Final Three Christmas Cards

You'll see some similar themes in these final 3 cards. Like the previous post they all use: Bazzill cardstock, American Crafts patterned paper (again the blue is DCWV), American Crafts ribbon, silver stickers, and the Stampin Up! Merry & Bright set.

Tree "Ornament"

Another Blue Snowman

Rudy

This last one was another that needed a gift card holder. I actually used this sentiment in all my cards this year. It is from the Stampin Up! Wishing You Cheer set.

More Christmas Cards

When I used the snowman card from a two posts ago (here), I included a gift card. Naturally I wanted something a little fancier and/or more special than the holders that come with the gift cards. Using the same Doodlebug Let it Snow set, red ribbon, pearl stickers, and some DCWV paper I created the below:

















Variations on a Theme
After using the Stocking and the Merry Shorty from last time I decided that I wanted new cards for the rest of my list. They're all 4x4 and all use: Bazzill cardstock, American Crafts patterned paper (except the blue which is DCWV), American Crafts ribbon, pearl or silver stickers, white opal liquid pearls and the Stampin' Up! Merry & Bright set (not that I play favorites, but if I did it would be the green one!)

Red

















Green

















Blue

Christmas Cards!

Ho ho ho! 25 Days until Christmas! I've been pretty on top of Christmas this year - no last minute shopping or card making for me! It has been a little hard since it has been so unseasonably warm here. It doesn't even feel like fall so how could it possibly feel like Christmas? It didn't feel like Thanksgiving either, but I've been trying to work past that so the season doesn't just fly by me unnoticed.

Three more Christmas cards are now complete! I've really been feeling the 3"x6" for these:

Christmas Trees
Supplies:
Doodlebug Clear Expressions Let it Snow
Crafts Etc! Cardstock
DCWV & Lasting Impressions patterned paper
Nestabilities
Spool O' Ribbon
Lime Green Stickles
White Opal Liquid Pearls
JoAnn Sew Essential Buttons

Christmas Stocking
Supplies:
Stampin' Up! It's a Stretch
Lasting Impressions & Doodlebug patterned paper
Crystal Stickles
White Opal Liquid Pearls
Mark Richards Metal stickers
Offray Ribbon











This last one is a shorty so I haven't decided if I'm going to send it to someone or just keep it for myself since I think it turned out super cute. I got the idea for the lights from Nancy, one of the Hero Arts designers, she mentions it toward the end of this post here. None of my brads have ever come with turns so I went looking for some to play with. I ended up with silver which I colored with Bic Mark It permanent marker (sorry Sharpie!) and then Stickles'd for the lighted effect. I think it looks awesome! But perhaps I'm biased.

Very Merry Shorty
Supplies:
Stampin' Up! Short & Sweet
Lasting Impressions patterned paper
Offray Ribbon
Crystal Stickles
JoAnn Scrap Essentials photo holders (silver, colored with permanent marker)
Black braiding cord








Since I have plenty of time still, I may play with some more holiday designs if the inspiration hits. If not I'll just make some multiples of these and the one from the second half of my previous post and call it Christmas!

December - Two Days Early

I'm really stunned at how fast time is flying - I swear the years are just getting faster as we go. That being said, now that December is 2 days away I have mom's birthday in less than a week! If you remember awhile ago I wanted to Sprinkle (like the cupcakes) a card (reminder) and came up with something okay but not what I was originally attempting. Well I re-tackled the concept and think it came out really well! I used the colors of mom's favorite flavor - Vanilla. Though I must say that I spaced and forgot that the vanilla aren't served with the dots either... they have vanilla sprinkles... but with the design of the card she'll still get the point!

Birthday Sprinkles
Supplies:
HA Clear Design Cupcakes
DCWV patterned paper
Crafts Etc! cardstock
Offray ribbon
White Opal Liquid Pearls











December also brings us to Christmas. Thanks to Scrapbooks Etc. I finally found some appropriate Christmas stamps and papers! No pink! I've only made one card so far but I'm playing with some other designs today.

Let it Snow
Supplies:
Doodlebug Clear Expressions Let it Snow
DCWV patterned paper
Crafts Etc! cardstock
Offray ribbon
Nestabilities
K&Co. adhesive pearls
Crystal Stickles

Ms. Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous

Well, this year's 3-Day is over and I just had my first weekend in over 6-months that was completely free! No walking, no feeling guilty about skipping walking, no thinking about fundraising. It has really been weird. I was extremely productive this weekend though: got my Christmas shopping 98% done, wrapped some of those presents, cleaned my room.

Even though I suddenly have all this time, I have done absolutely no crafting. I did do some craft shopping since I'm trying to figure out what I want to do for my Christmas cards. Can someone please explain to me when pink, gray, and black all became Christmas colors?!?! I wanted some new Christmas paper since my one mat stack from years past is now pretty picked through. I could not find one set of paper that I remotely liked. I couldn't even find single sheets I liked! Needless to say I was mad. I'm going to try and hit up the non-JoAnn's and non-Michael's stores later this week. I'm trying to be hopeful.

As I said, I cleaned my room. Most specifically I got really into cleaning up my craft corner - notice I didn't say craft "room." Living with my parents has put crafting in the corner {insert Dirty Dancing quote here}. One of the Hero Arts designers, Jennifer McGuire, posted a video of her room which is so amazing! I would maim for a room like hers! Add some puppies and cupcakes and it's a pretty close approximation to my image of heaven. I had wanted to post some pictures of my area anyway and now I feel extra possessed to showcase my tiny corner that I continually outgrow. I do feel like I've finally hit capacity, but I have felt that way before and found ways to manage.

From the Doorway:
- That would be my 3-Day camp gear in the immediate foreground. I unpacked and did laundry, just don't know where to store the gear yet!

- Did I mention it's mainly a bedroom?













The Naked Desk - In 3 angles:
















Looking down to my left:
-The rolling case has all my non-12x12 stacks, my 3 sectioned containers of eyelets/brads/etc., and various colored pens.











Now lets look behind me - in 2 angles:

















Over-packed tchotchke and book and craft storing going on here.

To My Right:
- I just measured, that's about 7.5 inches between my bed and the desk!

- That black thing bottom left would be my tiny chair, you can just about see my knee hitting the part of the desk to the left of my computer can't you?









So that's my space! All of it! When it's messy you can't see much carpet and the bed turns into additional craft area. The bookshelf always looks like a disaster even when organized so I don't try as hard with that anymore. Hope you enjoyed the tour!

Final Fundraising

This weekend is the big 3-Day walk. I decided to do a final fundraiser at work with cookies (in bags - I have tons of leftover bags) and Christmas tags. I had everything ready for yesterday, not thinking that most of the office would probably be out since we had today off. I did manage to rake in $13 though anyway! I'll resume sales tomorrow and see what happens.

Cookies for a Cure
Supplies:
Nestabilities Dies
CB Support Ribbon Die
Me & My Big Ideas Paper
HA Clear Gemstones colored with permanent marker
Making Memories Eyelets
Spool O' Ribbon in light pink










Argyle Sweater Bear
Supplies for all:
Crafts Etc! Textured Cardstock
Remember When Christmas Plaid paper
Paper Pizazz Kelly Green/Yellow Plaid paper
Making Memories Eyelets
Spool O' Ribbon in green and red
Nestabilities Dies
HA Playful Animals
HA Laughter & Merriment (inside)








Giraffe

















ReinOwl

















Monkey

















Insides
All the tags are the same on the inside, but for an example here's the inside of the ReinOwl.













It was a little hard for me to think Christmas with it still being fairly early November. I normally like to hit Thanksgiving first! Though it was actually pretty fun, I really like these animals! I also realized that I don't actually have many Christmas stamps - Interesting!

Mini Mischief

Not much of a craft-stravaganza going on for me this weekend. I have some things I would like to work on but I just don't feel like dealing with my cramped craft area. So lazy has prevailed! Though I did toss this mini card together real quick for this week's HA Mini Cards Challenge. I had the mini card sitting around since the paper challenge, and actually the cat and sentiment from the same time too. Was trying for awhile to figure out how I wanted it to come together and this is the result:

Mischief Maker
Supplies:
Making Memories patterned paper
DCWV card stock
HA I Love My Cat






I'm also entering Little Birthday into the challenge.

A First Anniversary

Lysa and her hubby are celebrating their first anniversary! I really cannot believe it has already been a year since the wedding. Their wedding colors were brown and blue, and while I told myself I didn't have to stick to the theme I found some really great brown and blue papers in my stash.

First Anniversary
Supplies:
Penny Black First Kiss
HA Happy Anniversary
DCWV & me and my BIG ideas Papers
Offray Ribbon
Prismacolor pencils
K & Co. Pearls

Precious Cookie Favor Bags - Outcome!

I may not have been overjoyed with the original bag tags, but I think the final results were fantastic! I revisited the masked animals, specifically the bear I originally put in costume (see here). I decided to definitely go the costume route, so after a little brainstorming and a little help from my friends we have:

Zorro Giraffe
Supplies for all:
HA Playful Animals
trusty black ultra fine point Sharpie
Provo Craft papers
DCWV black cardstock
Dashes, Dots, & Checks orange and purple ribbons
Offray black ribbon
Orange and Magenta Stickles





Super Bear (thanks for the idea Lysa!)













Mummy Monkey

















The Original Owl - can't improve upon perfection!













Blah blah blah, inconsistent photography, blah, the ribbon is more accurately purple in the owl shot.

They were such a hit at the sale today that they sold out in the first half hour - of the five hour sale! I was pretty stoked to see they were such a success. Well I'm sure the cookies factored into the deal too. Though my boss told me that she just had to have one of each animal. Fun day!

We have a face painter among our colleagues, she was busy this morning dolling everyone in the department up for the sale. I was a zombie and I must say I looked AWESOME! I came prepared wearing the mummy screen print tee from Target, and she let me borrow from her stash of wigs. Here I am in all my stunning, zombie glory!













Yes that is a fly (fake, natch) on my face - it was my favorite part!

Precious Cookie Favor Bags?!

Remember last month how I so desperately wanted to make precious cookie favor bags as 3-day reminders for my office but changed my mind last minute due to green concerns? (Memory refresher here) Well this coming Thursday my department is having a rummage and bake type sale with proceeds going to United Way. I volunteered to make cookies for the sale and was thinking (with growing excitement) that they would probably want these cookies individually wrapped somehow. So, I went to check with the woman in charge: "If you could wrap them in sets of two or three somehow that would be really great." Great? You mean AWESOME! My dream is coming true!

Except I'm kind of a downer on the results. I don't know if my craft wave is finally over, but the ideas just aren't flowing as well as they were last week. My visions of grandeur included 4 images and two other "main" colors (green and something else) and just more stuff. Maybe some patterned paper? They were going to be simple so it wouldn't be a pain to make 12 or however many. But below is what I have, and I think they're too simple, plain even. Plus I'm beyond mad that I don't have better nesting circles. I still have a little time, so I suppose I could go back to the craft stores and check for some better paper options. I could do squares instead of circles. I was originally contemplating borrowing the masked animals for this project, and I am now re-contemplating the idea. I won't make the cookies till later this week so the "cookies" in these pictures are spools of American Crafts ribbon. I'll post updates with the finished project.

Pumpkin & Kitty

Trick or Treat!

Time for another TECC entry! No cupcakes this time, I happened to make the three little figures as I was playing around with an idea for cookie bag tags (more on that next time!) and decided to go for another Halloween card. I must say that I borrowed the super cute mask idea from 1scrappycat on the Hero Arts Flickr group. I wish beyond all wishes that I could take credit for the idea - I LOVE the owl! But alas! She won second place in the paper challenge! As you can see from her winning card, I kept the owl pretty much the same but played around a little with the bear.

Taylor's sketch:
















For my take, I flipped the sketch. This was a last minute decision because I wanted the trick or treat stamp to go this way.

Trick or Treat!
Supplies:
DCWV and Provo Craft papers
K & Co. Rhinestones
Magenta Stickles (on kitty's hat)
HA Playful Animals
Stampendous Witch Kitty
Doodlebug Halloween
Offray ribbon

With a Cupcake!

Taylored Expressions Cupcake Challenge # 38 take two! I already revamped my original idea from earlier today - cupcake now included! I like this one better because of the cupcake, so I'll be entering this one:

Dibs!
Supplies:
Imaginisce Penguin Dude stamp
Stampin' Up! Short & Sweet Cupcake
Colored with Prismacolor pencils
Inkssentials Glossy Accents on cherry
Offray Oatmeal Ribbon
DCWV papers
JoAnn Sew Essentials Buttons









The inside will say "The cupcakes are all yours today!"

I'm wondering if I should speak to someone regarding my apparent view that penguins are greedy...

Picky Penguin

After getting my feet wet in a few Hero Arts challenges I decided to tackle a challenge I've seen Lysa enter a few times. Taylor over at Taylored Expressions holds a weekly Cupcake Challenge! It's a sketch challenge where you make whatever you want following a given sketch. Whilst it's called the Cupcake Challenge, cupcakes are not mandatory.

This week came with an additional challenge to tell Taylor what our stamps are really saying or thinking. Here is the sketch:

















Here is what I came up with:

Popsicle Penguin
Supplies:
Imaginisce Penguin Dude stamp
Colored with Prismacolor pencils
Inkssentials Glossy Accents on popsicle
Offray Oatmeal Ribbon
DCWV papers
JoAnn Scrap Essentials Brads
Hero Arts Gemstones






I haven't created an inside for the card yet but plan on having it say "It's your special day, you deserve to take the last one!"

I did want to use a cupcake (I love cupcakes!) and considered selectively removing the popsicle and adding a cupcake instead. Hmm. I might still do that as something to play around with. I haven't entered the contest yet and have until Monday at 8am, so I now feel possessed to play around with including that darn cupcake!

Thinking of Fall

Can I just say that Photoshop is amazing? I've been editing the balances on my pictures with free software that came with my camera. I was finally fed up with the results enough to decide to borrow some time with dad's Photoshop program on his computer. What a difference! Deep down in my heart I knew this would be the case, but I wasn't ready to admit just yet that my cheapo program could be inferior. The results still aren't as magnificent as if I had started with the midday sun light source, but they're acceptable enough for me that I entered this card and Live, Laugh, Love from my previous post into the Hero Arts contest last night.

I have two stacks of Making Memories papers, Live, Laugh, Love was complied from one of the stacks, so I wanted to give equal opportunity to the other. This second stack didn't seem to coordinate as well as the first, IMHO, so I only ended up using one sheet out of it. I also wanted to push myself some more with color. It's not a huge leap but I normally avoid orange! I was even surprised when I realized I had orange buttons, I only bought them because they were on clearance for $0.97, and look how well that worked out! Lesson learned, always impulse buy clearance items. The orange and browns feel super autumnal and even a bit Coldwater Creek. I almost did go completely fall inspired when I remembered I had a sentiment stamp "have a bountiful season" and a pumpkin stamp that isn't cartoony and cutesty. That was feeling too far out of my style though and I came up with the below instead.

Thinking of You

Supplies:
Making Memories Funky Vintage - Lizzie Collection
HA Playful Animals













I entered a few others into this weeks challenge too: A Day Sprinkled With Fun, Welcome Little One, and Thank Yous Two and Four. The winners of the masucline flair challenge were announced today - no win or honorable mention for me. With over 200 entries I wasn't really expecting to win, but it's fun to try anyways!

There is Love

Don't tell, but I forgot a third October holiday. My parent's anniversary - shame on me! It is the 23rd so luckily I remembered with time to spare. I was also very interested in this week's Hero Arts contest: Patterned Paper. I'm no stranger to patterned paper but I wanted to do something more patterny than normal. Push my pattern boundaries, if you will. I must say that I love what came out of that! It is definitely more "loud" than anything I've ever made before, but that is actually what I love about it. This is also the first anniversary card I've made that I don't mostly hate.

Live, Laugh, Love
Supplies:
HA Clear Design L
Making Memories Embellishment Paper - Funky Vintage, Ruby Collection














I have yet to find a light source for my photography that I like as much as the midday sun. Unfortunately, during the week I don't get much midday sun (it would ruin my lovely complexion of 'office pale'), but by this weekend hopefully I'll get a shot of the card in the lighting that I prefer. I'm waiting till then to enter this one in the contest.

I want Sprinkles

A little back story on this first: Sometime in August a vendor I occasionally work with cleverly figured out that sending me 2 Sprinkles Cupcakes would be an easy way to expedite setting up a meeting with me. Now I had never had these delicate morsels of heaven before this time and boy can I say my life was incomplete before! I have made two trips of my own to our new store in town since then and I keep thinking up reasons why I need to go. What's even better is I've gotten my parents hooked! So now that we all dream in Sprinkles I wanted to Sprinkle a card. As you can see from pictures on their website they have a trademark dot that they use as a cupcake topper (made out of gum paste, not so tasty). They have different color combinations to signify each flavor. I wanted to make a birthday card option for dad using his favorite flavor's colors, brown with blue in the center (coconut!). This is also what started my quest to find every size circle punch ever made.

This card failed the original intent for three reasons. First, the dots just aren't the right size. I did measure a dot from our last set of cupcakes and I thought what I had would be close enough. I just don't like how they look. I only used one on this card, what the sentiment is hanging on, so you can see. Second, the coconut cupcakes aren't served with dots on them. They have coconut on them so something may have been lost in translation. Third, dad doesn't need 4 birthday cards! Mom has a birthday coming up in December so out of all fairness while I'm still riding a crafting wave I should be making her some birthday options too. So I'll retry this again, but using 3/4" and 1/2" circles. Her favorite flavors are actually served with the dots so it won't be as much of a stretch. Although I say this failed the original intent, I don't mean it failed completely. I really like it a lot! So it'll go into my general card pool and the next time someone deserves a day sprinkled with fun I'll already be ready already.

A Day Sprinkled With Fun
Stamp:
HA Clear Design Cupcakes















In looking through some past entries right now I just happened to realize how amazingly similar this looks to Thank You 2 from my 5 Thank Yous post. I CASEd myself! (CASE = Copy And Selectively Edit)

Manly!

My intentions behind this card were two-fold. Fold 1: I wanted to take another crack at a birthday card for dad. I liked the theory behind the original October circle with the 14 in another color to indicate his special day, though now I have a circle punch. Actually, now I have several circle punches, but that's a story for another day. Anyhow, I wanted to use my 2" circle punch with the October stamp. I must say I think it looks much better this way! Fold 2: I decided to finally make a card specifically to enter a Hero Arts contest! This week's contest is cards with a masculine flair. I went for a slightly distressed and thrown together look because aren't all men slightly distressed and thrown together? Maybe it isn't screaming "MANLY!" but it definitely isn't girly! This also happens to be my first 3" x 6" card, if I keep this up I'm going to have to purchase the appropriate envelopes.

Dad Birthday Option
Supplies:
HA October Month set
Spiral Punch - Yahoo!














I entered a few other previously made cards as well, the original Many Many Thanks, Brother's Father's Day Card, and 3-Day Woof. I'll let you know if I end up winning anything.

A New Niecphew!

I'm going to be an auntie again! Baby short-stuff niece, Lil T, is going to be a big sister! Eee! Pretty exciting stuff, so I had to be sure to send a congratulations card to my bro and sil. Before Lil T's arrival I made a pretty cute congratulations card, half blue and half pink with some purple in the middle since we did not yet know her gender. This was before I was consistent with taking pictures of my cards so I don't have one to show you. I knew my new card would have to be different so the tykes wouldn't judge me and resent me for being a lazy copier. Again we do not yet know niecphew's gender so I went with non-gender-specific greens and yellows. I made this during my crafting frenzy last week but had to wait for bro and sil to get it in the mail before I could post it. I will admit that I used the same sentiment in each card, but honestly babies really are a nice way to start people.

Welcome Little One
Supplies:
HA Clear Design Baby Boy and Baby Girl sets

Inside:
"Babies are such a nice way to start people" A quote by Don Herald taken from a Penny Black stamp

Little Birthday

I loved the Cuttlebug Swiss Dots embossing folder from the very first time I saw someone use it. Then I saw a few cards where the entire front of the card was Swiss Dots with a small stamped image and knew that not only did I need to find that folder stat, but I would have to make a card like that myself. So I did! I call this one Little Birthday because it is slightly smaller than a standard sized card to avoid a border of blank space the embossing folder wouldn't reach. If you're interested I just measured it and it is approx 3.75" x 5" - I didn't pick the measurements but happened to have a scrap piece of card stock that worked.

Little Birthday
Supplies
HA Clear Design Number Zero

Inside
{wishing you a one-of-a-kind BIRTHDAY}
HA Clear Design Birthday Messages

Little Reminders

Six or so weeks ago, an email was sent on my behalf around the office telling everyone about my participation in the upcoming 3-Day walk. I've had a lot of responses! All very positive and sometimes glowing. I knew this walk would be an amazing life experience but I was a little unprepared for all the warm fuzzies I'd feel before the actual event. I do have a little bit of a hard time when it comes to asking people for donations, but I wanted to remind everyone that they could still donate if they wanted to. I thought to myself, "what could be less pesky than something crafted coupled with cookies? Nothing!" I had all sorts of visions of cute little bags of cookies with little reminder tags on them. But then I got to thinking about how green my office is and I wasn't sure I'd want to walk in with individually wrapped things that could work just as easily in Tupperware. I could have looked for little kraft paper bags, but I worry about the butter in the cookies leaving greeze marks which is never appetizing. Ultimately I decided to go the big Tupperware container route as a free for all. I made a little card to put in front of the container and about 8 little business type cards with my walk web address that people can take.

Here is the little announcement card:













Oh yes that does say "and/or organic apples." We have a few people in our office who are very conscious of what they eat so I wanted to be thoughtful and have snack options for everyone.

These are the business cards. The logo is the official downloadable Walker Logo from the 3-Day website. I only put ribbons on half of them, haven't decided yet if I should ribbon them all. Decisions are hard.













Overall it isn't my grand vision of precious cookie favor bags, but I like what I've made and it is a lot less work for an outcome that is somewhat of an unknown anyway.

5 Thank Yous

Yesterday was a marvelously successful Thank You day! I quickly and easily pinked up the original TY I showed you yesterday by adding a ribbon. Yes that is a pink staple. You will see from the next post that I learned a little later on that two staples work better at keeping the ribbon in the proper position. It was too late to add a second to this one, but I still like it!

Pinked Many Many Thanks

















Next up are 4 unique new TYs! I was a busy crafting bee yesterday. You'll notice I continued with the rounded edge theme. My corner rounder is getting pretty dull. The first two use HA Clear Design Thank You Messages, the second two use HA Clear Design Anytime Messages.

Thank You One













Thank You Two


















Thank You Three


















Thank You Four

















(Aside: You know what would make this last one cuter? More rounded edges!)

Now I just need to write in them and send them off!