inspired by christmas cookie baking

So after a marathon of cookie baking, this fabulous photo shows up at Inspired by all the Little Things challenge.

How could I not play along? Out came the STAMPlorations Houses and a tree from Trendy Christmas Trees, kraft paper and white embossing. Add to that the Sizzix Bell Jar die and a woodgrain inked/dry embossed background panel - oh and a strip of washi - and my card was born. Added a sentiment from Neat and Tangled Sweet Home to complete it.

I'm playing with the gals at CASual Fridays too.

and ETA: Joining in at a new-to-me challenge Inkspire #280. Certainly the place I spend most of my time at Christmas is the kitchen. Not sayin' it's my favorite ;)

Thanks for coming by today. Only five more sleeps!

ultra CAS christmas duo

Needed two more Christmas cards and found more inspiration in the current PinSights Challenge - mega eye candy here.

See that last photo on the right. I love the black fireplace and that white with the bold touches of red and green. I translated that to this ultra CAS design. I did some selective inking and heat embossing with Essentials by Ellen Holly Jolly and WOW embossing powders.

Don't know why, but the style of this stamp set reminds me of the Grinch. So I decided to make a second card with a little more oomph. Ready for some ultra CAS oomph?

tee hee hee - I added a banner from PTI Birthday Style! Do you get a Grinch-y feel? Which version would you prefer to receive? I'm happy both are so mailable!

I'm hooking up at WOW embossing powder's December challenge. So thankful for the fun colors I won over there a few months ago.

Thanks for visiting today. I appreciate it.

modern take on snowy hills

Did you see yesterday's card? I CASEd myself. Well I did it again today. Here is the tag I CASEd.

Those snowy hills. Fun to make with hill dies and fun to pop up for dimension and depth. But white cards/snowy hill cards often end up so elegant. I can't really do elegant, which you'll notice on my tag. It's more playful. Well then I saw this inspiration photo from the PinSights Challenge - get ready for Christmas eye candy overload.

Know which photo caught my attention? Middle left. Taupe walls. Geometric trees. All white with a touch of red but yet a pine cone wreath hanging on the chair. Love that shot. Modern. Unexpected. Thus my card.

I used MFT Snow Drifts, Diemond Dies Pine Tree, Spellbinders Fall Foliage and Essentials by Ellen Merry and Bright. No stamps at all!

Thanks for visiting today. I appreciate it.

nature's noel

One of the tags I made for the 12 Tags of Christmas with a Feminine Twist inspired me to make a card. CASEd myself, so to speak. Here's the tag.

For both I used Winnie and Walter Winter Woodland for the pine branches and MFT Hand Lettered Holiday for the tag sentiment and Essentials by Ellen Holly Jolly for the card sentiment which is heat embossed in white. I love mixing dye and pigment ink. The dye really soaks in to and saturates the paper. The pigment stays on top of the paper and the dye ink so you get some depth for free - see those light green branches! To give the card a modern kick, I added a corner of striped PP beneath the kraft panel.

I'm hooking up at:

Addicted to Stamps and More - CAS

The Male Room #50

Green is not a neutral, but it certainly is a natural so I'm hooking up at Inkspirational too

My Christmas To Do list is dwindling slowly. I hope yours is too! Happy Sunday.

more tag fun at the CLASSroom

On the eleventh day of Christmas

The CLASSroom gave to me

A perfect tag design by

the amazing Kittie!

Maybe you saw my post yesterday with my first six tags for the 12 Tags of Christmas with a Feminine Twist over at the Ellen Hutson CLASSroom. I love this special event they have every year so I squeezed some time in to play along. Especially after I'd seen Kittie's tag design for day 11 .  I grabbed STAMPlorations Luggage Tags dies and made some tags.

Now before I move on to days 7-12, can you say "Dumbkopf"? That was me yesterday in my rush to get tags made, photographed (in this various shades of gray weather we're having) and blogged. Posted Day 7's tag as Day 3's cuz it has foil too. Duh. Meet my actual tag for Day 3, that was inspired by Joni's foiled spotted deer. I applied rubber cement through SSS Falling Snow stencil, let it dry, then burnished foil onto the dots with my bone folder, Added a strip of double sided tape and more foil where the PP meets the tag and topped it off with an Essentials by Ellen Merry and Bright die cut...

I'm hooking this tag up at Simon Says Stamp November Work it Wednesday - Dies and Simon Says Stamp Wednesday challenge - Gift It. I think a gift tag counts.

Moving on...
Day 7

These ladies had a nice striped sketch - I CASEd Melania's tag - and having just foiled for the first time (tag up top) I pulled out double sided tape, laid it onto the black tag and then burnished gold foil onto it. Easy. Hard to photograph. Stamp set:  MFT Hand Lettered Holiday    Die: SSS Poinsettia Parade

Day 8

Inspired by Carly's colorful inspiration piece from Margaret Berg and adding a touch of Ashley Goldberg's style I made this one-layer tag with a vellum overlay. I chose to use a camper image to play along with The Heart Desires Challenge #7. I inked the trees up with Distress inks and spritzed them before stamping. Stamp set: Artemio, Precious Remembrance Sketchy Christmas

Day 9

White = Elegant. I can't seem to go all elegant, gotta have a touch of playful.  I heat embossed trees and a house on the tag. You can barely see the gold glow I added to the house windows and door. Added a couple snowy hills, dry embossed. And snuck the gold antlered deer and his family in too. Stamp set: Neat and Tangled Winter Wishes    Die: MFT Snow Drifts and Memory Box Deer Trio

I'm joining the fun at Little Tangles - Silver and Gold. Not sure if you can see it but the silver is on the deer edges so you can see them in all the white. The gold is on the antlers, the house and the heat embossed sentiment. And at Memory Box - Marvelous Metallics too.

Day 10

Inspired by the the girls' use of kraft this tag was born. Used pigment and dye inks in greens. Stamp set: Winnie and Walter Winter Woodland and MFT Hand Lettered Holiday

I'm joining the Rerun fun at Winnie and Walter, although I chose the pine needle bough from Winter Woodland instead of Hollie's Festive Florals. I loved the natural look of Heather's card - kraft and twine.

Day 11

Kittie's tag for this day inspired my design for most of my tags. Love the PP on top, dry embossing on the bottom and a focal image. Unfortunately I don't have a wreath that would have looked the right size on this tag. And I was too lazy to create my own. Thus the ornament.  Stamp set: Waltzingmouse  Die: Spellbinders

Day 12

Inspired by the beautiful color palette and motivated to play in Where Creativity Meets C9 "Winter" challenge I made another tag with vellum overlay. Soft stone tag with world map stamped in khaki. White heat embossed snowflakes falling onto the world. Heat embossed and snipped sentiments atop the vellum overlay. Stamp set: Concord and 9 Map Love and Poppystamps Holiday Hoopla

Whew! Thanks for checking out my tags. Hope you are having a wonderful Advent and not getting too stressed out. We're off for more Christmas cheer this evening. Might even be carol singing... I wish you and yours - and all of us the world over - peace, love and joy this holiday season.

ARTplorations stencil blog hop - day 3

There's a blog hop featuring some of the fantastic ARTplorations stencils in the shop over at STAMPlorations. Today is day number three, but there will be inspiration coming at you for the next few days, so be sure to check it out.

I used Merry Go Round for today's project. Now I don't know about you, but when I saw this stencil I immediately thought of peppermint candies. You know, the ones wrapped in cellophane in the bowl by the cashier at Big Boy!

Well, that became my modus operandi for this card. I remember when Cath E. talked about me in her Moxie Fabber feature - which doesn't seem to be online anymore :( - and said that I always put a lot of  "think" into my cards. That was so true on this one. Keepin' it all "visions of sugar plums". Well, peppermint candy...

I started by putting the stencil down a bit askew and inking with Spun Sugar. Then I put it down straight and inked with Festive Berries. If you look at the close up, you can see the pink drop shadows behind the red. Just an added touch.

But alas, my "askew" left a white strip along the right edge of my cardbase. What to do? Enter the strips of recycled envelope liner and polka dot PP!

I had chosen this playful Santa image from Santa is Here to match the playful nature of the candy ;) Copic colored him and die cut him with a circle. Added light Tumbled Glass to the circle as a sky and then decided that a light blue frame would be good too. Enter the stitched circle frame.

Then the lightbulb went on. Cellophane candy wrapper. Enter recycled stamp packaging. I snipped into strips of it with scissors to make the fringe. Crumpled them up and glued them to the back of a larger red die cut circle.

Heat embossed sentiment snippets finished off my card. Hope you likey! If you're not hopping, but would like to, you can find all the info here. SOOO much inspiration. You really should check it out. My first card for the hop is in this post, BTW. Have a good one.

I'm joining in at this fun challenge:
Creative with Stamps - #9 Use Christmas Stamps

MMCC #30 - reminder

Here today with my last card of the year for MMCC, where the theme this month is "GOLD". Have you joined us yet? There's still time.


Back to CASSY basics on this one for me. CAS and messy. Got gold fingers while making this one.

Painted a chipboard piece with a couple coats of gold acrylic paint and let it dry. Heat embossed some silver dots with Hero Arts Life of the Party onto a scrap of vellum and stitched it onto my cardbase. Added some sentiments from Paper Smooches Christmas Sampler, doing some selective inking to only get "joy" out of  "be jolly".

We'd love to see your GOLD card creations in the gallery. The challenge is open until end of day on December 25th! I hope your holiday season is filled with peace, love and joy :)

ETA: I'm taking this card to the gallery at Little Tangles.

on the first day of ellen hutson christmas

On the eleventh day of Christmas

The CLASSroom gave to me

A perfect tag design by

the amazing Kittie!

So I ran with it. See, lately I'm quite the b***h. Least that's what my family says. So I'm in the kitchen making Christmas cookie dough for five hours one evening. Then baking them in a seven hour marathon the next day. Enter the "B" word. Only when I saw the light at the end of the tunnel did I get nicer ;) And took a moment to check out the 12 Tags of Christmas with a Feminine Twist over at the Ellen Hutson CLASSroom. It's become a favorite of mine every year - there's so much talent over there. Couldn't bear to miss it. And then I took several hours to whip up some tags. Literally. Of course, pissed off DH a bit when I woke him sneaking into bed after 1 am, but oh well!

May I present days 1-6. Largely modeled on Kittie's tag design for day 11 and using STAMPlorations Luggage Tags dies for all my tags CUZ IT KEPT ME FOCUSED, people!

Day 1

Inspired by Laurel's colored image with lotsa white space I heat embossed a sentiment in sparkly teal as my main attraction and decorated the tag top with stamping. Stamp set: Essentials by Ellen Holly Jolly    Die: PTI Holly Jolly

Day 2

Inspired by Kay's design and colors I made a shaker housing lots of chunky glitter. Crappy photo, sorry. The PP is actually green! Stamp set: STAMPlorations Trendy Christmas Trees

Day 3

Inspired by the foiled deer on Joni's tag, I pulled out some vintage gold I bought  this summer and foiled for the first time. Used doubled sided tape and burnished the foil onto it with my bone folder. Coolio! Stamp set: MFT Hand Lettered Holiday    Die: SSS Poinsettia Parade

Day 4

Inspired by Jennifer's LOVE tag and knit-sweater-looking embossed BG I made a simple, clean tag. Die: STAMPlorations Be Jolly phrase, PTI Holly Jolly

Day 5

There's a story to this one. When I saw the graphic and the word "frozen" my mind did not go to margaritas. It went to "Let it Go". Enter a box of cereal that came to live at our house (because DD and I really love "Frozen") and this tag was born. It does have lots of frozen goodies on it though, the glitter around the edge, and the sequins. Stamp set: Essentials by Ellen Tis the Season

Day 6

This was actually the first post of the series that I saw. And I fell in love with the unexpected color combo, and let's face it, these two ladies can ink backgrounds like nobody's business. I gave it my best with Victorian Velvet and Seedless Preserves. Stamp set: MFT Balloon Strings BG on the tag, Tim Holtz Mini Holiday 2 and Precious Remembrance Sketchy Christmas sentiment (what a fabulous set!)    Die: Poppystamps Small Madison Window

Whew! If you're still here - GO DO SOMETHING FROM YOUR CHRISTMAS TO DO LIST! And should you be all organized and waiting for Christmas to roll around - GO MAKE TAGS FOR THIS WONDERFUL EVENT!

Nuff said. I've got presents to wrap...

















(every year I say I'll do it better next year, then I don't)