December

Two posts in one weekend - are you amazed?  I have to catch up.

December was a blur as I had to get the Christmas cards in the mail.  Luckily I had a few done at Stamp Camp and on our Thurday nights but I still had many to finish.

I found my inspiration for my last minute cards on Heather Telford's blog.

This is my Christmas version of her card.

I used a double-stick paper diecut in the shape of a Memory Box star as a mask and watercolored the sky with my Peerless water colors.  I planned to made it a darker sky but I used all my Cobalt blue just to do the first layer on the twenty cards I made. Note to self, order more.

I then used the evergreen tree from Stampin Up's Lovely as a Tree set. I stamped several trees in Forest Foliage and then a few more in the foreground in black.  I used a wet paintbrush  to spread the ink out making them look less defined.

When the paper dried I removed the cover from the double stick paper and added ultra fine glitter to the star. Unfortunately you can't see the glitter in the photo. I layered the image on a Bashful Blue and Forest Foliage paper, both retired colors.  The sentiment 'Joy' is a Stampin Up die.

Belatedly, I wish all my readers a Joy-filled New Year.

Inkspirational Challenge

Exciting news....my friend, Susanne is the guest designer for the Inkspirational Challenge #89.  She so deserves it because she makes some awesome cards.  You can see them on her blog, Keep in Touch. And of course, she inspired me to post a card for the challenge which is the word prompt "Melt". 

I thought at first I would be melting because it has been so hot my stamp room has been a sauna.  But this weekend , thankfully, the heat wave left us and it has been gorgeous.  While I might have used ice cubes melting in my cold drink on a hot day, my thoughts instead turned to candles that melt.

The candle and sentiment stamps are from a retired Stampin' Up set called Poinsettia Greetings.  I stamped the candle in Crumb Cake ink and then used colored pencils. I got to use my new Stampin Up dies Lots of Labels. I found a patterned paper in the Trim the Tree DSP pack and went with the colors Garden Green and Cherry Cobbler.   There is a layer of White sparkle paper in there too.

I hope you visit the Inkspirational Challenge; you have five more days to post your own creation.

Thanks for visiting.  Hope you have a great week.

Holiday Home

At least some of the Cardologists have decided that this Holiday Home stamp set in the Stampin' Up holiday catalog ranks among their favorites.  Check out all the little stamps that come in this set sized to "fit" the houses. This cute Santa and reindeer have been appearing in front of the full moon all over blogland.  Tonight we made our version (or should I say versions?).

We all started by masking a moon shape and sponging ink on glossy paper, using four Marvy blues with a little Memento black to darken the corner.   While that dried, we stamped, colored and fussy cut the three houses.  The hard part was picking a card color; mine is cherry cobbler with a thin black mat. The streetlamp and tree were stamped directly on the card and a line added to ground them.  Then the houses were popped up on the panel.  We turned the streetlights "on" with our white pens and added a little bling (of course) on the Christmas lights and wreath.

I hear we might have a little snow in our day tomorrow.  Ho Ho Ho.  Susanne and Melba, we missed you tonight.  Hope you are feeling better soon.

Thanks for visiting.

Welcome to my blog on the last day of 2013.

It has been a week since an ice storm came through here and took out our electricity.  After three days it was restored - but only intermittently - until yesterday.  We are celebrating that we have had heat and running water for 36 continuous hours and counting; but also anxiously watching the weather forecast for the end of the week.  I took a lot of pictures since it is so hard to describe. We are so grateful to the many crews that have been working through the Christmas holiday to get us back online.

We couldn't stand outside without hearing the crashing of trees all around us.

 

There were five days of icy rain that built up an inch of ice.

Still driving with one eye out for branches hovering above the road.

 

 

I fully intended to post this Christmas card before the holiday, but was tending a generator instead. The idea for this card came to me in July, and as usual, I didn't start making until the week before the Cardologist's Christmas party.  

 

 

The challenging part was that children were looking in a window, but from the inside of the card they would have no faces. So I used a belly band (after tossing around the idea of cutting out faces of the cardologists and pasting them on). I stamped the children with brown ink on grey paper and colored with pencils.  The tree was stamped in green and colored with markers. It is more sparkly than it shows in the picture because it was done with the drier sheet technique. Of course I am now finding glitter everywhere!



 

 

Stamps:  Children by TooMuch Fun, Tree from a retired set by Stampin' Up

Die:  Small Madison Window by Poppystamps

Embossing folder: Tim Holtz /Sizzix

 

I wish all of you a happy, healthy New Year.

 



Hello Friends,
Thank you to all who have made me welcome in my first blog attempts.


I barely recovered from Stamp Camp - no I am still not unpacked! - and then I was off to visit friends in New Hampshire.  Here is a picture of my friend's daughter, a very talented teenager.  She designed and sewed her first quilted wall hanging when she was nine; here she is holding one of the Christmas stockings she made to sell to raise money for her class trip to Washington DC. 



And now for the card I made, inspired by her stocking. I must say I chose colors that were too dark so it is not as colorful as the stocking!



Stamps: Stampin Up Pointsettia (1998), Endless Creations Merry Christmas, Inkadinkado Pine branch, Studio G Ornaments
Stampin Up Top Note Die, Papers, Bakers Twine
Ranger Ink, Snowflake embossing powder
Cuttlebug Snowflakes
Other: detail gold embossing powder, gold rub-on, versafine clear