Another red and white card

Made for the current challenge at the Play Date Cafe:

supplies: red and white cardstock, Susan Branch Santa download, Hero Arts CL343 Holiday Sayings, barn door distress ink, red emboidery floss and red heart button, Spellbinder's Fleur de Lis pendant diecut

I am really enjoying this challenge - simple red and white are the colors of the season and they are so pleasing to me.  This one started with a digital image of Santa by Susan Branch - LOVE her art!  It was sized to fit inside the Spellbinder's Fleur de Lis pendant, and then all I had to do was stamp my sentiment and add the heart button and red embroidery floss .  I think this will go to my little grand-niece.

Here is the inspiration photo from PDCC:

                                  

Also entering this into Paige's quick and easy challenge at CARDS blog.

Holiday Music Inspiration

At the Wee Memories Blog, the Saturday Challenge is to make something that is inspired by our favorite Christmas song.  Mine is "Oh Holy Night"; beautiful words and beautiful music.

I think this sentiment reflects that carol beautifully.  And I must give credit to Nancy K, who came up with the original idea to pair these stamps together.

Supplies: white and blue cardstock, Hero Arts CG224 Starry Night, CG222 Music Background, CG100 Snowflake Circle, Penny Black 3227K Hope is Born, stormy sky and chipped sapphire distress inks, versamark ink and white embossing powder, punched snowflakes, glue, glitter

Oh Christmas Tree

Today I thought I'd share some pictures of our tree.....just finished decorating it today.  It's a 9 foot articial tree; I miss the fresh pine smell, but like that it has so many holes for bigger ornaments and that you can bend the branches to your liking.  Here it is almost from bottom to top:

Here's the very top.  That angel topper is something I made many years ago.

We have a lot of ornaments after almost 40 years: cross-stitched, stuffed fabric ones, lots of various paper ones, things the boys made when they were little, and of course, gifts and Hallmark ornaments!

And some of my teddy bears and old toys at the bottom:

One more, to show some of the ornaments up close and to give you a feel for how eclectic they are.  Top left is new this year, made from Spellbinders' Fleur de Lis pendants (tutorial here).  The little German hunter is one of many wooden ornaments we got in the late 1970s when we lived a year in Luxembourg.  And the angel made of doilies and lace is a fun reminder of a group of friends getting together to make them in volume; the hair is stiffened skinny ribbon wound around a dowel rod to dry.

Thanks for sticking with me - I'd love to see pictures of your tree if you'd like to share!

Red and white and more Christmas

At the Play Date Cafe this week, our challenge is to make a holiday card using red and white.  I knew right away what I wanted to do:

Red cardstock, white embossing powder, 2 stamps, a ribbon and some ribbon roses - done!

Supplies:  red cardstock, Hero Arts CG215 Wreath of Leaves, CL343 Holiday Sayings, versamark ink and white embossing powder, red ribbon from Sue C, ribbon roses

And continuing with my sharing of Christmas decorations, here is a little candle holder from Goebel (the famous German company which makes Hummels) dated 1975.  She is about 4" tall, without the candle.  Does anyone know if these are still made?  Wonder if they came in different colors? 

CASE Study #17

This month at CASE Study, our muse is the talented Nina Brackett.  Here is the lovely card she made for us to CASE:

She used as her background some lovely Webster's Pages.  I have a few sets, but have been so intimidated by their gorgeousness that I've used very few of them.  When I saw Nina's card, I figured it was now or never!  So here is my take on her card:

I chose a petite paper from Webster's Waiting for Santa pack, and added a birdhouse pieced from another red script paper from the same pack and parchment paper.  To that I added a holly sticker and hung it from a piece of crochet lace, topped with a red satin ribbon and a white ribbon rose, and finished by stamping my sentiment. 

Supplies: red and cream parchment cardstock, Webster's Pages Waiting for Santa Petite Papers pack, Hero Arts CL251 SparkleClear Birdhouse Tag, CL111 Hand Drawn Christmas (sentiment), CH231 Lace Ribbon, Versamark onyx black ink, clear embossing powder, red satin ribbon, cream ribbon rose, unknown holly sticker 

And since I like how my bow turned out, I'm also entering this into the Wee Memories challenge: Bowtiful Ribbon.

Hero Arts color challenge and a share of my Christmas decorations

The monthly challenge at the Hero Arts Blog is to use these colors: kraft, cranberry, slate blue, pine, and snow - all great Christmas colors.  We can also make something that has lots of shine.  I tried to combine both of these criteria in my submission:

You can click on any picture for a better view.  I started with white cardstock, and stamped one of the flourish borders in stormy sky distress ink, then sponged on more of the same to make the sky. This was overstamped with the trees. Then I paper-pieced each of the houses, adding glitter to each roof with a glue pen and prisma glitter. The fence was punched out of kraft cardstock, and I added Crystal Stickles along the top and dipped that in glitter for more sparkle. Then I cut it apart to make my fence openings, lined it back up, glued it down and then added more crystal stickles along the bottom. To finish I used Shari's idea of adding stickles throughout the sky to simulate glittery snow. It really adds a lovely dimension!

Here's a little closer look. 

Supplies:  white, cranberry, pine, slate blue, and kraft cardstocks, Hero Arts CL464 Sending Holiday Cheer, LP107 Flourish Borders, Versafine onyx black, stormy sky and pine needles distress, and Adirondack cranberry inks, Prismacolor pencils, Martha Stewart picket fence punch, Crystal Stickles, glue pen and Prisma Glitter

I thought I'd also show you our Christmas decorations.  This is the outside of our house at this time of year:

                          

And inside, each window has a candle.  The nativity scene here is made of parchment paper, an old art called scherenschnitte.  It is cut with very tiny scissors.

And another closer look.  I did this years and years ago and put it up every year.  Amazingly enough, it has held up very well.

I hope to share more pictures as the house is decorated.  The tree is up, with lights and wood cranberry roping, and now it's my job to add all the decorations.  That will be my next share!  Thanks so much for sticking with me throughout this long post!

Set of Birthday Cards

For the Card Creations: Favorite Occasions Week Birthday Challenge in the Moxie Fab World, they are celebrating the release of their newest Card Creations publication, and one of the challenges is to make a birthday card. I just happen to have needed 5 of them for this month, so this challenge worked out well for me. I made the same card 4 times, each in a different color.

Here are 2 of them closer up:

All of the cards started with the lovely Hero Arts cling stamp called Butterfly Field.  It was stamped on white cardstock using various distress inks.  Separately I stamped and colored the Traditional Butterly using colored pencils and mineral spirits (or orange marker and white gel pen on the orange one), then cut each one out.  I finished by overstamping the butterfly again on my background, and gluing or popping the butterflies in place (this saves trying to cut out around those tiny antennae).  Lastly I overstamped the sentiments.

Supplies: white cardstock, Hero Arts CG176 Butterfly Field, E5388 Traditional Butterfly, CL139 Birthday Messages, PTI Vintage Picnic Sentiments, worn lipstick, broken china, peeled paint, and mustard seed distress inks, Versafine onyx black ink and clear embossing powder, Prismacolor pencils and mineral spirits, Marvy orange marker, white gel pen

Get in Shape

The 38th challenge at the Shabby Tea Room is to "Get in Shape": to make a shaped project that uses no squares or rectangles.  Every year I make some ornaments for our Christmas tree, so I decided to use the Spellbinder's Fleur de Lis pendant to make snowflake ornaments.  Here are 2 examples:

Briefly, I diecut a circle out of blue cardstock, overstamped it in white ink with the snowflake circle, then stamped the trees in green ink.  The snow is a torn piece of a white diecut circle, glued to the blue circle.  The log cabin was stamped on kraft cardstock, and colored in with colored pencils, adding white gel pen for the snow and popped up for a little dimension.  I added glitter with a glue pen, then dipped into prisma glitter.  I used 2 pendant diecuts, 1 turned 45 degrees from the first behind the finished scene, and then put another finished scene on the reverse side, so that if it turns you still see the main image.

Supplies: blue, white, kraft cardstocks, colored pencils, glue pen and glitter, Glossy Accents on some windows, Hero Arts CG100 Snowflake Circle, CL462 Magic of Christmas (added snowflakes), CL464 Sending Holiday Cheer (cabin and trees), Colorbox Frost White, pine needles distress, and Versafine onyx black inks, Spellbinders Fleur de Lis Pendant diecut, circle diecut

Brown, silver and grey

Hello, everyone!  I really missed you all over the holiday.......I hope you had a lovely together time with your loved ones and lots of yummy turkey and all the other traditional foods, too!  We were away for a little over a week visiting family.  Loved being with them, but I'm glad to get back to normal.  We arrived last night with a few neighbors' Christmas lights to welcome us home, and I was instantly switched over to Christmas mode!  So I've changed my blog a bit to reflect that.  This week we will put up our tree, decorate a bit inside, and put our Christmas candles in all the windows - love the welcoming feel they give at this time of year.

The Play Date Cafe challenge has given us another challenging set of colors: brown, grey and silver.  I almost didn't try, but I'm glad I did......once again, I really like the results once I played a little with these colors; they are so calming together, and I hope I chose the right theme to reflect this.  Here is my submission for this week:

Supplies:  2 shades of grey, kraft and brown cardstock, Hero Arts K5256 Winter Pine, CL459 Merry Christmas Trees (sentiment), CL462 Magic of Christmas (smallest snowflake), Our Daily Bread Peace and Joy (large and medium snowflakes), Ranger Super Fine Detail silver embossing powder, clear embossing powder (sentiment), Hero Arts Clear Mixed Gemstones, dark burgundy embroidery floss

Play Date Cafe challenge #56

I didn't think I'd get a chance to play this week at the Play Date Cafe challenge, but an idea came to me and I ran with it!  The colors we are to use are red, olive, and turquoise and here is my submission:

Supplies: parchment and red cardstock, BoBunny ocean dot dp, Adirondack cranberry, Versamark onyx black, and Versacraft Cerulean Blue inks, Hero Arts CG222 Music Background, CL462 Magic of Christmas, CL464 Sending Holiday Cheer, Sizzix swiss dot embossing folder, SU topnotch die, red metallic decor, olive prismacolor watercolor pencil

Really Reasonable Ribbon

The challenge at Really Reasonable Ribbon this time is Christmas.  I pulled out a digital image from the Graphics Fairy that I've used before and built my card around it, being sure to make the ribbon a prominent feature. 

I started by stamping the music background on parchment paper, distressing around the edges with tea dye distress ink.  I also distressed the sentiment panel and the angel image.  The ribbon is from Kath - it appears to be organdy bordered in satin and it glimmers so beautifully!  After assembling everything I thought it needed a little something down in the corner, so I added the holly sticker.

Supplies: red and parchment cardstock, digital image from the Graphics Fairy (look under the angel category), Hero Arts CG222 Music Background, CL460 Joy to All, Anita's Teddy Bear brown, tea dye distress and Adirondack cranberry inks, K&Company sticker, gold ribbon

Lucy's Old and New challenge

Lucy has challenged us to use some old as dirt supplies :) and something new.  I followed her lead and used as my old this K&Company Tim Coffey Grand Adhesions birdhouse sticker.  And my new item is the Cosmo Cricket Togetherness dp I used as my background.  It was a gift from Tiffany a few months ago.  Stickers sure do make for a fast card - lesson learned!  Thanks, Lucy!

Supplies: kraft and creamy parchment cardstocks, Cosmo Cricket Togetherness Mini Deck dp, K&Company Grand Adhesions Stickers #554276 Garden Kitty, Hero Arts CL272 All Occasion Messages, Versafine onyx black ink, nesties scalloped oval dies, twine, heart button

May your joys be countless

Another Thanksgiving card for the challenge at The Shabby Tea Room, using a vintage image that I found on Google.  I think this is a real keeper of an image - the sentiment is exactly right:

For love present,

ills past,

and good to come,

may our hearts rejoice

this Thanksgiving Day.

May your joys be as countless

as the golden grains

I stamped the background grains on kraft cardstock using tea dye distress ink and Hero's Silhouette Grass stamp, added that to a darker brown card, then framed my printed image on brick red to bring out the barn in the image.  Added some lace edging and the very, very last of a spool of this golden ribbon and a button, to reflect the sunset.

Supplies: kraft, brick and brown cardstocks, Hero Arts S5316 Silhouette Grass, tea dye distress ink, scrap of lace, golden ribbon, button

Thanksgiving

The challenge at the Shabby Tea Room this week is to make something that reflects thankfulness.  This couldn't have come at a better time, as I needed some ideas for a few very special Thanksgiving cards.   I loved dt members Debbie and Cathy's examples using vintage images, so that's the direction I went.

I found this adorable image at the Clearly Vintage blog.  I love the bright autumn leaves against the blue sky.  I framed it with part of a doily, and added some autumnal paper scraps, a ribbon I dyed to match, and my sentiment. 

Supplies: pumpkin cardstock, scraps of autumnal design papers, doily, Hobby Lobby ribbon dyed with Versacolor Paprika ink, Hero Arts CL119 Happy Thanksgiving (sentiments)