Christmas...New Year's...love too...

The Impression Obsession challenge this week is to create a card that speaks to our New Year's resolutions. Well, given that I'm older than dirt, I've learned not to make those anymore (lol), BUT...if I did, it would be to step outside my comfort zone and try new card making techniques. This one is emboss resist, using Leigh Hannan's Flower background stamp, paired with a delightful sketch challenge from Wendy, one of the talented Dreamweaver designers. Here's Wendy's sketch:



and here's my interpretation ofher sketch, using Dreamweaver's Asian "Love" stencil as my sentiment, with glossy blue embossing paste and Navajo Sky Metallic FX. First, stamped the Impression Obsession image with clear embossing powder on glossy cardstock, then dipped it onto a Non Stick Craft Sheet which I'd sprayed with blue and green Ecoline Inks mixed with water and Winsor and Newton Iridescent Medium mixed in a Ranger Mini Mister. Then I paste embossed the stencil with the blue glossy embossing paste (again on glossy cardstock), removed the stencil, let it dry, then repositioned it and pounced Metallic FX over dabbed-on glue. I really like the sheen that the Metallic FX gives over the blue glossy paste. I cut that with a Spellbinders plain circle die, then mounted it over a blue panel cut with the same die, and white cardstock cut with a Spellbinders Lacey Circles die. I used some gold peel-offs for the corner embellishments. This card is in the post, along with a hand crafted Christmas present, to a long time, dear lady friend, who loves blue and white!

I hope you'll have time to visit the blogs of the other designers from Impression Obsession and Dreamweaver; you'll find links in my left hand sidebar...well worth a visit!

We'd love to have you join BOTH challenges. Click here for the current Dreamweaver challenge, where you'll have a chance to win a Dreamweaver stencil, and click here for the current Impression Obsession challenge, where you can win a gift certificate to spend for Impression Obsession stamps!

I'm also entering my card for these challenges:

Wee Memories (Challenge # 33 use ribbon)

Stampin for the Weekend (winter...this IO background stamp and these colours remind me of a crisp winter's day!)

Lots to Do Challenge (embossing)

Etsy Inspired Challenge ( I used the blues of this wonderful picture as inspiration)

Alphabet Challenge ("E" for embossing)

Charisma Cardz (one for the girls!)

City Crafter (Blue Christmas)

Thanks SO much for stopping by today! Hope you'll play in these challenges.

One more thing...just take three minutes with your cuppa, listen to THIS...Susan Boyle singing Leonard Cohen's Halleluja...oh my...and if you like that, listen to her sing "Do You Hear What I Hear..." what a GIFT she has...aahhh..."with a voice as big as the sea..."

One more...okay then! "Oh Come All Ye Faithful..." Take time...close your eyes...just listen...

Happy day y'all...

Christmas...of course!

Today marks the inaugural "Thursday Dream Scheme" challenge for the Dreamweaver design team. Lynell gave us the challenge to create a Christmas card with a non-traditional colorway. In this instance that means no Christmas red or green and no maroon or forest green.

I decided to create to meet several other challenges from some of my favourite challenge blogs as well: Pile it On ("winter means..."); Stampin for the Weekend (winter); Secret Crafters (challenge # 110, create handmade Christmas gifts); Our Creative Corner (holiday 3-d project); Papertake Weekly (punched shapes/diecuts); Creative Cottage (untraditional Christmas colours); Fab and Funky (open theme); Moxie Fab World (photo inspiration, gingerbread snowflake...loved that white glittery design!); Paper Cutz Challenge # 58 (Christmas);

I started playing with the Christmas Ornament stencil, and once I was finished, my "card" turned into tiny Christmas ornaments for my mini tree...I LOVE these!! I used the double glitter technique. I taped double sided tape onto white cardstock, soaped the stencil, removed the top liner of the tape, positioning the stencil on the sticky tape. Then I poured glitters with a tiny spoon, rubber them in, and removed the stencil. Now I'm left with all this blank sticky space, so I poured more transparent glitter over all those sticky areas, rubbed it in, and after punching circles out for each ornament, I outlined them with Krylon gold leafing ink. Then I used the second smallest size of the lacey circles die from Spellbinders to cut coordinating cardstock. I hand beaded the pearls, glued them to the back of each little piece, using Aleene’s® Original Tacky Glue (iLoveToCreate™) from a small plastic squeeze bottle with a #9 Squeeze Bottle Tip, and this was the result. Just click on the pic for a close-up.

I'm in a Christmas paper ornament swap this year, so I've decided to create more of these for my swap partners. They're pretty, they're relatively flat, and they won't cost a fortune to mail. Wouldn't they look pretty too, just one on a Christmas card?

Thanks so much for taking the time to stop by today. Please do visit the other designers' blogs (listed at the right here). You KNOW they'll have a virtual FEAST of Christmas eye candy for you! I wish you a delightful day, doing what you love best!

Aaaahhhh romance...

I did this card for a young friend who's feeling a bit disillusioned with romance these days. Haven't we all felt like that at one time or another? Well, I decided to work something up to meet some challenges, as usual. Art Journey # 3 challenge is romance...this is an interpretation of the all-too-real other side of the euphoria of romance. I haven't done a pop-up card in AGES, but the One Stop Craft challenge wanted just that, so it was REALLY a challenge to incorporate a pop-up with a serious card. But that's actually how I decided on the whole theme...serious, but hopeful. So THANKS for the inspiration ladies (even though I used LAST week's theme, lol). The Art Card challenge is to use other forms of cards...hence, again, the pop-up. The Charizma gals Challenge # 45 was "sympathy/sorry" cards. Over at the Sisterhood, we're challenged to create something about things we're thankful for...in this case, I'm thankful for HOPE! The Lots to Do challenge is to use a favourite technique. I think one of my "signatures" as a card maker is my Krylon Gold Leafing pen. I use it on nearly all the cards I make! I like the professionally finished look it provides. I glue the layers on my cards with Aleene’s® Crystal Clear Tacky Spray™ (iLoveToCreate™).

Louise from Art Journey in the Netherlands just sent me oodles and OODLES of stamps to play with (THANK YOU Louise!!), so I used some of them today. I've grown to LOVE these stamps...they have such a "unique" style to me, and take my card making in very different directions.

The outside of the card was done with this set, called "Men." Click and have a look...I just LOVE that eye stamp!! WOW!! And doesn't that fellow look just so sure of himself? (lol) Yep, I've definitely known men like THAT in my life!

So here's the outside of the card. I stamped simply with Ancient Page Coal Black Ink, and added a little colour to the eyes with blue chalk, and a teardrop crystal to an eye. I masked the sentiment and stamped part of it onto a punched out piece, using a McGill tab fold punch.

This dancing gal from the inside of the card is from the Silhouette set. It was great to incorporate some JOY into what might have been a too-sombre card! I used the other part of the sentiment (also masked) for the inside of the card.

THANKS for visiting today!

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas!

This little box and matching tag were done for the current Impression Obsession designers' challenge, which is to use music from "My Favourite Things" from The Sound of Music as inspiration. (I've had it rolling 'round in my head ever since I started the project!) My inspiration was the line "brown paper packages tied up in string." I white embossed the snowflake Cover a Card stamp on brown paper to wrap my little box, and made a tiny gift tag to tuck into the side. I used Spellbinders Lacy Circles and the Creatabilities "Create a Flake 1" dies to make the top decoration, using gold embossing, gold mirri cardstock, and Barbara Trombley's Clear Glass Shards around the bottom snowflake. For the inside of the tag, I used this sentiment stamp from Impression Obsession. This was such a FUN project to do, and there really IS a Christmas gift inside, to be heading to England later this week. Creative Cottage challenged us to make something for somebody special for Christmas this week...this is mine! The Moxie Fab World Tuesday Trigger is "Moxie Chic" this week, and I've decided my wee package measures up to paper chic! I used this beautiful "Snow Necklace" from Happy Day Designs as my inspiration for the Etsy Inspired challenge. I used Tulip® Glam it Up™ Iron On Crystals™ on the stamped and embossed snowflakes, glued on with Aleene's® Paper Glaze™, both by iLovetoCreate™.

I use Aleene’s® Original Tacky Glue (iLoveToCreate™) from a small plastic squeeze bottle with a #9 Squeeze Bottle Tip to glue on Art Institute Glass Shards.

Just imagine the FUN you can have with this theme! Hope you'll play along with us! You have until 9pm EST Friday to share your Impression Obsession challenge card. All the information you need can be found here. You could win a $25 Impression Obsession gift certificate for yummy rubber! Please take a few minutes to see what treasures the other Impression Obsession designers have created; the links to their blogs are on the right.

This next one is a "joy fold" card done for the Created by Hand challenge this week, which is snowmen. I gold embossed this sentiment stamp from Quietfire Design and the snowman from Inkadinkado, paired with some very old and loved Christmas papers from K & Co, prompted by the Fab and Funky challenge this week, which is "Forget me not," and challenges us to use something old from our craft stash, and by the Wee Memories challenge # 31, which is to dust off some older patterned paper. I used Tulip® Glam it Up™ Iron On Crystals™ for the snowman's buttons, glued on with Aleene's® Paper Glaze™. ( both by iLovetoCreate™)

This card will be in the post to a special little grandson who LOVES winter! Grammie helped with these critters...ummm...living vicariously through snow people? (lol)

Thanks SO much for visiting today!

Twenty five years...

Oh my. Time has whizzed by. I did this card for my son's twenty-fifth birthday. It seems like only yesterday that he was a baby. Siiigh. I'm so blessed, and so grateful, to have such a good relationship with my son. We see one another often, and he still enjoys hangin' out with his Mum! (lol)

When I saw Godelieve's beautiful scraps card here, I knew I wanted to do something like that. I didn't have the diamond Spellbinders, more's the pity, so I cut 1 inch square scraps, necessity being the mother of invention. I wanted to create for the "corners" theme over at Created by Hand too, and clear embossed over black Versafine with this beautiful stamp from Quietfire Design for the front of the card, for the birthday theme over at Wee Memories, One Stop's theme of embossing, Sisterhood's birthday theme, and Our Creative Corner's gratitude theme.

Thanks so much for visiting today!

Hugs and fishes...

What FUN I had creating this card! I wanted something fun and funky to reflect the lighter side of love.

Fishing for LOVE (lol)...

I painted the surface with four different Lumiere metallic paints, let it dry, then stamped the fish and shells (on this fabulous unmounted set, from Art Journey in the Netherlands) with Ancient Page Coal Black Ink. I cut that panel and distressed it, then mounted it on an off-white base on which I'd computer generated the sentiment. Then, wanting to mimic waves, I masked the sentiment and stamped the swirls (Hero Arts) over top with Versamark and gold embossed them.

So...challenges:

Art Journey # 3 (romance)

Created by Hand (words of love or friendship)

Papertake Weekly (cards for men or boys)

Gingersnap Creations (challenge 74 use Versamark)

Moxie Fab World Tuesday Trigger (blue-blue-blue...living near the ocean, blues always evoke sea themes for me)

Wee Memories and One Stop (free theme)

Creative Cottage (use embossing)

Thanks so much for stopping by today!

It's a RED day!

By the end of my crafty time today, I realized how much I liked RED (lol). I'm enjoying creating papercraft samples for a local Michael's store here in Halifax, and it's always fun to combine that with blog challenges, where I find so much inspiration. There are some beautiful new Anna Griffin and K & Co Christmas papers in stock right now, so I'll be posting several papercrafts with those during the next few days.

I used damask paper on this card, which was created for the following challenges:

Created by Hand (theme is friendship or words of love; I gold embossed this beautiful calligraphy stamp from Quietfire Design)

Creative Cottage (use embossing)

Fab and Funky (keep it simple)

Moxie Fab World (use damask)

This one was done for the following challenges:

Art Journey (romance; I used two Art Journey stamps (the rose from this BEAUTIFUL new plate, and the hand from the Writing plate), a Hero Arts sentiment stamp, and a Stampin'Up script background stamp)

One Stop and Wee Memories challenges (free theme)

Our Creative Corner (a yummy pic for inspiration...beige and white predominate)

Isn't this May Arts ribbon GORGEOUS!? It's the most sumptious velvet!

This next card was SUCH fun to make! I used fabulous sketch # 87 from CPS (too bad I used the sketch from LAST week...lol...). The gold embossed sentiment stamp is from Hero Arts. I used red and white to meet the current Etsy inspired challenge, which was to choose something from this delightful Etsy shop as inspiration. This artist creates the most beautiful, whimsical art pieces! I used the red and off-white colour scheme from this print as my inspiration.

Here's another one with the luscious new Christmas papers and embellishments at Michael's. I used the layout/design of the Case Study challenge card posted for inspiration.

Thanks so very much for stopping by today! I wish you a creative week, doing what you love best!