Christmas Fruitcake

I'd wanted this paper collection by Basic Grey called "Fruitcake" for *forever*, a few years at least, and finally picked it up when I saw it on clearance at Hobby Lobby earlier this fall. I'd been wanting this paper for forever, and also wanted to use it to participate in Sharon Johnson's Stamp Simply Challenge #10! (Keyword ssnotime10) I fell in love with the cards she made for that challenge, and looked forward to creating my take on them. :) So here they are!!
For this challenge, we had to let the patterned paper do the work for us, and were limited to using only sentiment rubber stamps. I chose to computer-generate my sentiment, so I didn't pull out my stamps at all for these cards! The only "stampy" thing I did was use my Frayed Burlap Distress Ink pad by Ranger to distress the sentiment cardstock and get it to blend in better with the patterned paper.
These cards were totally awesome to make, because:

• they went together very quickly
• I happened to have some perfectly-coordinating cardstock and ribbon that I received in a surprise box from The Angel Company that I had been hoarding up til this point -- double points for both the perfectly coordinating AND the use of hoarded items!
• I loved using the pewter tree brads by some of the sentiments!
  

Part of what let this set of cards come together so quickly is my habit of making up the fussier things six at a time. I spent some time choosing the style and colour of the sentiments and then printed out six at once and brought them to my crafting table. Once that was out of the way, I was free to carry on with the serious business of cardmaking with everything I needed right in front of me!

Ink: Frayed Burlap Ranger Distress Ink
Papers: patterned paper from the Basic Grey "Fruitcake"collection, confetti blue-green cardstock from TAC
Other: taffeta ribbon from Making Memories, pewter tree brads from Paper Salon Spare Parts

Emerald Christmas

I had some lovely emerald green holiday scrapbook paper I picked up from the dollar bins in Jo-Ann Fabrics last year -- I was so tickled to find it complimented my ruby-coloured houses! I didn't think ruby on emerald on emerald would work out quite so well, so instead I went with a tricolour colour scheme of emerald, ruby, and that dark chocolate brown again. (It was still out on my craft table from the ruby cards I posted about yesterday.) I also used white and pale grey, as you can see. The card on the left was inspired by a wonderful Christmas card I saw on Tobi Crawford's blog here. The other card design came about because I wasn't totally happy with just centring the scalloped oval on the green layer, and decided to see how breaking up the large space with a sheer ribbon would look. I quite liked it, so it stayed. :)

Stamps: house, snowflakes, and sentiment from Martha Stewart gingerbread men stamp set

Inks: Rhubarb Stalk, London Fog, and Rich Cocoa Memento dye inks Papers: green patterned paper by Colorbok (Jo-Ann dollar bins), grey, brown, and white cardstocks

Papers: patterned paper by Colorbok, white, grey, and brown cardstocks

Other: green double-faced satin ribbon with silver trim by American Crafts, sheer ribbon with sparkly trim by Offray, ticket corner rounder punch by EK Success, decorative-edged scissors by ProvoCraft (don't get PC d-e scissors; Fiskars are WAY better!), white snowflake brads by Paper Salon

Sheldon and I decided to decorate just the living room because the office is pretty full as it is. So now when we go to the kitchen to get our coffee or meals, or go do laundry, we get treated to our festive and pretty living room!

Ruby Christmas

I saw these wonderful little houses on the Martha Stewart Christmas line and fell in love with them -- I think they have such personality and are so unique! Luckily for me, three houses in this style were available in the MS Gingerbread men stamp set! I think I'll get good use from them year-round, not just at Christmastime.
When I sat down to make these cards, I knew I wanted to use:

1. my Giga scalloped oval punch
2. one of the houses from the MS gingerbread men stamp set
3. some of the ribbon in the American Crafts Christmas set I picked up at Hobby Lobby on clearance a few years ago
4. my new Memento dewdrop inkpads

Other than that, I had no clear plan, so it took me FOREVER to make the first card. I started out by stamping the house on white cardstock and punching it out, but quickly found it was much easier for me to punch first and then stamp my image centred in the oval. So, I created several focal images (about a half dozen) so I could move on to the card design; this also let me use some of the less-perfect stamped ovals to test the results of inking, sponging, etc before I committed to using a technique or product on the card itself.

After much trial, error, and gnashing of teeth, I finally made a card I was REALLY happy with using SCS Card Sketch #201 as my starting point. I worked on that first card for an entire evening before leaving it unfinished and going to bed. Then the next morning, I assembled it in fifteen minutes, then made a second identical card in ten minutes flat! The second card is on the left in the topmost photo -- you can see I went a little haywire with sponging on the walnut stain ink on the mat for the focal image. :) The design choices I made to get this card to "work" were:

• go with a monochromatic colour scheme
• sponge my neutral colour (in this case, a chocolatey brown) over the patterned paper and on the white cardstock to reduce contrast and thus let the focal image take centre stage
• sponge the edges of the card base with my neutral colour to unify the cardstock base and the patterned paper attached to it, and frame the focal point of the card
• go with clean lines to balance the scalloped shape and richly patterned paper
• use the complementary colour to accent around my focal layer and give it more visual weight

Stamps: house and snowflakes from Martha Stewart gingerbread men stamp set
Inks: Rhubarb Stalk, Bamboo Leaves, and Rich Cocoa dye inks by Memento, Walnut Stain Distress Ink by Ranger
Papers: "Devotion" patterned paper from Basic Grey Blush collection, Cherry Bazzill Smoothies cardstock, white cardstock by Domtar, brown cardstock from Hobby Lobby open stock, so probably by Paper Salon
Other: paper edge distresser by Heidi Swapp, black antiqued mini brads, silver-edged double-faced satin ribbon by American Crafts, Giga scalloped oval punch by Marvy

Because I had made several of the houses on scalloped ovals the previous night, it was very easy for me to continue playing around with making another card using the supplies I already had out. :) For this next card, I used the same Cherry card base, chocolate brown cardstock, and focal image, but this time incorporated some American Crafts Christmas rub-ons I'd picked up last year.
I found I liked this little house image best when it is set against patterns more than when it is against a plainer background. I wound up stamping the grey layer with a "Season's Greetings" script stamp from an MSE holiday sentiments set in Versamark. The card base is stamped with paisley images in Moonlight White ink.

Here's a closeup of the stamped grey cardstock. Don't tell anybody, but I glued the grey cardstock onto the brown upside-down... the "Season's greetings" script is facing the wrong way! But, it still fills the design role I needed it to, and it took me a while to notice this so I'm not too worried. :)

Stamps: house from Martha Stewart gingerbread men stamp set, sentiment from My Sentiments exactly
Inks: Rhubarb Stalk Memento dye ink, Versamark, Moonlight White Brilliance
Papers: Cherry Bazzill Smoothies cardstock, white cardstock by Domtar, brown cardstock from Hobby Lobby open stock, grey "True Value" cardstocks from Michaels
Other: ticket corner rounder punch by EK Success, white Gelly Roll Souffle pen, green sentiment and flourishes American Crafts rub-ons, paper piercer, Quickie glue pen, Martha Stewart yellow gold glitter

Sheldon and I will be putting up the Christmas decorations today -- woohoo! We spend SO much more time in our office/hobby room than in our living room, maybe we will decorate the office this year and leave the living room plain -- who knows!

Scenic advent calendar

I've been working on an advent/countdown calendar for the past few weeks, and I'm happy to have pretty much finished it up this morning. I haven't seen anything quite like it in all my online searching, but my design was inspired by some Kinder and Lego advent calendars I'd seen where you build a three-dimensional scene with each day closer to Christmas. I made my own version of this concept using

• foam core board (two 13"x12" pieces to make the panels)
• 12x12 cardstock and patterned paper
• self-adhesive holographic paper
• clear velcro dots
• Frost White pigment ink by Colorbox, Platinum Planet Brilliance ink
• various stamps and printouts from online colouring book websites
• an easel-style stand, which I've seen at Hobby Lobby and Michaels in the frames dept
  

This is the calendar without any countdown pieces on it. The pieces are going to be kept in a little snowman tin I got from Michaels that is meant to hold gift cards, etc.
This is the calendar with all the countdown pieces attached. The idea is at the beginning of December, you are 25 days away from Christmas, so for December 1, you would put the little image marked with #25 onto the space on the scene that is marked with #25, and then add a piece a day until on Christmas Eve day, the scene is complete. Below are some closeups of the two sides of the calendar.




After I stamped, coloured, and cut out each countdown piece, I glued the number to the image and then laminated them for durability using some Scotch self-laminating pouches I picked up from Sam's Club. You don't need a heat laminating machine for these; you just place whatever you want laminated in between the two halves of the pouch, peel off the protective paper to expose the sticky backing, and then press the two halves of the pouch together around your item.
This angel tree-topper is for the day 12 days from Christmas. I found this great image on an online colouring book site, and coloured it in using Prismacolor pencil crayons.
I'm using some more foam core board and velcro dots to hold the two calendar panels together. This is a pic of the back side of the calendar; both halves are attached to a third large piece of foam core board that holds them together.
The mountain in the scene I created is based on the mountain that was in my backyard when I was growing up. :) Its name is Stekyawden/Roche de Boule, which you can see a proper picture of at http://www.panoramio.com/photo/10265467. I claim no credit for the above photo -- I just found it on the panoramio website!
This is a detail pic of the clear adhesive Velcro dots I used to hold the pieces on the calendar. The hard half of the dots is actually quite clear -- here the dot is adhered over top of a number I wrote with ultra-fine Sharpie. The fuzzy half of the dot is not clear though; it is opaque white. I got my pack of dots for ~$10.75 US at Hobby Lobby; the pack said it contained approximately 76 dots, but they counted both the front and the back halves separately so in reality there are only about 38 pairs of dots. Both halves are self-adhesive, and I think they are awesome. They aren't very bulky (they're thinner than the regular strips of Velcro), the hold is strong but not so strong it's hard to separate the two halves, and the adhesive backing is very sticky.
Here's a closeup of the snowy bits, which I made using white cardstock stamped repeatedly in Platinum Planet Brilliance ink using a retired Stampin' Up background stamp featuring hearts and swirls.
Here's a bit of a closeup of the sky, which I made using some ProvoCraft designer cardstock stamped with some Scraptrends snowflakes in Frost White pigment ink. This pic gives a good impression of how thin the Velcro dots are -- the calendar pieces are almost flush with the calendar!

Now that this baby is done, I can move on to other (quicker) projects and post a little more regularly to my blog! :)

Victory!

Yay, I'm so happy! I managed to not only find all the materials for but actually complete the altered pen project, and used one of the stamps I purchased yesterday! Huzzah! I **love** looking at the purple Himalayan poppies I picked out at Hobby Lobby yesterday, so I'm very happy with how the altered pen project turned out. The materials I used were:

• green floral tape (also comes in white at Walmart)
• spray of artificial flowers without too many poky or fragile bits
• pack of stick pens
• wire cutters (got mine for a buck from Dollar Tree a while back, so glad I did now!)

A tip on working with floral tape and pens is don't pull the tape tightly around the shaft of the pen til you're getting ready to finish off! The first pen I did is very sticky to write with because I pulled the tape tightly all the way up the pen, which exposed all of the adhesive that's in the tape.


I also worked up a card using the Rubber Stampede Santa Collage stamp I picked up at Michaels yesterday. I've been ogling this image for a few years now and decided to indulge myself and pick it up this year. This card looks simple, but I personally am not looking forward to finishing assembling five more of these babies before moving onto my next project. All that layering is a pain!!!! Santa looks a little bit (ok a lotta bit) like a hippie with his rose-coloured glasses. That was an unintentional design addition, cos I forgot that putting liquid glass over dye ink results in tinted liquid glass. Having learned my lesson, I tested other products before applying them to Santa; for the record, Stickles will also cause Distress Ink to run. I gave poor Santa a bloody moustache and eyebrows on my tester! Instead of adding any sparkle to give the focal image more visual weight, I opted to mount Santa on dimensionals. With all the adventures I had making this card, I had mixed feelings about the results until I showed it to Sheldon and he wholeheartedly gave it the Husband Seal of Approval!

Stamps: Santa Collage by Rubber Stampede, sentiment by My Sentiments Exactly

Ink: Walnut Stain, Aged Mahogany, Brushed Corduroy, and Vintage Photo Ranger Distress inks

Paper: starry paper from Memory Stor, green and brown cardstock by Fiskars from "Country" collection, patterned card base from the wedding section in Michaels.

Other: liquid glass by Plaid, Prismacolor pencil crayons

Sheldon and I also spent today together watching fun shows; our faves are primarily Japanese, British, and Canadian in their origins. Today we treated ourselves to:

1. the Lucky Star OVA
2. Chi's Sweet Home
3. Ga-Rei Zero
4. Skip Beat
5. Merlin
6. The Rick Mercer Report