Big Shot Christmas Ornaments

Posted on Dec 6, 2013 | 14 comments

I hope my little post today helps others who are feeling the pinch financially this Christmas….I’ve got ideas for using all that crafty stuff you already have to make ornaments to give as gifts! I figure if we add enough embellishing and ribbon and (ahem) stickles to something, folks will believe we went all out!

Enjoy this video showing how I did the snowman ornament…and gasp along with me as perfectly brand new plates get baptized with their first cuts!

Hope you enjoyed that bit of fun! Here’s a still of the ornament, and then the others…I’ve listed as many supplies as I could remember…. Shopping links are at the end of the post for as many items as I could find links for!

Snowman: Framelit Fancy Label #3, Hero Arts snowman, May Arts silk ribbon, pearl pen, stickles:

Lion and lamb: Stampin Up set for the image (very old), Simon Says folded banner stamp/dies, 1.5″ wrinkle ribbon, pearl pen:

Bird: Memory Box Holly and Bell Bird stamp, airbrushed background (with Copics), bird and bell are popped, silk ribbon,  Simon Says folded banner stamp/dies, oval and scalloped oval dies, stickles:

Mice: House Mouse (can’t find the stamp name or the stamp online, anyone know what this is?), Labels 10, silk ribbon, pearl pen

Sledding squirrel: Stamp by Inkadinkado, grosgrain ribbon, Copic markers:

Lamb: Stamp manufacturer is unknown. Sentiment company now-out-of-business. Beaded oval dies, stickles, pearl pen.

Bear in the woods: Memory Box polar bear globe stamp, circle and scallop dies, silk ribbon, copic marker, stickles:

Peanuts: Stamp is Peanuts Gang Caroling, colored with Copics, stickles added. Corner rounder, rectangle scalloped Nestabilities – I shortened the size by moving the die. 1.5″ wrinkle ribbon. 

Santa: Ribbon threader die, Stampendous stamp – I can’ t find this one online anymore, sorry! Copic markers, May Arts twisted rope, Fiskars star punch.

Drummer boy: Labels 7 dies, Stampendous stamp, Copic markers, distress inks. I stamped the background with a word art background stamp in Soft Sand ink – however my eyes are getting bleary so I’m not gonna go find that one. LOL. This has been a many-hours post already

Reindeer: Special Delivery stamp, copic markers, Simon Says holiday label sentiment/die, Nestabilities Labels 18.

OMG am I done yet? Penny Black’s Mimi stamp,  Copic markers, Fiskars sar punch, and more sentiments no longer online. Silk ribbon again. Works great for a splash of fancy! Snowman: Floral oval dies, Snowman stamp that I can’t find anywhere, copic marker, May Arts embroidered ribbon, Simon Says Holiday Banner sentiment. House Mouse love – The stamp is called Holiday Smooch…egads, I gotta let you start googling, I’m going blearyeyed. Sentiment is one from Impress. Lacey scalloped circle die, Glossy accents on the berries.

Last but not least….I made a bunch of these for my friends at Toastmasters. It was my turn to lead, so I figured I’d give them little gifts in case I screwed up Floral oval dies, Our Daily Bread poinsettia stamp, and ODBD sentiment too.

WHEW! I think I won’t be doing a post like this much more, holy cow….but….there’s tons of shopping links for you, so go buy yourself a Christmas present, ok?

From the bottom of my heart

Posted on Dec 5, 2013 | 3 comments

I recently had need of some very special thank you cards for some crazy-amazing-generous donors, so I used my long-hoarded eagles! When I created the video below, I had made a bunch of test images (which I generally do for videos) — and was hanging onto these for a while. I just love how the color layering worked out and hadn’t wanted to part with them. (uhm, as if I can’t make another!?!? what am I thinkin’?)

I’m hoping the donors felt my appreciation in these cards…because when folks get that generous, it spills out all over the place! Enjoy the video if you haven’t seen it yet:

Making my days brighter

Posted on Dec 4, 2013 | 2 comments

I’m back from vacation! Yes, I got back on Monday, but I’d prescheduled a few days, thinking I might need to do some catching up. And oh man did I have catching up to do! My AWESOME volunteers (primarily Dotti, but I heard more folks were here!) had left a “palette” of boxes for me! Holy cow. You’ll see what that looked like on OWHtv Friday, it was a pretty stellar sight. It was really well organized, though, and I spent all day Monday packing about 30 boxes, and just as I completed that – the mailman brought another 32 packages! LOL! But at least now I feel a little caught up. At least as of this morning

**Commercial break! Don’t forget I have a CHRISTMAS DAUBER class
coming up this Saturday at Impress. Sign up today!
Info is on my Classes page HERE. **

If you missed photos from my vacation…here are a few! We stayed at a lovely cabin in the snow, on a lake – and it was all snowy! They had  a couple inches of fresh snow ready for us, and it snowed lightly through the first two days! I was so happy to be with my family, and the holiday-ish weather made it feel like we got to spend Christmas together too.

We had a yummy Thanksgiving dinner in the cabin…my niece Julie is pretty awesome at napkin folding so we had it all fancy shmancy!

And out of all the times we kept saying we need to get pics of all of us together, we never quite did much of that! Agh. Hopefully everyone else got some people shots; we had some medical issues that kept the picture-taking to a minimum for a good part of the trip (but all is well now, no worries!). I’ll be getting some pics from the others to put together an album with, so I can’t wait to see what everyone shot.

Okay, now on to what you come here for – my card! I thought this precolored Doodle Pantry penguin would be perfect for today. He’s a little chilly, as penguins are wont to be, and he’d have been totally at home at that cabin, where it was in the teens during the day, and single digits at night! Brrrr! The lake even froze over, and some numbskulls went out to ice fish!?!? lol!

The design is what’s called a kickstand card, where one portion, here it would be the lacy circles, stretch all the way to the 5.5″ length, and the other part of the card is cut short. I also made a crazy lovey sunshine for the card by using scraps of paper…since we had lots of sunshine at the cabin too. It warmed my heart to see snow along with the blue skies and sunshine!

The inside of the red card base is decorated a little too – red is too dark for our heroes to write on in pencil, so there’s plenty of room now to write with whatever they want to write with. To create the 2-tone background, I added a strip of black before placing the white liner, and then added the thinner strip on top.

I like making cards like this that our heroes can use as a valentine or just as an I love you card anytime of year – valentines, if not used in time, can become out-of-date quickly, but general love cards work for a long time! But this guy needs to go quickly since he’s a wintry penguin…although I suspect someone desperate in summer could still send a penguin card like this since there’s only the little drop of snow he’s sitting on!

Hoping to get myself back to normal soon….oy! So many things on my to-do list, I need to get crackin’!

Lil Red Hoot

Posted on Dec 3, 2013 | 4 comments

This card was a prototype – I have a lot of “test” cards when I have special projects, and while this one isn’t too close to the final, it did come out pretty cute. Just simple cardstock – plain happy colors!

The blue cardstock was apparently hard to photograph from both angles….but truly, this *is* the same card!

Hope you folks who’ve purchased these are having as much fun with them as I am! Wheeee!

Chalkboard moose

Posted on Dec 2, 2013 | 4 comments

Today I thought I’d show you a little fun I had with the new moose stamp from Hero Arts! I don’t like the chalkboard technique using images with white outlines, usually….the whites of the eyes reverse how they should look and just seem odd to me. So I’m playing with coloring the image and not the outlines!

He’s colored with pencils and a little bit of Hero Arts dauber ink. Fun!