Crafty Critter Challenge #13 & Sketch and Stash Challenge

Ok ladies, I decided that my choice of challenge will be a technique challenge. So my challenge for you all is to create a card using the Split Negative technique. I have wanted to try this one for a while because the results are so neat! You can find a tutorial HERE. I can't wait to see what you all come up with!!

This split negative was not as easy as I thought it was going to be. I used SU! Kind Thoughts....I don't think I have ever used this set before. I decided to stick with the black and white because it was easiest and I don't has as much embossing powder as I thought I did....so I was limited in the colors! I used SU! ribbon along the bottom and side and used Stamping Bellas donuts...I just love those things!

I feel like my eyes are playing tricks on me now staring at this black and white for so long. And since I had two split negative pieces left I made another card just like it.....didn't want to waste them!!!! Thanks for the Challenge Jenny it was fun!

2009 Christmas Cards

It's official. I have finished my Christmas cards and have most of them in their envelopes ready to hit the mail box. I did 35 of these cards this year. I don't think next year I will take on something that has soooo many layers and takes so much time. Last year I didn't make my own cards and believe it or not I actually heard about it from a lot of people. More people then I thought enjoyed getting their hand-made cards each year so I thought this year I'd try to go above and beyond a bit!
This is Tilda With a Glitter Halo from Magnolia stamps. You can go here to their site and check out all the wonderful images they have. I bought my first Magnolias at the German convention I went to a few months ago and I'm in love with them but until I actually just went to their site, I never ever knew they had sooooo much stuff....images, backgrounds, props, and the list goes on. So check them out.
So lets begin: This is an upclose of Tilda...and I did make her Halo glitter...how could I not. I used my gold stickles and I also used my copic spica pen in the gold for the bursts on the sides of the halo. I colored her with my copics....yes...I colored 35 of these! And I again used the spica pen in green to accent the swirls on her dress. Again stickles were used for her wings.

The DP I used I picked up at my local base craft store and it's by Kaisercraft. I'm not sure what the regular cardstock is I also got that from my base craft store but it's like a cream color, it's very heavy and it glistens a bit. The other color is bravo burgandy from SU!. If you can see in the corners of the layered section I have used Stamping Bellas dots....I just love those things...I believe it's a brownish-copperish color.

I decided to use the easel card technique for my cards this year. I just love the look of these cards and it's great to showcase your hard work!

And this is my saying for the year. It's from an SU! set as well. I used green SU! ribbon and I also used the two SU! tag punches and layered them on top of each other for this look.

And this is the card folded down and ready to be sent out. I hope you enjoy!

Tuesday Morning Sketches

A New Years resolution of mine is to try to at least do 1 challenge a week. I enjoy challenges and it helps to keep me creative and gives me a ton of new ideas. So this is for Tuesday morning Sketches. Also this card is for a DT that is actually closing tonight at midnight...it's Inky Impressions. You had to do an ornament or add an ornament to your card.

I used SU! snow swirled stamp set for the little snowflakes, SU! ink, Martha Stewart snowflake punch, the ornament is from my Cricut, a few Stamping Bellas baubles and blue glitter...you know me...I just love me some glitter!

Craft Critter Challenge #12

Our challenge was to make a backpack
Backpack BoxI have been dying to try making one of these and just haven't gotten around to so.....I'm now getting around to it and so are you!This is technique TLC232 and you can find tons of samples.
Steps to this challenge:1. make a backpack box
2. it must be a childrens theme.....superheros, animals, princess, prince....you name it you can do it....but it MUST be a childs theme.
3. fill it with goodies as a gift to a special child in your life

Let's just say this is NOT my best work but it's done and posted! The actual template for the backpack is pretty easy to cut out and score and fairly easy to put together I think where I ran into issues was...too much pattern paper....I should have used a solid with the robot paper and my other problem was the first kind of ribbon I tried. I ended up tearing right through the DP because I used a ribbon that didn't "give" very much and I pulled too hard and out came the eyelets....very frustrating to say the least but this was the very first one I made and I do intend to do more....the first is always trial and error!

The DP I used was from DCWV...I had been dying to break into this pack. Eyelets are SU! and so is the ribbon....I think that's all the stuff you need besides tape of course!

Hot, hot....burn, burn

I say that....(above)....because I think I burnt the crap out of my fingers a million times last night doing these candles. I love doing them so I decided to make a few for some family members for Christmas. I wanted to get them done early due to the fact that I have to send everything through the mail seeing how we live overseas.
Materials used for these: heat gun, tissue paper, SU! Snow Swirled stamp set, stickles, 3 different shades of blue SU! ink, and some jeweled bling, two different shades of SU! ribbon...oh and wax paper...can't forget that.

I found this little snowflake poem on the internet....I google everything and I just punched in snowflake poems and these came up!

I have done these before but I learned something new last night...you don't want to use the "good" tissue paper. It needs to be the thin, wrinkly stuff....I tried it with a pretty white one side was glossy type tissue paper and it didn't work at all.

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas

Here is my "mock" Christmas card for this year. I decided to do the Easel card technique.....honestly the directions I found made it look harder then it was. It is super easy and only two cuts and two scores.
This is a picture of a close up of the sentiment I am going to be using. Sorry my pictures aren't in order.....I hate they don't come on the screen in the order you uploaded them! I might just have to try doing them individually next time!
I used some SU! green ribbon, and the sentiment is from SU! snow swirled and the "thing" under the sentiment is the big and small SU! tag punch done four times and then I just layered them and butted them up together.

Here is the card when it's laying flat. I used an American Art Stamp for this card but I have since decided to change the image. My coloring on this is horrible but I just wanted to finish it so I had something to physically look at while making my other cards. I cut out snowflakes with Martha Stewart snowflake punch, used a shimmery gold for the background paper, two red sparkly brads, used my new smooch for the big snowflake on the image, copics to color and some stickles on the big and small snowflakes.

Here is the card standing. I really like the easel card!

And a side view!

Okay, I normally wouldn't show pictures like these but most of you think that I don't ever have a mess....well....here it is.....my totally messy work area. This is me getting started on my Christmas cards. Of course it doesn't look like this anymore this morning....just last night while I was trying to come up with how my new cards are going to look....honestly....I can't work in this disaster.....but wanted you all to see....I'm just like you.....I can be messy!!!

Oh, and Melanie your kids gifts are sitting under my desk and do you all see the lovely bag of cherry cordial hershey kisses.....the craft store lady had me totally depressed and I was eating my way back to happiness!!! LOL!

Hannah Montana and Spongebob

Here is some 12x12 cricut pages I did. I did these for a swap but then realized after I had them ALL done that they were suppose to be border kits not full pages....so....these are going to go to another swap!
Spongebob page 1
Spongebob page 2

Close up of spongebob....let's just say he was a labor of love to put together....even though he is a good 4 inches tall the pieces were still tiny!

My favorite pages....Hannah Montana cartridge. I actually did a bit of regular stamping on these pages too....which I don't do very often!

Hannah Montana page 1

Hannah Montana page 2

CCBG Challenge #11

Use SCS Card Sketch 240

No Red or Green

Use Stickles and Ribbon

Use Any Christmas Image (Besure to check out my blog, I have lots of links to blogs with Freebies)

I actually have two cards to share......I finished my first card and was quite proud of myself and then realized two things.....I didn't add ribbon so that was a total afterthought...can you tell? Then I realized.....I USED GREEN! UGH! I based my card off of my DP and just loved that the colors weren't the traditional ones but I still used green.

So I sat again and made a second one...this time with blue, cream and pink...dang! Let's see, I actually used my cricut on this card. I don't use my cricut much for card making but I thought instead of a circle....I would use a circle snowflake, you can see I used stickles on the snowflake. The ribbon is from SU! The stamp is from American Art Stamp and so is the saying. The DP is from God only knows where....I collect DP...honestly I do!!! I colored with copics and I used the copic spica glitter pens to color the small snowflake....I love those pens and I just saw they have a new collection of them out.

I still really like my "green" card!!!!

New Digi Stamp......Softpencil

I came across softpencil while looking over the new DT callings. I took a look at their site and fell in love with their images. This is girl on cupcake....and I bought two other images too that I can't wait to use! You can go here to softpencils blog and I also have her banner on the right side of my page.

For this card I used some DP from one of my DCWV packs....can you tell I like those? It's so hard to get a lot of DP here so I just buy the packs and have them sent to me! I used two glitter brads, white SU! paper and the blue paper is also from the same DP pack. I used my SU! photo corner punch for the corners, copics to color, and stickles on the cupckake! Very simple card but with a lot of layers.

Happy Birthday to my mom!

My mom's birthday is on Sunday and I put this card together for her. I used the leftover paper from my Ildi card because I just love this DP...it's from DCWV Indian Summer Fall Stack...it's hard to see here but some spots on the DP are foil...very pretty.
The stamp I used was from the new Whiff of Joy stamps I got at the German convention I went to. Let's just say this was a labor of love project because these Whiff Of Joy stamps are NOT easy to color in. There are so many small areas and tons of stripes!
I used my copics to color (of course), stickles for the cupcakes and her wings (I just feel for some reason that angel wings should shimmer), I sponged around her image with SU! close to coco ink and used SU! paper. The setiment is also from SU! Oh and the brads are SU! too.

Ildi Co. Monday.....on Wednesday!!!!

Yes, I'm aware that today is Wednesday and not Monday. I have been fighting a cold and I think the cold has finally won....I keep feeling worse each day.

Anyway, here is my card for the Ildi Co. cuddles giving thanks. I really enjoyed coloring this in. Even though I had to ask my husband what color a turkey was!

The card is fairly simple in it's layout....but I just love the DP, its from a new DCWV pack I got recently. I used my copics of course to color, used a saying from an SU! stamp set and then just added two dots from Martha Stewart

Jodus' layouts

One night while I was doing a few layouts my 5 year old decided he wanted to do some too. Here is his wonderful creations!

And did you see my new picture? Why on earth is it so hard to get my husband to smile...not even half a smile. UGH! It's hard enough to get my son and daugther to look and smile at the same time the least he could do is make my life a bit easier with a smile!!!!

Page layouts

I'm doing a rainbow swap with Mnewby and I did blue, purple and white for my pages. I don't think I took pictures of the blue but here are the white and purple pages.

This is the cricut flower I made....I used silver as my accent color for the white pages. The little dots are from Stamping Bella.

I used an SU! stamp set to do the background Wings of Friendship, used some DP from one of my DCWV packes, and I tried a new technique with the two other pieces of paper. I inked my cuttlebug embossing folder and then ran it through...not sure how much I'm liking it....I think I should have inked up the other side...I don't know.

The other page I just used some ribbon down the side, made a little bow time thing at the bottom and added a brad. Pretty simple.

I used different shades of purple, some prima flowers, I used an SU! stamp for the corners of the paper and then went over it again with my copic glitter pens and added stickles.

Again, more primas, I stamped a background stamp and the used stickles....I always have to use some stickles!!!