PaperFections

Christmas Countdown

Can you believe it? Just 25 days until Christmas! To help the time pass . . . okay, honestly I made this for my 6 and 9 year girls, so they could turn the blocks each day and not have to keep asking ME how many more days until Christmas ! I found this wooden calendar at my local scrapbook store. If I find out who makes it, I'll edit this post with the manufacturer. EDIT: Many thanks to another Sharon, who sent a link to an online source where she just purchased one of these: http://www.walnuthollow.com/27208calendardeskorganizer.aspx It is approximately 4.25" tall and 4.75" wide. I chose this soft green patterned paper from Cosmo Cricket's Be Good line to cover it. I wanted something on the neutral side, that didn't scream "Christmas" because I plan on using it for other occasions, as well -- Easter, the last day of school, birthdays, etc., just by changing out the insert and tag on the front. I started by painting the wood with cream acrylic paint and then distressing it, by sponging Ranger's Tea Dye Distress Ink on the edges and also on the wood blocks. The paper was adhered with... Read more →

Giveaway Winner!

Thank you all for taking the time over your Thanksgiving holiday to enter for the chance to win the Taylored Expressions Season's Sweetings stamp set and bag full of Copic product. I really enjoyed reading what all you are thankful for and your family traditions -- so heart warming! I also wanted each of you to know how much I am thankful for you and appreciate you stopping by and leaving comments over the past two years -- I always read every comment and they are very encouraging to me! HOUSEKEEPING: So how do you like how I've dressed my blog for the winter? I have so much fun playing with new digital banners! I just wanted to remind you (or let you know, if you are new here) that you can find some more pages of topics listed over on the left top sidebar of my blog. There is a Papercrafting Blog List page -- if you don't see your blog link listed there and would like for me to add it, please leave a comment on that page with your name and web address and I'll be happy to add you. So our winner, chosen by Random.Org is... Read more →

JustRite Christmas Blocks

Once the turkey leftovers are in the fridge, it's officially the start of the Christmas season, right?!! So I've got a Christmas project to share with you today . . . Be Merry! I've been having fun with these 1-inch wood blocks I picked up at Michael's. Lockhart Stamp Company's Itty Bitty collection of images fit perfectly on them and I paired the images with JustRite's classic Times New Roman font. The largest 95-point size font fit perfectly on the 1-inch blocks. It was easy to stamp out the letters with Memento's Rich Cocoa ink onto patterned paper and then use a 1-inch paper punch to punch them out and adhere them to the wood blocks. The other sides of the blocks were covered with coordinating papers. Here's a closeup of the Lockhart stamped images. They were stamped onto Neenah Natural White cardstock with Memento Tuxedo Black ink and colored with Copic markers: I liked the vintage/distressed look I achieved with the JustRite monogram font and Memento ink on the patterned papers. I further distressed the blocks by sponging ink on the edges. The "tray" the blocks are sitting on started out as an unpainted wooden oval frame, also from... Read more →

Happy Thanksgiving!

The big meal was cooked earlier today and shared with family. Our Dallas Cowboys won the traditional Thanksgiving Day game (while I napped!) . . . good times and good memories. I hope you all enjoyed the day remembering what you are thankful for and shared it with those you love . . . I know I did! My girls wanted to make some art for me to share with you all today . . . I hope you don't mind! I think this one is self-explanatory (gobble-gobble): This one is a large harvest moon, fall tree, and pumpkin: And this is what dear hubby is doing now: Looks like I have my work cut out for me tomorrow! A few reminders: - Taylored Expressions is having a sale this weekend: Use coupon code THANKFUL4U (all caps, no spaces) upon checkout to receive FREE SHIPPING on orders over $40 (before tax and shipping) through Sunday the 30th. Please feel free to pass on this code to your friends -- the more the merrier! Happy Shopping! There's also a sale on THESE JustRite products at Taylored Expressions -- Buy One, Get One Free (on selected product). So you can shop for... Read more →

Holiday Cupcake House & Giveaway!

I put together this sweet holiday cupcake house for my girls to play with this holiday season -- they love acting out stories with figurines! Images are all from Taylored Expresesions' Season's Sweetings stamp set from the Stamp A Sweet Impression line. The house started as plain chipboard that I found either at Michael's or Hobby Lobby; it's about 7-inches tall and 6.5 inches wide. I covered it with papers from Taylored Expressions' Christmas Key Ingredient kit and trimmed it with white Bazzil pom-poms. The roof peaks are covered with Twinklets Diamond Dust by FloraCraft, adhered with Judi-Kins' Diamond Glaze. I picked up the Diamond Dust (which is finely ground glass and gives a wonderful "sugared" look to your projects) ages ago at a local store that has since gone out of business, but I'm told it can be readily found on eBay stores. Star Dust Stickles outlines the door, roof-top and windows. You can see from this view (and the one above) that I curved the trees around foam tape, to make them "poofy" and three dimensional. They are also accented with Stickles. I put two of the cupcake images on 1-inch wood blocks (from Michael's) that I covered... Read more →

Evening Angels

Just a quick note to let you know I have this project over at the CLASSroom today. You can join me over there and get the full details on how it was made, but I just wanted to rave a moment about this lovely ribbon. It's a wonderfully pliable silk I got from StarLitStudio and Cindy has it available in EIGHT different colors. It's available in 1/2 and 1-inch widths and ties and lays so beautifully. It's very thin and won't had much bulk to your cards, for mailing purposes, either. I used the 1/2-inch white here. Image Credit: Lockhart Stamp Company. I'll be back a little bit later today with that Taylored Expressions project and giveaway . . . the kiddos being home from school for the holiday is slowing me down just a little! Read more →

Winter Joy

This is another scrap page in my series of seasonal ones I plan on framing and grouping together in a wall arrangement. You can see the first Autumn one here. The photo is of my youngest, then 4-year old, daughter and is a very special one -- it's the first time she had experienced playing in snow! Yes, we must have had a few very dry, not cold enough, winters here in Texas before then! This simple page came together quickly with custom die cuts. I used one of my favorite Spellbinders dies, Snowflake Wonder, to cut WorldWin vellum and paper to layer together. I colored the embossed vellum with clear Copic Spica glitter pen. After cutting and embossing the vellum with the die, while the vellum was still in the die, I used the die as a template to dry emboss it even more using a stylus. The photo below shows the vellum still in the die that I dry embossed. The vellum snowflake outside of the die shows only the top three "spokes" of the snowflake with the additional dry embossing. The other three lower spokes have just been embossed normally (with Spellbinders tan embossing mat and running... Read more →

A Challenge Was Issued . . .

. . . by my good friend Jami. She and a few other friends (you can see them listed at the end of this post) visited me last weekend and we all had a BLAST! Jami brought along a Texas Scrappy Christmas Challenge for all of us . . . to take the contents of this kit she put together for each of us: and make a card or 3D item with it. We HAD to use at least a portion of each item on our project . . . Jami's so fun like that with her challenges -- they usually DO end up being a wonderful challenge to your creativity (love ya, girl)! I couldn't think of a way to effectively use all these components on just one project, but then this idea hit me -- so here's what I came up with: A set of four holiday gift/note cards! I added these supplies from my stash: Inchie Arts Inchie Notes. These come in assorted packs of twelve 3-1/2" square note cards. You can see all the available assorted packs HERE (scroll down). I used some of the new Holiday Assortment (darker green, red and white) and a lighter... Read more →

Ellen Hutson LLC Second Anniversary Sale

How about doing some early Christmas shopping next week with a 15% off your entire purchase coupon? Then check out Ellen's blog post HERE to get all the details! To celebrate her second year in business, Ellen Hutson LLC is offering 15% off anything and everything in her store beginning today (Sunday) through next Friday, November 28th. Yes, that even includes large sets of Copic markers & Spellbinders dies, soldiering kits, stamps, paper, cardstock, ink . . . whatever is available in the store to load into your online shopping cart! I'll be back tomorrow with a challenge amongst friends! Read more →

Meet Holly Cupcake

Isn't she a sweet image? She's from Taylored Expressions' Stamp a Sweet Impression-Season's Sweetings stamp set. She normally has a very sweet face on her, as is characteristic of this line of stamps, but when I first saw Taylor leave the face off one of her SASI cupcake creations, I thought it was a fabulous idea and makes these SASI stamp sets so versatile! I used CPS91 for my layout and stamped Holly with Memento Tuxedo Black ink onto Neenah Classic Cream cardstock, then colored her with Copic Sketch markers in R29, R39, G24, G28 and C1. Her frosty topping is Ranger's Petal Pink Liquid Pearls sprinkled with transparent iridescent glitter. Her leaves are accented with Melon Spica Glitter Pen. Holly was cut out with Spellbinders new Labels One die and matted by cutting Prism Blush Red Dark cardstock with the next size larger die. The green wide grosgrain ribbon, cardstock and beautiful patterned paper comes in your Christmas Key Ingredients kit. With the kit and this sweet stamp set, you will be able to make quite lot of cards for this holiday season. The pretty pink self adhesive crystals on the ribbon are a new item in the Taylored... Read more →

WSC67: Give Thanks Inchie

It's Beate's Weekend Sketch Challenge time again -- she's been putting together some very easy ones to work with. I hope you'll play along -- this one has so many possibilities, I think! I can't wait to see what the other girls came up with . . . here's mine that I incorporated an Inchie into: It was so much fun to finally get to play with this new Spellbinders Labels One die that I had coveted since this summer! I used the largest one to cut this beautiful green tree limb patterned paper from Memory Box's Winterberry collection. The burgundy card base is another pattern from this collection. I choose Karen Lockhart's Two Acorns (#5004) to color with these Copic markers: Then I cut out the acorn image with a Spellbinders Classic Oval Nestabilities die and while the image was still in the die, I used Copic's Airbrush System and Copic E15 Dark Suntan to airbrush around the outside edges. A brown button tied with linen thread accents this focal image. I used Lockhart Stamp Company's Give Thanks (#10002) sentiment to ink and stamp the words individually with Memento Rich Cocoa ink directly onto an Inchie Arts White Inchie... Read more →

Thankful Hearts

It's the 20th of the month and that means another SplitcoastStampers.com Dirty Dozen Design Team & Alumni challenge. I was the hostess of the challenge this month and with Thanksgiving so close I decided to challenge everyone to create a thankful card or gift, Thanksgiving table placecard or treat holder, or Thanksgiving home decor item. Required Element: At least one heart on your project. Restricted Element: Nothing Here's what I came up with: This is a 10-inch square metal frame from Hobby Lobby. Using Spellbinders Assorted Leaves die templates, I die cut metallic cardstock (Prism Bronze Ore, Cappuccino, Copper and Flame) and then applied ink pads directly onto the die cut leaves, to give them some color variation. I used Clearsnap Colorbox Fluid Chalk inks in Chestnut Roan, Dark Brown, Warm Red, Tangerine & Black. Then I crumpled up the leaves, flattened them back out a little and used regular and pop-up Glue Dots to adhere the leaves to the metal frame. Fall colors of Creative Impressions ribbon was tied in one corner to accent it. For the 3-5/8" x 5-1/2" opening, I placed Fall Splendor patterned paper by Fancy Pants into the opening and then created the vellum overlay... Read more →

Canvas Poinsettia?

I have some more Christmas inspiration to share with you today over at the CLASSroom. I hope you'll join me to see a new product I tried out . . . Ranger's Sticky-back Canvas! I'll be back tomorrow with my monthly SplitcoastStampers Dirty Dozen Alumni challenge! Read more →

WSC66: Warm Socks

Beate's Weekend Sketch Challenge #66 was quick, fun and simple . . . I hope you'll play along this weekend. I already had most of this Lockhart Stamp Company Warm Socks image stamped and colored with Copic markers, so I just had to match it up to cardstock. Some pre-made patterned notecards by My Mind's Eye (Out & About box) came to the rescue -- they were the perfect colors to match my socks and are already color coordinated for you, so choosing and mixing patterns is quick and easy! The socks were cut out and mounted with dimensional foam tape to a chocolate dotted layer of coordinating notecard and zig-zag machine stitched to a mat of rose cardstock. The Lockhart Get Better sentiment was stamped with black StazOn and some Neutral Card buttons were stacked together and tied with linen thread. I hope you'll check out sketch samples from Beate, Cambria, Charmaine, Jenn, Lori and Mary Jo -- it's always fun to see everyone's interpretation of the same sketch! Read more →

Framed Angelic Ornaments

Happy Tuesday! Please join me over at the CLASSroom today and I'll share with you how to make this angelic holiday project! Image credit: Lockhart Stamp Comany Ornament Angel. Read more →