A SPECIAL CHRISTMAS CARD

Hello everyone!! I am a bit late in wishing all a very Merry Chrsitmas. I once again have some out of town company, so I have not been able to get to my computer too much this week.
But I did want to share with you a special card I made for my husband. I wanted to make him a card with more of an adult type of theme, rather than the "cutesy" type stuff I usually go for.
Not remembering where I saw this stamp awhile ago, I turned to my SCS friends and asked for their help. It was only about a day later that I had several suggestions as to where I could find similar type images. Once again, thanks all for your help.
This girl is actually a digital stamp and is from Sweet and Sassy digital images. I sized her to fit a 5 1/2 by 5 1/2 inch square card and printed her out on my computer. Easy as pie. I colored her with my Copics and used SU crystal effects to make her boot and belt appear to be patent leather.
I then used Martha Stewart flocking to add a fur look to her hat and trimmings. I am not sure yet how much I like this brand of flocking. I am thinking that Doodlebug makes a better product when it comes to this.
Paper is all from my scrap drawers except for the card base, which is SU Real Red. Here is a shot of the inside of the card. The sentiment is computer generated and cut with nesties and glittered.
Unfortunately a glass of something?? was spilled on the card before this picture was taken, so if you look close, you will see that its kinda warped and dicolored on the inside part.
But most importantly, Bob loved it and thinks it is one of my best cards ever.


Many thanks for stopping by...

OUR ANNUAL GINGERBREAD HOUSE

A tradition in my house is for my daughter to make a gingerbread house each year. It started when she was only about 3 years old and has continued to this day.
We look forward to this time spent together. And weeks later, her Dad actually eats much of this by then stale confection.
So without furthur ado~ a couple of photos of her work in progress this year.

Hope you are making great memories also. Many thanks for stopping by...

A quick Little Gift

These are the little gifts I made for Theresas teacher and teacher assisitant. They are Post it Note holders with a little twist.
Since her taechers are often writing notes home to all the families, I opted for the bigger Post Its with the lined paper inside. I thought this would be less likely to get lost in the back pack compared to the little yellow sheets.
I went with the basic tutorial on SCS for these holders, and just adapted the measurements to fit this 4 by 4 size. Since I made these late at night before the last day of school ( did I metion that I tend to procrastinate?~ I small a new years resolution!) /I was in a hurry to find something to decorate the front of them. I looked thru my never ending stash of stuff~ and here is where that stash comes in handy~ and found a little pack of snowman bits that I bought a year or two ago at A.C.Moore for 20 cents. How could I have passed these snowmen up for that price??? They are made by Nicole Co. and there are 24 pieces in the cello pack. All you have to do is assemble them.
Easy peasy and adorable. I added the ribbon and snowflake to their hats. You may recognize the snowflakes from my Christmas cards. Popped up with pop dots are they were good to go.

This is a super quick gift, and would be great for craft fairs too.

Many thanks for stopping by...

The Final Result

Well, I am glad to say that my cards for this year are finally complete and on their way to friends and family.

I am so pleased with how they came out. It all fell right into place. What isnt so good though, is how they photographed. They are so much prettier in real life. I couldnt seem to get the embossed silver image to show up well. it always had a glare no matter which way I took the photo from.

And the aqua-robins egg color is just stunning, I think.

They will have a small picture of our family at Thanksgiving inside. Now Im off to make a couple individual cards.
Hope your shopping is going better than mine. I am falling behind in that too~

Many thanks for stopping by...

A SNEAK PEEK....

Of this years Christmas card!!!!
This is what I have been spending alot of my time on these past few days. Although they are not finished quite yet, I thought I would share some previews with you. I am going a bit off tradition with the colors, but this year (and a few of the last few also) I am just in love with robins egg blue and all similar types of greeny-blues.
Paired with white and silver, it gives me a wintry feeling of an icy, snowy wonderland. And who better to inhabit that wonderland but Santa himself. The cards are an A2 size. Santa is embossed in silver and cut out. I have used some PTI cardstock, patterened paper from The Holiday Stack from DCWV,and Stampin Up White.

Lots and lots of Martha Stewart glittery goodness here. I have used Antique Silver, Coarse White and White Tinsel Glitter.

The snowflakes were punched out and then painted with glue and dipped in the glitter bowls.

At this time last year, my cards were all in their new homes all over the country~ well, the east coast and Colorado~ and they were much more involved. But I think I like this years even more. And although these little babies are late bloomers, they will be on their journey soon.

As soon as they are all complete, I will be back with their big reveal~LOL.

Many thanks for stopping by. ...

p.s. do you like my snowy blog?

A BIRTHDAY CARD AND A BUSY WEEK

Last week it was my stepdaughter Nicoles Birthday. Happy birthday nikki~
She lives in colorado, so her gift is always a check in a card so she can pick out something she likes. Many times its a snow related gift, as she loves to snowboard, and living in North Carolina on the coast, we dont have anything like that here.
Her card came out very pretty and colorful, but unfortunately the colors came out terrible in my photos. The purples look so garish and actually they were beautiful violets. So what I did was to cut out most of the card in this picture, and just shoe (haha~ that was an unintentional typo) show you the stamped image.
Colored with Copics, and glittered around the edge with a chunky glitter from Hobby Lobby.

On another note~ My Mother In Law came down for a visit from NYC on sunday. She stayed until last nite and we had so much fun shopping, eating, showing her around my little seaside town and playing in my art studio.
I used to have a craft business with her more than 10 years ago. She is quite artistic and now the stamping bug has bitten her. We made several little projects, and even invited Sharon over to play also. Hopefully she can come back soon for a another visit.
Many thanks for stopping by...

ADVENT BOX

Last Saturday, I invited my friend Sharon over my house to make one of these Advent Boxes. They are so beautiful in person. I had seen one made on another blog ( I will have to find the name of that blog), and thought to myself that this was something I had to make. This is even after they said it took countless hours to do.
We cheated a bit by using the Stampin Up Matchbox die instead of making each drawer by hand. Even doing this, it took the better part of an afternoon to make just the drawers. There are 24 of them, one for each day of Advent, with 6 of them on each side.
We'll start with a view of the whole box. I made mine in traditional greens and reds and a Santa theme. For a little intereest, I added several touches of pink. All these colors blended well together. Here is a shot with the drawers open.

These are some of the matchboxes when we first got started.

Here they are as I started to stack them on top of a 5 1/2 square chipboard base. I had covered this base with paper first. I mostly used a hot glue gun for assembly.

I decided to add a smaller chipboard layer in between the 2 stacks for a little more stability. Since the die is a little bit bigger than the 12" size of cardstock, you go thru a lot of paper, as each sheet only made one box.

Now the box is in the process of embellishing!! Oh how I love that part!

Although the red velvet ribbon in the photo (from Martha Stewart) is beautiful, I was not happy with how it looked on top of the box, and went with a sheer wired ribbon instead.

The top has a few layers of cardstock and designer paper, and a stamped image. Santa and his friend are colored with Copics, and I used red liquid pearls for his holly berries.

Here is side #1. The drawers are labeled with computer generated numbers and a small wooden "hub" as they are called.

Papers are from several different companies. Cardstock is DCWV, some from Stampin Up.

I used little wooden stars for the spaces opposite the santas. I painted them pale pink, and then dipped them in prism glitter.

I love this image of Santa. His fur is glittered and his holly berries are also done with Liquid Pearls.

A view of the last side of my box. I am just so pleased at how it came out!!!!!

I used the gold colored Copic here for his glasses, and Stampin Up Crystal Effects to make it look like he had lenses in those glasses. Pretty good, huh???

His beard is colored with pale grey Copics , but its hard to see in the photos.

My Daughter loves opening the boxes each day to see what candy she has gotten. A single Reeses fits perfectly ( her favorite). 4 kisses also fit, some laying down on their side.

M & Ms would be a good choice also.

Many thanks for stopping by.....

A WONDERFUL THANKSGIVING

I hope that everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving!! Although this should have been posted a few days ago, I didnt want to let it go altogether. This was the first time in the 5 years I live here that I had my sister and her family, and my dear friend Sharon as our dinner guests. We typically spend the day just us 4, but being my sister and John moved to North Carolina this summer, and my friend was available to come for the dinner, we had a mini crowd.
I loved it~~~~ This little cutie may look familiar from a previous post, but what I did was enlarge her to about 4 1/2 inches, print her out on heavy cardstock, and turn her into placecards for the Thanksgiving table. I forgot to take a photo of the table looking so pretty, but at least I got one of her. This was at my daughters place. She had a little piece of cardboard bent in half behind her to help her stand up. Dont you love her little glittered barette?

This is how it all started last wednesday, as I food shopped in the rain.....

As my company arrived, we took some photos outside, as the weather was in the upper 60's and sunny. Here is my son Michael and my niece Jacqueline.

This photo shows our family and my sisters family on my front steps. Our 3 other children were not here as 1 lives in New York, and 2 live in Denver, Co. We missed them.

Michael, Theresa and Madison pose on the front lawn.

Here are "The girls" striking a pose . My friend Sharon is the one on the left.

And here is my sweet Miss Madison. AT 12 1/2 years old, and having very bad arthritis, we are thankful to still have her at our family feasts....

The dinner went well as evidenced by the huge mess in my kitchen.

Many thanks for stopping by.

Tomorrow I will be back with my first Christmas project.

Lets Get Stuffed!!!

Another Thanksgiving card made with a digital image rather than traditional rubber or acrylic. I am having fun with these stamps, now that I know how to use them, but I would never give up the chance to actually "stamp" my images. There is something I just enjoy so much about getting ink on my hands~ haha.
But with that said, this little butterball was too cute to pass up. He looks like how most of us feel after a delicious Thanksgiving dinner. He was printed onto white cardstock and colored with Copics (shown below).
Yellow is from Stampin Up, patterned paper is from a Debbie Mumm collection I purchaesd last season at Joannes.
Ribbon is a pumpkin colored satin 5/8 ", wrapped around card base, then I tied a bow separately and adhered that to the card. Scallop is a Martha Stewart punch. Sentiment is from the same digi collection as the turkey.

Many thanks for stopping by...

Pure Innocence

I saw this little girl and fell in love!!!! She is a digital stamp, and thanks to my dear friend Sharon, I was able to play with her and make some adorable Thanksgiving cards. I do not have Microsoft Word, and since most of the tutorials for digis are written for that, I had a terrible time trying to resize these stamps. Wait- not terrible- IMPOSSIBLE!!!!!-. No matter how hard I tried, I could'nt do it. I spent countless hours giving it my all, till my friend came to my aid. With her simple emailed tutorial for Word Perfect. it was a breeze. For that I will be eternally grateful!
Since I dont show or name the colors of Copic Markers that I use, I thought I would try to starting with this post. I already see that I left out her skin color, which was EOOO. My son Michael was gracious enough to be my hand model. Its good practice for his acting career! HAHA Well her is a peek of her. She was purchased from a store on ETSY called Pure Innocence. I believe she was only $2.00!!! And I got her right away! Thats a win win for me~

I made a total of 4 cards with her- all a bit different. I will show you 2 of them.

Cardstock is Stampin Up, amd Designer paper is from a pack by Debbie Mumm that I purchased last year at Joannes. She is stamped on PTI Select White cardstock.

Ribbon is from Michaels, and punches are Martha Stewart of course!

Spica pens are used for her hair barette and her green heart on her dress. I remember when I was little, my Mom often put my hair in one of those barettes.
The sentiment was computer generated, another thing I almost never do....

Dont you just want to give her a big hug??

Many thanks for stopping by... hope all your holiday preparations are going well.

ON THE SUBJECT OF HEROS...

While we are speaking of heros~ I have made a card for another hero in our family.
That hero is my Dad.
A WW2 Veteran, a Purple Heart recipient, and most important, a United States Marine~
This is a card I made for him for Veterans Day Yesterday. A while ago I had purchased a K and Co. scrap pack that was USMC themed, so this card came together rather quickly, as I used only the products in the pack.
A few sheets of cardstock, some die cuts, and his card is ready. Happy Veterans Day DAD!
The Marines should be proud to call you one of their own.....

MICHAEL THE HERO

Yesterday began like any other day. Little did I know that by noon I would have dialed 911 for the first time in my life. It seems like a tiny ember from a scrap wood fire was smouldering under a metal fire pit since Sunday morning, and yesterday, 2 days later, it had gotten enough life in it to start a fire.
My house is next to the woods on the driveway side and when my son Michael went out to put some trash in the bin, he saw this large area, about 20 by 25 feet on fire with flames a foot high. He quickly ran into action, getting our garden hose and a 5 gallon spackle bucket to try and put out the blaze.
I had seen some smoke from my art studio window about a hour before, it looked to be at the end of my driveway and across the street. I did go into the kitchen and look at all the windows, into the backyard, and across the street. Unfortunately this area of the property was out of view.
Since my sub division is out of city limits, we are allowed to burn yard debris, I mistakenly assumed that a neighbor was doing just that. This time of year, it is not unusual for that to happen. I then went upstairs to take a shower.
It was about 15 minutes later when Michael came up to my bathroom and asked for my help. All that time he had been fighting the fire by himself, managing to stay calm the whole time.
We ran outside and I helped with the hose , while he used the bucket. He had managed to get about 85-90% of the fire under control. I ran back inside to call 911 and within a short time, they had sent out fire dept.
These guys are really good, and they are all volunteers. They commended Michael on what a good job he had done before they got there.

After it was over, I said a prayer of thanks that all was ok. It could have been so much worse. You begin to think of all the what ifs???.

what if-

the fire would have started during the nite?

if Michael hadnt gone outside to throw away the trash?

we had gone to the gym like we were planning to do earlier in the day?

we would have been out for the day?

or if our 12 1/2 year old Lab, Madison was outside instead of in the house. This is where she lays when she is outside, and with her failing eyesight, hearing, and all other faculties, would she have had the sense to get out of there?
In the end~ all ended well.

Thank you God~

Thank you Michael~ our hero!!!