Ribbons and Bows Challenge

First off I would like to wish everyone a Happy New Year! If you are out and about tonight, I hope you party smart and safe. As for me, I usually spend the evening at home, eating junk food, watching movies and doing little else. It is the perfect night for me. Onto my card now. The challenge on the In a  Sweet Pea Dream site is to use Ribbons and Bows. I started with the Ching-Chou Kuik image The Silentness from Sweet Pea Stamps. I colored the image with Copics and painted the background with Twinkling H2O paints. The papers are from DCWV's Far East pack and the ribbon and flowers are from my craft room. 

 

The past couple of months I have been working on relocating my craft room. It is kind of set up in the new area--well the furniture is-- but I am still working on getting the shelves organized and stuff gone through. It is amazing all the things that I have found that I had forgotten that I even owned. Like the flowers on this project, no telling how long I have had them, but I fond a big bag of these flowers in assorted colors. As soon as I get it presentable, I will take some pictures. My friend's two daughters craft over here all the time and so they also have quite a stash of supplies too. I have been going through all their stuff too, getting rid of things that are no longer used, passing it along to other friends with smaller children.  Since they discovered my Copics, the Crayola markers have just sat on shelf untouched, the kids coloring pencils have been ignored for the Prismas, construction paper gets passed over for card stock and they now prefer Sculpty clay to play-doh. It was time to box these things up and pass them along to someone that can use them. Now they each have their own storage area for their things too. Back to work now!

New Year's Twisted Thursday

Hello! Doesn't my Christmas Cheer woman look like she is relaxing after a perfect Christmas celebration? Kicked back in her favorite comfy chair with a good glass of wine; sounds good to me! Our Twisted Thursday challenge is all about New year's this week. Don't forget to check out the huge sale going on at the S2G shop, great prices so you can stock up on some of your favorites. 

I hope everyone had a great Christmas. We aren't quite done yet, due to the weather last weekend we were unable to make it to see my family so we will probably get together with them in the next week or so. Other than that, it was a wonderful Christmas. I will post some pics as soon as we finish celebrating. 

Happy New Year!! If you are out and about please be careful.

My Top Ten Cards of 2010

I thought this would be a fun blog hop to participate in. It was a lot of fun going through all my pictures over the past year and picking out some of my favorite projects. Thanks for stopping by and taking a look! If you click here it will take you to the list and you can see others' favorite cards of the year too.

Image from Sweet Pea Stamps

Image from Sassy Cheryl

Image from Sweet Pea Stamps 

Image from Sassy Cheryl

Image from Sweet Pea Stamps

Image from Shirley's 2 Girls

Image from Simply Betty Stamps

Image from Sweet Pea Stamps

Image from Pholkart Blessings

Image from Simply Betty Stamps

I changed cameras this year too and can tell a huge difference in the colors of my photos. Looking back, I could see exactly when I changed cameras too, there was no doubt. Thanks again for taking a look.

Merry Christmas! And here's what I have made over the past 24 hours.

First off, I would like to wish everyone a very Merry Christmas. Hopefully yours is full of family, friends and lots of love. Remember too that family are the people that we chose to surround ourselves with, the people that we love and who love us, support us and encourage us. Not all of those people are related by birth or even marriage. Thanks to all of you for the gift of your friendship over the past year. Some of you I have had the pleasure to meet in person, and the rest I would love to meet in the future. I appreciate all the comments you leave for me. they really do encourage me. It has been a rough year personally and the comments have meant even more than you could possible know. Thank you from the bottom of my heart for the gift of friendship and the time that you spend reading my blog.

This is our Christmas tree this year. I love Christmas trees and ornaments and have been collecting them for many years. Most all of my ornaments are angels. The rest are Elvis. That alone says so much about my personality!

I thought I would share with you what I have been making for the past 24 hours in my kitchen. This is a pan of homemade caramels. They are to-die-for delicious, but not quite firm enough to lift out of the pan. But with a spoon they are great!

Chex Mix Muddy Buddies. I sent a bowl of this and some coffee to work with my husband yesterday.

Traditional Chex Mix.

Chocolate Mint fudge.

My almost famous twice baked potatoes.

Sausage balls.

A triple batch of laundry detergent. Not for Christmas or anything, I was just out of detergent! I do make my own and usually make a double batch when I make it.

I have been working on this for the past couple of weeks, I just finished it yesterday. My niece lives about 3 hours away from me and she wanted A stamping kit for Christmas. She specified that she wanted to be able to make cards for lots of occasions, birthdays, get well, friendship, holidays and such. I bought a pack of cards and envelops and decorated them for her. Since she doesn't live nearby she doesn't have access to a lot of craft supplies. 

Now she has a box of 50 pre-decorated cards, ready for her to stamp her image and then add it to the card. There is also a rainbow selection of card stock for her to use.

This is her "stamping kit" that I put together for her. I have a few more stamps to add, but she will have a few for every occasion she wanted to be able to make a card for. I also added some colored ink pads, a black ink pad, some coloring pencils and a pencil sharpener. I think she is set for a little while!

And now let Christmas begin!!! I won't be around online for the next few days, I will be hanging out with family and friends. They are predicting a white Christmas for us which is a very rare thing. I've got my fingers crossed!!

Merry Christmas!!!!!!!!!!

The Day Before Christmas Eve

And if you are a crafter like me you are frantically trying to finish up all your homemade Christmas gifts! I have a couple of more to finish and am in the midst of my holiday baking. So far I have made caramels and am starting a few other things. Not on the menu? Fruitcake! I am not a fan, but I love this S2G image anyway. In addition to my Copics, I used some Spica markers and a little bit of Stickles. 

My twelve year old niece told me all she wanted for Christmas from me was a card making/stamping kit. I fond her an organizer and have filled it full of supplies for her. Since she is a novice, I have  been working on making her some card fronts. I will try and get some pictures of them and posted.

Have a great day!!

Happy Anniversary Kip

Yesterday was our 5th wedding anniversary. I haven't had a lot to post this week because I have been hard at work on my gift to my hubby and since he does sometimes take a peek at my blog, I didn't want to spoil any surprises. This is my anniversary card to him, I wanted to give him a little something special, and since he knows that the Sweet Pea images take a little more effort from me to color, I decided I wanted to use one of those images. I wanted to use one of his favorite colors, blue, as the main color for my image. I realized I don't color just blue a lot either! I am very happy with the way that this turned out and even with the bow, I managed to make a card that wasn't too girly for him. 

One thing we do is for our gift, we play along with the "traditional" gift each year, don't spend a lot of money and then try and do something fun. The first couple of years he planned and then last year we decided to alternate years. I planned a trip to see Star Wars in Concert which was amazing. This year we went and saw The Nutcracker, which neither of us had seen before.

The traditional gift for year five of marriage is wood. I made Kip this wood shadow box. Our last name is spelled out in the top of the house. 

Here are a few close-ups. For this panel, I took a mini canvas, painted it and then stamped the flower onto the painted area, edged it with a brown and then wrote in the year of our wedding at the bottom.

This is a verse from Ecclesiastes 4. I chose this passage because it emphasizes that being alone is not always better. The cord was chosen because of the end of the passage says "a three fold cord is not easily broken". I loved that this cord had three distinct colors and even better, it matched the color combo and paper that I had already picked out. 

The center sections of photos are just pictures that I love of Kip and represented different things that I love about him. Clockwise: the first picture was in Chicago the year we went there in February on vacation, this is us at the end of the Star Wars concert, a picture of Kip with my cat sleeping on him and finally a picture of Kip with my Aunt Ella.

This is a copy of our wedding vows.

And this is my favorite picture from our wedding.

We had a great time. I will show you my gift from him in the next day or so, it was very impressive! Thanks for stopping by!

Slipping and Sliding

It is Thursday so you know what that means! Shirley's 2 Girls has another Twisted Thursday Challenge for you! Our Twist this week is to use flocking and snow. I used a little of both, I used some regular flocking on his earmuffs and some polar white Flower Soft to make the snow around the sled.

When i was working on this, I thought it was appropriate since our forecast in the Nashville area was to get more freezing rain. I have decided I no longer go out when it is slippery outside so I stayed home on Monday for a snow day and then was planning to stay home again today if we had ice. Fortunately it did miss us so I will be going to work today. Have a great day!

12 Days of Christmas Day 10

The Simply Betty 12 Days of Christmas is still happening! Our challenge for Day 10 was to use a Simply Betty image and turn them into carolers. When I think of carolers, I guess I think of Victorian era or something from Dickens. I used Darcy and Timothy from the Victorian beauties digi line. Don't these guys look like they could be out caroling?

I have been so busy for the past few days! I have been hard at work in the craft room, but don't have much to show yet. Most of what I am working on is either Christmas or for my husband for our anniversary. I will show you when I can, I don't want to give anyone a preview about their gift!

We did have a snow day on Monday so I was able to spend the day at home. I kept Jenna and Samantha and except for lunch, they crafted all day long. They made stamped and made cards, played with clay and play dough and painted some ornaments. All in all, a pretty great day. Thanks for visiting!

Day 9 of Christmas

What do ya mean ghosts can't be elves?? Our challenge from Simply Betty Stamps is to use one of the digis to represent the Ghosts of Christmas past. I think Elfin' Miller is a little upset that Santa doesn't need a ghostly elf this year. I left Miller's face white to make him look more ghostly, everything else was colored with Copic markers. Papers are DCWV and the ric rak is from the stash. I have been using lost of things from my stash lately, they are showing up like embellishments from shopping trips past! Since I have been working on moving my craft space, I have found tons of stuff that I bought and never used so I am working on either using it or giving it away. I have a friend that teaches kindergarden that loves getting boxes of craft stuff to use in her class. 

Guess what?? It snowed!! I am like a kid when I see snow. It is pretty rare for us to get very much of it here in Tennessee and even rarer to get it this early in the year. Unless something changes overnight, I think I will be staying home tomorrow. After my spill earlier this year in my driveway, I think it is better for all if I stay inside when there is any potential for ice! 

12 Days of Halloween--Day 8

It is Day 8 on the Simply Betty 12 Days of Christmas. And today the challenge was to use a SBS image as our version of "Sandy Claws". I cannot tell you how many times that I have seen The Nightmare Before Christmas. When my nephew Cole was younger this was his absolute favorite movie. Not too long ago, Kip surprised me with a Blu-ray copy and I just watched it again the other night. So this challenge was very fun for me to do!  I used Bahumbug Christian for my card. I thought this swirly paper would make the perfect background for my Sandy Claws. His beard was made with Liquid Applique and the fur on his suit was done with some white flocking. I thought he definately needed some skulls floating sound somewhere so I pulled out this skull border from K&Co.'s Halloween line. Finishing off the card is some silver accents in the corners. 

I have had a busy day today. I got caught up on some house cleaning (boring!) and then played in my craft room for a while (FUN!). I finished my Christmas shopping yesterday so I wrapped a few gifts. After that my friend dropped off her two daughters (8 & 11) so they could hang out over here for a while. We goofed off for a bit then I took them shopping for their mom's Christmas gift. This is a yearly tradition that I do with them every year and I enjoy it as much as they do, if not more. It is always interesting to see what they pick out. Sometimes they know what they want and sometimes we wander around stores for a very long time. Today wasn't too bad. One year for Mother's Day, Jenna decided to buy some flowers. I swear we were in Wal-Mart for hours! She inspected every single leaf on every plant before making her choice. We had so much fun shopping. Kip was meeting us for dinner and after we finished what we needed to do we had a little bit of time to kill so they talked me into going into Bath and Body Works. They had to smell every scent in the store before picking out what they wanted to buy. After a sushi dinner we took them back home and then Kip and I went and saw the new Narnia movie. It was pretty good, but now it's late and I am going to get in bed. Thanks for stopping by tonight!

Monochromatic Card

Good Morning! I am running late today. I am normally off on Fridays, but due to the traveling we have done visiting family, Thanksgiving and then volunteering at Ornament Day at my nieces' and nephew's school, I have not had a Friday morning at home in quite some time. I took advantage of that, didn't set the alarm and when I woke up sat down with a book and a cup of coffee this morning to read for a bit. It was great to have my relaxing morning back! My card today is for the Monochromatic Sweet Pea challenge on the In a Sweet Pea Dream challenge blog. I have only attempted the monochromatic thing a  couple of times, so this was a real challenge for me. This was definitely the first time I have attempted it on such a detailed image too. I chose to use the Ching Chou Kuik image  "Seeing Through" from Sweet Pea Stamps. I think I used almost all the E series Copic colors! My papers are from Basic Gray and I used some lace and brads that I had on hand.  Thanks for dropping by!

Simply Betty's 7th Day of Christmas

It's Day 7 of the Christmas celebration over on the Simply Betty Challenge Blog. The challenge today goes along with the Christmas song "all I want for Christmas is YOU" and Betty says "all I want is my Emos". So we were to use an Emo image and the colors lime green, purple and turquoise.  I used Candy Cane London and of course colored her with my Copics. This is not a color combo that I would have thought of for a Christmas card, but the more I look at it, the more I like it! Papers are from Making Memories, the snowflakes are some buttons that I have had for a long time and the shapes behind the image were cut out using Nestabilities.

Twisted Thursday--Glitter and Bling

Welcome to another Twisted Thursday! Our challenge this week is to use GLITTER and BLING. Shirley's 2 Girls have got some great Christmas images, Isn't that little mouse peeking out of the stocking just adorable? For my bling I added rhinestones onto the stocking and for glitter I used some glittery Spica marker on the stocking and my poinsettia has been misted with Glimmer Mist. We would love for your to join our Glitter and Bling Challenge, just create your project and link it to our challenge blog.

I just bought my first bottle of Glimmer Mist recently and I do not know what took me so long! My LSS carries this and I had looked at it over and over again and never took any home until about a month ago. The last time I was at the LSS, they had restocked and had lots of new shiny colors. Hmmm, maybe I need to tell Santa that those would make great stocking stuffers! I know Santa reads my blog sometimes so who knows? I may have a very glittery Christmas.

Sweet Baby Boy card

I was invited to a baby shower last week and realized I was out of baby cards! I have been having so much fun making Halloween and Christmas cards that I have let my card box get a little low. Friday night at Craft Night I took a bunch of images to color so that I could have a selection of cards when the need arose. I know a few people expecting babies in the near future and I knew I would be needing several baby cards soon. I have a few more of these stamped, I think next I am going to make one for a little girl. This image is from Sweet Pea Stamps and is from the Lisa Victoria line. As soon as I saw this image I knew it would make great baby cards. That little dragon curled up with his little bear is just the cutest! Image is colored with Copic markers and I used a Sakura glitter pen to accent some on the clouds. The brads and the stars are from Making Memories and those letters have been in my stash for a little while and I can't remember who made them.

My tree is up and decorated, the shopping almost finished, presents are wrapped and under the tree. I try and do a lot of my shopping early so that I can relax as it gets closer to Christmas. I have one more major gift to buy and then a couple of odds and ends, mostly stocking stuffers. One tradition that I brought to our marriage was little wrapped gifts in our stockings. I loved that when I was little, mixed in with the fruit, nuts and candy we always had little small gifts to open. Often it was a pair of earrings. some lip gloss or other trinket and  always looked forward to that. I told Kip that and he always includes small wrapped gifts in my stocking and I make sure he has a couple too. What tradition have you carried over from your childhood?

Steampunk Christmas

It's Day 6 of Simply Betty's 12 Days of Christmas challenges. Here is the challenge: "the children were all snug in their bed while visions of steampunks danced in their heads." I have to admit that if we hadn't been challenged to make a steampunk card, I would have still be just admiring these images too intimidated to try coloring them. Even after I printed it off, I still sat staring at this image for a while before starting to color it. After I got started though, it really was a lot of fun! My image is from the Steampunk Gang at Simply Betty Stamps and was colored with Copic markers. The paper is from a Hobby Lobby Christmas pack and the letters and buttons are from a Making Memories pack from a while back. You can't really see it, but the letters spelling out "JOY" were added using foam tape to give it some dimension. The gear is from a digi set from My Grafico. Even though these images intimidated me a little, I had fun with this one and will be getting the rest of the set!

Copics used: Hair Y11, Y21, YR14, YR23, E07

Skin: E000, E00, RV02

Shirt & Scarf: E40, E41, E43, E44, E47

Dress: R35, R37, R39, R59, R89. C7

Boots: E44, E47, E49

Mo's Glitz and Glimmer Challenge

Hello! I just love this image from Mo's Digital Pencil. As the owner of (or servant to, depending on who you ask) three cats I can so relate to this picture. The cats and I are at constant battle over the tree. The cat's quest is to climb it, undecorate it, run off with the tree skirt and generally make me crazy. It is getting a little better since we have wrapped some gifts and placed them under the tree. When I saw this image, I also knew it wold make a great card for some of my cat loving friends with the same problem. I am entering this card in Mo's Glitz and Glimmer challenge this week.  It's a little hard to see in the photo, but in addition to coloring everything with Copics, I used Spica markers on the ornaments and star and added a glittery border to the tree skirt. My glittery paper is from Hobby Lobby, and the ribbon is too and the buttons are from my stash.

Speaking  of tree skirts, every time I see one or hear those words together I think of the funniest episode of Designing Women. That episode was just about one of my top episodes of any show on TV. It is nearing Christmas and all the women are going to a Christmas party. Their friend Bernice came downstairs to join them and she was wearing a tree skirt as her party dress. throughout the rest of that episode she was still wearing a tree skirt in place of a real skirt. That still makes me laugh, and almost just as hard, all these years later. Thanks for dropping by!

Simply Betty's Witches Christmas Day

Jingle spells, jingle spells, it's Witches Christmas Day!! Well it is over at Simply Betty's challenge blog. This is my card for Day 5 of the 12 Days of Christmas where we were supposed to deck out our favorite Simply Betty Stamps witch. I used Witch Betty from the Halloween line and colored her to look like she was going to a Christmas ball or something. Betty is colored with Copic markers and I added some spica markers on her socks and sleeves for a more festive look. I wanted the smoke out of the cauldron to look sparkly too so I painted it with some Extreme Glitter paint from Folk Art. I love that little sentiment circle asking "naughty or nice?". Papers are by Making Memories.

I have been painting quite a bit lately, but can't show you anything because they are all Christmas gifts. Normally a week or so before the holidays, I will keep my friend's two daughters for a full day of shopping for their mom's gift, drinking frozen hot chocolate (or a peppermint mocha) and then will spend the rest of the day crafting. That way their mom can finish wrapping and getting all of her last minute stuff done without her little helpers. They have been seeing all my paints sitting out so they have specifically requested a painting day. I went to Jo-Ann's and found some really cute plaster and wood ornaments to paint. The girls love all things that glitter so I had to stock up on some glittery paint for their ornaments. I found the Folk Art Extreme Glitter paint and I love that stuff! This was the first time I have used it on paper. But I will be buying more colors!

Simply Betty's Sugar and Spice and Everything Scary

Simply Betty Stamps is doing it again! This time instead of the Twelve Days of Halloween they are doing the Twelve Days of Christmas. Unfortunately due to some travel and my crazy, hectic schedule, I missed the first couple of days and am jumping in on Day 4. I had so much fun with the Halloween challenges, I wanted to play along again. I decided to use Tootsie on my card because I thought this would make a great card for my zombie loving husband! The challenge was to incorporate some scary elements onto your project. to me, walking into a giant spider web would be pretty scary so that was the scary element I added. 

Copics used: Skin W1, W3. Eooo

Hair: E11, E13, E15, E17, E19, E95

Clothes: R35, R37, G05, G09, B93, B95, B99

Something Different

I have lots of crafty hobbies, when I go to a craft store, I can hit about every section of the store and find something for each of my hobbies. That is every section but one. The Floral Department. I mean I will go through there on occasion just to see if there is anything that I can repurpose into a paper crafting project, but to actually make anything with all those flowers? Well I have tried and let me just say it involved tears, some not so nice language and creating something that looked like three dogs fought over in the rain. No project has ever seen the light of day. My mother-in-law Barbara makes these gorgeous arrangements that would fit into any top notch store. Normally if I want something floral, I ask her or one of my other friends and just kind of point out stuff I like. I don't know if it is Barbara wearing off on me or the fact that I have followed her around store after store looking at flowers or arrangements, but I decided to make a Christmas centerpiece for my dining room table. For the first time, I am happy with something floral that I have made. It's nothing too fancy or anything, but I was happy enough with it that it will stay on the table and I am even showing it to people!!

Buttons and Bows Twisted Thursday

Welcome to another Shirley's 2 Girls Twisted Thursday! Our twist this week was to use buttons and bows on our project. I love this image, the look on the cat's face is too funny. One of the sentiments that comes with this image says "one more 'boing and you are a goner" and that sentiment is going on the inside of  my card. we would love for you to join us in the challenge this week!