Monday, December 29, 2014

love is kindness

Hello Stamping friends!  I hope that you all enjoyed your Christmas and had some wonderful times with friends or family.  I know I did and I am thankful!  I decided not to worry about my blog this past week so that I could focus on Christmas and not stress out.  And, I have also been a little sick.  I have done A LOT of sleeping!  It is amazing really how much I slept this past week.  Thanks to my husband for keeping the kids quiet.
I thought I would show you a card made with a brand new stamp!  The stamp is called Love is Kindness and I think it is just so pretty.  It is the first stamp from the new spring catalog that I inked up.  It is a single stamp #137131 and will be available January 6th.








    I used new Blendabilities colors to color the tulips.  I really love the softness of the new colors.  I added a little outline around the stamped image to make it stand out.  The new Blendabilities colors are Bermuda Bay, Pink Pirouette, Wild Wasabi and Soft Sky.  These new colors will be available January 6th. 















A pretty vintage button completes the card. 




















Thanks for stopping by today!  If you haven't already, stop by the online store and take a look at the year-end closeouts.  There are a lot of great items as much as 80% off. 
And, beginning January 6th you can order from the new Spring mini catalog and take advantage of Sale-a-bration too!!  During Sale-A-Bration you can choose from a selection of great products FREE with every $50 you spend.    Details will be coming soon, and the spring catalog has already begun arriving in homes.  let me know if you would like a copy!

Thursday, December 18, 2014

MDS Blog Hop ~ What we are working on in December!





Hi Everyone!  It's MDS Blog Hop time again!  This week we are showing what we have been working on lately.  These are a few Christmas cards that I made.  I had hoped to show you the printed versions but they are expected to arrive Friday!!  One day too late for the Blog Hop!  I will try and post them on Monday if you would like to check back. 






























I also made some new cookie recipe swatch books, also set to arrive on Friday.  This is the cover.  I have made something like this before and they are so fun to give.





On the front of the pages are pictures of the cookies.









On the back of the card is the directions.









Mixed in are a few pictures from over the years.
Jackie and I have been making cookies together since I got married 21 years ago.








hollystamps.com
Next up on the Hop is Holly!  I hope that you will hop along and check out what the rest of us MDS Blog Hoppers are working on this month!  We hope you will be inspired to try out MDS yourself!

Friday, December 12, 2014

Another Many Merry Star

Hi Everyone!  I am still working on the Many Merry Stars kit.  The kit comes with SO MANY!  I was going to post the rest on in one shot when I finished but there are just so many kid things going on at school and church this week, I thought I would get t his cutie up rather than nothing.  I love cardinals, so of course I had to put one in a star.  What do you think?













He is already sitting pretty in my tree.






















I started by assembling half the star, cutting of the front tabs.  Then I stamped the wood grain stamp onto some Kraft card stock in Soft Suede ink.  I then cut out my fence with the word window punch.  I also made a little strip of paper to hold the fence together.  I snipped the rounded tops off of the word window pieces so they would look more fence like.  I use bitty banner punch but you could just snip with scissors.




















To add the fence bridge I just bend the ends down and glued them inside with glue.















To line up the fence posts, I lined them up on the bottom of my grid paper to make sure they were straight, then I placed a post it not on top of them to hold them in place.  I then placed the star on top of them so I know were I needed to fold them. I traced the star to add the fold line.





I folded the fence posts in and added glue to the folded tabs, keeping them on the post it note to hold them were they should be.











I also added glue to the fence bridge, then lowered it all inside.

















 I let it sit for a while and then took off the post-it note. 














 I added a thin line of glue along the edges of the star, then added Cherry Cobbler bakers twine around the edge to give it a more finished look.















 I perched the bird up on the fence and added a bit of dazzling details for snow. 












I hope you like my little cardinal ornament.  I hope to finish the rest of my kit this weekend!










Tuesday, December 9, 2014

Many Merry Stars

Hello Everyone!  I wanted to share this fun kit with you!  I have had it for a few weeks and finally had an opportunity to put some of it together.  I say some because what you see here is about half of the kit!  I still have so much left over!!  The kit makes one of the Huge star, which I am going to hang on my door, and 25 of the smaller stars. 










This is a video that shows you a few of the samples from the catalog.













This video shows some alternate ways to use some of the stars on other projects like cards and placeholders. 












I mostly just did my own thing and played around with all the elements that came with the kit.  I loved the wooden snowflakes!  You also get gold bakers twine, sequines, lots of glimmer paper stars and words, and newsprint stars and cherry cobbler stat stickers and words.











I loved the little paper bows, so the green one in the bottom left corner? They are so sweet.   You get two each of three colors.  And, a little sneak peek for you, there is a bow builder punch in the upcoming spring mini catalog!!!  












One thing I did with several of my stars is make them into fill-able treat holders.  I intentionally did not take the cover off the adhesive on the top flap.  Then I used a hole punch to punch a hole for ribbon. 










You can tuck the flaps in to the star and hold it closed with the ribbon.  But, by not taking the baking off the adhesive you can open and close the star.  I use a dental floss threader to thread the ribbon in the holes.  These are for people with braces or dentures. I found then bu the regular dental floss at the grocery store!  Thanks to Lois for giving me this tip!!












 Here is another one of the boxes with a refill-able top. 
















This is the largest star hanging on my door! So pretty don't you think?
One thing I want to point out is that there are no holes in the sides of the stars to thread ribbon threw.  I used a hole punch in mine, adding the holes where I wanted them before attaching the back of the star.




















All in all a super fun kit.  I saved some of the stars aside so that I could attempt to make a diorama like on I saw on Pinterest.  Here is a link to that star and mine will not be quite as fabulous, but I will try :)
  Thanks for stopping by!!

Friday, December 5, 2014

Year End Closeouts!

Stampin' Up! has updated the online store with some new Year End Closeouts!  There is a lot of really great stuff on there!  You will want to shop fast as I am sure things will sell out!  I saw a few Christmas stamp sets and great deals on framelits.  If you missed the snowflakes from a couple years back, you will want to grab them now.
 Many of you will be getting the new Spring mini catalog in your mail boxes soon!!  You will love it!!  Not on my regular mailing list, but would like a spring catalog?  let me know!! 

Thursday, December 4, 2014

MDS Blog Hop Christmas Projects




Hi Everyone!!  It is MDS Blog Hop time again!! We are celebrating Christmas projects this week!  I don't know about you but Christmas is really charging through isn't it?  I don't know how we are in December already! Did November seem like only a few days to you too?   But, here we are, it's December and Christmas is coming so it is time to "Deck the Halls"!  With that in mind I made a Faux Mixed Media wall art piece to hang up.  I call it "Faux" because normally there are layers of paper and paint, and I made mine digitally. 


I started by opening an 8 1/2 by 11 project and adding an 8 x 8 punch square, filled with some newsprint dsp as a background.  I then layered some brush stroke stamps from the Happy Watercolor stamp brush set.  I then looked through my Christmas stamps that were line art only.  I choose this tree from the Color me Christmas designer template download.  I wanted to make it look like I added a wash of "paint" behind the image like you would do in real mixed media drawing, so I used the "freeform" brush tool to add a wash behind the tree.  I Then made a text box on the bottom of the page to make my cut out letters.
I then printed out my page onto watercolor paper and colored in the tree with my Aqua painters.  I added some sequin garland for Holiday sparkle. After I painted the tree I cut apart my text and glued it on.   Here is what the print out looked like. 

















I also decided that I might as well make it smaller and create a matching card. I used the Rudolph image from the same download as well.


















  I cut the card fronts apart and painted them.  












I cut the words apart and glued them onto the card fronts.  Next I glued the card fronts onto a card base. My cards measure 4 1/4 by 4 1/4 square. 


I hope you think my hand painted cards and wall art are fun!  They were fun to make! 
Click on the Next button to see what the rest of the team has made. Holly is up next, I am sure you will love her project!  Hop all through the blog hop till you get back to where you started!  We hope you find some Christmas inspiration!!





Monday, December 1, 2014

Stampin' Up! Online Extravaganza!!

yea!!  Stampin' Up! has announced the dates of the annual Online Deals!   There is a lot on sale, a few things are on sale only for the first day, so check out the list and see if there is anything you may be looking for.  I spotted some glimmer paper, XL gift boxes, lots of ribbon, My Paper Pumpkin refill kits, and lots of stamp sets.  The star embossing framelits are on sale too, so if you haven't gotten those yet, now is a great time.   Click here to see the list and start making yours.  Contact me with any questions you may have, or if you would like help placing your order. 

Wednesday, November 26, 2014

Santa Gift Card Holder


This is a fun little gift card holder we made at a recent Stamp Camp.  I really like this Santa Stamp from the Santa Stache stamp set.  The Santa is big and bold and easy to color, and that mustache is just begging to be popped up a bit and glittered don't you think?






Behind Santa is a pull out holder that says 'wishing you a "stache" of cheer.



I stamped the sentiment on a mustache to reinforce the theme.











Something I learned while making this card, Santa's beard fits the scallop punch! I knew I was going to cut off the mustache so I just cut right down and I was wishing that I didn't have to cut around the scallops and so on a whim I checked to see if it fit and it did! yea!  I colored Santa with my blendabilites











The mustache is pretty simple to cut out but a framelit makes it even easier!!











I used a two-way glue pen and some Dazzling Diamonds to give him a little sparkle.














The mustache was popped up on dimentionals to make it stand out even more.
I hope you like my Fun Santa project! Thank you so much for stopping by!