Gold Challenge

Jingle Belles has another wonderful challenge for us this week. It was actually suggested by Lisa Hausmann of Recklinghausen Musings. Lisa suggested that we use GOLD on our card. I just happen to have a few gold embellishments in my stash. For my card, I adhered gold clips to gold circles. I added a gold top and a gold string to create ornaments.  I also added gold gem ribbon and a gold border. I have a number of different ideas buzzing around my head so I'm sure to be back with another card!

Let it Snow

Just a quick post to share my second card for the Jingle Belles non-Christmas card challenge. For the current challenge we are encouraged to create a card for our friends who do not celebrate Christmas. We can create a New Year's, Kwanzaa, Hanukkah, Solstice, or a general winter themed card. I decided to use the general winter theme because I am more likely to actually send it to a friend.

I used blue and white for the card because it makes me think of winter. However, photographing the dark blue was a challenge. After several attempts, I decided that this was the best it was going to get. The dark blue still looks black, but it's really a deep, dark blue.

Warm Wishes

I'm  playing along with the current challenge over at  Jingle Belles. The challenge is to create a non-Christmas card for our friends who do not celebrate Christmas. I decided to create a winter themed card by using a snowman as the focal point. Since the individual I have in mind for this card, loves bright colors, I used a rather bright colored scarf and top hat.  I think she'll like it!

2 More for the August Sketch

It's hard to believe that the end of August is just around the corner. However, there is still time to use Kathy's "Bouncing Circles" sketch. We hope you will play along with us and post your creation over at The Sketch File. The sketch will be available until the end of the month. I found the sketch quite inspiring so I am posting two cards. Kathy has also posted an additional version of the sketch, just in case you don't find inspiration with this one. So what are you waiting for?  Hop on over and post your creation.  I am looking forward to seeing what you create.  

Gearing Up For....

This is my second card for our August sketch challenge at The Sketch File. I am just getting around to posting it because I returned from vacation yesterday.  The card is based on this sketch from Kathy:

I kept my card very simple. I began by embossing gears on black cardstock, inked over the top with white ink, then fussy cut them. I adhered some of the gears with dimensional adhesive and layered them on printed cardstock.  I printed the sentiment with my computer and added brads to each side of the sentiment strip. 

The sketch will be up for the entire month of August, so we hope you'll show us what you do with it. If this version doesn't inspire you, Kathy also posted a second version at The Sketch File. Hope you'll play along with us.  

Go Wild...On Your Birthday

I recently purchased some Die Versions wild animal dies and just had to sit down and give them a little workout. I purchased the dies to use at work, but knew I would be able to create a few cards with them as well. I simply ran them through my die cutting machine and adhered the images to a dry embossed piece of cardstock (a leopard pattern).  I added a tag and twine for the sentiment: Go Wild...On Your Birthday.

August Sketch File Sketch

I put this card together for our August sketch challenge. It's based on the sketch Kathy created for all of us over at The Sketch File. She calls it "Bouncing Balls".  It's a super fun sketch. We'll be sharing other design team cards throughout the month. Each Tuesday, we'll post a few new cards to inspire you to play along.  I hope to see you there.

My card came together very quickly because I used my computer to print all the text. It was just a matter of layering the text on cardstock and patterned paper.

I'm sure you can be more creative then I have been! Please join us and let us see how Kathy's "Bouncing Balls" sketch inspired you. 

Red, White & Blue

Just a quick post today! I'm very busy creating a mini baby album, but I am taking a break to post this card. I can't believe I'm just getting around to posting it! I created it based on our July sketch at the The Sketch File and since it's already the end of July, I figured it was time to post it. As you might have guessed, I was also inspired by the July 4th celebrations here in the US. I ended up using red, white and blue as well as stars.

Please come on over to The Sketch File and post a card or two based on our sketch.

Summer Streamers

We're still playing with STREAMERS at The Sketch File! This is the second week for our Summer Streamers July sketch. Kathy has created a wonderful sketch for all of us to play with so I hope you'll join us for this sketch challenge.

I love the bunch of flowers in the corner of Kathy's sketch, but rather that re-create the lovely sketch just as it appears, I decided to use a cluster of butterflies. They were sitting on my desk top begging to be used, so instead of finding a place to store them, I used them as a focal point on my card. I also replaced the streamers with small dots to represent the butterflies flight pattern.

Kathy has also posted an alternate view of the sketch just in case this one doesn't appeal to you. Both sketches will be up all month. I am looking forward to seeing your creation.

Warm Winter Wishes

I'm back with a second card for the "two-fer" challenge over at Jingle Belles. Here are the details that I shared in my previous post:

The most recent challenge at Jingle Belles has us looking no further than our own craft rooms! We've all gathered quite a stash of crafting goodies (at least I know I have a room full), so the challenge is to use something that is at least a year old to create a Christmas card. Jingle Belles is teaming up with Shopping Our Stash or SOS where the challenges always invite us to focus on supplies and materials we already have on hand. These are always great challenges for me because as I paw through my stash I often discover something I have totally forgotten. With this challenge we also get to link our card up with BOTH Jingle Belles and Shopping Our Stash (thus the "two-fer" challenge)! 

My second card had me reaching for some very old patterned paper. I can't remember when I bought it, but it was many years ago. I think I bought it from Oriental Trading. This particular patterned paper has mittens and hats printed all over it and there are lovely white snowballs as well. I also dug out my Shape Boss....remember those? Mine was a gift from my husband years and years ago. I remembered that the Shape Boss had a mitten image, so I used it to dry emboss the mitten shapes onto green cardstock and white cardstock. Then I fussy cut around the green mittens and adhered the hearts and cuffs from the white embossed mittens.  I attached the mittens to a piece of purple cardstock, inked in some snowballs with a gel pen and matted this on white cardstock. Next I adhered this to the patterned paper and trimmed around the patterned paper with a pair of decorative scissors. These scissors were among the first tools I purchased when I first started paper crafting. (I really should be using them more frequently!) The inside sentiment reads "Sending Warm Winter Wishes".

Thanks for the challenge 

Jingle Belles and Shopping Our Stash!

Let it Snow

The most recent challenge at Jingle Belles has us looking no further than our own craft rooms! We've all gathered quite a stash of crafting goodies (at least I know I have a room full), so the challenge is to use something that is at least a year old to create a Christmas card. Jingle Belles is teaming up with Shopping Our Stash or SOS where the challenges always invite us to focus on supplies and materials we already have on hand. These are always great challenges for me because as I paw through my stash I often discover something I have totally forgotten. With this challenge we also get to link our card up with BOTH Jingle Belles and Shopping Our Stash!

For my card, I found a lovely little stamp from Stampin' Up. I had purchased it at an incredible craft supply garage sale about two years ago. Sadly, I don't think I have ever used it. I used Memento white ink to stamp the image onto a square scrap piece of dark blue cardstock. The cardstock is also old. It was given to me many years ago and it's from a company called Fox River Company. After I stamped the image, I used an Xacto knife to cut around the image, then trimmed a bit more from the frame to leave a bit of white space between the image and the frame. I adhered the snowy image to a white cardbase that I dry embossed with snowflakes. Inside the card the sentiment reads "Let it Snow".

Thanks for stopping by! I'm off to create a second card for this challenge.

July Sketch

Happy JULY! I can't believe how quickly the summer is passing by! I wish things would slow down a bit!

Are you ready for the July sketch. Our DT at the The Sketch File has some very inspiring cards for you! I hope you'll take a peek. Kathy has created a wonderful sketch which at first had me stumped. Then as I looked at it, I saw a waterfall, so I created this waterfall card.

What do you see when you look at the sketch? I hope you will be inspired by the sketch, then link up a card or two with us.

Late Post

I am running a bit behind with this post. I had intended on posting last Tuesday, but forgot all about it....ooops! Oh well, I suppose it's better late than never. Both of these cards are for one of our challenges at The Sketch File. Kathy created the sketch and we're hoping to see how you are inspired to use it. Please visit The Sketch File to see other cards created by the DT and post your creation with us!

July 4th~Independence Day Celebration

July 4th is right around the corner. My community celebrates Independence Day with a day long event. There will be a children's parade in the morning, followed by live music, entertainment, games and various children's activities at a local park. We'll end the day with fireworks if the fire department gives the okay. In the past, there have been some years when it was too dry, with drought conditions, to risk potential fires. This year there will be about 90 booths at the park. I will be working a booth for the first time this year.  I work in a dental office and one of my co-workers and I will be representing our office at the celebration. We will have a booth with games for children. I've created two of the games. One is a ring toss with handmade toothbrushes and a toothpaste tube.  The toothpaste tube is about two feet tall and easily made with a posterboard, paper plate and cardstock. I used the cardstock for the cap...I just scored it, accordion folded it and rolled it into a cap shape.  I stuffed the tube with an old bed pillow, leaving room on each side so I can slip it over two stakes that I pound into the ground. The toothbrushes are made from pool noodles that I cut in half and carved with a bread knife. The brushes are floor brushes from the $$$ store. Because the noodles have a hole running up the center of them, they also slip over stakes pounded into the ground. I made the rings from oxygen tubing. I slipped a wire inside each piece of tubing, shaped them into a circle and used electrical tape to wrap them. To add a decorative touch I used yarn and crocheted a looped stitch around each. The yarn will also make the rings easier to grasp.

I will also be selling some handmade items to benefit "The Race for the Cure". (One of my co-workers has breast cancer.) Two of the items I am selling are quilted wall hangings. I haven't appliqued a quilt in a long time and decided to give it a try. When I was looking for ideas, I ran across two similar quilts on the internet (I don't remember the source). I created my own version of the quilts that I saw. Here they are:

Thanks for stopping by my blog!

To all my American followers....

HAPPY 4TH OF JULY!

Gift Bag Tag for Baby

I made this tag to attach to a gift bag for a baby shower. It isn't a great photo because the colors are slightly off, but it's too late to retake the photo as I've already given the gift to the expectant mother. I tore cardstock to create the bear, added chalked rosy cheeks and inner ears, then used a marker and white gel pen to create the facial features.  At first I had just the bear sitting on the card, but felt it needed a bit more so I added the yellow blanket. I dry embossed the yellow cardstock to give it a bit of texture,  then carefully folded it so the folds would look like a blanket.

The Bells of Saint Mary's

Last night I had the pleasure of revisiting a few scenes from an old movie called "The Bells of St. Mary's". It's a story about a priest (Bing Crosby) and a nun (Ingrid Bergman) who put aside their differences to save an inner city school on the verge of being condemned . As I was watching scene after scene, my mind was flooded with wonderful memories of my mother and I enjoying this movie together. I guess you could say it was a tradition for us. We always looked forward to watching it together.  I watched scenes from the movie in order to get inspiration for the Christmas Story/Movie card challenge at Jingle Belles.  I love this prompt!!!  It was suggested by Irene from A Serendipitous Retirement. Although the movie isn't a traditional Christmas movie, I remember it being broadcast around Christmas time and enjoying the wonderful songs sung by Bing Crosby. There is a scene where the children perform a Christmas play and also one where Bing and the children sing "Adeste Fidelis", which may be one of the reasons why it was broadcast in December.  The inspiration for the card came from the scene where Bing Crosby and the nuns sing "The Bells of St Mary's". I must have listened to it a half a dozen times before I sat down to create my card. Bing's voice is just so incredible!  Anyway, I pulled out my acrylic paints and hand painted the bells onto a piece of black cardstock then fussy cut around  them and mounted them with dimensional adhesive onto black cardstock. I decided to use a black background and a white cardbase because the film was created in 1945 and was broadcast in black and white and of course the priest and nuns wore black and white. The red ribbon and green bows add the much needed color.

Thanks for stopping by! Have a great day!

Believe

In my previous job at a public library, I worked in the Children's Department as a storytime reader/planner. I sooooo enjoyed reading wonderful books to children as well as planning crafts, songs and fingerplays based on the theme of the books. One of my favorite themes to plan was Christmas. There was always an infinite number of wonderful holiday books to read but I always struggled to narrow the choice down to just three or four books. Earlier today I found myself browsing through my personal collection of Christmas books.  Why am I doing this in June? It's because the challenge at Jingle Belles is to use a Christmas story or movie as a prompt for creating a Christmas card. Isn't that just an extraordinary prompt?

For once, it didn't take me long to pull a Christmas book off the shelf and once I leafed through the pages I was in craft mode! I used a die to cut the bell and used punched boughs to frame it.  This isn't the card I had intended to make....more about this later.

So have you guessed which book I used as a prompt?  I chose a book by one of my favorite children's authors.  The book is also a very popular movie. The book that prompted my card is The Polar Express by Chris Van Allsburg?  Chris Van Allsburg just happens to be on my list of favorite children's authors and the movie features the voice of Tom Hanks (a favorite actor...I don't think I've ever seen a movie that starred Tom Hanks that I didn't like!)  Back to the card...

As I mentioned before, the card I had in mind isn't the one I created. As I began creating my card, my initial thought was to create a card that incorporated both the jingle bell and a ticket with the word "Believe" punched from cardstock to represent the ticket Tom Hanks punches and hands to the "Hero Boy". I made the ticket, carefully punching the letters to spell out the word "believe" but in the end it was somewhat difficult to read and it was too big to use along with the bell. So I scratched that idea and just included the strip with the word "believe" printed on small circles.

It's time to head back to the bookshelf to see what other Christmas Stories will inspire a card.  A special thanks to Irene from A Serendipitous Retirement who suggested this fabulous prompt for a Jingle Belles challenge!!!!

Holly Christmas Card

Hmmmm....I seem to be in a crafting mood today. This is the third card I've created today and the night is still young! I guess I have been inspired by the RED & Green Christmas card challenge at Jingle Belles. If you've been following my blog, you know that I've already posted two other cards for the same challenge. I couldn't resist creating just one more.  To create this card, I punched holly leaves, added detail with glitter and then mounted them on a piece of white cardstock. Before adding the holly, I used my sewing machine to stitch the white cardstock to the red cardstock. I printed the red and green greeting on my computer and layered it on red and green cardstock.  I wish I had printed it directly onto the white stitched cardstock, but I didn't think of that until I had already stitched the layers together.

NOEL: RED & GREEN

This is my second Christmas card with a RED & GREEN theme. It's the current prompt at Jingle Belles.  

I kept this card pretty simple by hand cutting the word NOEL from red and green cardstock and adhering the letters to red and green squares. I also added tiny dots of red and green glitter and a silver foil snowflake to each square. (Sorry about the quality of the photo. My camera doesn't like the combo of white and metallic.)

RED & GREEN

Lauren & Steph, the clever and crafty duo over at Jingle Belles, have us thinking about the traditional colors of Christmas: RED & GREEN. It's the perfect prompt for a Christmas card challenge.  A quick search through my Christmas paper stash revealed this red, green and white patterned paper with circles. I used it as the starting point for my card and continued the circle and red and green themes by punching several white circles, adding handcut lettering,  red and green polka dots and a glittered green or red trim.

Supplies: Cardbase: Recollections, Patterned Paper: Oriental Trading(???), EK Success Circle Punches, Cardstock: Recollection, Scotch Quick Dry Adhesive.