Merry Christmas!

What a busy year!  I keep telling my husband to help me say "no".  Sometimes I just can't help myself!  This year I made a pretty big decision to try to go back to school.  I started taking a class online and hope to get into a program for a graduate degree.  Stay tuned as I wait for word on whether I am accepted ;0).

In the mean time, I still love paper crafting, I just have to limit what I do as time is pretty precious these days.

Nonetheless, I still made our Christmas Cards this year.  I started later than usual and still had them in the mail in time (I hope) for a Christmas delivery.

I love the deer head silhouette (not a Stampin' Up! product)!  Such a simple image and yet so elegant.  The rustic look of the hardwood background helps put the deer in the right light! And the bling of the gorgeous red foil cardstock is the perfect amount of fun for this card!

Simple and yet it took a little to make them!

Wishing you and your family a merry and bright holiday season!

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Negativity is great!

For our Christmas cards this year I decided to use some die cut images for the focal point of the card. As I cut 100 pieces for our cards I started looking at the negative image that was cut and thought I would try to make something out of them.  Why waste?!?

These gift tags were so easy to make!  I cut the 6x6 paper from the Merry Moments Designer Series Paper Pack (Stampin' Up! 2015 Holiday catalog) into 2"by 6" strips and then used the scalloped tag punch to punch the top of the tag.  Then I simply layered and stapled the negative images to the front of the tag along with some pom pom trim.  I love the way they turned out!  So fun!!

I had to make a wine bottle tag as well!  If I would have thought of this earlier I would have had 100 tags laying around!!

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Stampin' Celebration SC119 Going Worldy

Welcome back to the Stampin' Celebration monthly sketch challenge (SC119).  It was nice to take a break from making Holiday themed projects for this sketch!

I decided to use new products from the Stampin' Up! 2016 Occasions Catalog that goes live January 5th,  A lot of beautiful images and great products that I can't wait to use!   The Going Global collection is a fun set!  I love the embossing folder and the coordinating designer series paper pack has a lot of fun designs!

This is a really easy sketch and I can't wait to see what other projects I create by using it!

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Holiday Fun with the Crafty Chicks!

I had the honor of hosting craft night with the neighborhood Crafty Chicks club! This is the second year they invited me to design some holiday themed projects for them to create.

Here are some pictures of the projects I designed for them.  All projects used ©Stampin Up! supplies from either the 2015 Holiday catalog or the 2015-2016 Annual Catalog.  The projects were fun to create and I was able to get a lot of inspiration from my fellow papercrafters!

The first project was candy holder using a simple sour cream container design. We used the 6x6 Merry Moments Designer Series Paper Pack to make the container and then decorated it with a simple tag.  The 6x6 paper makes a nice big container so you can get a lot of candy kisses in the tube!

The Gift Tags were created using the Wonderland Stamp set and Winter Wonderland designer series paper.  I love the gold foil in this paper and used it as inspiration.

We also created a bottle tag (wine bottle, or in this case a bourbon bottle, hand soap, whatever your bottle of choice might be).  This project used the Peaceful Pines stamp set and matching die set as well as the Christmas Greetings thinlits dies.  Lots of fun bling on this project!

The last project is a gift card holder using the new Square Pillow Box Thinlits Die.  I love the rustic look on this card and whole-heartedly admit that this is very much inspired by Erica Cerwin at Pink Buckaroo Designs.  The pillow box pieces were stamped with the Hardwood Stamp set using Soft Suede ink.  The greeting is from the Project Life Seasonal Snapshot photopolymer stamp set.  I made a fork bow with the linen thread to give the bow some extra loops.

Hope you enjoyed seeing the projects!  We had fun making them.

Supply Lists

Making Spirits Bright Candy (sour cream) Container

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Wonderland Gift Tags

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Night of Navy Peace Bottle Tag

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Rustic Pillow Box Gift Card Holder

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Stampin' Celebration Peace

I am so excited it's December.  It's been a long year, very busy!  This month I get to use some saved up vacation time which gives me a lot of time to play in my craft room!  Good thing as I have not been able to make my Holiday cards yet!  Only 7 more work days left for me and then I will be free for 2 and a half weeks!  My cards may go out a little later than usual but they should still arrive in time.

Anyway, my excitement can wait a few more days!  I love this month's inspiration challenge at Stampin Celebration!  The buttons are adorable and I love the colors.

For my project I used the buttons as inspiration!  I kept the color combination at Very Vanilla and Kraft paper.

I used the chevron (embossing folder) in the background and the deer head silhouette (not Stampin' Up!) in champagne glitter paper (retired).  The greeting is from the Peaceful Wreath photopolymer stamp set.

I love the simplicity of the card!  Perfect for a busy season!

Hope you get a chance to play along with this challenge!  Looking forward to seeing what inspired you.  And may you stay peaceful this holiday season!

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Some Penguin Fun!

I needed to make some tags for the some holiday gifts and fell in love with a card that Kimberly Van Diepen posted at her blog Stampin by the Sea.

I loved this card so much I almost bought the stamp set, Christmas Cutie.  I didn't purchase it originally and was really close to doing so just because of this card!  Happens to me all the time.  However, this time I used a little self-control and decided to try to see what I could do using the stamps I already had.  

So here is my version of Kimberly's technique.

I decided to use the Snow Place stamp set from the 2015 Stampin' Up! Holiday catalog.  I decided that the Santa hat would help give this little guy a festive feel.

I loved the way Kimberly used the vellum to soften the background circle so I used the silver vellum paper to soften the real red 2" circle.  A little silver thread adds a little flair!

This tag turned out really cute.  I can't wait to use it to wrap some gifts!!

Helpful hint: Since the tag topper punches fit tags that are 2" wide, you can get 10 tags that are 2" by 4-1/4" tags or 8 tags that are 2" by 5-1/2".

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