Peace, Love, Hope, Friendship

For today's card I started by coloring the image Saturday night for The Daily Marker 30 Day coloring challenge on Instagram, knowing I would be using it to make a card for the Jingle Belles challenge. The Jingle Belles want to see stars and/or stripes on our Christmas cards and thanks to some retired SU DSP from my stash I was able to incorporate both! 

The image is from a clear set from Power Poppy called Cozy Cupfuls (on sale right now for only $9.00!). I just love this image and the old fashioned feel it has to it!

Thanks for stopping by!

Going Red for Jingle Belles

The current challenge over at the Jingle Belles blog is to create a project that predominantly features the color red. I finally made time to create a Christmas card, the first one of the year for me!

I used a set from Power Poppy called Joyful Arrangements. The clear set is now retired but you can find several of the images from the set in digital stamp form in the Power Poppy shop, including the image I used on my card. 

To keep me on track with the red theme I picked out the paper I was going to use first and then I brought the accent colors from that paper into the image. The card is still all about the red but has touched of brown, green and blue thrown in.

The challenge ends tomorrow so hurry on over and link up your red card :)

Going Pink

It's October and over at the Jingle Belles blog that always means it's time for pink Christmas cards, as Lauren and Stephanie always donate $2.00 to the Breast Cancer Research Foundation for every card linked up. My stepmom is a breast cancer survivor as are several good friends of mine so this challenge is always near and dear to my heart. I'm still running behind on challenges but made time for this special one today!

I actually already had this image from Power Poppy sitting in my stash, all colored and ready to go. I grabbed some retired SU DSP that went perfectly with the colors and my card come together nice and quick. It came together so quick that I was also able to play along with last weeks Creative Confetti Challenge, create a card in 10 mins or less. The hardest part for me was getting the circle panel centered just right. I am so hard on myself and the image needs to be centered perfectly or else I'll keep moving it around LOL I'm happy with it though and am now caught up with 2 of my favorite challenges!

Make sure you check out both of these great challenges!!

A Sepia Christmas

This week over at the Power Poppy blog the Creative Confetti challenge is all about sepia tones. I'm not going to lie, this challenge scared me LOL I knew the tones would have to be brown but I wasn't sure how I wanted to approach it, so I did some googling. I found this tutorial from Ally Cope on the Power Poppy blog and it helped quite a bit.

I'm combining this challenge with the Jingle Belles challenge, which is to create a project with a peace symbol on it, the word peace or a scene that evokes peace for you and so I pulled out the O Holy Night stamp set from Power Poppy to use for this card. I grew up in New England and there are some beautiful old churches that look absolutely stunning and peaceful in the winter, with the light coming from stained glass windows and the world covered in snow around it. 

I used 2 sets of brown for this card.....the moon and snow on the ground, trees and building were all done using the E40 family while the building itself I used the E50 family. For the sky I used W1 and W00 to give it more of  a brownish overcast. I brought in a very light yellow for the glow in the windows and a very light green and red for the wreaths on the building. After my coloring was done I die cut the image out and sponged the images with some Crumb Cake to further blend the image panel with the patterned paper I decided to use.

As I mentioned earlier I was pretty scared to give the sepia look a try but I brought the image with me to work on Fri to color on my breaks and lunch and I'm really happy with how it came out! I showed my husband this card last night and he loves it so I consider that a win :)

Thanks for stopping by!

Stamps: O Holy Night (Power Poppy)

Paper: Early Espresso (SU), Crumb Cake (SU), Neenah Solar White, Deck the Halls DSP (SU retired)

Ink: Memento Tuxedo Ink, Crumb Cake (SU), Early Espresso (SU)

Copics: Snow/Trees/Ground: E40, E41,E42,  E43

Building: E50, E51, E53, E55, E57, E59

W00, W1, W2

Y00, G12, R81

Accessories: MFT Blueprints 2 and 23, Framelits Labels (SU retired), dimensionals

On the First Day of Christmas

For this card I am playing along with the current Jingle Belles challenge, which is to create a project that features a numeral or that features an element from the 12 Days of Christmas song. As soon as I saw this challenge I immediately thought of the Power Poppy digital stamp, Partridge in a Pear Tree, as it's perfect for this challenge!

I positioned the top sentiment and the main image in Word, changed the top sentiment color to a red and then joined the 2 images into one. I printed it out and used my copic markers to color it in, adding red and silver accents with metallic jelly pens when I was done coloring. The image panel was cut out with a die and then adhered to an Early Espresso card base. Easy peasy!

Thanks for stopping by!

Flowering Santa

Our temps are still nice and low, Hallmark Christmas movies are still playing on my TV and I made another Christmas card :)

I'm playing along with 3 challenges for this card....Freshly Made Sketches, Creative Confetti and Jingle Belles.

As soon as I saw the Freshly Made Sketches sketch I knew I wanted to try it, it's very unique, but I was a bit scared. Then I got an email from Power Poppy where it said they were retiring some Christmas sets and that Flowering Santa would be one of the sets retired. NOOOOOOO!! Thankfully I had bought this set as soon as it came out as it is one of my favorites. It's one-of-a-kind and I just adore it. As I started thinking about how I could use it with the sketch another Power Poppy set came to mind, Snuggle Down. It comes with stamps to make your own plaid pattern....a perfect way to create the border that makes up the sketch! I headed into my craft room and started stamping my pattern using red, green, gray and black as my colors and I carried these colors into my Santa image. After coloring my Santa image with copics I popped it up with dimensionals in the center of my frame.

The Creative Confetti challenge is Christmas in July and seeing that Flowering Santa was retiring inspired me to create another Christmas card for the challenge!

The challenge over at Jingle Belles is a Tic-Tac-Toe challenge and I chose the middle row going down...glitter, red or green and Santa. I used red glitter Stickles on the red dots in Santa's beard, the red and green are the flowers and leaves plus part of the plaid pattern and of course the image is Santa!

Stamps: Flowering Santa, Snuggle Down (both Power Poppy)

Paper: Neenah Solar White 110#

Ink: Real Red (SU), Garden Green (SU), Smoky Slate (SU), Memento Tuxedo Black

Copics: R24, R27, R29

YG03, YG63, YG67

E0000, E000, E01

N0, N2, N4, N5

Accessories: Stickles Xmas Red, Dimensionals

Cozy Winter Wishes

We're having record breaking temps in my area of Alaska and I've been avoiding my craft room because the entire house is just so hot! It's the first time I've ever regretted not having blinds on the big window in my craft room. I really wanted to play along with the Power Poppy Creative Confetti and Jingle Belles Challenges though so I dove into my craft room today before the hottest part of the day moved in!

For the Creative Confetti challenge we were to create a project based on inspiration from the sneak peeks the DT held for the fabulous new clear sets Marcy just released. There were so many awesome cards made by the DT members that it was really hard to narrow it down! For this card I was inspired by the fabulous layout that Allison Cope used on her card HERE. I love how clean the card is and how the image is in the bottom right corner with the sentiment off to the left, plus the top of the card with some simple paper and a simple border. 

For the Jingle Belles challenge they have a fun Tic-Tac-Toe challenge, I always enjoy those. I went with the diagonal row that has stamping, red or green and ribbon. My main image is stamped, as is the sentiment, and red and green can be found in both of those as well as the paper and of course the red ribbon.

Thanks for stopping by!

Stamps: Snuggle Down

Paper: Neenah Solar White, Frostwood Lodge DSP (SU retired)

Ink: Memento Tuxedo Black

Copics: R35, R37, R39

G03, G09

E70, E71, E74

E81, E84, E87

B000, B52

Y11, Y15, Y26, E27

C00, C1

N1, N3, N4

T0, T3

Accessories: Cherry Cobbler Ribbon (SU retired)

Snowman Love

This week over at the Jingle Belles blog they are celebrating anything to do with snow. We're having a heatwave here in southcentral Alaska and I'm definitely dreaming of snow and cooler weather!

For my card I went with a snowman image from Power Poppy, I just love this fellow! I colored him up with copics, used a circle die to cut him out and then adhered him to some layers of retired SU DSP. 

Thanks for stopping by!

Stamps: Snow Kissed (Power Poppy)

Paper: Cherry Cobbler (SU), Neenah Solar White, Snow Festival DSP (SU retired)

Ink: Memento Tuxedo Black

Copics: BG70, BG72

YG03, YG63, YG67

R81, R85

R35, R37, R39

N2, N4, N6

C1

B0000, B000

Accessories: MFT Blueprints 13, MFT Inside and Out Stitched Circles,Stickles, Wink of Stella Dimensionals

Merry Little Christmas

For today's card I am playing along with 2 challenges....the Santa challenge over at Jingle Belles and the sketch challenge over at MFT Stamps, which unfortunately I missed the link up by just a few hours. Oh well!

The gals over at Jingle Belles are celebrating Santa or anyone else who may be living at the North Pole. I decided to use this great stamp set from MFT called Secret Santa. I just love how Santa is peeking out from behind the tree!

I colored the images with copics and then used some Stickles for the ornaments on the tree, as then some Wink of Stella on the fur areas of Santa's hat and coat as well as on the little girls stocking.

Thanks for stopping by!

Stamps: Secret Santa (MFT Stamps)

Paper: Neenah Solar White, Sour Apple (MFT), Plaid Patterns Merry and Bright Paper Pack (MFT)

Ink: Memento Tuxedo Black, Real Red (SU)

Copics: YG03, YG63, YG67

R24, R27

E50, E51, E53

RV10, RV11, RV13

E33, E35, E37

E84, E87, E89

N0, N2

C3, C5, C6

Accessories: MFT Inside and Out Stitched Squares, Wink of Stella clear, Stickles-Silver, Candy Cane, Green, Gold, dimensionals, Silver Gel Pen

Seeing Three

I'm squeaking in with a card for the Jingle Belles challenge, which closes tomorrow. They want to see 3 of something on our project, so I went with 3 deer.

The layout is an older sketch from Freshly Made Sketches and it's supposed to be 3 circles across the front panel. Instead of circles I used deer from the SU set Dashing Deer. I stamped and die cut one and then just die cut the other 2 out of some card stock. I embossed the Crumb Cake panel and adhered that to some patterned paper I got at my local stamp store. I put all of that on a Chocolate Chip card base and then adhered the 3 reindeer to the front and called it good LOL

Stamps: Dashing Deer (SU)

Paper: Chocolate Chip (SU retired), Crumb Cake (SU), Very Vanilla (SU), Simple Stories Sweet Vintage Christmas PP

Ink: Cherry Cobbler (SU), Chocolate Chip (SU retired)

Accessories: Detailed Deer Thinlets Dies (SU), Pinewood Planks TIEF (SU), dimensionals

Christmas Chickadee

I've had a stressful week and really needed a moment to just go to my craft room and make a card. I had this image colored during the 30 Day Daily Marker Challenge and had set it aside, so when I saw the current challenge at Jingle Belles about making projects with birds on them I went "wooohooo"!

This chickadee is a digital stamp from Power Poppy. I just love chickadees, they are such adorable little birds! I watch them at my feeder all the time, as they are the main bird that sticks around for the winter (along with nuthatches and redpolls). 

Thanks for stopping by!

Christmas Cheer

Today's card was made for 2 challenges....Jingle Belles is to use something new we got for Christmas and The Paper Players has this great sketch.

Other than copics to finish off my collection Santa didn't bring me anything specifically stamping related so for my card I used this new Christmas set from MFT that I bought before Christmas with intentions to make cards for it and well, after the earthquake I didn't get much stamping done so this is the first time it's seen ink.

For the sketch I added a Santa and a reindeer to the circle portion and then heat embossed the sentiment on a banner just below the 2 images.

Thanks for stopping by!

Stamps: Here Comes Santa Claus (MFT)

Paper: Early Espresso (SU), Old Olive (SU), Riding Hood Red (SU retired), Neenah Solar White, Letters to Santa DSP (SU retired)

Ink: Memento Tuxedo Black, Versamark

Copics: R32, R35, R37

E53, E55, E57

E41, E42, E43

N1, N3, N5

C00, C1, C3

YG03, YG63, YG67

E000, E00, E21

Accessories: MFT Blueprints 13 and 27, MFT Inside and Out Stitched Circles, White Embossing Power, Dimensionals

No Time Like the Present

It's a new year and that means new challenges over at the Jingle Belles blog and a brand new stash of Christmas cards to start building! To start off 2019 the gals at Jingle Belles want us to make a card featuring wrapping paper or a gift tag.

I wasn't sure how I wanted to approach this so I pulled out some scraps of wrapping paper I had tucked away and stared at it all for a bit to see if any inspiration came to me. As I was looking at the paper I eventually used I started thinking about a snowglobe and so I cut out the section of the paper I wanted, taped it to a piece of card stock to give it extra support and then ran it through my Cuttlebug with a die from MFT. 

My card base is Pacific Point from SU and I used a die from MFT to cut a panel from Neenah Solar White, which I then stamped the sentiment on and embossed with an EF from SU. I then adhered the wrapping paper image to the embossed panel to finish off the card. I wasn't sure about how it was all going to come together but I really like the final result!

Thanks for stopping by!

Stamps: MFT Winter Wonderland (sentiment, retired)

Paper: Pacific Point (SU), Neenah Solar White

Ink: Pacific Point

Accessories: MFT Stitched Domes, SU Softly Falling TIEF , wrapping paper

To My Sweet Friend

I colored up this image last week for the Jingle Belles food or drink challenge and got busy and set it aside. Then the sketch for the new Paper Players challenge came across my feed and I knew it would be perfect for my image!

For the Jingles Belles challenge I used this fun gingerbread set from Power Poppy called Frosted Gingerbread. I used my copics to color in the image and although it doesn't show up I used some Wink of Stella in the frosting and snow areas.

For the sketch I used some retired SU DSP for my background paper.

Flowery Winter Wishes

This week over at the Jingle Belles blog they want to see us get festive with flowers. Easy peasy, all I had to do was turn to my Power Poppy stamps, they have the most incredible flower images for Christmas!

For my card I decided to go with the Winter Wonderland set from Power Poppy. This image features a Poinsettia, Dusty Miller, Pepperberries and Anemones! I just love this combination of flowers, it's so pretty and unexpected. Power Poppy just released this image as a digital stamp on Monday so that's even better news for folks that love digi's!

I colored the image in with copics and then used a die from MFT to cute the image panel. It looked a bit plain to me so I did some paper piercing around the edges for a little more visual punch and then I adhered it to a card base. My daughter is home visiting us from OKC so because she loves glitter on everything I added some Wink of Stella to the anemones. 

Thanks for stopping by!

A Very Meowy Christmas

Over at the Jingle Belles blog they are all about a creature Christmas right now. I was going to do a moose card (of course) but I recently got this fabulous stamp from Mama Elephant and just had to color it up. I adore cats, and have many friends that are cat lovers also so this is the perfect Christmas image for me to have! It's hard to see but I added some Wink of Stella to the hats and ornaments.

Thanks for stopping by!

Celebrate Christmas Music

It's the first day of spring and I'm posting a Christmas card, I think that is pretty fitting for me LOL I'm definitely a winter girl and I'm not overly thrilled about spring and I don't care for summer at all, although I do enjoy tending to my flowers and lawn.

Anyway, today's card is for the Jingle Belles challenge, which is to celebrate music. It can be in the form of sheet music, musical notes or musical instruments. I love Christmas music and listen to it year round (much to the dismay of my husband) so I was happy to see this prompt!

In their Christmas catalog Stampin Up had this fabulous musical themed DSP. It made it very easy to come up with this card! I took a panel of the sheet music DSP and then used a strip of black snowflake paper from the same set to go down the right side of the panel. I then divided the 2 panels with some black ribbon lined with silver. The image is from a retired SU set and I thought it was perfect for this paper and challenge! I cut out several pieces from the paper so I can make at least 5 of this card, I really like it, even with the non traditional colors of black and white.

Thanks for stopping by!

Coloring for Jingle Belles

I'm cutting it close but I got a card(s) made for the current Jingle Belles challenge, which is to do some type of coloring on your project. I colored up this older image from Heather Ellis, the gal who designs the Pure Innocence Stamps for MFT. I only got one card finished today but I do have 6 of this image colored and ready to finish!

I found the layout on Pinterest HERE.

Getting Text-y for Jingle Belles

This week over at the Jingle Belles blog they want us to make text the focus of our project. This one stumped me, I had a hard time with it for some reason.

I went through my paper stash and found this paper from Carta Bella that has the words from 'Twas the Night Before Christmas on it. After staring at it for a while I cut out a panel with a stitched die and then used a die from Stampin Up to cut out the houses. I then took a stamp of Santa flying through the air and stamped that above the houses. I used red to keep with the theme of the text on the paper, with a brown border behind the text panel.

Warm Wishes for Jingle Belles

I was so mad at myself for missing the first challenge of the year over at Jingle Belles so I made sure to set aside time in order to get a card done for the second challenge of 2018, which is to have 3 elements of something on your project. I decided to go with polar bears!

I took a stencil from MFT and use distress oxide inks to create my background. I used a die to cut out the panel after I was done and adhered it to a card base of Bermuda Bay. The polar bears are popped up for added dimension and I used a sentiment that is perfect for a Christmas card or just a general winter greeting card.

I'm also playing along with The Daily Marker 30 Day coloring challenge on Instagram, and my theme this week is winter/cold, so coloring the polar bears fit right into my theme perfectly.

Head on over to the Jingle Belles blog to play along, there are a few more days left!