Tis The Season

When I first saw the color choices for the Play Date Cafe's challenge this week, I hesitated. My plan is to try to get holiday pieces done now and be a little prepared for the season and this sophisticated combo didn't quite say Christmas to me. By the time I put it together with the Mojo Monday sketch and some left-over Basicgrey paper I changed my mind. Here's where I started:

See, that's a beautiful color pallette and it's a pretty sophisticated sketch. But often beautiful and sophisticated go together and I think this time it worked out for me.

Although it's hard to see in the photo, I stamped the cream background cardstock with several size snowflakes from Papertrey Ink's Winter Swirls in soft blue and with a Versamark Watermark ink. It's all embossed to give it slight dimension, as are the mittens. For all my worry, I ended up liking this card a lot. Hope you do too!

A Tradition of Gingerbread

Does your family have any holiday traditions? Ours does, several in fact but one of our absolute favorites is gingerbread. For many years we had a gingerbread house making party. Seventeen to eighteen kids, candy from one end of the patio to the other and icing that hardened on to everything! Truly unforgettable. That's why I'm a sucker for anything gingerbread to this day. When I saw the weekly Card Patterns challenge I knew I had to use it for this design. Here's the sketch:

This card features the gingerbread man from Papertrey Ink's Holiday Button Bits.

He's a cutie isn't he? I made the cookie sheet by dry embossing two lines on the edges of a piece of silver cardstock, rounding the corners and folding it up. I stamped and embossed the gingerbread man but since that's the only stamping done this card goes together very quickly.

Hope your home smells of sweet gingerbread this season! 

 

Gratitude

Do you Facebook? I don't. Well not really - I farm, but that's a whole different problem. But because I have to go through Facebook to farm, I read other people's wall comments. One friend has me deciding to at least post daily on Facebook. Her suggestion, and she's already begun, is to post one thing you're thankful for a day. And she said not the obvious stuff like family. I like it. It's a good idea. Today I'm grateful that I got this card finished before it got too dark outside for photos. And that's a really big thing for me to be thankful for, believe me!

This card hits four, count'em, four challenges at once. It's a sketch, JUGS6, a Color Throwdown #68, a theme of "Thankful" from The Pink Elephant and then then adds the leaf requirement from Pile It On. It looks better than it sounds, honest.

You can already see that the colors and leaves work together and adding Thankful - logical too.

Here's the card:

I did some dry embossing today, always a good thing because it doesn't demand perfection. The templates are from Lasting Impressions and the cardstock is from a DCWV Brights stack with a white core. I try to use white core for dry embossing in case I want to distress. I made a determined effort not to use buttons on this card - been over doing those a bit! - and thought I'd gotten away without ribbon too. Not quite - the embellishment was on the clearance rack at Michaels. 

Gratitude on Facebook. I'm gonna try it. Try it here too - I'm really thankful if you read this!

More Untraditional Christmas Buttons

Even with practice, my night time photography doesn't do justice to the colors in my cards. Especially this time. The card is for Taylored Expressions sketch # 90 and the color challenge at The Playdate Cafe.It's a shame too because this sketch is sooooo usable and these colors are always going to be stunning.

See? The sketch has tons of possibilities any way you turn it and the colors are classic. At any rate, here's my card:

The stamps are from Papertrey Ink's Holiday Button Bits and the sentiment is from their Take A Bough. The papers are from the stash. If you look close, I took the lesson at Nichole's blog and layered the snowman's head up to give dimension. This stamp set is pretty much idiot proof though. I don't think you can wrong using it anyway you like!

Once again, sorry about the photo. This card is much better in real light but had to be submitted by midnight. Timing in life is everything! Thanks so much for stopping in!

A Little Less Traditional Christmas Color

Getting a head start on holiday cards and wrapping is always my plan, not necessarily well executed. This time I'm trying to apply card challenges to Christmas themes in hopes of getting at least a little bit done before the last minute. Here's a card for Mercy's Tuesday Sketch Challenge #46 and the color challenge at Pals Paper Arts, PPA15.

My card is a smallish, 4 1/2 x 41/2 gift tag card.

 

Sadly, I don't have any grey inks. So I used a marker to ink up the Papertrey Holiday Button bits stamps. I dry embossed the check on the red cardstock and then sandpapered it for dimension. The printed paper is an old Basicgrey release and the cardstocks are from a DCWV paper stack. Enjoy!

Biscuit and a Basket

This has been exceptionally nice for a Monday morning. The weather's breezy, my husband brought me a chicken biscuit home on his way back from the gym and my stitches have stopped itching! Got time to put together this card for Scrapmaster's Paradise Color Challenge #22. This is a nice group of people to 'play' with - give'em a try if you haven't already! Here are the colors:

And here's my card:

I used cardstock and papers from my stash baskets. The basket itself is woven from 1/2 inch strips. Quick and simple card - I left it with no sentiment so I can use it whenever I need a card.

Hope your Monday is as pleasant as mine! 

 

Gone to the Dogs

As a family, we've always loved dogs. A definite preference for bigger rather than smaller, but dogs in general. Until last fall, we had been dogless since the spring of 2006. My husband took pity on me when the youngest child went to college and got me Emma, a German Shepherd. She's now 15 months old and until recently was the center of the universe. Just ask her. Now, suddenly and happily, we're a family of dogs! Nigel the wonder Corgi joined a little over a month ago and Colby, the Australian Cattle dog puppy just last week. This card is for them from Emma. She helped. And if you haven't had a German shepherd help you carry stuff out a screen door while you're on crutches, believe me, you haven't had help!

I used the Color Throwdown Challenge #67 and Mojo Monday sketch #111 for the design. Here's Emma's card:

Best part? I WON these stamps! Earlier I posted a card with stamps I won from Papercraft's blog . This set was included. And at that time, we didn't have a dog with a patch or a mask in the family. The stamps are from a set called Cosmo Pups from Gel a tins. And they come in a nifty tin too! BUT WAIT! There's more! Stamps that is. (And I'll use them another time). The papers used are from the Wild Saffron die cut mat pad from K&Company. Those pads are a nice way to get variations in papers if you're a cardmaker and not a scrapper.I made the collar embellishment and used some open holed brads that look like eyelets.

Hope you've had time to enjoy your family dogs lately! 

Colby

Pictures of Redheadedson's new Australian Cattle dog for his grandmothers!

 

I 'Heart' Trees

I love the colors of fall. Not that we see a lot of them in the true sense here in South Florida, but they're some of my favorites. So when I grabbed this little tree stamp from the dollar bin at Michaels I knew I wanted to use it for a card. This time it's for Card Positioning sketch 140.

 

 

For real, the stamp was a dollar. The sentiment stamp? A dollar too, but it came with three otherstamps. Such a deal! To make the trees multi-colored, I inked them in Papertrey Ink Summer Sunrise and then dabbed a little of their Melon Berry ink over that before stamping. Quick and easy way to get detail on a solid stamp.I smudged a little chalk at the bottom to 'ground' the trees. Terrible pun huh?

Thanks for looking - 'she shouldas' always welcome!

A Blue Christmas

It's November, the stores have their holiday decorations up and although it seems to be rushing things a bit, here's a holiday card for Card Patterns Sketch 39:

This card is a simple shaker card.

 

This is super simple to make. Just cut a hole, then cover it with acetate. To make the space for shaker pieces, cut a hole in a piece of foamboard, put in the "shaklings" and back it with the stamped cardstock. Easy as pie and a real hit with little guys! I used the Christmas Critters set for stamps, a great set made by Cornish Heritage Farms.Although most of the snowflakes are loose in the shaker, I did use glue dots to attach three of them so they appear higher in the window.

If you haven't tried a shaker card, give it a shot. Easy and fun for kids! 

Think Pink!

Combining Pals Paper Arts PPA14, In the Pink, and Taylored Expressions Sketch Challenge #89 made this a fun challenge! Here's Taylor's sketch this week:

 And here's what I did with it. It's a 4x4 inch card, done in pink to support Breast Cancer research:

I know, I used Papertrey Ink's Holiday Button Bits again. But honestly, they're so much fun, they're my newest stamps and they make you look great! The buttons are from PTI as well, the Vintage collection and the paper - it would be fair to say I hoarded. I don't know who made this pretty pattern.

Thanks for looking - As always, if you have a "She shoulda done this or that", please leave me a comment! 

Believe - in Halloween and Christmas!

With everything busy around here, I'm taking another minute out to post a card for two challenges. This one is supposed to fill the requirements for Card Positioning System sketch 139 and for the Color Throwdown #66.

Check these sites out if you haven't already. Great inspiration from the design teams and participants!

This card made use of cardstock I had in the stash and my new Papertrey Ink set, Holiday Button Bits. The Button Bits series is just too cool for school - fun to use and gives you built in embellishments!

Have a safe and happy Halloween and enjoy the extra hour of sleep tonight. I'll miss daylight savings terribly. I suspect all procrastinators do!

Merry Kissmoose on Halloween!

Happy Halloween! We have a busy household watching that football team with the Herschel Walker record breaking quarterback and waiting on Trick or Treaters. Emma is in seventh heaven since Blondson and his girlfriend are here for the weekend. AND, they brought Nigel! If the rest of the kids were home Emma's life would be complete. She helped with the photos today just to keep her out of the football viewing area.


Today's challenge is for Scrapmaster's Paradise Color Combo #21 and 2 Sketches For You, Kazan's Sketch 38.

Here's the card

How cute is that moose? And better still I WON HIM! For real! One of the comment lotteries on Papercraft Magazines blog. So if you've given up and believe no one actually wins, it's not true. I won this set, Christmas Critters, from Cornish Heritage Farms. I won others too, but I'm using them in challenges later. The papers I used are from Basicgrey's Christmas issue a couple of years ago and the cardstock and buttons are from the stash.

 

Torn Tree

This tree was a quick entry into Hero Arts blog challenge this week. The topic was torn paper and I ripped this out quickly. 

The 'joy' is stamped using Hero Arts Designer Alphabet. I did some stitching on the kraft cardstock to give the look of snow falling. 


Am I the only person Blogger gives grief or does he move photos around on everyone?

Happy Birthday!

Here's a cheater of a birthday card. It fits the challenges for Card Positioning System challenge 138 and Color Throwdown challenge #65. It's also submitted to the Paper Craft Planet blog for Susanna's birthday. The real cheat? I made it for my mom's birthday and it's in the mail on the way to her.

Here's the card I finally came up with to meet all the qualifications.

I used Papertrey Ink's Everyday Button bits and a K&Company designer mat pad for the papers. The buttons and ribbons were from the stash. The original design of the stamp calls for it to be a topiary - it's really pretty and elegant that way too. I just made it a flower stem and added the wings from the bird in the button set to make the flower leaves. Love that about Papertrey designs, most of their stamp sets work in several ways.

Hope you have a great weekend! We finally have the family room painted and now we're in the process of putting it all back together and shampooing the carpets as well. The heat is on since we leave on a short vacation Monday and I hate the idea of coming home to a mess!

A JUGS3 Card and a New Grandchild!

I just scooted in under the daylight wire for this card today. Kept saying it wasn't going to happen again and then I got distracted. By this:

Meet my new grandchild, Cobalt, Colby for short. Redheadedson is the world's biggest dog fan and has waited until he graduated from college and got a job to get his own dog. He's a chemical engineer, this is an Australian Cattle dog, a Blue Heeler, hence the name Cobalt. Colby's seven weeks old, comes home as soon as he's old enough and Redheadedson is MORE than ready! He's known about it for weeks but didn't tell us until today. 

Meanwhile, the JUGS challenge this week was a color combination:

I find blues of any kind hard to work with so my card definitely emphasized the red and cream.

I used Papertrey's Winter Swirls (again - better learn to pick up a different stamp set!) and Basicgrey paper from a couple of season's ago. The ribbon is on sale at Michaels this week and the buttons are from Papertrey's new vintage mix. I adapted the sweater pattern from an old one I save published in Papercrafts a couple of years ago.

Thanks for reading! (If you're a dog fan - there are photos of our first grandchild and Emma in the post "Please Pardon the Interruption".)

It's Beginning to Look a Little Like Christmas

So I think I've got it together. Found a sketch and a color challenge that I can use with each other and I got them done well before the deadline. Ha. Completely forgot about the photography issue. I've learned I'm much better off outside in natural light. But that same natural light starts to fade quickly in October. What seemed like all the time in the world rapidly became just a couple of minutes. I got the photo and my accomplice looks pretty good in it!


The card is for Scrapmaster's Paradise Color Combo #19 and There She Goes Sketch 24

My accomplice is a hand made bear from my aunt. She rescued pieces of a quilt made in 1886 and created this bear for me in 1986 when my first son was born. Pretty nifty huh? And he's a great help - never says a negative word!

I used the stamp set Winter Swirls from Papertrey Ink and it's rapidly becoming one of my all time favorites. I like all the options it offers - focal points, backgrounds and sayings. And it dresses up and down very easily. I used the snowflakes and Versamark to create a subtle pattern on the purple cardstock. Did that again on the white cardstock before I sponged the blue ink over it to create the hill and sky. And I used the snowflakes one more time with white ink on the brown cardstock. The cute little tree is covered in glitter because Christmas always needs a little bit of extra glitz.

The sunlight here is almost gone and I promised the Emma dog one last frisbee session before it got dark. Enjoy!

Hello Pumpkin!

There's a just a hint of change in the air here this morning. If you didn't live here you probably wouldn't notice, but it's FALL! The forecast shows us only in the upper seventies over the weekend. I'm not a cold weather person, but Emma is going to be thrilled! And it'll be nice to have the windows open while I finish painting the den and kitchen.

Here's the sketch for 2sketches4you this week:

 And in the spirit of the season, here's my card:

It has a cut-out front so here's the inside:

 

Sadly it took longer to line up the letter stamps for the saying than it did to make the rest of the card. Even with tweezers! The paper used is from K&Company, I picked up the ribbon and charm at Michaels on clearance and the flowers are probably all Prima of one kind or another. The stamps are a zillion years old from Close To My Heart.


We're off across Alligator Alley this morning to visit Redheadedson - hope you enjoy your weekend as much as we will!

A Step in the Right Direction

I finished and posted my previous entry at the last minute. Sadly, this is typical. What isn't typical is that one of my kids came home for the weekend. So Saturday night, just before the challenge deadline, I tried to photograph cards in the kitchen while Brunetteson and some of his friends watched his school's football game. This, however, is the South, we live in Florida, and my sons go to THAT SEC school. The one with THE quarterback and the CHOMP. A game here is something of a religious, although loud, experience. My photos reflect the situation. This week's are better.

These cards are for the JUGS2 challenge, using the technique of paper piecing and for the Taylored Expressions challenge TESC86. They're a set of note cards for a friend:

Working on these reminded me how much I prefer paper piecing to coloring. I HATE coloring. Probably because I smear most of it while coloring left-handed. The stamp set used is from Hero Arts and the papers are all from K&Company's Berry Sweet collection. Sadly, I'm not at all organized and didn't have black brads for these cards. I cheated BIG time and colored brass brads with a Sharpy marker. I edged all the background papers with the Sharpy too. 

If you were here, thanks so much for looking!

Tea Bags for Two Challenges

Hear that sound? It's the sound of deadlines passing by. I've missed several challenges but gotten some of the family room painted. Probably a fair trade.

This set of cards is for the Scrapmaster's Paradise  color challenge and 2 Sketches 4 You's challenge:

Here are my cards. Again, please excuse the photography - it's a work in progress!

The inside of the cards looks like this:

The cards themselves are just about 4 inches tall. The stamp is from Unity and the paper is absolutely beautiful but I have no idea who made it. Again, from the supplies I've had for too long.