Monday's Christmas Card

Over on the Bitten By The Bug site, we were asked to design a card using the tree card feature from the Joys of the Season cartridge. I actually found this quite hard, it was difficult to put my own stamp on such a pre-cut design. I came up with this, cut at 5 1/2", and then the tree cut again in the burgundy paper. I used lots of krylon gold to doodle and add a gold border. The star was cut from JOTS again. I found some christmas fibres by making memories which I wound around the tree, and finished off with a dusky pink vellum behind the aperture, it looks as if there are marks on it, but it's just wispy bits of fibres. A ribbon bow and I was done.

Go and see the other designers ideas for this HERE - Kazan even managed to make a fabulous halloween card out of a Christmas tree, and Teri made the most wonderful felt tree ornament. Amazing. If you have this cartridge, join in the fun and make a card using the cut.

Christmas Card of the Day

Here's the card for today, very simple, quick to do. A huge snowflake cut from the joys of the season cartridge at 4", then run through the cuttlebug snowflake embossing folder. A simple scallop centre and a joy button, and you're done. I like the purple though, all the papers are from this year's Christmas glitter stack by DCWV

House Mouse Card - Twinkling H2O for DCM

The dare on Daring Cardmakers this week is to use paint on your project. This house mouse stamp by Stampabilities is called Feeling Breezy and is one of those BIG stamps that I always have problems with, it measures 5" x 3 1/2", purchased in a buying frenzy at a used stamp sale. I coloured in with Prismacolour pencils, all my early training as a little girl of carefully colouring inside the lines coming in useful with this one. I painted over the flowers and leaves with some shimmery white H2O paints. As the stamped image filled most of the card, I just managed to squeeze in some scalloped layers, done with the Cricut and mini monograms, and added a pretty leafy border cut from the Storybook cartridge. This type of card is not really my style, but hey, I had to use that stamp someday............

Christmas Card of the Day

Here is today's card, from a set called All Around the World by Stampin Up, and coloured with copic markers. I do like the intense colours you get with these markers, the sentiment is quite small, in case you can't read it, it says 'snowy days, frosty nights and warm hearts' The background is done with the cuttlebug snowflake embossing folder.

Penny Black - Mouse Card

I just bought this stamp, and love the little mouse having a bath in the cat's dish. I coloured with prismacolour pencils and a goo gone pen. The papers are from a pad by Making Memories. Dew drops by Robins Nest, available from Cropstop. The sentiment is a stamp by Great Impressions, and the border is the two hole scallop by Martha Stewart.

Christmas Card of the Day

As promised, here is my Christmas card for today. The stamp is by Penny Black, I messed up on the painting of the sky, so simply cut around the little shepherds and stuck them onto blue paper, adding a silver star brad and some doodled stars. I think this one will be a good card to send to a child, the image is so sweet.

More Cropstop Cards

Here are some more of the cards I made with Cropstop's fabby October Kit. I really enjoyed using the papers and embellishments, and made loads and loads of cards with it. Take a peek over there, they have a brand new gallery, and a forum too.

Thanks for all the emails about my pig. I have been told it was probably a large armadillo, they snuffle and grunt too, looking for grubs apparently, so my friend Joan, who is a long time Florida resident tells me. I am thinking of going out to buy a natty outfit in camouflage fabric, just so that I look the part with all this wildlife that seems to be attracted to me.....................

Christmas Cards

I really must get on with making my Christmas cards, so I have set a personal challenge to try and made at least one every day, which I will post on here along with any other cards to show you. Whilst surfing around a few blogs, I came across a blog called Christmas Cards All Year Round, which could be a great way of getting around the problem, although I am not too sure I would want to be making cute santas when it is cute bunnies time. Their challenge this week was to use non traditional colours, so I made a very simple little card using DCWV's glitter stack, cut around some of the trees and popped them up for dimension. It's a cute blog, with loads of ideas for Christmas, not just cards, so hop over and take a look, they have ideas for little gifts as well.

The polar bear card, which I love, used the bear from Joys of the Season, cut at 3" (it cuts BIG), I randomly cut the white to represent snowdrifts, and inked the edges in blue. The holly on his collar is a stamp, which I cut out and dotted with red liquid pearls. I inked around the bear in very pale grey, which gave the shape some definition.

The last card in this seasonal fest is an old stampin up stamp, I stamped the penguins in black then embossed with clear embossing powder. The colouring was done with copic markers and the papers are all DCWV, from the glitter stack as before.

So the saga of Florida wildlife continues..............a couple of nights ago, I was reading on the lanai and heard snufflings and grunts, peering out into the darkness I could see a large, black pig like shape trundling along. I was sure it was a pig, people I have mentioned it to said that it was probably a dog.........really? A very fat dog with little legs that grunts? They also said I should have called security, now security consists of a guy in the gatehouse in this 'secure gated development' (obviously not secure enough to keep big pigs out), what could he have done, said "SHOO'? No I hadn't been drinking, and yes, I am sure it was a pig. Whatever next? Herds of elephants, wildebeest leaping around........ooh no, wrong continent, sorry!

Peachy Keen Face Stamps

I bought a couple of sets of the Peachy Keen face stamps, one for the animals from Animal Kingdom, and one for New Arrival. There was a bit of a learning curve with them as you can't cut the images with the little marks for facial features, so if the face is in blackout, the whole animal is blacked out. To overcome this, I cut two, one regular, one blackout. I then placed the regular cut with the detail, over the blackout and punched tiny holes with a paper piecer along the detail marks (leaving the face blank). It was then easy to doodle along the detail marks as usual. The face stamps are very cute. Here are some cards I made with them, all the animals were cut at 4"

My favourite of course is the lamb.

Papertake Weekly Challenge - Get Well Soon

The challenge this week was a sketch, and this is what I came up with. The tiny dog stamp is an old one by stampin up. He looks a bit down in the mouth, so I made it a 'get better soon' card. The lacy border was made by punching each side of the paper with MS chequerboard punch.

Click HERE to see the rest of the entries to the challenge.

Any Occasion Card

This is my offering for the design team on Bitten by the bug this week. The cut was accent 49 from the accent essentials cartridge, which I cut at 2" and again at 1 3/4" and turned it into a sort of flower spray. The tiny black flowers are cut from a doodlebugs border. The papers are by Martha Stewart (I am turning into a walking advertisment for that woman, but I do like the elegance of her stuff). The sewing is feather stitch. I left it without a sentiment, as it falls into my category of "it could be for anything" card.

Take a look over on BBTB - as always, the different ways the designers have interpreted the cut are amazing.

Clip Art Card

The challenge on Arty Girlz this week was to use clip art on a card, I have never used clip art before, thought of it as cheating a bit somehow - I know, I can be irrational sometimes. I downloaded this image of turtles and found the perfect sentiment in an inkadinkadoo dollar stamp to set it off. I shadowed around the turtles a little, and added a little shading to the shells, otherwise what you see is a printed image. It's a very simple straightforward little card, but hey, sometimes simple is best!

Sunday is my day to 'phone home' and I always look forward to hearing my kids voices and the news. My daughter in law Annabel made me smile - I sent Kiki a postcard of a little girl sitting on a deckchair on the beach saying "Miss You". Well, the postcard arrived and led to a looong discussion with my little granddaughter peering at the photo "Where are her Mummy and Daddy, is she there all alone?................." "Why is she wearing those glasses, do her eyes hurt?"................."Is she happy mummy?'.............................. "Has she got a dog mummy?"

She now has her photo of her new best friend, the happy little girl with no mummy and daddy or a dog, by her bed. Bless her.

Martha Stewart Border Punches

I am hopeless when I look at punches and try to imagine what they will look like on paper, so in case there are many like me, I have punched out the (considerable number of) Martha Stewart punches I have, including four of the brand new ones. My advice, ignore the embossed snowflake one, I bought it and returned it, the snowflakes were just embossed blobs. It's the only MS punch I haven't loved.
The card is made with a house mouse stamp, MS border punch and a studio G sentiment. I put diamond glaze on the raindrops so they are nice and wet looking.
The caterpillar battle continues, this morning I found a big one crawling up the mesh on the inside of the lanai - yes, the inside. They are invading. The cheek of it. You would laugh if you saw me brandishing the spray gun like John Wayne in a western :) - I draw from the hip and I shoot to kill..................................

Male Birthday

A male birthday card today, this is for the Penny Black Challenge Site, a sketch this week. Better late than never, they issue the next challenge tomorrow, I may have the distinction of being last to do this challenge. I love sketches, and keep a portfolio of them on the computer. If I am short of inspiration, I pull them up and can always find a card layout to follow. The stamp is, of course, Penny Black, and the papers are by American Craft. The little metal dots were a Big Lots find, and the sentiment stamp is by Hero Arts. Colouring was done with prismacolour pencils and goo gone. Oops, the striped paper looks crooked in the photo, it isn't in real life, how strange..........

So I am fast becoming an expert on the flora and fauna of Florida. Thanks to all of you who contacted me to tell me that the black and orange caterpillars will turn into tiger moths, and that the caterpillars STING. The upside is that the spray seems to have worked and there isn't a sign of them. I am also relieved that I am not depriving the world of a beautiful butterfly.

Winner of the Magazine is.........................

The first name drawn out of the hat for the magazine you are all going crazy for is

Ms_Dee

Congrats, if you email me with your address I will get it in the mail to you

Here is a variation on the frog in a martini glass card that I did recently. The stamp is called Max, I turned him into Maxine............doesn't she look sweet in her pink polka dots.

Cuttlebug Christmas for Papertake

I am slowly starting to do a few Christmas cards, if I leave it until the last minute, I get so bored, I really am no good at mass-producing. I have the concentration span of a mosquito. So it works well for me to just make a card here and there. This one uses the cuttlebug treetop dies, and is a variation on a card I made a couple of years ago. I did have vague ideas about doing a lot of these this year, but after faffing around with this one...........well, I don't think so. The card measures 8" x 3, the snow drifts were randomly cut by hand. The stitching was a happy accident, I didn't thread it properly so it just made the holes for a feather stitch, I really like the look and will use it again. Lots of ice diamond glitter to finish it off, the beauty of this type of card being that you can have stray glitter all over the place and it just adds to the effect. I inked the edges in ice blue, and added some snowflake brads. I made this card for this week's Papertake Weekly Challenge where they asked for a card with no stamping, now if I do a Christmas card for every challenge for the next few weeks, I may even get Christmas sewn up.

Talking of bugs, I planted some oleander shrubs a month ago and have been nuturing them ever since. When I got back from Orlando, one of them was looking a bit sick and when I went to investigate, the underside of EVERY leaf had some caterpillary things on them. Bright orange with little black bristles sticking out. I brushed them all off and sprayed them with flying insect spray, on the assumption that they would have flown someday if they had chosen somewhere else to graduate from buggy kindergarten instead of my oleander shrub. It seemed to do the trick, but this morning their brothers and sisters have hatched...............................off to Home Depot to ask a bemused sales associate what I can get to kill orange caterpillary things with black bristles.

A Perfect Pair Anniversary Card

I was at a 'swarm' this weekend, which is the nickname for a crop for cricut addicts. It was in Orlando, and luckily two of my pals came with me, so I didn't have to drive (thanks Cheryl). I hate the interstates around Orlando, and would probably still be there, going round and round in circles, handing over the kids inheritance at the toll booths........................... Anyway, back to the swarm, we had a great time, made new friends, laughed and chatted a lot. I made only 5 cards in 2 days, which is an indication of how much I was enjoying myself. We were asked to provide 30 items to put in 'goodie bags', and I had no idea I was supposed to be crafty. The stuff was fantastic - to give you an indication of how much I have to raise the bar for the next swarm, the fabulous little cat face treat bag above, is by my super talented friend Phyllis. She made 30!

The design team over on Bitten By The Bug were asked to use this pear cut from Home Accents this week. Take a look over there, there are some amazing designs. I cut the pears at 4", using papers from a Cloud 9 stack (Joannes), the white scallops are a new punch by martha stewart (who else?!) called double scallops. Ribbon also by MS

Funky Hand New Download

Both these cards were made with papers from a new download from Funky Hand called salt and pepper. I love using black and white on cards, and having this on my computer means I can print out my beloved polka dots whenever I need them. The download is 3.49 pounds, which translates into about $7. Click HERE for details

The dress cards was made using the Happily Ever After Cinderella dress (icon), cut at 4 1/2". Don't you just love that coarse mesh paper on the background? The border punch is one of the new ones from Martha Stewart The inside sentiment reads 'Have a Ball"

The present was cut from Stretch Your Imagination, again at 4" and given a liberal sprinkling of glitter and gemstones. Sentiment is a studio G, and another scallop punch from Martha.

Christmas Card Book

I bought this magazine last year in the UK and was surprised and delighted to see loads of Cricut ideas in it - plus a whole host of other stuff as well. So when I saw it on sale here in the US (at Books A Million) last week, I posted a message on the Cricut message board telling everyone to look out for it. So many people wanted it and couldn't locate it in their towns, that when I saw I had reached the grand total of 200 posts, I went and bought a copy to give away. So anyone who leaves their name here between now and thursday morning will have a chance of winning it. It has 200 pages packed full of really fabulous ideas. Just look at this advent calender made with little bags from the tags, bags, boxes and more cartridge.

Totally Taupe

This card is for this week's challenge on 2sketches4you - a fantastic challenge site started by my BBTB design team buddies Kazan and Laura. I have wanted to make a totally neutral card for a while - the idea intrigued me, not all white, just neutral. I used paper by Martha Stewart and kept resisting the temptation to add brown to the mix. Lots of white stitching and a sprinkle of glitter - I used a quickie glue pen and my best glitter (sparkling ice by Great Impressions). The sparkly glitter doesn't show up in the photo of course, but It's really delicate looking in real life. A big taupe twill bow, ribbon also by Martha, and I am done. I really like the effect, it's cool, elegant and........well, neutral. What do you think?