A White Christmas

Yes, Virginia, there is a blogger! ;-) It has been such a long time since I've had a chance to post anything! Whew, the holidays are nice but they are exhausting!
 

As you can see, we are indeed having a white Christmas. Fortunately, the snow mostly came Thursday night into Friday morning, so by now the roads are clear for driving. That is perhaps the best present of all. :)

Here's a picture of the fam:

 

And the furry family members as well.... our dog Dixie, the in-laws' dog Sparky and our foster dog Yasmine

 

This is the card I made for Jessica. I wasn't thrilled with how it came out at first, but it was 1 AM and I needed to go to bed. I liked it better this morning (funny how that works that way so often). She really liked it a lot and declared it was going up on the display board in her room, so that made my day. :)

Well, we're off to spend the day with the rest of the Thompson clan. More food and more presents! :)

Have a wonderful day!

Ice, Ice, Baby!

Ugh! Winter hasn't even officially started and I am already ready for it to be over! We are getting some frozen precipitation tonight and they've already had to close off highways in the areas due to accidents. It was definitely time to do some stamping to get my mind off all of this miserable weather we're having!

TAC Supplies: Happily Grateful stamp set, TAC's Ivory, Willoughby SWIC, Brown and Khaki cardstocks, Bazzill green cardstocks, Pallette inks in  Burnt Umber and Jardin Moss, Lemonade Buttons & Blossoms embellishment kit. Other supplies: Labels 1 Nestabilities, distressing tool, paper piercing tool (Making Memories), circle punch (Creative Memories) twine, scalloped die (Cuttlebug).

I sponged my favorite brown ink (Burnt Umber Palette ink) around the image and edges of the base card to help "age" the card. The Angel Company is having an AWESOME promotion on Palette inks right now - buy the ink pad and get the refill FREE! Gotta love free. :) For details, see this: BOGO Ink. Email me if you're interested in taking advantage of this great offer.

This card was inspired by one that I saw today while I was blog hopping. (I thought I saw it on Laurie Schmidlen's Just Give Me Stmaps blog, but I didn't. I really have to start writing down where I find these things!) If I figure it out, I'll update this post. (I like to give credit where credit is due!)

I'm off to check the "Ice Tracker" and head to bed! I hope they manage to get down enough salt & cinders on the road tonight.

Wintry Weekend Wrap Up

Baby, it's cold outside!!

We got our first batch of snow this year, thanks to some Arctic air. (It's currently a frosty 12 degrees.) Fortunately, we went out Saturday morning to get our Christmas tree before the snow and the worst of the cold temps hit. Here's DH cutting down the tree as the girls watch. (Poor Dad! He does all the work.)

All this cold and Christmas-y happenings put me in the mood for another holiday project for this week's DSB project. These clothes pins were decorated using Nestabilities dies and Christmas Doodles digital stamps from DigiStamp Boutique. The images were colored in with Copic markers and I used double stick "red tape" to adhere the decorative fronts to the clothes pins.

My inspiration was a great little project I saw while blog hopping from The Cats Pajamas blog. Unfortunately, I can't find the link but the project started with a Christmas card display kit from the dollar store - some twine and a few plain clothes pins. The crafter embellished the clothes pins with TCP stamps and Nesties and used them to clip cards to the twine. (If anyone has seen the project, please send me the link and I'll post it here.)

Here's a photo of our current foster dog, Yasmine. Isn't she adorable? She has kennel cough (although a mild case, fortunately) and recently had 6 puppies. She's a good dog and I just know she'll get a good "fur-ever home" as soon as she's all better.

Have a good week! Hope your weather is a little warmer wherever you are! :)

A Wintry, Blue Christmas

Whew! One card, several challenges:

Supplies: Christmas Party Tilda (Magnolia), snowflake punch (Martha Stewart), pearl Dew Drops, Copics, sentiment stamp (retired, TAC), light blue cardstock (DCWV Pastel Stack), papers from stash.

7KidsCollegeFund - Challenge #10 Winter Wonderland

Stamptacular Sunday - Blue, Blue Christmas

iCopic Lover - Color Challenge #9

I just got this adorable Magnolia from 7KidsCollegeFund and couldn't wait to use her! Luckily, she was just right for a lot of challenges out there this week!

Wednesday with Wings

OK, between Christmas cards, Christmas concerts and Christmas cookies, I needed to change it up a bit for this week's Wednesday with Wings post. Here's a little something warm and spring-y.

Supplies: One of a Kind (TA-3337), Lillyanna SWIC and coordinating cardstock, Lemonade Blossoms & Buttons kit, Palette Noir ink, Copics (skin: Skin White and Pale Pink, hair: Pale Yellow, Buttercream Yellow and Brick Beige, bench: Brick Beige, Sand and Sepia, dress: Pale Pink and Pink, bows: Tender Pink, flower: Aqua Blue and Pale Yellow). All supplies from The Angel Company (TAC).

And, hey, did you notice the new blog header? Yeah, yeah, I know - I said I needed a break from Christmas. But I've got my blog "redecorated" for the holidays and this was a quick and easy header image to create. I used this tutorial to help me figure it out: Everyday Morgan's "Make your own header" tutorial. Now I can't wait to find time to make something fancier!

DSB Doodles

Well, I didn't get as much done this weekend as I wanted to (the story of my life!) but I did manage to bake five different kinds of Christmas cookies this weekend. I have to say that I am a little tired of baking cookies at the moment, LOL.

In keeping with this weekend's Christmas-y theme, I used these images from last November's release - Christmas Doodles - for today's DigiStamp Boutique card:

I was inspired by Lisa Nowacki's sample card to cut my images out separately and arrange them in a linear layout. Other supplies used on my card: Copics, sheer ribbon (Michael's, I think), "A Rhonna Christmas" buttons (Autumn Leaves), green twine, white Fun Flock (on hat) and sentiment stamp both from The Angel Company.

Tomorrow I will attend my first holiday concert of the season - my 12 year old's first band concert (ever). She's been practicing hard and I'm looking forward to seeing her all dressed up and hearing her play. :)

Have a great week!

A Wild Wednesday With Wings

I confess. I have a "thing" for Christmas cards in non-traditional colors. Yes, red and green are very pretty. Yes, I'm a traditional kind of gal in a lot of ways. But I just love seeing and making Christmas cards in unexpected hues. Thus, I came up with this Wednesday With Wings card, featuring stamps and other products from The Angel Company.

Supplies: Merriest Wishes stamp set, Pop Rockz dp, Copics, Lemonade Blossoms & Buttons kit, Noir Palette Ink, green cs (DCWV Pastel Stack), Copics, ribbon, ultrafine glitter
 (on wings).

December DigiStamps

This month's release from DigiStamp Boutique features this great new character, Beau:

She was just so pretty - I had to make a card with her as soon as Sally-Ann sent her to me!

Head on over to the shop to see the rest of the December images!

Cabio's Candy

Cabio, one of my fellow PWCO design team members, if offering some wonderful candy on her blog! Check it out:

Head on over to Cabio's blog before December 14th to be in the drawing for this wonderful stash! And be sure to leave her some birthday wishes, too. :)

A Magical Monday Sketch

Peggy has posted another great sketch this week on the PaperWorksCo blog.

Note: I saw this sketch as a pencil draft and envisioned it turned around with the sentiment along the top. Just goes to show what a versatile sketch this is - it looks great either way!

This week's card came together so easily for me! I was stoked about using these four things: 1) this week's sketch (I love it!); 2) another one of Rachelle Anne Miller's Christmas images (love those too!); and 3)  this adorable Echo Park honeycomb paper; and 4) my new EK Success border punch.

(I don't know about you, but the white designs on that honeycomb paper look an awful lot like snowflakes to me...)

Supplies:
Stamps: A Magical Christmas (RAM for PWCO)
Paper: Honeycomb from the Life is Good Collection (Echo Park), Tweetheart from the Love Bandit Collection (Bo Bunny Press), pink cardstock (Prism), aqua and ivory cardstock
Other: Copics, border punch (EK Success), sheer ribbon, snowflake punchie, self-adhesive pearl

DSB Sunday

Oh man, tons of computer problems today!! Our internet was out for several hours and our connection has been erratic all day. Whew! I better get this posted before it starts acting up again...

This little cutie is part of the Francis collection from DigiStamp Boutique:

Isn't he adorable? I just love penguins and this little guy is no exception. He's quick and easy to color, too, so he'd make a great image for your holiday cards! Head on over to the DigiStamp Boutique to check out Waddle Francis and the rest of the Francis collection.

A Frosty Free For All

Hi! Hope you had fun participating in all the birthday festivities these past 2 weeks over at the PWCO blog. We're back to our "regularly scheduled programming", so here I am with this Monday's FFA (Free For All) card

This aqua and cream dp from Echo Park is just so soft and warm. I felt it was just perfect to warm up our frosty little friends.

Supplies:
Stamps: Flaky Friends (Rachelle Anne Miller for PWCO)
Paper: Grandma's Quilt, Life is Good Collection (Echo Park), kraft and aqua cardstocks
Other: Copics, ribbon, snowflake punch (Martha Stewart), button, twine

DSB Sunday - Season's Greetings!

This Sunday I have not one, but two cards for you featuring images from DigiStamp Boutique. My recent DSB cards have featured Hootie and her friend, Hoot, from the November release. Today's card features a cute Christmas image with both Hoot and Hootie:

Supplies: Hoot and Hootie (DSB), dp from Fa La La collection (Making Memories), Copics, ribbon (Michaels), buttons, cardstock.

I've been on a bit of a red and green kick lately (I really adore that polka dot dp), so I decided to go with something a little different for my Ice Skating Poppy card:

Supplies: Ice Skating Polly (DSB), Winter Weather and Winter Simple Stripe DP (KI Memories), cardstock (including DCWV Pastel Stack), scallop border punch (Fiskars) snowflake punch (Martha Stewart), self-adhesive rhinestones (dollar spot at Michael's), Copics, Icicle Stickles.

Have a great week! Don't forget to stop by tomorrow to check out my Monday Free For All card for PWCO.

Happy Holidays Hoot!

The other day I introduced you to the adorable Hootie from November release, the Hoot & Hootie Christmas collection. Today's card features her friend, Hoot.

Wednesday With Wings Holiday Hints

Next week is Thanksgiving, which means Friday of next week is Black Friday, which in turn means .... Christmas it not that far away!! OK, take a deep breath and read these tips on how to get ready for all the holiday gift exchanging, card mailing, etc.

If you're making your own cards - keep them simple! Use colored cardstock to make your basecard (or, better yet, buy premade ones) and keep your layers to a minimum. You can find recent holiday card samples here and here (the last 2 cards have pretty simple layouts and the Joy card doesn't need any coloring whatsoever). Barb Foster has some adorable, but simple Christmas cards here.

Even the most humble of gifts looks great if it's packaged nicely.  Below are some gift bags that I used to give gifts to my daughter's school secretaries. I'd picked up the preprinted bags at Hobby Lobby (they have great pre-Christmas sales and you can often pick these up at after Christmas sales, too.) and I had a retired TAC stamp set (Christmas Fun) which coordinated well with the design. So, I made some tags, punched 2 holes in the top of each gift bag, then tied them shut with some sheer ribbon and a tag. (Insert both ends of the ribbon through the back of the back, towards you. Tie a half-knot to seal the bag. Thread the tag onto one of the ends of ribbon. Tie a bow and you're done!)

Only 38 shopping days left until Christmas! (Sorry, I just had to throw that in there! LOL!)

Happy Birthday, PWCO!!

If you've been visiting the PaperWorks Co blog, you know that the company is celebrating birthday #3!

To celebrate PaperWorks 3rd birthday, we're playing a little game with the past and present members of the design team. There are 3 chances to win a $33.00 gift certificate to the store, so make sure you play along and grab the clues along the way!! Stop by the PWCO blog and check out the birthday bonanza post for details.

Supplies:
stamps - A Little Haul of Cheer (Rachelle Anne Miller for PWCO)
paper - Honeycomb, Seeing Spots from the Life is Good Collection (Echo Park)
other: Copics, pink and brown cardstock, pink grosgrain ribbon, snowflake charm, self-adhesive rhinestones

Don't forget to leave a comment and keep looking for who this little snipped might belong to!

Who-o-o Is This Christmas Cutie?

This Christmas cutie is "Hootie", one of the November releases at DigiStamp Boutique. You can find Hootie and her pal, Hoot, in the current Offer of the Month. You can also buy all of the Hoots and Hooties individually, along with some other cute characters at the November release page.

On Tuesday I'll be posting a few more cards featuring images from the November release!

Wednesday with Wings - Catch up!

I am so behind with my blogging in general and my Angel Company projects in particular. I haven't been feeling right and stayed home sick Monday and part of Tuesday. After copious amounts of sleep, I feel much better. Now I can get back to crafting!

For this week's WWW, I'm going to share some giftbag ideas with you. Once a year my upline, Avis, hosts a holiday bag swap open to all TAC demonstrators. The big draw is to be one of the first 10 to sign up so you can get a "Mischelle bag". (Mischelle Smith is the oh-so-talented founder of The Angel Company.) I've been lucky enough to get one most years. :) Here's this year's bag:

Isn't it cute? Mischelle used one of my favorite stamp sets ever - Merriest Wishes. I love the Nesties die that she used, too.

Here are some bags from previous years. The red bag is a traditional handled gift bag with a cardstock "bib" that serves to help keep the bag closed. (The handles feed up through the cardstock.) The blue one is just a colored lunch bag with the top rolled down. Holes were punched around the edges and ribbons were tied through the holes.The snowman is stamped on a metal rimmed rectangular tag.

Handmade packaging really helps jazz up a small gift. Hopefully these bags will give you some ideas for your own holiday giftbags! :)

November Release at DSB

It's November 1st, which means great new images over at DigiStamp Boutique!

I'll be posting some cards with these cuties later this week. In the meantime, check out the great eye candy over on Sally-Ann's blog.

Holiday Wishes

(to those who celebrate...) Happy Halloween!

Halloween is my husband's FAVORITE holiday so it's a big deal at our house. He looks for stuff at garage sales all year long and is constantly adding to our collection of outside decorations.

(That's my youngest daughter, Alison, dressed "Goth" for a Halloween party.)

DH's graveyard - he made the fence and gravestones  himself

This year's addition. He's even dressed for the occasion. :)

And now, for today's card. Of course, with all this ghoulish fun around me, I had to create...

....a CHRISTMAS card! LOL! :)

This card features the adorable "Milly Singing Carols".

Ah, off to trick or treat with Alison and my dog, Dixie. Dixie doesn't trick or treat, of course, but she loves to walk around the neighborhood and see all the kids. :)

Final Free For All at PWCO

This is my last Free For All card for this month. I can't wait to see what my next month's assignment will be! For my card, I couldn't resist using this adorable new image from the latest Rachelle Anne Miller release. My youngest daughter loves snowglobe so this image reminds me of her. :)

If you look closely, you'll see that there is a little snowman on piece of the dp that closely resembles the snowman inside of the snowglobe.  I thought that was a fun coincidence, especially since this was just a piece from my scrap pile.

Supplies: A Magical Christmas by Rachelle Anne Miller, red Bazzill and green Prism cardstock, Season's Greetings (Let It Snow collection, 3 Bugs in a Rug), snowflake punch (Martha Stewart), scallop border punch (Fiskars) Copics, rhinestone, corner punch (Stampin' Up!), sheer white ribbon.

Skating Away...

I love this new Ice skating Poppy so much, I just had to use her again in this week's DSB card:

One of the things I like about this image is how versatile she is. She works well with fresh, non-traditional Christmas colors, but would also be right at home on a  traditional red and green Christmas card or done up in non-holidday colors as a generic winter image.

Wintry Wednesday with Wings

This week's card features this adorable snowwoman from Merriest Wishes. (Sorry - there's no way that's a snowman in that hat! lol!)

It's also my entry for the "Pink Holidays" challenge, part of the Hope You Can Cling To challenge over at Splitcoaststampers.

I kept the layout really simple and played around with my Scor-Pal and Scor-Bug. The Scor-Bug is a littler trickier to use than I thought it would be but I love the effect. I added the big, sheer bow and pink rhinestones to bling it up a bit.

A Frosty Free For All

It's an FFA (Free For All) day over at the PWCO blog. Here's one of my favorite new Rachelle Anne Miller images, Flaky Friends.

Supplies: Flaky Friends (Rachelle Anne Miller for PWCO), Island Mist Medium cardstock (Prism),  Bazzill Smoothies cardstock, 3 Bugs in a Rug patterned carstock, Copics, ultrafine glitter, snowflake punch (Martha Stewart), small snowflake punch, sheer ribbon, pop-dots, rhinestone, chalk (for "sky").

PWCO Images Revealed!

If you missed last Friday's release over at Paperworks Co, you missed a good time and a lot of cute new Rachelle Anne Miller stamps!

First up is the new Angelic Choir images. (I used Sketch 54 from the Paperworks blog for my layout.)

 

Next up is the festive Season of Joy:

You can check out all the great new images here, as well as seeing the design teams' great sample projects here (look for posts from last Friday night, the 15th).

Visit the PWCO blog on Tuesday (or stop by here) to see my latest Free For All card using another holiday image from this latest release!

Ice skating Poppy

As much as I'd prefer *not* to think about winter weather, I love this new Ice skating Poppy image from DigiStamp Boutique.

Supplies: Ice skating Poppy (DSB), snowllake paper (Karen Foster Design), Martha Stewart snowflake and snowflake border punches, rhinestones (Studio 18 - Michaels), Copics, ribbon, metallic silver paper and blue cardstock from scraps.

Sneak Peek

Hey, it's time for another great release of Rachelle Anne Miller stamps from PaperWorksCo!.

Here's a fun sneak peek:

Can you guess what the image is? No? Good, you're not supposed to! ;-)

For another fun sneak peek, visit my buddy Sunghee's blog.

And be sure to stop by the PaperWorksCo blog tonight to participate in the release party and see what great new images we've been teasing you with! Here are the directions to participate in the chat. Hope to see you there!

That's So Groovy!

This week's Angel Company card is also my entry for the "That's So Groovy" challenge over on TAC's Paper Crafting Community.

 

Supplies: Merriest Wishes, Miss Moxie SWIC, Scarlet cardstock, Copic markers, orange brads

Whoa! That's one colorful snowman! :)

A Thankful Free For All

I wish it didn't take something really bad to make people realize just how lucky they are. My neighbors recently lost their newborn son, after a previous pregnancy ended in miscarriage. It definitely made me realize how lucky I have to have two great, healthy kids. So, I decided to create a card using this wonderful Rachelle Anne Miller image from the September release over at PWCO.

Supplies:

Stamps: “A Thankful Day” (Rachelle Anne Miller for PWCO)

Paper: orange and green dp (A Walk in the Park Collection, Echo Park), Jillibean kraft cardstock, brown Bazzill cardstock

Other: Copics, brown ribbon, self-adhesive rhinestones

BTW, I hope you're keeping an eye on the PWCO blog for sneak peeks from the October release of more great Rachelle Anne Miller stamps!

DigiStamp Sunday

Now that the madness of September is over (why is that month always like that?!), I"m trying to organize my life a little! My TAC and PWCO cards both have their own special days (PWCO changes each month, but it's still a weekly timeslot), so I decided that my DigiStamp Boutique cards needed their own special day, too. :) So - ta da! - welcome to the first DigiStamp Sunday!

This week's card features my favorite teddy bear, Coco. (Of course, the fact that he's named after my favorite food group - chocolate! - doesn't hurt but he's just so darn cute!)

It's hard to see the glitter in photos, but here's a close up of the snowflake embellishments. I used my Martha Stewart snowflake punch (love it!) and some Prismaglitter, then added a rhinestone for some extra bling.

Ahoy Matey!

Ahoy there lads and lassies! It's Pirate Josh from DigiStamp Boutique's September release! I gave this lad a scroungy look with lots of distressing and Burnt Umber Palette ink. The globe stamp is one I picked up a Hobby Lobby a few years ago when I was working on my genealogy scrapbook. It was fun to find another use for it.

You landlubbers can see Josh and the rest of his friends over at the DigiStamp Boutique shop. Head on over or I'll make ye walk the plank! 

J/K! ;-)