I’m so excited about today’s post! 

Anna Wight created an ornament for the High Hopes Challenge (you can see her post HERE) and it was soooo inspirational.

While I do have quite a few High Hopes stamps, I don’t have the one Anna featured on her ornament.  I also don’t have an ornament die but I do have a baby stamp that features a similar moon and I have a Cricut and a deep cut housing (that I don’t find that brilliant but it will do in a pinch) so I set out to make a baby’s first Christmas ornament in honour of my niece who’s due date is December 24th (and I kind of hope that she will arrive on Christmas day so she’ll share a birthday with my mother – among other people)

I hope it’s a cute as I think it is!

I used some October Afternoon paper that I bought last year (it’s double sided – the paper pieced blanket and the top of the ornament use the flip side of the paper) and I altered the stamped image slightly.   You can see the original image HERE (on a baby card I made – and screwed up the placement of the image on!).  I realized after I made the ornament that I could probably have left the ribbon on the stamp as my ribbon/button embellishment would probably have hidden it but it wasn’t too hard to leave out the ribbon portion of the stamp and hand-draw the rest of the crescent moon.  I also drew a little curl on the baby’s head so I wouldn’t have to worry about fussy cutting the original hair.

The ornament is from the Joys of the Season Cricut cartridge and is cut out on chipboard.  I cut it 4 times to ensure a clean cut.  The back of the ornament is covered in the polka dotted paper (like the baby blanket) and all edges are sponged with Ranger distress ink in Antique Linen.

I used glamour dust on the moon and the jingle bell.  Now I just need to make a cute box to package the ornament in and I’ve got a cute little personal gift for my niece.  I can’t wait to meet her!

A busy day of “mass production” (if 4 sets counts as “mass”) and a step further in my Christmas gift endeavours.

I made 4 sets of notepads/beaded mini pens/gift tags and packaged them up this evening.  I used an assortment of patterned paper from Basic Grey and Jillybean Soup 6X6″ pads.  The stamps are all from PTI Christmas Tiny Treats which I bought after the Christmas season last year (from a gift certificate I received for my birthday in December).

If you look at the tag and the notepad on each set, you’ll see how versatile a small image can be just by changing the size of the shape you cut out around it (it’s also helpful that the notepad images have a sentiment under them).

As I didn’t take pictures before packaging the notepads, it was hard to get a good shot of my gift sets.  Here’s a closer look at one of the tags to see the simple layout.  

To make the tag, cut a piece of cardstock 2X3″, trim or punch the top corners to form a tag shape and punch a hole for the ribbon.  I reversed the order of the patterned paper on the tags so the more graphic design would be dominant.  This is a great opportunity to use your smallest Spellbinder circle dies that you probably don’t get to play with too often.  For those of you in Canada, the notepads are from Dollarama and the mini gel pens are from Staples.   I wish I could find a good source for black mini gel pens as the assortment from Staples has some difficult to match colours.

If you want to try your hand at these notepads, I did a tutorial last September that you can find HERE.  You can find a tutorial on SCS for beaded pens.  The mini ones from Staples require a piece of 1 7/8″ X 1 5/8″ patterned paper and a piece of 1 7/8″ X 1 1/2″ sticky tape.

I was thinking about Winter yesterday as we had some wet snow.  We originally had a “winter storm warning” as it was calling for 10 cm of snow but the storm warning ended and we didn’t get any accumulation.  It was certainly cold, though!

I was trying to tidy up my craft room for the small amount of time I spent in it yesterday (car was in the shop, I needed groceries, library books were begging to be returned, etc.) as I have a friend coming over to make Christmas cards today.  The tidying went quite well at first but somewhere between eating supper and going back to tidy, I started to make a card instead.  (oops!)

It could have happened to anyone.  I was industriously stacking my 6X6 pads of Christmas paper and a few strips fell out of a Basic Grey pad.  I meant to put them back in the pad but my muse called me and decided the strips were the perfect size to make a cute scrap card. 

This card was inspired by one I saw in a Papercrafts magazine a week or so ago.  I liked the use of the button underneath the sentiment and the smattering of rhinestones along the curve of the stamped image.  You can’t tell in the picture but the rhinestones are a soft green and match the paper quite well.

The best part is that this image took moments to colour so the card worked up quickly.   Another one for my stash and I believe it’s the first landscape orientation of the season. 

I hope to have a productive day with Karen so there might be something to share with you tomorrow.

Another productive Christmas card day!  Two more cards to add to the stash.

Today’s image was coloured with white craft ink on kraft paper (hey, craft on kraft!) to make the snowman pop.  I used an adorable snowman image from Whipper Snapper (an Anna Wight cling set – she illustrates the best snowmen!) and some Crate Paper patterned paper.  I used a confetti white base which is very unusual for me and I used a lot of distress ink around the edges of the image and the card base.

I might have to make some coordinating gift tags to go with these cards as I really like the vintage feel of these papers and I like working with the smaller scale of a tag – it makes it very easy to be creative as you have such a small space to work with (less intimidating than a big, blank card).

The layout was CASEd from Pine (PTI design team member).  Her card was not a Christmas theme plus I made some other little changes but the basic layout was from her blog.

Working away on Christmas cards (as the mood strikes) and hoping to come up with some gift ideas soon.  I’ve been looking for some ornament ideas but everything is either too tacky or too intense.  Where’s the happy medium?

Today’s card is intended to go with the gingerbread ornaments I made last week.  It doesn’t exactly match the set but it coordinates with it but using the same theme (gingerbread), kraft cardstock, and a small piece of the same paper I used on the ornaments and the tag. (I only had one sheet of that paper – wish I had more!)

The layout is quite simple but I kicked it up a notch by using a fancy cut on the bottom of the largest piece of patterned paper (I used a PTI die but you could use scissors or a long nestability die or your Cricut to cut out a fancy edge) and sewing around the sheet music paper.  I added a brown button with some baker’s twine rather than using a bow.  A bow would work too, of course.

Not sure I chose the right colours for my patterned paper on this card – it’s a bit busier than I’d like but I wanted a card with rich background papers so I guess I got my wish!

I don’t do a lot of religious Christmas cards each year but I do like to give one or two people on my list a card portraying a less commercial aspect of the season.  Today’s card features a Stampendous image (Blessed Family) that I bought last year.  It’s fun to colour and isn’t too fussy.  The sentiment is from an Anna Wight (Whipper Snapper) cling set.

The patterned paper is from Echo Park (2 different lines - from last year) and I used More Mustard and Bordering Blue cardstock.  You can’t tell in the picture because the patterns are so dominant but I zigzag stitched the blue paper to the brown paper.

I was quite pleased with the colouring on the images (check out my banner for greater detail) as I used a few tricks I picked up when I did my Copic Certification in September.   I admit I’m quickly forgetting some of the things I learned so  I need to read my manual and practice, practice, practice!

I’ll be back tomorrow with a gingerbread themed card.

I haven’t had a chance to do any Christmas projects in the last few days as I had some card orders and personal card requirements to fulfil.

One of my orders was for a baby shower card (baby girl) so I used my cutest Whipper Snapper baby-themed stamp.  I’ve actually been wanting to make a card with this stamp for a while as I knew I was going to double stamp the heads on each of the animals so I could pop them up on dimensionals.

The pink circle actually matches the card a little better than the picture might indicate.  I used copics to colour the image but the purple section on the umbrella bled a little so I paper pieced some of the yellow background paper to hide the bleed.

The pearls to the left of the sentiment were white but I coloured them with Copics.  I have a LOT of flat backed pearls in assorted colours but they are rarely the shade I am looking for.  I’ve taken to only buying black, white and cream pearls now and I’ll just colour the white ones as required.  I should probably start experimenting with clear rhinestones too because I’ve got quite the collection of those in different useless shades as well!

On a totally different topic, I have to brag about our dog, Jack.  His picture was recently chosen as the cover picture on the 2012 Beagle Paws calendar.  (it’s a non-profit that finds homes for beagles and it’s where we adopted Jack from just over a year ago)  I know that Jack doesn’t really know he is now a famous dog but we’re proud of him all the same!

I’d share a link to where you can order the calendar (all proceeds go to this wonderful organization) but they’re having some issues on their site at the moment (a virus, so I really don’t want to be blamed for you going there if your virus software is not up to date) so I’ll share a picture of the calendar that I “borrowed” from the internet:

Yup!  That’s the sweet face that greets me when I come home!  When we adopted this older (5-6 years), timid, trembling, relatively untrained dog last year, I thought he was lucky to have us take him into our home but I now realize it is my husband and I are that are lucky he came to live with us.  He’s brought a lot of love and joy to us in the last 13 months and I look forward to every year that we have him in our lives.

Just blogging a birthday card in between Christmas projects.  I managed to finish my MIL’s birthday card a couple of days ago.  It’s not the homespun look I was originally trying to achieve but I think it turned out fairly elegant – it’s not my usual type of card for sure!

I used a PTI stamp that I got free in my last order and cut out a frame using my Cricut (shock!  I’ve used it more in the last week than I have since I got the thing!)  Lots of distressing with ink and with scissors to give my card a shabby but elegant look.  I used muted, earthy tones because I think my mother in law likes them (she lives in England so it’s a bit difficult to get to know her as much as I’d like).

I hope she enjoys her card.  If she didn’t know before, she’ll know now that we think of her often from “across the pond”.

Warning – LOTS of pictures in this post!

I’ve just started making my Christmas cards/gifts for the year but I’ve only got a couple of ideas to date.  I don’t want to make the mistake of investing too much time researching what I plan to make as I find that leaves me with lots of ideas but no finished projects.

Over the weekend I made a half dozen gingerbread man ornaments as a gift.  I’ve been wanting to make these ornaments since I saw them on Anna Wight’s blog last year.   I bought the Tim Holtz die while I was in Florida and cut out two dies from chipboard for each ornament (I glued them together for extra stability).   I used white flat-backed pearls as the eyes (I coloured them with a black copic marker and now have interesting dots all over my hands) and used my Cricut to design a folkart heart for the embellishment as I didn’t have a suitable die.  I glued together 3 hearts for each ornament so the cardstock would be nice and sturdy.  Here’s what they look like:

(the guy on the left cracks me up.  The music underneath the eyes makes it look like he’s frowning!)

Of course, I couldn’t just steal borrow Anna’s idea without adding my own creative (ish) flair so I made a cute little gingerbread house box to package the ornaments:

I used Jolly Holidays – which is a Cricut Lite  cartridge – to cut out the house.  I decorated the front house but left the back one plain.  I made a simple box from cardstock to glue the house front and back to.  The box measures 3 3/8 inches wide by 2 1/2 inches high.  The house extends to just over 6 inches.  Here’s a profile shot so you can get a better idea of how I made the box:

The box is 1 3/4 inches deep and comfortably holds 6 ornaments without crowding or leaving too much space.

If you made the  box a little taller, you could punch holes in the roof tops and tie the box closed with some ribbon but  I wanted to use a clear bag to package mine and add a handmade gift tag:

Here’s a closer look at the tag:

I used leftover patterned paper from the ornaments as well as an extra heart embellishment.  Lots of Anna Wight influence going on here.  The sentiment on the tag (plus the background sentiments) is from one of her cling sets (Whipper Snapper), the extensive use of a tracing wheel is 100% Anna, and the tag is even her type of style (IMO).  There’s a reason she’s my idol ya know!

P.S.  If you want the cut files for the house and its embellishments, I can email them to you.  I’ve had a Cricut for a while but don’t use it and this is the first time I’ve even saved anything that I made with Design Studio.  I’m hoping to get more use out of my Cricut but I do find it a little fiddly to work with all those little pieces of cardstock and I’m not the most patient person.  My email address is kelly AT kellybee DOT ca

It’s just about that time.  I need to get my overseas Christmas cards designed, produced and mailed to the UK. (well, they need to be ready to go in parcels that I’ll send surface mail – if it was just the card, I’d have more time!)

I was in a kraft cardstock kind of mood today because I was thinking about making a birthday card for my MIL.  She loves things that have more of a homespun feel.   While I was leafing through my patterned paper to decide what colours to use, I thought about stamping directly on the cardstock but couldn’t find an appropriate stamp.  I did stumble across the perfect Christmas stamp though – one I’ve always regretted buying.  I quickly jettisoned the birthday card and made a 5 minute Christmas card.  Take a look:

This is a Hampton Art stamp cleverly named “Santa Claus”.  I don’t really know what I was thinking when I bought it.  I’ve had it for at least 4 years and only inked it up once.  I found it impossible to colour so I’ve ignored it ever since.

The inked stamp was a little too plain for my liking so I used copics to colour the hat and just put a stroke or two of green on the holly leaves.  The “berries” are flat backed pearls coloured with a copic marker.  The string is some Martha Stewart baker’s twine I’ve had for ages.  Easy, peasy card.

It’s funny I never thought to make a card like this before as, except for the twine, the card looks pretty much like the back of the stamp (it’s wood-mounted and there’s a touch of colour on the hat and the leaves!).  I might try another version using some linen ink on the edges of the card to soften it a little.  I know that my MIL would like this card though so this one is ear-marked for her.  Now if I could only get her birthday card finished!