Happy Holidays!

Well, I don't know about you but I have been crazy busy and I am EXHAUSTED already! The house has been a whirlwind of activity, including crafts, candy making, gift wrapping, chasing a toddler and all sorts of other things. Boy am I glad that I took some time off after the holidays so I can start to recover.

I wanted to share with you some photos of ornaments I made for the kids on my Mom's side of the family. These were made from cork stars I found at JoAnns 4/$1. That was such a deal I tell you I was thrilled with a capital 'T'!



So, here are the details of how I made these ornaments in case you're interested. First, since these star shapes had magnets on the back I peeled them off. Then I traced the stars onto some Basic Grey paper and cut out 2 for each ornament (front and back). I glued the paper to the star using Perfect Paper Adhesive (Matte finish). I seriously LOVE this stuff! It is way easier to work with IMHO than Mod Podge and it's not as sticky, I don't get bubbles and it dries very fast. I found mine at Hobby Lobby a while ago. I hope they still carry it because I used a lot of it on these ornaments.

I let the ornaments dry over night because the cork soaked up a lot of the glue and I wanted to be sure the paper was completely dry before I went on to the rest. When it was dry I sanded the paper along the edges of each point to make sure it was flush with the edge. I added some distress inks in Antique Linen to give it a vintage feel. For the girls' ornaments I used Elzybells Christmas images because they were just the right size and I had a lot of them sitting around that I received as Wish RAKs. Perfect time saver which was just what I needed since i had to make no less than 20 of these babies! I colored the images using Copic Markers and used a Spica glitter pen in some places for more sparkle.

I cut out the images using my Nestabilities and then also cut out small circles for the back and stamped a border using my small round Just Rite harmony stamper. Using the Paper Trey Ink Simple Alphabet I stamped each girl's name and the year. After I adhered the images and the name pieces to the star I gave each side a top coat of Perfect Paper Adhesive and let it dry.

To finish I used my Crop-a-dile Big Bite to punch a hole through the ornament and threaded in some pretty ribbon, outlined the star with Stickles and added some glass beads to the points of the star. I have to tell you about these glass beads I found too. I was so super excited! Dew Drops are all the rage and they are cute but $4.99 for a little bottle is pretty steep. One day I was shopping at a floral design store that I love and found these enormous bags of glass beads. Stopped me dead in my tracks. They look just like dew drops but they are called Diamond Drops. They have to be the same thing. They're the same size and they're flat on the back. I snapped up a bag of clear and red for $15.99 each. It seems expensive but believe me there's more than 3 bottles worth of dew drops in each bag. I also found coppery brown ones recently. I haven't tried searching for an on-line source but surely there's one somewhere.

Here are a couple more samples of the girls' ornaments.






For the boys I used a reindeer image from AMuse but since I did't finish these until 3 a.m. on Friday night and we went to my family get-together and I gave them out on Saturday, there are no pictures of the boys' ornaments. :( I may go ahead and make one more that I can post as a sample. For the boys I used hemp instead of ribbon and added some buttons over the hole where the hemp is threaded through. And no glitter for the boys. ;)

I hope you enjoyed my samples, I'd love to hear your comments and to know if anyone is reading my blog. :) I'm not a prolific blogger but I wanted someplace to start sharing more in addition to my Splitcoast gallery.

Happy Holidays!

Happy Thanksgiving! I know it's a holiday because I woke up at 6:15 a.m. and couldn't go back to sleep. If this was a work day I would have pulled my down comforter back up around my ears and gone right back to sleep. LOL!

I've already popped the Sweet Potato Casserole in the oven and I think we're all set to go to my Mom's later this morning. My DH and I did all of our baking last night. We're taking deviled eggs, the casserole, 7-layer cookie bars and a "mystery" pecan pie. The mystery is that under the top layer of pecans there is a cheesecake like middle. Mmmmmm!

No new card creations today but I will share with you some cards I made a while back using the 3D stamping technique I first saw on SCS. You stamp an image in white craft ink (in my case I used Versa Magic Cloud White because I don't have craft). Then you ink up the same image again in an ink to match your cardstock and using a stamp positioner just slightly move your second image off center and stamp. It leaves a nice embossed look.

I hope you all have a safe and happy Thanksgiving!

(Stamps: SU!, Fred Mullett and Cloud 9 Designs; Ink Chestnut Roan VersaMagic and Cloud White and Distress ink Anticque Linen)

(Stamps: Art Impressions, Paper Trey Ink; Ink:- Versamagic Cloud White and Chalk Ink Amber Clay; Encore Gold and Gold EP. Faux stitching with a white gel pen)

Christmas cards and more cards

I have so many things to do for the holidays I don't even know where to start! I make cards to send out and I want to make monogram note cards for co-workers, ornaments for the kids in my family, coaster calendars, and so much more! I need a priority list to keep me on track that's for sure. For my first post to my new blog I thought I would share a few Christmas cards I've made in the last couple of weeks. The first card is one I made using Lauren Meader's Wise Owl set from Paper Trey Ink. I went way too long before inking up these adorable owls! While I was tooling around in my craft room at 2 a.m. last Saturday I thought to myself "Hey, I wonder if this Denami santa hat will fit on the owl?" and it did! It was a perfect fit! The "who" was made with Karen Foster snap stamps and the branch is by Outlines. Cardstock is PTI Kraft, SU! Chocolate Chip and Real Red. I enjoyed this so much that I made 7 more cards, some of them also including a Denami stocking hanging from the branch. It felt great to get that many cards out in one sitting. Now I have only about 30 more to go. LOL!


The next card was for the sketch challenge on SCS. I really enjoyed this sketch and see myself using it several more times as I work on my holiday cards. The main image is from one of the new Inkadinkadoo clear sets. I stamped the reindeer in Versamark with Espresso ink and then embossed with clear ep. I went back and colored in the flowers using Copic markers and embossed in clear again and then added some small stickers to embellish a few flowers. The sky was sponged on using a combination of Antique Linen, Baby Blue, Buckaroo Blue and Night of Navy. The paper is SU!'s new Ski Slope paper. I added some snowflakes with a white gel pen and then embossed the Noel sentiment from PTI in gold and framed it with some hardware. The reindeer panel is mounted on Chocolate Chip cs which is edged with a metallic gold pen.

This blogging is hard! Please let me know if you'd like more or less details about my cards. I think I'll save some other cards to post later this week. This is a good start to my first real attempt at blogging, don't you think?

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!