Another Christmas Card

I haven't crafted in a few weeks. I jammed my index finger at the gym and once that started healing I needed to get busy cleaning out my gardens for winter. I still need to remove the canopy from my gazebo and get the gutters and windows cleaned but it is raining today. I make multiples for Holiday cards. I colored 14 of the ornament stamps so today I am making them into cards. This is one of the designs. Stamp and die set is simply celebrate winter from Lawn Fawn. The Merry Christmas line border is also Lawn Fawn. The pattern paper is Lawn Fawn really rainbow Christmas. My card bases are always papertrey ink cardstock.

Halloween cards

My style is simple. Here are some Halloween cards using MCT stitched spooky ghost dies. The Boo was cut on my Cricut explore.

Make Motivate Connect Make A TAG Linkup Party #6

After lunch I saw this weeks challenge so I played in the craft room and this is my submission. I used the new really rainbow lawn fawn snowflake paper for the background. The oval is lawn fawn stitched oval die stamped with an old stampin up set called mini mates and heat embossed in white. The snowflakes were cut in sliver using My Creative Time winter flake dies. The dangling beads I put together from my jewelry making stash. The ribbons were left overs from a school project last year from hobby lobby.

wedding card

I have a wedding next weekend and needed a card.  The oval is cut from Lawn Fawn stitched oval and the embossed stamp is from My Creative Time tiny tags stamps.

more flowers

I played some more with that flower Simon Says Stamp set from my previous post and created a background. The thanks die cut is Simon Says stamp. I double cut that in black and silver to shadow it. 

Sorry lighting is awful. Its been raining pretty much for 5 days and I hate using artificial light. 

use flowers

In 2014 my mother moved in with me so I could assist in her care. She passed away in 2015. In the time since I've considered myself an on demand crafter. I produce cards and banners etc when needed but I didn't sit down on a regular basis with the same creative passion prior to life demands. My life has slowed down and again taken a new turn with retirement from 40 years teaching in June. I feel my old passions returning and I'm using Creations with Christina's Make~Motivate~Connect to push my boundaries a little trying challenges again and uploading to here.

This weeks challenge is use flowers. Ha! It quickly became clear I am not a flower girl. I did manage to find a Simon says stamp set from a card kit I had never opened called birthday flowers. Again it is a very simple design. I feel that I am trying to find who I am as a creator since for 3 years I looked up something on pinterest and just made it my own. I've placed an order from Simon says stamp to help get some creative juices flowing so we shall see.

super simple thank you card

Sometimes I just stamp and color images in front the the tv. I stock pile them and then just make a bunch of super simple thank you cards out of them.

Birthday Card

I preordered the Lawn Fawn Simply Celebrate Winter stamp and die set. They arrived so I used the presents stamp to create a birthday card instead of a holiday card. I colored with copic and spectrum Noir markers. The Happy Birthday stamp is a really old Hero Arts stamp. The pattern paper and ribbon are old items in my stash.

Make~motivate~connect

Anything Goes Linkup party #3

Christmas in August?

I actually work on batch stamping Christmas cards all year so when its time to mail them I have more than enough homemade cards to mail to friends and family for the holidays. Using a Misti stamping platform makes it so easy to create multiples and double stamp to get images darker. For the card I used Lawn Fawn Here we go a-waddling and snow cool with their coordinating dies. I also used Simon Says Stamp stitched rectangles dies as well as My creative time fun stitches edges dies. Everything was colored using comic markers. The snow was embossed using snowflake tinsel embossing powder to give it a little shimmer. I added stickles to the hats and wink of Stella to the lantern light.

color challenge

Long time no blog post. I was inspired by Creations with Christina to complete a color challenge for her Make-Motivate-connect Linkup Party. I used a sizzix banner die set I got on clearance at Hobby Lobby to create this card. All the papers are mostly scraps from leftover projects.

more snow day cards

I used patterned paper from the mariposa mat stack and then a simon says stamp die.

snow day card making

An unexpected snow day meant some crafting. I made 6 of these. A little plain but they will do. All the cuts done on my explore. The sentiment stampin up.

shaker card

My son is kinda freaking out he is turning 30 this month so of course I had to showcase his age on the card. I welded the 30 from the cricut font on the explore to create this card.

sympathy card

I used cricut design space to weld the stamped image into a rectangle. Then sized the flowers. I can't remember what carts the images were from. Its easy to lose that part when you just search images.

Banner

Wow so much has happened since I last posted. I got the flu right after Christmas. My mom got bronchitis at the same time and unfortunately passed away from it January 6th. So I've been in a bit of a fog that is slowly lifting. The past 2 weeks I really started crafting again. I have my project life and holiday pictures almost caught up. I've also been making some cards and this banner. My daughter is maid of honor in a wedding this summer and she is planning the shower. She saw a banner similar to this but much plainer on pinterest and sent me the picture. I used my explore to size and cut everything. I used elegant edges and the font is from cuttin up. The bride to be loves cheetah print so I used pink cheetah for the heart. Not sure of the cart for that. I just searched heart in cricut design space and used one I owned.

still using my imagine

It doesn't always work the best but I am still using it. If Santa is good to me I just may upgrade to an explore.

Crappy photo quality but at least I am posting a project. Candy bags to give out. The candy is crock pot Christmas crack candy and it is yummy. I used Imagine snow angel, a Martha Stewart punch and paper trey ink stamp.

holiday card

I needed some holiday cards to send to my non christian friends so I made some of these. I got the inspiration on pinterest but I used totally different products. The tree stamp is lovely as a tree stamped in stamp-n stuff marcasite opaque embossing powder. Bought it years ago and was never successful with it until I started using the powder bag thing that preps the surface before embossing. The sentiment is a years old MSE stamp that was the right scale for the card. I tied heat embossing the sentiment it didn't work for me. So I stamped in papertrey black in and used a belly roll clear star pen to color in the open areas of the letters on the stamped sentiment. I used color box charcoal color for the edging. I loved the black sparkle paper for the mat .

Manger Card

I haven't blogged in forever. That's the way it is sometimes. At the end of the summer I had some health issues and was actually hospitalized for the first time ever with acute asthma. I've had asthma since I was a kid but that was a first.  Then my mother fell during the night  Columbus Weekend. She was hospitalized for a brain injury, broken nose and fractured jaw. She then went to rehab before coming home. She is still not where she was so its one day at a time. I am so grateful for SIL's who come get her up and assist her dressing on the days that I work. I'm a month behind on project life. I have been working on my Christmas cards here and there. This card I actually made 40 of. It seems like it took forever yet is looks simple. The stamps and die cuts are from Simon Says Stamps.

New unit

Okay this assembled so much easier than I expected. The hardest part was waiting for my daughter to get up for work (she works nights at the hospital) so I could have help standing it up. I assembled it in the family room on that carpet cause I have lots of space in there. Then slid moving men sliders under it to get it back to the spare bedroom I use as a craft/office room. I'm really happy how much the folding boxes match the room. I'm going to take my time filling it up replacing all the old photo albums that are falling apart into new books…. When my daughter moves I will move the old photo albums into a small bedroom on a shelf and get more basket cubes for this I think.

The before…

My son bought this ikea unit on sale to fit in a really narrow odd closet space in his studio apartment in Brooklyn NY. When he moved home for 2 years in sat in my garage until I broke my bookshelf when I was painting this room. The drawers are not functional. They are bowing from the bottom because they can't hold weight. There is wasted space on the bottom. It just needs to GO! The hardest part is where to put all the stuff while I assemble the new unit. Ughhh… Some of my old photo albums are starting to  fall apart so the blank ones on the top have just been sitting there waiting for me to redo them. So this will take me a while to do it right. Today it's all about unloading……