prismacolor pencils, CL163 Always Heart, fired brick distress ink

This woodblock stamp is one of my favorites.  I have used it many times, but I don't think I've ever stamped and white embossed it.  I love the look of colored pencils on kraft, so that's the direction I went this time.  Then I trimmed it out and placed it on a white card to pull out the white even more.  And since the flowers are actually little hearts, I went the Valentine route and used a sentiment to match....

Ellen has similar challenges for cling stamps and clear ones, and you have until January 1 to enter to win a fabulous prize for each one!

Peace and Joy

Good morning!  I'm here today with a card that is also featured at The Craft's Meow blog  today, made with 2 of our newest Christmas stamp sets.

I stamped and colored 6 sprigs of holly from the Hearth and Home set, then cut them out and used them to make a wreath.  They were popped above the peppermint stripe background paper from Authentique's Festive collection, and I added some red pearls to the berries for dimension.  My sentiment comes from our Holiday Foundations set, a lovely font, don't you think?  And I couldn't resist adding  these little jingle bells and lacy ribbon to finish.  

I'm sending you all my best wishes for a lovely Christmas!  Have a wonderful Holiday!

Simon Says......Merry Christmas!

It's almost here!  Are you ready?   I hope so, so you can play in our challenge this week at the Simon Says Stamp challenge blog!

This week you can make anything that has to do with Christmas.  The design Team is using Simon Says Stamp exclusive dies and stamps, and we'd love to see yours, also, but they're not a necessity as long as you make us something Christmas-related.  Here's what I did this week:

I used 2 dies from Simon Says Stamp: Small Forest Tree as a branch, and Holiday Shapes hanging from some twine tied to it.  The background paper is from the Aspen Frost pad.  This whole card is full of die-cuts: the chipboard Merry art part, the Wplus9 snowflakes, and the Memory Box Perched Reed Bird, cut from red glitter paper.

As always, Heidi has provided another $50.00 gift voucher to the Simon Says Stamp store.

Will it be yours this week?  You can't win it if you don't play!  Ho Ho Ho!!

What's Your Favorite?

If you're here to see my card for The Craft's Meow Valentine Blog Hop, please click HERE or scroll down one post - thanks!

It's Wednesday, and that means another challenge at Simon Says Stamp!

I think you're going to like this challenge - it's all about your Favorites!  You can use a favorite product,stamp, or tool, so this week should be lots of fun for you to create!

I made you a Christmas card today, using my favorite paper collection this year, from Basic Grey, called Aspen Frost; I fell in love with it as soon as I saw that aspen bark paper, which I used here as my background.  I like Basic Grey collections because they always contain lovely coordinating papers and some solids.  I also used some favorite Hero Arts Christmas stamps, Magic of Christmas for the branch and ornament, and Miracle of the Holidays for the sentiment.

supplies: Hero Arts pool layering paper as cardbase, and white cardstock, Basic Grey Aspen Frost 6" pad, Hero Arts CL462 Magic of Christmas, VersaFine onyx black ink, Spectrum Noir markers, CL630 Miracle of the Holidays, barn door distress ink, clear embossing powder, gingham ribbon, red pearls

Again Heidi has provided us with a $50.00 voucher to use in the Simon Says Stamp Superstore!!

                           

I can't wait to see what your favorites are!  And don't forget to visit our blog to see what Guest Designer Jenn Shurkus and my teamies' faves are, too!

TCM Valentine/Love Blog Hop

Guess what?  The Craft's Meow is having a Valentine's/Love Blog Hop, featuring our stamp sets that fit that category.  You should have arrived from Karen's blog, but if you get lost, just head on over to The Craft's Meow blog for a complete list of the hop order.  AND Lisa is offering 15% off our 9 featured stamp sets, using the code Valentine through Sunday, December 16!!

Today I made a card using the new Valentine's Wishes set.  I adore this little girl holding heart balloons, and once again, paper-pieced her, using papers from Basic Grey's Kissing Booth, along with the damask design from Lily Bee Designs Head Over Heels.

Your next stop is at Lindsay's blog.  And don't forget to leave a comment on The Craft's Meow blog, as Lisa will be giving away an All You Need is Love stamp set!  You'll have until this Friday, December 14th at 9 pm Pacific time to enter.....enjoy and good luck!                 

Dashing Through the Snow

Just sharing a Christmas card that I made in multiples for a gathering of friends today for a Christmas tea, to accompany my gifts to them.

I used my favorite music paper from Hobby Lobby, and stamps from PTI and Mark's Finest Papers (the trees).  I added some little jingle bells to go along with the theme.  

CASE-ing Jennifer

Jennifer McGuire had a tag video at the Ellen Hutson CLASSroom blog as part of Ellen's 12 Tags of Christmas with a Feminine Twist series, and I couldn't wait to try this lifted acetate panel technique for myself:

supplies: aqua, white and red glitter cardstock, acetate panel, Memory Box Peace Collage, Stazon White ink, Hero Arts CG229 Classic Holly, VersaFine onyx black ink, Spectrum Noir markers, Memory Box Perched Reed Bird die, Wplus9 Seasonal Sentiments snowflake die, red pearls

I'll let you watch Jennifer's video, but basically I stamped an acetate panel, embellished it, and then lifted it with foam squares above my card base, hiding them behind the holly, bird, and snowflakes.  Doing this gives an interesting shadow effect on the base from the stamped image on the acetate.

This was really fun to make, and it makes for an unusual card!  Thank you, Jennifer!

Snowflakes at Simon Says Stamp

Happy Wednesday, all!  It's time for another Simon Says Stamp challenge, and this time we've chosen
Snowflakes as our theme.  The Design Team is using Ritz glitters on all our projects, and we'd sure like to see your designs with them, too, but if you don't have them, that's okay.  Just make something that showcases snowflakes.

When I was looking around the Simon Says Stamp store, I found this darling little tree in a stoneware crock and couldn't wait to get it home and play with it.  I've collected stoneware for a long time, and love the idea of a baby tree set inside a crock.  So I further countrified it with these papers from Echo Park's Winter Wishes pad, and then just added my sentiment banner and a couple of punched snowflakes.  Love how it turned out!

The stamp is by Impression Obsession, called Snowflake Tree, and the papers are Echo Park's Winter Wishes.  As I said, we used Ritz Glitters, and they are really super-fine!  I used the Ice Blue color along with my Sakura glue pen and colored the little snowflake hanging from the tree and also the design on the crock.  I also used the Cool Highlight color on the bits of snow on the branches.  And I coated both of my punched snowflakes with a glue stick, then dipped them into each glitter. 

I can't wait to see your snowflake creations!  If you'd like to see some more ideas, please visit the Simon Says Stamp Challenge Blog to see what my teamies and Guest Designer Jenn did.

Our Heidi has provided another $50.00 gift voucher to the Simon Says Stamp Store for a random winner of this challenge - will you be the lucky winner this week?