STB march 2024 in a nutshell

Here's a peek at my March month-at-a-glance in my 2024 STB memory planner. 

People use them as a calendar. I decided to do a glance back at the end of the month and do a month-in-a-nutshell. Just having fun with all the things that somehow stuck out to me as having been important in that month. What a fun exercise that is.

However... note to self... don't use wet glue to adhere vellum!

May I introduce March-in-a-nutshell.

 

christmas card set - cas heat embossing on dark cardstock

So it's back to more of the card sets I made for this year's neighbor gifts. Instead of cookies. Which I now think might have taken me less time!

Today's set was inspired by various dark colored cards with gold embossing. So simple but so pleasing - to my eye at least. And with a MISTI, so easy too.

I used Waltzingmouse Poinsettia (you know Claire B is designing for Gina K these days) and sentiments from Concord and 9th O Christmas Tree and Klartext Frohe Weihnachten.

I'm joining these challenges:

Sparkles Monthy Challenge - White Christmas
Crafty Hazelnut's Christmas - AG with the option of blue
Cards and More - mood board

Addicted to Stamps and More - Clean and Simple

HLS November CAS Challenge

tags for 25 days of christmas tags - part 3

Three more tags to top my neighbor gift Christmas card sets. Inspired by Tracey M's 25 Days of Christmas Tags.

For Day 10 with Winnie and Walter I was inspired by Lindsey's simple but oho red tag and made one just like it.

MFT Traditional Tags, Papertrey Wonderful Words Holiday, Avery Elle Winter Wreaths

For Day 11 with Studio Katia I totally loved Tracy's gold-embossed-on-dark-CS tags cuz I made a set of cards just like it (which you'll see soon).

MFT Blueprints 4, WMS Poinsettias, Create a Smile Schone Bescherung

For Day 15 with the MUSE Christmas challenge ladies, I was inspired by Kimberly and Cornelia to make a white on white tag to accompany my marbled trees set.

Papertrey Tag Sale 1 die, Diemond Die Pine Tree, C9 O Christmas Tree

Once again, thanks for the wonderful inspiration Tracey and all her guests!

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.

splatters and blues and glitter, oh my!

So happy I got to join the Make it Monday fun at Papertrey. Danielle F. is splattering this week and I can't miss that. I missed the November blog hop, but its colors were my inspiration for this card along with the inspiration photo from Fusion.

And since I'm in the glitter mode, had to incorporate some glitter CS and even glitter glue splatters!

On white CS I stamped a wreath around a traced circle using Waltzingmouse Around Christmastime. Then I added the berries in various shades of blue pigment ink and gave them a little shot of clear embossing powder.

I used pigment inks with the exception of the darkest green - Adirondack Bottle. I used this, watered down, to make my splatters all over the panel.

Die cut my sentiment from glitter CS, stacked it and adhered. Stamped my secondary sentiment from Papertrey Take Three: Fall. Adhered the panel to a cardbase with foam adhesive and voila!

I'm joining these challenges:

Fusion - Blue Christmas

The Challenge - A non-Traditional Christmas Card

Christmas Card Challenge - Anything Goes

Thanks for visiting. Have a great week!

yes, virginia it is a glitter beard

If you are looking for my mixed media card for MMCC, click here.
If you are looking for my CASEplorations post, click here.

If you are looking for my RIC#97 Guest Designer post, please click here.

It's kind of a crazy day (this is my fourth post for the day), but TODAY the first thing on my list was to make a card for Virginia's View Challenge #21.  Unfortunately, it's going to be the last challenge for, a while. For, ever? Virginia has decided she's going to take a break and I want to make sure she has a fantastic last hurrah! She's been so inspiring this past year. And always on top of the trends.

And I felt compelled (yep) to make an unconventional card. Did you catch this a couple days ago? People, this was trending on Instagram!!!  Wait, is it Dec 1st or April Fool's?!?!?



Anyhoo (OMG... "morningwood")... anyhoo, meet my glitter beard.

Well, not really MY beard (although in the whole cray cray realm of this trend I hear the ladies are glittering their armpit hair - what?!?!?! - now too). OK, I'm done, I promise.

Just one more shot of Mr Glitter Beard Santa up close.

Since you may never visit me again (doesn't that guy on the left look like Ellen DeGeneres???), before you go let me tell you how I made this.

I grabbed the Sunday Stamps sketch #114, Waltzingmouse Around Christmastime stamp set and my gold glitter glue and glitter. Stamped the image in black and heat embossed it clear. Copic colored the hat and went to town glittering Santa's beard, first with the glitter glue and then I dumped on the loose glitter. A la The Gay Beards.

A panel of Pink Paislee Luxe PP, which is so cool cuz it's also shiny like the heat embossed area, and a strip of red GLITTER CS later, I was done! Join the fun at Virginia's, won't you? I'm off to hook up at:

The Challenge - A non-Traditional Card

AAA Card Challenge - Anything Goes

 Christmas Card Challenges - Anything Goes

 SSS Monday Challenge - Gentlemen

a christmas tag

Or is it an ornament? I stamped the front and back sides so if it twirls around when hanging on a package (or a tree) it looks good too ;)

I die cut a wreath twice from creme CS with a 4" MFT Circle Stax. Stamped with a tweed pattern from WMS Heirloom Patterns and Amuse Latte pigment ink, masking with a Post It each time to create effect of ribbon wrapped around the wreath (cuz that's how I make wreaths!). Glued front and back together and attached a crochet thread hanger loop.

Heat embossed the poinsettia from WMS Big Blooms Poinsettia twice onto some red/pink tiger print vellum and fussy cut. Trimmed away some petals from one and layered the flower. Added Stickles to flower center and glued it onto the wreath. Trimmed burlap ribbon and formed a bow.  Wrapped the bow with crochet thread and glued it onto the wreath. Voila!

You've probably seen the two Christmas tag events happening in blogland as we speak. One is over at Loll's Twelve Tags of Christmas and it's about mixed media tags. I've got several mediums here (heat embossing, Stickles and burlap and twine in addition to stamps and ink). I was lucky to join Loll on day six.

But my design is kinda simple cuz I'm joining the fun at Tracey's 25 Days of Christmas Tags. She's putting on this huge event for the fifth time! I saw Tracey's ornament tag for Day 6 which reminded me that I have those ornament dies. And WMS stamps to use with them. But the poinsettia sidetracked me when I went to peruse my WMS stamps. And thus this decorated wreath (instead of a decorated ornament) was born! 

Have a great day. I appreciate your visit.

Mixed Media Card Challenge #16

It's nice to be back creating mixed media for the MMCC. Unfortunately I didn't have the supplies for it while I was at my folks' house this summer.

This month it's about black and orange with the option of glitter.

I must admit this theme immediately reminded me of one of my earliest memories of Cath E.'s Moxie Fab World in the Sept/Oct 2009 issue of Paper Crafts magazine.

So with that as inspiration, I set off to cover myself and my craft room with glitter.

I stamped the bats and stars from my favorite Halloween set Midnight Feast from WMS on a white cardbase (the sentiment is from the same set). Then used a Crafter's Workshop Aspen Trees stencil on adhesive paper to create the gradient orange BG of the focal panel. Even tried to create a moon up in the left corner by sprinkling yellow glitter through a die cut negative circle placed on top of the stencil. Burnished the oranges then removed the stencil and added the black glitter. I've done a tutorial on this technique here if you're interested.

So what's mixed media about this card? Well, I've got stamps and inks. And...

TEXTURE - heat embossed sentiment, glitter
DIMENSION - raised sentiment panel
TECHNIQUE - burnished glitter through stencils

Here's another view of the wonderful textures.

Mixed media and Halloween. Sounds like fun, doesn't it? Join us - the challenge is open until October 25th.

I'm joining the fun at Simon Says Stamp World Cardmaking Day Challenge as well as the Work it Wednesday challenge with this.

And the challenge over at Curtain Call which jumpstarted my batty BG 

one layer christmas #9

A Christmas card for you today. Was made for a publication call way back when, but uses an interesting technique I'd like to share. Great for adding interest to a one-layer card.

Take a good look at your stamps and see if you have some that are symmetrical. They can be used like this.

Use the reverse of the stamp to stamp solid color and then use the outline image to heat emboss. Even cooler - some letters can be used the same way.

I used large circle stamps inked with Distress Inks and spritzed with water. Then I used the reverse of poinsettia (Waltzingmouse) and alpha stamps (Hampton Art) with darker colors in the same manner to stamp the shadows. When it was dry, I heat embossed the poinsettia and letters!

So, one layer and Christmas. Quite the clever challenge idea, eh? Get 'em done early to avoid the end-of-year rush. And keep 'em one layer to avoid paying extra postage.

Hook up a one-layer card with an angel on it and you could win an ARTplorations Christmas stencil.