Sharing Creativity...

This is a second Name Frame Christmas present I made for the new grandson of our best friends. Liam’s room is decorated in sports and dark blues. The name of his bedding is All Star! I pulled out an old retired Stampin’ Up! Scrappin’ Kit Toy Box to decorate his name. I thought the plaid decorative paper in this kit worked well with his room, too! The All Star tag is “hanging” off the bat with natural hemp. I stamped the large letters with Headline Alphabet (retiring tomorrow!) I’m going to miss that alphabet! The small All Star letters were stamped with Short Order alphabet. The only ball that is stamped is the football (for some reason one wasn’t in the kit!) from the retired Touchdown stamp set. I stamped the football in Really Rust on Creamy Caramel cardstock and then colored the stitches and stripes with my White gel pen.

I spent yesterday helping my hubby build wood shelves for my studio. Before I had some ugly metal ones that I will re purpose into the storage area behind my studio to hold all those items that need to be “altered” yet…like tin mailboxes, altoids-type tins, candles, etc. They will work great and be out of site. The new shelves will hold my retired collection of stamp sets and miscellaneous tools like the Cuttlebug and Bind-it-All machines. I can’t wait until it is finished. It was a major pain to take everything off the shelves I had…now my stuff is just sitting around in boxes. He is painting the shelves today, so hopefully I can get my stuff back to normal tomorrow. Although I’d love to do some organizing and cataloging before I put them back, I don’t think it will get done until I’m back from Leadership. And I have too many projects due before I leave to think about it now. I have a class coming in on Thursday, so it has to be cleaned up! lol!

This week’s challenge was again to show something that you were inspired by and recreate it. I am chosing to use the punch animals that Meredith Burnsed posted on SCS to create a home decor item.

One of the things I made for Christmas for the new grand-nieces and nephews, were their Name Frames. This one is for Cadence. Her room is done in Red with Black Frames and a farm animal theme. Looking thru my huge stash of stamps, I found that I didn’t have many farm animals…the ones I did were smaller in size than I wanted to use.

I could find nothing Meredith made for the cow, so I made him up. Since this picture was taken, I did add a tail. The body is a rectangle and I rounded the corners. The head is a small white oval and then a trimmed pink oval for the nose. Ears and horns are the slot punch. I colored the spots with a black marker. At the bottom of his legs, I colored the feet black, too, but you don’t see them in this view.

I used Well-Worn Alphabet for the letters. The grass is Wild Wasabi textured paper, cut with my scissors to resemble blades of grass.

The sheep used the Circle Scallop punch and half an oval for the face and slices cut from the other half of the oval for the ears. The chick is a 1″ circle and a 1/2″ circle, then a 1/2″ circle cut in half for the wing. The pig is a 1-3/8″ circle for the body, 1″ circle for the head and 1/2″ circle for the nose…each layer is popped up. The fence was the Word Window punch, stamped with Weathered for a wood grain look.

It was SO much fun to make. Although Cadence is only one, I don’t know how much she appreciates it right now, but her dad and grandma loved it!

I hope everyone had a very, merry Christmas! Ours went by TOO fast, of course. We try to fit SO much into those two days, but we do get to see a lot of people we only see a couple times a year. That makes it fun. My poor husband hasn’t felt too well. We don’t know if he ate something, or just is suffering from a bug. Today he is on the couch…hopefully he will feel better soon. The house is a wreck anyway…I can work around him and get things cleaned up.

I wanted to show you the boxes I made. These are the gift boxes that I made to hold gift cards and small objects we gave out at Christmas. It is a regular 2-5-7-10 box that I added the white scallop edge and placed a Scallop Circle on the front for the To/From tag. I cut pieces of the wrapping paper I used this year and glued to the flap of the box. I punched the holes at the top for the ribbon with my Crop-A-Dile…that makes it SO easy to go through several layers of paper. Inside was a gift card and some peppermint patties.

What craft items did you receive this year? I received Cut N Up cartridge for my Cricut machine, the Ribbon iron, a Michael’s gift card, and a brand new flat plasma TV for my studio! It is already installed and I love it, because it gives SO much more space on my counter than that old TV took up!

Luckily, we don’t have too many exchanges to do this year. I only had one duplicate gift and one item my son received is too small. I already purchased my wrapping paper for next year, so there is really no reason to go out today at all. Yeah! Hopefully you don’t have to do too much today, either, and you can catch your breath after all the rush!

Every year I make my tags for the packages under the tree. All my packages are wrapped in the same paper, and I make the tags to match. Usually I change the color of the bows so we know which gift goes to which family and to make it easy to sort them when we are ready to go. This year I made the tags different colors instead so the separate families are easy to identify.

The base snowman is actually the snow globe from Doodlecharms cut on my Cricut and set at 2″. The hat is the 1-1/4 square punch, the brim is the word window punch. The snowflake punch is retired. I stamped the faces with Cold Play (retiring this month…I’m sad!) To/From is from Holiday Tag Time set. I had the narrow ribbon in my stash. I think they make my packages FUN!

Hope you are enjoying the last few days before Christmas. I need to finish one more gift and do some baking on Christmas Eve. Feeling in pretty good shape. If I have time, I’d like to make up some coaster calendars for everyone. We’ll see!

One of my favorite things to do is make moveable cards. I’ve always been intrigued on getting a blank piece of cardstock to be interactive. Shaker cards were one of the first cards I saw when I started stamping! I looked at the demo’s sample most of the night, I think, trying to figure out how she made it! Soon after I started stamping, I attempted to make one…I’ll try to find that original card and show you…it was pretty funny! Thank heavens I’ve perfected the art of making shaker cards now (after doing a shaker card swap and having to make 15 of them!)

So…here is this week’s Blogger’s Challenge card. I used the snowman from Wishing You Cheer as the focal piece and stamped him on Very Vanilla. I cut a piece of Real Red cardstock the same size as the Vanilla and sandwiched the beads between the two pieces with foam tape and a clear window sheet. I used the Giga Scallop Oval punch for the front.

This card is one that was “rejected” by a magazine for their holiday cards submission. Funny, the other one I made (Christmas Cowboy) was accepted in last month’s Rubber Stamper magazine (their last issue). I actually liked THIS card better! Who knows how they choose what to publish.

But, I am excited that I have two other cards published in the Valentine’s issues of Craft N Things and Rubber Stamp Madness! I haven’t seen either one in print, but I’m floating on Cloud 9! Woohoo!

This card uses some scrapbook paper from my “stash”…I don’t have the manufacturer, sorry. I inked the mistletoe with Old Olive and Real Red markers and stamped on Shimmer White cardstock. Peace is from the retired set Perfect Endings (I think). I punched the Old Olive flowers (non-SU punch) and added red brads to their centers. They are popped up off the page with dimensionals. It is a square 5 1/2 x 5 1/2 finished card. Enjoy!

I’m slowly catching up…most of my cards are mailed with the Christmas letter that I wrote on Sunday. I started wrapping and tomorrow will work on making tags for the packages. Still have a few gifts to make and some gift certificates to purchase, but the rest of the gift purchasing I finished up this morning! Yeah! I’m feeling in control again!

Well, I SURVIVED! Oh my gosh…last night’s holiday party dinner nearly put me over the edge. (Next year I’m having it catered!) I spent most of today recovering (after delivering some orders in a horrible snowstorm that hit this morning!) Hopefully tomorrow I will feel like I’m back in the Christmas spirit and get some things done (like writing my Christmas letter, mailing cards, making my tags, wrapping gifts.) I plan to finish my shopping on Monday…yeah! Just a few things left to get and then some gift certificates.

Here is another one of the projects that my Last Minute Gifts class made. The shadow box frames I purchased at the Target $ spot last year. I bought a WHOLE bunch, so still have quite a few left for gifts! I love how these turned out…easy to change the colors to fit the recipient’s taste.

For the center, I stamped the medallion from Baroque Motifs twice with Versamark and then Groovy Guava ink on River Rock cardstock, applied Iridescent Ice EP and heat set….very sparkly. Then I trimmed both the medallions to get just the floral part. I mounted the two together and layered on the Scallop Circle punch, then used my Round Tab punch to form a Very Vanilla circle behind the Scallop. The Jumbo eyelet went thru all layers with my Crop A Dile (just like butter!), then I added the Rhinestone in the center of the Jumbo eyelet. The swirl in the set was stamped with Wild Wasabi on the Wild Wasabi background and the mat. I stamped Cherish in Wild Wasabi and punched with the large oval punch. All together a very nice gift, I think. Wouldn’t you like to receive it?

This week’s Blogger’s Challenge was to make a Sympathy card. Since I send out a lot of Sympathy cards, my practice is to make up a dozen or so at a time. I leave the insides blank and quickly stamp the sentiment when I need one.

I love the simplicity of this design. Clean and crisp comes to mind. The flowering branch from Artfully Asian is stamped on Shimmer paper and watercolored. Faith comes from a retired set…I stamped off the left side of the stamp (it normally has the long script line on both sides of the word Faith), so it now appears as the letter f is just starting. I mounted the White Shimmer cardstock on Chocolate Chip…leaving a thin border. I’ve used the ticket corner punch on both layers. The So Saffron piece is stamped with Sanded background in So Saffron for a tone-on-tone look. A simple knot ribbon finishes the card. The wide Chocolate Chip satin ribbon that is ON SALE now would have looked great, but I ran out! Time for me to order more…

Check out the other Blogger’s for their Sympathy card creations.

Tonight is my hubby’s holiday dinner party at our house. I have things mostly ready to go. Just need to finish up some last minute cleaning (my studio!) and pull the meal together. Yesterday, I baked four Pumpkin Rolls for dessert. I didn’t make them last year, and I’d forgotten how long they take me! I always try to make several when I do, because I always make a big mess. lol! They are yummy, though…and worth the effort. In previous years, I’ve made them for neighbors and friends…they make a nice dessert, freeze well and look good when served!