Christmas Cards

Hello! My apologies for being such a delinquent blogger. I don't know how people blog every day. Maybe if I didn't read other blogs, I could work on my own. But there are so many wonderful other blogs out there, how could I not!?!

Here's a card that I recently made (as in last night). It was quite quick to put together so I think this might be a candidate for some batch cards next year. It's for someone who loves glitter and shimmer paper, so I used both. I started with some navy shimmer paper and stamped the image (Snow Dust by Penny Black) and sentiment (Cornish Heritage Farms) with white pigment ink and embossed with a mixture of white embossing powder and warm highlight Glitter Ritz. Then I matted it on some white, and popped it up over a navy shimmer card base. I thought it would be nice to extend the dots, so I used a fanatstix stick to daub on some dots of white ink again and embossed those. I added some Star Dust stickles to the snow dots and the trees, and a rhinestone star to the "i" in Christmas. I like how the "t" in Christmas sticks down like a tree trunk (and a cross for that matter, but I am speaking for a design perspective here). This card is quite wonderful in real life (is that terribly immodest?) and the scanner can't really pick up all the shimmer. You'll just have to try one yourself and see!

I love this stamp. I see so many possibilities for spring (cherry blossoms), summer (leaves) and of course, autumn. And it's so perfectly laid out for wham-bam-image and whamitty-bam-bam sentiment, bob's your uncle, done. Gorgeous and quick and easy. Love it!

I hope you are well, and not getting too crazy. Remember to keep stamping on your to-do list at all times! Then you get to stamp and not feel guilty about it!

Thanks for stopping by!

PS A huge thank you to that very nice lady who gave me the coupon a couple of weeks ago. I got some great new colours of Adirondack paint dabbers, which I can't wait to use. Thank you!!! :-)

Bling it on!

The challenge this week at Stampotique is Bling, and all stamps are Stampotique. This is an easy one for me, since I have a drawer full of stickles, another one with Twinklings and lots of sparkly embossing powder. I also needed a birthday card for a 4-year-old girl and that task just begs for sparkle! I happened to have a piece of colourwashed and splattered paper big enough for a card leftover from a gothic arch. It's in gorgeous shades of pink and purple and yellow. Perfect for a little girl! I dithered for a bit how to stamp the fairy, and I settled on using Dusty Concord and embossing with iridescent ice embossing powder. She's stamped on watercolour paper, so I could paint her and so it would match with the base, which is watercolour too. I painted her with distress inks, shading a bit since things always look better painted with at least two colours. See that little heart on her chest? Painted with worn lipstick and spiced marmalade. Her face has tattered rose, worn lipstick and pumice stone. Honest! The wings have shabby shutters, tumbled glass, broken china, and pumice stone and the crown is wild honey + pumice stone. I also painted the mushroom with pumice stone and accented with enamel accents in white. When I had it all put together and mounted on the card (marigold morning - Stampin' Up), I felt that it needed something, so I drew in some swirls with diamond stickles, which I had also used to accent her wings. This was a gamble, and I'm 70% glad I did it. It really needed some words or other stamps, but I wanted to use this for the challenge, and I didn't really have any other stamps that would suit and the card has to be all Stampotique. Still and all, I like the swirls and really, this is for a 4-year-old girl who will likely not even notice in her haste to open the present. So really, it's for me and I like it. So there. I love the richness of the colours in the colour wash. I spend a lot of time with stained fingers thanks to my love of that technique. I might try that craft scrubby to see if I can clean them off. It doesn't really bother me, but I do work in an office, so I'd rather not have hands that look like I've recently been fingerprinted....

I have some other colourwash projects to post when I get a chance. Right now they're trapped inside my camera and I haven't had a moment to extract them since I have been off sick with a bad cold. It hit me like a ton of bricks on Saturday afternoon and it was only yesterday morning that I turned the corner and felt halfway human. Nothing serious, and I do get sick leave off work (just not off being a mommy).

On an unrelated topic, we watched the new Sherlock Holmes, the modern day one, with Tim from The Office as Dr Watson. It was fantastic! I was hooked right away. I thought they did a marvellous job. We've been enjoying Wallander too. And when I was off sick, I got caught up on my Midsomer Murder episodes. I sometimes wonder why English villagers don't move to the inner city to get away from all the crime. I mean they are bumped off left and right out there. Which reminds me of another show we enjoyed but haven't seen on lately was about the housewife mafia of Little Stempington and we can't remember what it was called. It had its funny moments for sure. I just liked the premise - too funny. All ladies-who-lunch on the outside and cold-blooded villains on the inside, cornering the local drug market on high-test hormone replacement therapy pills. Who knew rural England was this seething hotbed of crime??? (Other than Miss Marple, I mean, who was certainly well aware.)

On another unrelated topic, this weekend we are hosting our second annual gingerbread house building afternoon with the cousins. We have a cast iron mold (from Lee Valley Tools) that you bake the pieces in - one side is a log cabin and the other is a brick house. It's fun, but largely because DH does most of the baking and building. When I was a teenager I used to enjoy designing and making gingerbread houses at Christmas time. I remember making a few. I can hear rasping sounds from upstairs, which means DH is filing down more walls and roof panels so they make a better join. That is where we differ. He likes them to fit neatly together, straight line to straight line. I realize it is a cookie house, shortly to be encased in candy, so I just stick them together with gobs of icing to fill the major gaps. Actually, to be fair, it is nice to have someone like that in the house because it means that pictures get hung straight and the Christmas tree doesn't lean to one side.

Well, I should get back to it and not sit around blogging all night. I have things to do to get ready for Christmas, as well as Gothic arches to get caught up on, and the 12 Tags of Christmas have started already. Yikes! So much stamping to do, competing with other necessary tasks. How to choose??? People at work keep asking me if I'm ready for Christmas (and I do have to say that I resent bitterly this particular conversational gambit). I always respond with a chipper, "Another six weeks should do it!" and wish they would stick to the more traditional Canadian opening line, "Can you believe the weather we've been having, eh?" I guess I should be grateful that people still openly talk about Christmas, but I do dislike having to constantly defend my state of planning. My normal life gets planned on an as-needed basis, which is to say, whatever is happening in the next two hours. Long range planning gets done as-needed as well, which takes care of tomorrow, and possibly the next day if DH and I have had time to work in a strategic planning meeting. Any extras, like birthdays, holidays, church bazaar, throw a spanner in the works and seriously jeopardize things like laundry and groceries. I suppose if I gave up stamping, I could become some manically organized dervish, whirling the laundry from dryer to drawer on my way to menu planning and dropping the kids at gymnastics. In my new spare time I could host delightful candlelight suppers and stylish cocktail parties, but I would be so stressed from lack of stamping that I would likely become as murderous as a villager. Also, it would be a shame to lose the value of the investment on my stamps. By my calculations, if I stamp for seven hours a day for the next three hundred years, I will see a 10% return on investment. 10% is excellent, since our savings account only gets less than 1%. Now that I see the numbers in black and white, and realize what a great investment stamps are, I should get some more, and increase my returns by 9%, which translates (rounding up, carry the one) to investing in 9 times the stamps as I had been getting. I love it when the math checks out. I guess having an engineer husband is rubbing off on me.

Farewell Card II

I made this card for someone at work who is leaving for Paris very soon, so I chose a French theme. The Eiffel Tower is a Stampin' Up stamp, as are the filigree puffballs and floral sprigs (blue). The sentiment is by Darkroom Door, and was really my only stamp that had a suitable message that fit that spot. There are some background stamps by Stampin' Up and Stampers Anonymous (Tim Holtz). This is my go-to technique for a fancy card - lots of chalk ink brayering, lots of stamping over top, embossing, hits of black, a coordinated tag. This is a heavy card, and large, and I made it with an insert so that lots of people could sign it. I went with blues and golds, which seems like a very French colour palette, and the ruffled ribbon, gold cord, and swallow brad add some texture and interest. I like to frame things with some lines drawn with the bullet tip of a marker and a ruler. I tend to do a few lines, with ruler at different angles, which makes a nice border without having to be precise. Since it's the last step, any imprecision would show and ruin the whole thing, so I go for the feel of straight lines, but ones that are actually crooked. How fiendishly clever! Another tip is to use Heather's 130lb cardstock. It really accepts the chalk ink beautifully and withstands all manner of embossing and ironing and stamping without any ill effects such as warping etc. I love that stuff, especially for projects like this. You can see that I stamped the flourish in gold ink, which adds a very nice rich effect.

Thanks for stopping by!

Shabby Chic Christmas

The November challenge at Inkurable Stampers is to make a shabby chic Christmas card. The top photo was my first stab. I had in mind to use that lovely chapel in the woods (Paper Inspirations), stamped in Versafine sepia, and treated to the double-tack film and warm highlight Glitter Ritz treatment. Then I got stuck. I thought a pale blue backdrop would be in the shabby chic vein, and even added some blue velvet paper. And some ruffly ribbon, and a ribbon slide, which was sponged around the edges and stamped with a Cornish Heritage Farms sentiment (I like it to say "Merry Christmas", but this was the one that would fit on the die cut - oh well). There are also snowflakes stamped in light blue (seascapes, by Palette) on the card base.

I waited for a bright day that I was home in the daytime, got out the paper for a backdrop to photograph it, got it uploaded, etc. and realized that the only thing shabby chic about it was the ribbon and slide. The rest was just too crisp and I just couldn't call it shabby chic. I went back to the website for some inspiration and that worked. There were so many lovely examples, that I went to town. I sponged, and dabbed and daubed and remedied and I think that the second version is much shabbier. Not sure if it's any chic-er or not!

Version two included some felt snowflakes that I glittered, and I also sponged the edges and added the stamped brocade background. If I could have pried everything apart, I would have embossed the velvet too. I was afraid it might get too shabby if I started prying layers apart. As it is, it might be better submitted to a "faux scorched" challenge than shabby chic. Perhaps if I painted the whole card white and used it as a hat stand in my tiny hallway, it would be a better exemplar of shabby chic......

Thanks for stopping by!

Fun (?) Challenge

We were out for dinner with the kids to a family restaurant called Montana's. They give kids a placemat with puzzles on it and, lo! there was a word puzzle. I am a sucker for these and have been interested (my husband went so far as to say "obsessed" with it for a few days). The challenge is to come up with as many words as you can from the phrase "Escape to Montana's!". That was it, I was happily occupied for the entire meal, and for the rest of the evening. I have been adding a few words now and then since then, but I am running out. So far we have 181 single words, plus another 127 plural/conjugated words, and another 7 of questionable validity (though not sure there is a judge). The 8 questionable ones are santa(s), poo, pee (stop snickering), panto(s) and namaste. I didn't include any proper nouns. I allowed contractions as there was one apostrophe in the phrase. We astonished the waitress - she said people don't normally do that puzzle. What kind of joint is that? I mean you can't put a price on that much fun. It's just like Boggle only better because there's no timer! By the way, the puzzle comes with 16 spaces for the words. Sixteen! As if!!! We found 315, including the dubious ones. You can't write small enough, especially with the crayons they provide to fit those all into 16 spots, so we had to sacrifice the square challenge, colouring picture (moose and stag) and the maze.

BTW, you don't need to flame me for this post. I am well aware that I am a bit of a word geek, and noticed that I thought of words like "capon" and "peasant" before "mat" and "top". I'm not sure if I pass or fail that geek test........

So, in conclusion, I throw down the gauntlet: how many words can you find in the phrase "Escape to Montana's!"?

Scrap Stash Sunday 9

I will shortly need a batch of quick thank you cards in an 'artsy' vein. I thought it would be a great thing to use up some scraps for. This one uses a piece of paper that I coloured with Ecoline ink and stamped with a Stampers Anonymous- Tim Holtz stamp. The circles are Sunshine Designs and the "thank you" is Stampin' Up. (DH didn't like this one - he thought it looked like I spilled coffee on it. Why do I keep asking him to look at my cards?) I did the same layout for the other one, with the scrap being a piece that I failed to notice when it was time to stop, blew through that red light and a few of the others too. I don't recall the exact stamps for that panel, but the main ones I can see are a ginkgo leaf (Old Island Stamp Company) and a flourish (Hero Arts), with a polka dot background stamp (Stampin' Up).


It's been a bit crazy lately - our church bazaar was this weekend, and my mother and I were making lots of stationery boxes for it, in addition to the stash of cards I made. (I am looking at a card that got scanned in but failed to make it to the bazaar - it was my spadefish "amour" card. Some . We made seven I think, and three were left over. My girls snaffled up two of them and I will keep the last one for an emergency gift. I got some great treausres at the bazaar and some Christmas shopping done. I can't wait to crack into my pickled baby carrots. They look amazing.

Hope you're having a good weekend! I am off to tackle the mountains of laundry and dishes that have piled up over the past while as we have been busy with the bazaar and associated urgent stamping activities. It is getting so bad that even I feel compelled to work on it rather than stamp. Yes, it is that bad. Also nobody has anything to wear tomorrow for work/school. So, heigh-ho, heigh-ho, it's off to work I go!

Silhouette Meets Masking

I've been seeing the most amazing cards in this vein on lots of blogs, and they referenced an article in a recent Craft Stamper magazine. I thought I would give it a try - it's really easy. Basically, you take your white card, mask off the edges of the card (I used sticky notes) and sponge in colour (I used Distress Inks). Then I stamped this Memory Box dandelion image in black pigment ink and embossed it. (I did heat set the Distress Ink first, which is why I don't have a black rectangle!). The "for you" is Stampin' Up and the little dots are Ranger black accents. I also added Diamond stickles to the dandelion seeds, so in real life there is some lovely gold sparkle. I found the whole thing looked better on a black mat, so I added that in and I was done. It's a great way to get a huge wow factor in very little time. It looks fantastic with the Penny Black brushstroke stamps, but I gave away the card before I could scan it in. That's about all the stamping chit chat needed for this one other than to say, if you want something super quick and easy, in any colour scheme, just get out your sticky notes and get masking!

NSR. My 4 1/2 year old (who pestered us endlessly - is it my half birthday yet? Am I 4 1/2 yet??? Finally that magic day came!) often uses the biggest number she can think of to express the notion of enormity. As in, "It's a million, hundred, thousand, thirty, twenty, eleventy-one days until my birthday." Some days I just want to eat her up.