Christmas Cards

Good morning everyone! Hopefully no one else is up at this ridiculous hour like I am. It's 3:11 AM and I've been up busy crafting! I'll post my little project tomorrow night and I'll explain tomorrow. For now, I just wanted to post a picture of the Christmas cards I made for all my coworkers. I got the idea for these cut little mitts from a fellow Stampin' Up demonstrator on my team. I forgot to take a picture of who made the card so I can't give the exact stamper credit but please know that I didn't come up with this uber cute card. It uses 3 punches, the wide oval, small oval and scalloped oval. Super easy and super cute. Also, in case you're wondering why the heck I photographed them sitting in a box that says, "Fruit Buddies", it's because I bought Fuzzy Peach flavored candy canes! Hope you all have a great day! 

PPC-CC #42, SSSC96 & Top Tip Tuesday Challenge

Good morning everyone! We're only 12 days away from Christmas! Hopefully you all have your shopping and cards finished. I don't have either so I'll be working on those all week. Megan has another fun color challenge for you this week over at the Picture Perfect Creations blog. I combined it with 2 other challenges today. I used Sweet Sunday Sketch Challenge 96 and it's my very first Top Tip Tuesday challenge! I stumbled onto this blog a few weeks ago and was excited to follow another challenge blog. This week's challenge at Top Tip Tuesday is to use ribbon on your creation. More on that after I show you what I came up with. 

I was just thinking this afternoon that I need to use more ribbon on my cards (preferably on all my cards) since I was organizing my ribbon today. I was at the mall yesterday and stopped in at Deserres. They had a sale on some Craft Mates storage items so I stocked up on 4 of the ribbon holders. After loading in as many Stampin' Up ribbon rolls as I could, I realized I need more!!! So I'll need to stop by sometime this week and pick up another 2 or 3... Here's my new ribbon storage! Any thoughts? Jealous? =) 

Color Q #62, 4 Crafty Chicks #14 & Fall To Layout #119

Alrighty this is going be a very short post because it's already 12:36 AM and I need to work in the morning! And you read correctly. I am making another card for 4 Crafty Chicks and Fall to Layout! I had made a birthday card for my friend and posted it yesterday. The colors I chose were very close to this week's Color Queen Challenge. Although it was close, it still wasn't the exact colors and you could definitely tell so I wanted to make an exact replica of the card using similar colors. Here is it along with Clean and Simple's Fall To Layout #119 again. Love this sketch!!! And yes, it again does qualify for 4 Crafty Chick's challenge 14, to make a birthday card. Have a great night everyone! 

PS. I miss my beloved Circle Circus stamp set! I'm glad I busted it out again! 

PPC-CC #41, 4 Crafty Chicks #14 & Fall To Layout #119

I can't believe it's another Monday already!! Have you started our Christmas shopping yet? I've been sick sick sick lately and haven't really done much of anything! First it was the flu for 2 weeks, then numerous bouts of nausea and vomiting. Then on Wednesday night I sneezed a couple times and felt a tickle in my nose. Thursday morning I'm down with a cold. I've been out of commission all weekend. We did manage to go to Jamie's work Christmas party but I went to the washroom every 10 minutes or so to clear my sinuses. Good thing the washroom wasn't too far away. Today I took a sick day from work because with my hacking and green snot, I'm not visiting new born babies and I can't even imagine having to talk to parents for 4 hours on their child's growth and development. Is anyone else having as much illness this winter as me? My manager and Arlie keep telling me to start taking Cold FX. I think I just might. Onto today's card! Boy I haven't done a triple play in a long time. I really wanted to make my friend a birthday card for her 30th birthday and I know she loves green so I decided to combine Picture Perfect Creations #41, Fall To Layout's #119 and 4 Crafty Chicks #14 birthday card challenge. Here's what I came up with. 

I'm loving the ribbon and I think I just might need to do more of that! Works great with Stampin' Up's satin ribbon. And the big ol' button is from the winter mini catalogue's Big Designer Buttons. I might need to redo a card that's more "wintery" for my friend's birthday as I'm not so sure I chose the theme very wisely.... Hope you get a chance to join us at PPC this week and pop on over to see what the other creators have made! Have a great day! 

PPC-CC #40 & Saturday Sketch Challenge #179

I can't believe it's almost DECEMBER!!! Have you started or better yet, finished your Christmas cards yet? I sure haven't! I'm definitely feeling the fire under my butt though! I thought I'd get a lot more accomplished while I was on vacation but all my time was eaten up by wedding planning and renos. We've started using our new shiny fridge and today Jaime finished putting in the new dishwasher (into our old cupboards, so it's not as exciting). We started our first load of dishes last night and let it air dry. Needs a bit of tweaking still because I think the dishwasher door rubs against the cupboard. Minor details right? Now for the real reason you're here visiting. It's Monday and that means another color challenge over at the Picture Perfect Creations challenge blog! This week's colors are out of my comfort zone. I'm still not sure about Poppy Parade but I'm trying! I combined it with Stamping 411's Saturday Sketch Challenge #179. 

I'm really not sure why I chose a Poppy Parade background but I'm too lazy to take another picture. Originally I had a button where the sentiment is but then realized it wasn't Not Quite Navy. Boo. Hopefully you get a chance to pop by PPC-CC and join us this week for a challenge coloring challenge! 

4 Crafty Chicks #13

Boy it's early... 2:12 AM early! Today is the last day of my week long vacation and I'm sad I didn't get in more crafting time. But I am happy to say that we got a lot accomplished still. We managed to book our wedding photographer, our ceremony location, our reception and we bought a new fridge and dishwasher! So all the appliances for our future kitchen are purchased! The fridge and dishwasher were delivered today so I made Jamie help me wipe down the new shiny fridge and move everything over from our old fridge. One thing I noticed about fridges though, the veggie/fruit bins are never big enough. Perhaps we buy a lot of produce but seriously, we needed to make the entire shelf on top of the bins a designated "produce shelf". Hopefully Jamie will be able to install the dishwasher in the next week even though we'll be ripping out all the cupboards around it. I just really hate washing dishes! Such a waste of my precious life minutes. Can you tell it's late and I'm just doing some late night ranting? Onto the purpose of the post! This week over at 4 Crafty Chicks, it's an inspiration challenge. Can you believe it's already week 13 those gals are up to? Here's a CAS card I created using colors from the photo. Hope everyone has a great Friday and pop by 4 Crafty Chicks if you get a chance! 

Using Up Scraps!!!

I am really not good at using up my paper scraps. So I always just leave them in a little (actually it's quite large!) pile underneath my cutter. You can see from the photo that I had a lot of leftover pink patterned paper. I used a bunch of paper to make a wedding planner for my best friend, Elizabeth. I was left with a bunch of 1" strips so I decided to try weaving them together. After weaving a short panel to cover a box that was used as a "garbage" box during my last workshop, I realized I could weave a huge panel! 

I ended up cutting up all the rest of my pink scraps into 1" strips and made a nice long weave! Afterwards I stamped some letters out and stuck those onto the sides. This will now be my new garbage can for workshops! 

Three cheers for using up scraps!!! Hip hip hurray! Hip hip hurray! Hip hip hurray!!!

PPC-CC #40

Hopefully everyone had a relaxing weekend. I was out of commission on Friday night puking my guts out. I've had a really bad fall/winter so far. Someone suggested that I might be having migraines but minus the actual stabbing headache. I'll need to ask about it when I have my annual physical. But enough about me! A few of you joined us last week for Picture Perfect Creations very first Sketch Combo. We'll be throwing other curve balls at you as the weeks go by. This week at Picture Perfect Creations, we're back to another color challenge. I was very excited with this week's colors and here's why. Jamie and I were over at our friends' place (Mark & Jinnee) yesterday. Jinnee was showing me some of the cards she had made recently and my absolute favorite was this really bold Pacific Point and Real Red card she made using some DSP from the Celebrations pack. The colors matched this week's color challenge almost to a tee. I think she even used something close to More Mustard. Now I don't have a photo of Jinnee's photo to post but I can say that this card is an exact copy of hers! The only difference is I used a scalloped circle punch instead of a star punch. 

I tried adding my blog address to the photo and I have no idea how it came to be so blurry! It was too late to fix though because I already saved it and I have no idea how to reverse it! Hope you all get a chance to play along with us at PPC this week! Have a great Monday! 

Color Q #59 & CPS #193

It looks like I'm getting back into the late night crafting. That always seems to happen when winter starts looming. We got some snow today in lil Edmonton and it's starting to finally get chilly. The days get dark at like 3:00 PM. It really is quite sad. Sorta like that Expedia commercial where the girl is at work and looks outside into the dark night, looks at the clock that says something like 4 PM and then starts to cry. Anyways, onto why I'm really posting tonight so I can get to bed! I was out with my friend, Arlie, last week and we ran out of time at the mall so she didn't stop by Bath & Body Works for some little hand-sani. I had bookmarked this cute little project a while back from Pink Buckaroo Designs. it's a cute little holder for those mini hand sanitizers. I haven't participated in very many challenges since I took on the design team position with Picture Perfect Creations. I think summer had a little bit to do with that too. So here's a little combo challenge and those that know me know I almost always combine a sketch and color challenge together. Like I always say, why do more thinking than you need to. Especially for late night crafters! I've combined Color Queen's Challenge #59 and Card Positioning Systems #193. Now those that are Stampin' Up fans will notice that the DSP I used isn't the exact colors listed in the color challenge but they are just so darn close and it matched the stamp set so well that I decided to bend the rules a little bit. And for those that didn't notice, well then... Carry on!

Now you also can't really tell from the picture but I used a new product called Smooch Pearlized Top Coat. Picture a little bottle of sparkly glitter that you can paint onto projects like nail polish or white out. I painted it over the entire flower and in the middle added some Dazzling Diamonds glitter. The Smooch stuff is definitely fun to play with and now I need to buy more! 

For complete instructions, visit Pink Buckaroo Designs. She also has more photos on her blog. Total side note. I decided to try using a patterned piece of paper for the background instead of my plain old white and boy, I'm loving how it looks! That paper in the background is actually the one used on the project, but just flipped onto the other side! That's the great thing about Stampin' Up! The DSP is always double-sided and all the colors coordinate! Thanks for stopping by and happy early hump day! (Hump day still sounds so weird to me....)

PPC-SC #1 & PDCC #55

Happy Monday everyone! I can't believe November is officially half over! I'm not ready for it to be Christmas quite yet. The weather has been cooperating with that! No snow staying on the ground yet. We've had an entire day of rain though! Kind of feels like Vancouver! 
Today's card threw me for a double challenge and not because I combined 2 challenges together. Over at Picture Perfect Creations, we've decided to start sketch challenges! So this week is the first sketch challenge. I've combined it with the Play Date Cafe Challenge #55. I call this a double challenge because 
1. I do not like using more than about 3 colors on my cards and PDCC #55 uses 5 (and ones that I would never put together)!! 
2. I do not use complicated sketches very often and the very first PPC-SC is more complicated than I am used to. 
I wanted to make a card for someone close to my heart that was recently diagnosed with liver cancer. I don't know very much about liver cancer except for what she has told me. She will hopefully go for surgery within the next couple weeks. She'll be in my thoughts and I'll be praying for a smooth surgery and speedy recovery. Hopefully you don't need to make a get well card for anyone but come pop by Picture Perfect Creations to try out our new challenge and see what the design team has come up with! They did a much better job than me! 

PPC-CC #37, Fall To Layout #114 & 4 Crafty Chicks #9

Good morning everyone! Can you believe it's almost Christmas?!?! Ha ha, right? Hope everyone had a safe and fun All Hallows Eve. I managed to find some time to do some crafting this busy busy weekend. Can you believe we're up to Picture Perfect Creations #37? Wahoo!! I definitely didn't think these colors would look good together but I'm actually happy with how the card turned out. I combined the colors with Clean & Simple's Fall to Layout #114. I have a really hard time with single layer cards and I'm not sure if this technically qualifies as one because I didn't just stamp onto the card front. Those that know me, know I love layers. I love those little flowers and I'm so glad I have the Big Shot and punches for them. Can you imagine cutting those little suckers out?? Over at 4 Crafty Chicks, this week's challenge is to "Roll with the punches!" so I did just that! Anyways, the stamp set is Stem Sayings. Big Shot accessories include the Floral Fusion sizzlit and the Little Leaves sizzlit. The punch is from the Itty Bitty Shapes Punch Pack. Uber cute right? Hopefully you get a chance to play along this week. Both challenges are will definitely require you have some creative juices. Have a great week! 

Give Thanks

I'm very thankful for a lot this fall. I'm thankful for wonder friends and family. I'm thankful for my fiance and puppy. I'm thankful I have a great job and great coworkers. I'm thankful that I came down with the flu and can recover from it. I'm thankful that I had a great meal tonight in my own home. The list can go on and on but I just wanted to do a quick post on giving thanks. I made 30 of these little suckers to give out at work because it's been a tough few months. What are you thankful for today? 

PPC-CC #35 & Fall to Layout #111

Well I had a total brain fart while making this card. I thought the Tempting Turquoise was a Bashful Blue and didn't realize my mistake until I went to upload the picture! It was too late to make another card so this will have to do for now. I've been MIA for the last bit and that's because I've been sick as a dog the last week. I had to call in sick for work for 3 days last week and had a complete meltdown at 7 am yesterday because after making Jamie drive me around to find a store open to buy cough syrup at 2 AM, I was only able to sleep from 3:30-6:30. I woke up and tried sleeping on the cough but I couldn't sleep from all the hacking. So finally I made Jamie take me to the Medicenter for some prescription grade codeine loaded cough syrup. It totally did the trick and I was zonked out like a little zombie. I've slept so much in the last 5 days it's gross. Enough about me though. I've combined this week's Picture Perfect Creations Color Combo with Clean & Simple Stamping's Fall to Layout #111. I love the clean lines and simplicity of the cards. Hope you all get a chance to join us at PPC this week! In the meantime, stay crafty and healthy! 

PPC-CC #34

My oh my what a great Thanksgiving long weekend! Today Jamie and I will be going to my aunt's place for some yummy turkey dinner. I also got to sleep in a little bit today!! I've been sporting a sore throat the last 2 days and it's getting worse so hopefully the sleep will help a bit. I ended up drinking plain hot water last night because I wanted something warm but had already brushed my teeth. Boy I felt old! My grandma used to drink plain hot water all the time. She'd even mix her rice with hot water if it wasn't going down very well! Now speaking of family, I just want to give thanks for the wonderful friends in my life. I'm also thankful for an amazing partner in life, Jamie and for a great family. We have our quirks but I love them all. I hope everyone gets a chance to take a couple moments to be thankful for everything that they have in their lives. 


Onto today's card! Megan over at Picture Perfect Creations chose some gorgeous colors this week. I'm loving purples and greens right now, which is probably why my eyeshadows are all those 2 colors. I wanted to keep it really simple and got most of the detail from the DSP. I feel like I'm never going to make the 100 projects that I need for the No paper/product buying challenge. I really gotta step it up!! Hope you all get to play along with us this week over at PPC! Head on over to see what the other design team creators have come up with. 

Happy World Card Making Day & CD 78

What a gorgeous fall weekend! It's been so busy lately and the next 2 weeks are only going to be nothing short of CRAZY!!! It's influenza season and the next 2 weeks are the busiest out of the entire year for public health. I'm glad to have some time to craft today. Tomorrow I'll be going to the Bridal Expo with my best friend, Liz, to do some scoping out for her wedding next year. Onto the card! If you didn't know, today is actually World card Making Day 2010! I wanted to make a quick and simple card for my friend's birthday yesterday and stumbled onto The Color Dare's color challenge. The colors are Vanilla, Chocolate Chip and Daffodil Delight. I cased this card from Maile. I love the simplicity of it. 

The stamp sets are Watercolor Trio and a retired set called Wonderful Words. Another notch on the No paper/product buying challenge. Hope you get a chance to make a card today for World Cardmaking Day! 

Give Thanks... Again! And Photography Mumbo-Jumbo

I had originally wanted to make 2 of the same cards when I was crafting on Sunday night but realized that I wanted to use some Chocolate Chip ribbon instead of Pear Pizzazz like on my previous card. I finally got around to finishing the second Give Thanks card. I normally wouldn't have posted this but decided to for 3 reasons: 1. I wanted to knock another card off of my No paper/product buying challenge. 2. I wanted to share a story that my friend Arlie told me. 3. I wanted to test out a new camera lens that Jamie had purchased today. I didn't crop the photo and I didn't take it on a white background like I normally do because the lens we got is a fixed lens that really creates that nice fuzzy out of focus background and a sharp main image. This first image is on the "A" mode on my camera. The "A" stands for aperture priority mode. I didn't actually adjust anything on this photo except the white balance to match my lamps. 

Jamie said the salesman warned him this might happen. The lens focuses so well that often times if you don't have the setting right, it'll literally focus on someone's nose instead of their whole face. That's what happened in that first photo. I tried fiddling with the settings and turned up (or down..?) my aperture. So the f number got bigger. That means my field of depth is bigger so a larger f number means more of my picture will be in focus and vice versa. A smaller f number means a smaller field of depth so there'll be a small area in focus and a lot of blurry fuzz. I cranked up the sucker and this is how it changed the photo.  

Not sure if you can see the difference, but the words are actually clearer in this second picture. If I kept cranking up the aperture or f value, then that computer in the background would have continued to get clearer/sharper. Compare the computer in both photos and you'll see what I mean. I'm very very happy with my little camera which is a beginner SLR Nikon D60. The new lens is a Nikkor 50mm f1.4?? I just read that off the top of the lens! I wanted to take it out for some fall shots but Jamie hasn't purchased some sort of protective cover for the lens yet so we don't want to expose it to outdoors yet. 


Now onto my story from Arlie (and I hope she's ok with me sharing!). I don't know if I have all the facts right but a little grade 1 boy goes up to his teacher and says, "Mrs. Smith, Mrs. Smith. I've had a catastrophe in the urinal! I was trying to hold up my pants and my penis slipped back in while I was peeing!" LOL! Now I told Jamie the story and his first reaction was more of contemplation and then he says, "Oh yeah... That can happen." I guess every boy needs to eventually learn to stand with his legs apart so his pants don't fall down! Lets just hope none of the girls heard/saw him! Have a great day everyone! 

PPC-CC #32, 4 Crafty Chicks, SSC170

Good morning everyone! Hope you all got out and enjoyed the lovely autumn weather this weekend. I had to work this past weekend again but did get to enjoy some outdoor shopping at the downtown farmer's market. Learned a few things like how brussel sprouts grow! We did see a lot of families out taking photos with all the fall leaves. I'm doing a triple hitter today. I've combined this week's Picture Perfect Creations Color Combo with 4 Crafty Chicks "Fall" themed card along with Stamping 411's Saturday Sketch Challenge. I haven't done a triple challenge combo for a very very long time. I often don't like combining this many challenges because I don't like visiting blogs that make 1 project and list about 10 different challenges that it remotely qualifies for. 

I'm really liking this French Foliage set from SU. You can't tell from the photo but the main image is actually stamped onto glossy card stock and then colored with a sponge dauber. It looks really pretty in person, I swear! I had to move the main image to the other side because I wanted to put a sentiment and it just didn't fit if I tried to squeeze the panel beside the bow like in the sketch. Hopefully I don't get my hand slapped too hard! The sentiment is from a retired hostess set called Holiday Best. That ribbon is the new poly-stiched ribbon in Pear Pizazz. Another project knocked off my list for the No paper/product buying challenge. Hopefully you get to join in on at least one of the challenges! 

PPC-CC #31 & 4 Crafty Chicks Challenge #3

Good morning everyone! Hope everyone had a better weekend than me. I had to work all weekend so today was finally my Friday. Working 6 days straight sucks. Some of the girls on the PPC-CC design team joined up and started a new challenge blog! It's called 4 Crafty Chicks. This is their third challenge and this week it's to emboss! I'm really enjoying this week's PPC-CC colors that Megan chose. I know it doesn't seem like I embossed very much on my card but I often do this style of embossing because it just adds a tiny detail that I quite enjoy. Just make sure if you're planning on embossing, do that before you add all the embellishments because I tried to emboss after I tied the ribbon and added the flower. It's a lot harder. I'm happy to knock another 2 projects off my No paper/product buying challenge. I made 2 of the exact same cards. The paper used is from SU called Love Letter. The ribbon is actually from when River Rock was around the first time! The stamp set is For You Flower. Hope you get to pop over to either PPC-CC or 4 Crafty Chicks to join in on this week's challenges! 

PPC-CC #30 & FTL 107

This post is a little late but better late than never! Hope everyone had a great weekend. It was my good friend, Penny's, birthday this weekend so we spent Saturday night celebrating with her in her GORGEOUS new home. Being in a house like that makes me wish our home was bigger but as Jamie said, "The house fits us right now". This week's Picture Perfect Creations colors are just absolutely beautiful together. I combined it with Clean & Simple's Fall to Layout #107. I used the new level 3 hostess stamp set Playful Pieces. The sentiment is from my beloved Watercolor Trio. Hopefully Penny liked the card! I managed to squeeze in some DSP for my No paper/product buying challenge! Woot woot! 

Hope some of you get to play along with us this week over at PPC! 

Another Wedding Card

Well if you had a chance to see my card for this week's PPC color challenge, this card will bring a little deja vu. I made the same card except with different colors for my sister-in-law. She attended a wedding this past weekend that had burgundy and gold as the wedding colors. If you're experiencing deja vu and it's not from the other card I posted earlier, that's because I CASEd (copied and shared everything) this card straight from the Stampin' Up catalogue (pg. 122). I wanted a punch of color in the rose so I attempted to do the floating re-inker technique but the Bravo Burgundy and Bermuda Bay turned into just plain gross so I had to just watercolor with my aquapainter and re-inkers. Can't believe it's already Thursday! I'm busy prepping for my workshops this Friday and Saturday. I'll post those when I'm done! Yay! Another project down for the No paper/product buying challenge! Have a goodnight everyone!