Happy Saturday everyone! Well, we finally got some snow this week. It always cracks me up when we get snow. Yesterday I went out to lunch with a friend and on the way out the door someone told me to be careful. When I got outside, there was hardly any snow left on the ground. I guess growing up in the snow belt, I have a much different perspective on when the snow has gotten to a point where I even start to worry about road conditions.
Well, this week I was suddenly hit with the Valentines creative mojo. I made several cards to send out to various different people and also made about six cards for the Cards from the Heart Card Drive hosted at the Winter Wonderland blog. I wanted to make more but the cards were asked not to be gender and age specific. I actually ended up going through my scrap stash and looked for colors and patterns that could fall in to those categories. Below is what I came up with.
The majority of the papers were scraps from various different paper lines. All of the card bases were made from Georgia Pacific 110 lb white cardstock. I used stamps from an Inkadinkado Valentine stamp pack and pink Martha Stewart bakers twine. I kept the cards pretty basic because they also request that there be nothing that one of the patients that receive the cards can pull off and try to swallow. I wasn't able to get them in the mail, but I hope to get them out on Monday so that they get to their destination before the January 31 deadline! I would definitely say that I am more pleased with the results of some rather than others, but I hope that the recipients like them!
Hello all on this frigid Wednesday...I think that the weather got confused...4 days ago I was walking around without a coat on and now its 20 degrees outside?!?!?!?!?! Thankfully, I only had to go out for a quick appointment today and was able to come home and hide under my nice flannel blanket! lol.
Today I have four valentines cards that I put together. Valentines day is not a holiday that I have a great deal of supplies for, but I do have a few stamp sets and last week I had to make a run in to Michaels and several of their Memento Dew Drop four pack ink sets were on sale for 5 dollars each, so I grabbed the set that had some pinks, a gray and another black ink. Side note - I am loving memento inks, now that I have finally started breaking down and adding them to my craft arsenal - they are SOOOOOOO much better than any other brand I've tried so far and I really like the dew drop sizes. It makes it so much easier to use multiple colors for using multiple small stamps on one acryllic stamp block (as I did for these cards.)
Anyhow, since I don't have any valentines papers and our printer was out of ink when I put these together, I simply grabbed a wedding stamp set I had from Hampton Arts and pulled all of the hearts off. I placed three of them together on one block stamp and then used my "Angel Pink," "Rose Bud" and "London Fog" memento inks to ink the different stamps. I then stamped the hearts at a diagonal up the page over and over and over again until my entire sheet of white cardstock was filled - another side note - Georgia Pacific's standard white is working great for stamps, and only 6 dollars for 150 sheets of 81/2 x 11 cardstock. After I finished stamping the hearts, I used two inkadinkado stamp sets, one for valentines day and another a general sentiments set, to stamp the images and sentiment for 4 cards. I used several spellbinders dies to cut out the images, sentiments, and coordinating color cardstock and then cut down the handmade patterned paper to size and matted it with additional colored cardstock. I also used some ribbon from my stash and some pearls from Q&Co. Now I just have to get them packaged up and in the mail!
Good morning all! Well, yesterday evening I got confirmation that my cousin had received her package, so I can now show you the Christmas chipboard album that I made for her! Unlike the one I made for my grandmother, I left this album empty of pictures so that she could fill it up with her own pictures from their family Christmas.
Supplies:
Paper: I used papers from several different paper lines - the dollar aisle at Target, Jillibean Soup, a Winter Wonderland 12x12 paper pad (incidently, my cousin gave me that paper pack!), plain Recollections cardstock, some loose lead Recollections 12x12 papers, a Christmas My Minds Eye 6x6 paper pad, a 4x4 paper pad from Hobby Lobby and several scraps that I had leftover from last year's Christmas cards.
Embellishments: I also used the opportunity to play with some of Recollections new decorative tape that I scored 5 packs of for 1.99 (with 2 rolls in each - packs that are regularly 4.99 - I couldn't pass up the deal so I stocked up!) Gems and pearls from Q&Co, silver foil snowflake stickers, Christmas colored twine (found in TJMaxx for 50% of regular price in other stores) some foam mounted embellishments recycled from a Christmas card we received this year and some sparkly silver ribbon leftover from another Christmas project.
Other Supplies: EKSuccess Evergreen Tree landscape border punch, several Spellbinders dies, Inkadinkado mini ink dots, Tonic mini snowflake paper punch and a birch tree embossing folder from a company I had never heard of before, but I had wanted one forever and I finally found one for super cheap on black Friday - I have only used it once for this project, but so far I likey. :) I think that pretty much covers the supplies I used. If anyone is interested in the specific lines of paper that I used or the specific Spellbinders dies, let me know and I will go dig my papers out of my Christmas box and go find the die names. :)
Without further ado, some pictures!
Hello all. I hope that you had a blessed Christmas and New Year. Like most of you, I took a break from blogging over the holidays. There was so much going on and while I was working on many craft projects (one I will show you today, one I can't show you until the intended recipient get their package), I just didn't have time for everything and editing pictures and posting to the blog just had to take a back seat to everything else.
But now the holidays are over and I am confined to the couch because I did something to my neck and shoulders so I cant move around very much... Not the greatest of things to happen, but hey, it gave me a perfect excuse to work on getting some pictures edited and some blog entries posted!
This Christmas, I wanted to make as many Christmas gifts as I could, but to be honest, my husband and I were away for the first week in December on a missions trip to the Dominican Republic, and then I spent an entire week making all of my Christmas cards so I got a bit of a late start to the gifts. In the end I made a gift for my sister (the mixed media canvas I shared earlier), a gift for my grandma, some small gifts for my little 4 year old cousin, and a gift for another cousin and I gave something to my mom that I had made quite a while ago - just a small part of her overall gift. Today I am going to be sharing what I made for my grandmother.
My grandma loves handmade gifts and she loves photos of her family, so I thought I would try my hand at making my first chipboard mini-album. This was a holiday for branching out of my comfort zone!
Anyhow, I used a number of Cosmo Cricket papers that I received from my sweet cousin Christy, over at Christy Gets Crafty, as well as some lace and burlap flowers, some recollections brads and gems, as well as Q&Co gems and pearls. Other papers I used came from a blog giveaway - I don't know where they came from. I also used some paper doilies from the dollar store and paper flowers from Michaels - Calypson Tin flowers and Recollections flowers.
I would definitely make one of these again - however, I would NOT ever use scalloped edges again! They are a pain in the neck. I think I spent more time cutting down patterned paper than any other part of the album... but otherwise I enjoyed making the album - my apologies to my relatives for Facebook-stalking you to find enough pictures to go in the album. :)
