Bethlehem

It's time for another challenge at Christmas 24. We have a color challenge waiting for you.

How does blue and gold sound to you?!!? Sounded great to me. It gave me the opportunity to pull out a stamp that hasn't been shown any inky love. I picked up Bethlehem from Impression Impression at the Allentown rubber stamp convention. Because of that nasty virus, there was no convention. I have never missed one in the last 20 some years. Here's to next year!

You have two weeks to play along with our blue and gold challenge at Christmas 24!!

Yay USA!!

Happy birthday America!! Yay USA!!

Wishing all of you a wonderful 4th of July filled with parades, barbeques, and fireworks!!

Thankful

Sundays seem to be challenge day for me. I wake up and sit in front of the puter and go through all the challenges and see what inspires me and then I go to work. I am in a Thanksgiving mood and have been making quite a few to send out to those peeps I am thankful to have in my life.

This card was inspired by several challenges. First over at the Male Room (  a new challenge site I discovered and really like) we are asked to use wood in our design. Well, I used real wood on my card. The wheat sheafs (from Impression Obsession) were die cut from a thin piece of balsa wood and lightly sponged with khaki brown ink. What is more male than using real wood huh?

TIME OUT challenges has a photo inspiration and while it is somewhat Christmasy I thought the cream sofa and the wood crate coffee table was the perfect inspiration for my card. 

The Pink Elephant challenge also has a photo inspiration, I  hope you can see the elements that inspired me.

Lastly I am going out on a limb, but Shopping our Stash has a word theme of leaves. I know this is not a conventional leaf card, but those wheat sheafs are full of wheat leaves. I pulled out the balsa wood and the Tim Holtz Thanksgiving folder from the stash, dusted them off and used them for my card. Hey if you folks over at SOS think I am stretching it, I totally understand.

So wow weeee, one card, four challenges!

Thanks for taking a look and if you like what you see leave a comment- and hey if you don't like it don't leave a comment- I am very sensitive! :)

Hang in there

This week at Just Us Girls, Sharyn is hosting a fun photo challenge. It is just full of summer fun and inspiration. I am finally getting the hang of these photo challenges. Its not about trying to replicate the entire photograph but but being inspired by parts of it. I was drawn to the pennants that were hanging. I used an oldie but goodie stamp from Impression Obsession- "telephone lines" and colored them in the same colors as the flags. The sentiment was CASEd from the "summer BBQ". Still in my CAS aesthetic but totally inspired from the photo.

I hope you will join us this week at JUGS and show us how the photo inspired you! Happy creating!

Sweet substitutions

I am going out on a limb and going to confess something here. I hope I don't offend our hostess this week at Just Us Girls, Sharyn. This week's wild card challenge is that old favorite the shaving cream technique. 

But it isn't my favorite. I am not sure why, just not crazy about it- maybe it is just to messy for my CAS brain now. Anyway, I almost thought about coming up with some excuse as to why I couldn't contribute this week. But that isn't fair, a challenge is a challenge right??!!? I decided I would make my card, but of course I had no shaving cream (the husband uses shaving soap). I wasn't going to buy it for one challenge. I put my thinking cap on and I came up with a sweet substitution!

Yes- you are seeing what you think you are seeing! Whipped cream- which I always have a few cans in the fridge! I thought why won't that work the same.

It worked just fine as you can see. Now if only the ants don't find the card!!

Tweet-tweet

Can I tell you how much I am loving the watercolor class with Jennifer Maguire and Kristina Werner. I have become obsessed with watercolors. This particular  card is my favorite so far. I used distress markers on this adorable bird stamp from Impression Obsession that my best buddy Pat gave me. After I colored the stamp with the markers, I heavily spritzed it and stamped it and just blended the color out with a waterbrush. I thought about a sentiment on the front of the card, but I just loved the bird by itself.

I made this card for the color challenge at House of Cards for the CAS category. I mighta cheated with the gray tones, hopefully my fearless leader Mynn won't notice! :)

I hope you will join us this week at House of Cards and show us what you can do with the color challenge this week for either CAS or classic/elegant cards

Let it snow!

Last week we had our first hint of snow, snow showers on the way to work. Areas north of me received a dusting and yet today it was 60 degrees! I say enough is enough! I am ready for winter and I am ready for it to snow! Just in time for this week's sketch challenge at Try Stampin' on Tuesday.

I had fun with this challenge. I turned the sketch on its side, just so my sentiment would fit!! 

The background turned out gorgeous- looks like scrap book paper huh? It is a big background stamp from Impression Obsession-Snowflakes. I love this stamp and it inks so well. I won a challenge at Just Add Ink using it with red ink last year. 

Let this great sketch kick start your creativity and join us at TSOT this week!

Peace on Earth

Sorry for not being a good blogger, between my new class, work and trying to make over a 100 holiday cards I haven't had time to blog. My class, work and cards are done till after Christmas so I have no more excuses. I will try to make up for lost time this week.

I saw a card somewhat similar to this and knew the tree die from Impression Obsession would be perfect. The peace is from the Papertreyink wondeful holiday words. I have used them over and over again this season. Click on the picture and you will see the trees are cut from glitter paper.

Here are 2 other versions of the same card.

I hope you are all able to relax and enjoy the holidays.

Peace,

Dreaming of Mittens

How many of you are like me and dream about cards and their creation? I dreamed this card last night. needless to say, I had to go right into my studio to make it, before I forgot the idea.

I thought about some nontraditional colors, but decided I really wanted to stick with the obvious. I love how the mittens dangle from holiday. 

I stamped the 6x6 background Nordic Stripes from Impression Obsession with distress ink, mown lawn. I die cut the holiday from the Wonderful Word set from Papertreyink. I stamped the mittens from StampinUp's make a mitten set with mown lawn and distress ink, festive berries. The stamp set has a matching punch to the mittens. The rest I think you crafty stampers can figure out. If you have any questions please let me know.

The holiday crafting season starts for real November 1, so I will be very busy over the next few months.

 

There's that red snowflake again....

I guess there reaches a point when you begin to beat a dead horse huh? You all probably are thinking that about this red snowflake background. I promise this will be the last card, at least for awhile, but I had to use the piece I cut from yesterdays card. Didn't I? I mean we crafters cannot throw anything away!

I made this card with a white background and just didn't like it and almost chucked the whole thing. Then I happen to notice the chevron background stamp in the front pile of my background stamps and thought hmmmmmm.....

The rest is history and just because I noticed that Just Add it has a chevron challenge, I decided to enter this. I hope they forgive me using that d*****mn red snowflake stamp again!!! Please forgive me guys!

So until next time, I hope you all aren't seeing red over my red.

Red Christmas

Every year I find a color combo that I really like for my holiday cards. This year it is red and white. I especially like the idea of red snowflakes for some reason. I had to use my Impression Obsession snow flake background again and I had to do it in red again. 

I am submitting this card to the "Over the Edge" challenge at Cas-ual Friday.  An element needed to hang over the edge. Out came the PTI set- in the meadow with my sleigh running right off the edge.

I am also submitting it to the CASE study challenge, where an adorable card by Julia Stainton was the inspiration.

Stay with me for the next few months and see how many ways I can use this great background stamp!

Holiday Card Workshop Card with updates.

Yesterday my buddies and I traveled to York,  Pa. for the fall Heirloom Convention. We have never been to this particular location. Not sure we will go back, every year the conventions get smaller and smaller, I recognize fewer and fewer folks.

Impression Obsession didn't disappointment though. I waited in line for 25 minutes to check out and it was worth it. I am beginning to see the draw of the big 6x6 background stamps. This particular snowflake background drew my eye and I knew I was going to have to stamp it in red.

I added my new "merry die" from Papertreyink, a few snowflakes and some bling and waa laaa one of my first holiday cards made with all new things.

Over at Just Add Ink the challenge this week is using something new. Well this card is all new so I am submitting it.

Oct. 30, 2012 update. The Holiday card workshop at Online classes with Jennifer Maguire and Kristina Werner is going on right now. You can still sign up and the classes are always excellent with many new techniques to learn and ideas to kick start your creativity. Lisa Spangler used a HA background stamp to create her holiday cards and it reminded me of this card I made a few weeks ago and i wanted to share it with my fellow students.

Take care all and happy creating!