Shaping up to be a great year!

Utter disbelief re NBC's Brian Williams, reportedly the most popular anchor in the coveted 26 to 54 age demographic. I don't believe it..no one under the age of 60 watches network news.

But I do know that few things are more satisfying than creating a new Christmas card and so I made this one for the Jingle Belles Shape up for the New Year challenge. Any shape will do, as long as it's not a square or rectangle.

I die cut my Spellbinders Nestabilities Layered Poinsettias out of Tim Holtz Kraft-Core card stock and sanded them with an emery board to add definition. There was a little bit of gold ink on one of the dies that transferred to the paper but I thought it looked okay so I left it. A little baker's twine and a smallish Stampin' Up sentiment completed the card. BTW, I am crazy about this set of 25 little wood block stamps I found on Ebay, copyright 1999! I can't wait to try them all out.

The card was actually pretty easy to make and I liked the end result!

I am also submitting this to the following challenges:

ABC Christmas Challenge C is for Colorful!
Crafty Hazelnut's Christmas Challenge Extra Anything Goes Every Month!

Ringing in the New!

Got another Christmas card finished! This one is based on the Jingle Belles Ring in the New challenge. I used Sweet Sunday Sketch Challenge #253.

For the "new" I used some new MME papers I got for Christmas, a new wood snowflake embellishment and finished off with a sentiment from a brand new set of Unity stamps. I stitched around the edges of each piece of paper and managed to keep my stitches relatively straight!

Here is the sketch:

And here is the card:

And now I need to get to work on Valentines!

Time to wrap up...

Two weeks into the new year and two Christmas cards done!

Here's my second card for the Jingle Belles Wrap it up! challenge.

Fast and easy, featuring a gift tag from Michael's. 

In addition to posting more of my cards in 2015, I want to do more stamping. I didn't stamp on either of the first two cards so now I resolve that the next two will have stamping!!

Only 351 card-making days left!

Happy New Year!

For my first post of 2015 I am back on the Christmas card-making track with the Jingle Belles challenge, Wrap it up!  Lauren and Stephanie are unmatched in sheer creativity, inspiration and general lovableness, so I'm excited to get back to it. For this card I used an old Santa gift tag that I've held onto with plans to make it into a card but it never quite made it to the top of the heap.

This year my goal is to post more of my cards than I did last year. We'll see how long that lasts!!

Dreaming of a Pink Christmas

Happy to have a Monday holiday to get in a little card making so of course I had to go to my favorite card challenge blog, Jingle Belles, and take a stab at the current challenge, to make a card featuring a lot of pink. Lauren and Stephanie are each donating $2/card submitted, so $4 per card, to the Susan G. Komen Foundation. It's a little busy but there's a lot of pink! I think I'll go a bit more CAS for the next one. The sketch is from Freshly Made Sketches #157 by Amy.

Wish you a beary Christmas!

I had so much fun making this card. It has a little bit of everything: stamped Recollections ice skating bear colored with Spectrum Noir markers, fussy cut and glued to a background of cardstock with wax resist stamped snow flakes and Color Box French Blue chalk ink sponged on. Die cut DoodleBug patterned paper for the card base, glittery Jolee's snowflake embellishments, finished off with baker's twine, glittery sentiment and a button! 

 

My inspiration for this card came from the challenges:

Jingle Belles Shape Up  make a card in any shape except a square or a rectangle
Merry Monday Challenge #120, Skates, Skis or Sled
Crafty Hazelnut Christmas Card Challenge Fur or Feather
Christmas Cards All Year Round Sparkle and Shine
And of course, I always submit to Crafty Hazelnut's Christmas Card Extra Anything Goes!

Can't wait for Christmas!

It's 107 degrees here. Hubby is traveling and son is on the coast with friends. Yep. Yeah. Uh-huh. I think you know what that means. The dogs have taken over the bed and I'm making cards. I'll take a shower eventually.

For the Jingle Belles Shopping our Stash challenge I dug out a stamp of a nutcracker that I bought at the end of season sale at Michael's a couple years ago. I was (still am) a card-making newbie and didn't understand how to select a good stamp. The problem with this stamp is figuring out what color ink to use. If I stamp it with black ink the nutcracker's cheeks are black. Um, no. Nutcrackers have red cheeks. But if I use red ink, all of the outline is red. That just doesn't seem right either. So I decided to go all sparkly with gold ink and gold embossing powder. Stitched around the edges, added a few sequins (hello, Merry Monday Challenge #117) and slapped on a glittery gift tag embellishment and voy-la!