Christmas Cookies for Friday Mashup

This week at The Friday Mashup Amy is our hostess and she wants us to be inspired by Christmas cookies and use dies on our projects.

I grabbed a retired set from SU to create some gingerbread cookies. They come with a matching die set so that made it easy to mash up the challenge this week!

Head on over to The Friday Mashup blog to see what the rest of the DT came up with and then play along with us! This challenge is open for 2 weeks!

Use Your Stuff Monday #2

I'm joining my friends Holly and Rita once again to use something in my stash that hasn't been used yet and this time we are using dies. I pulled out the Home Sweet Home die by SugarPea Designs. I've had it about a month or so, it's a brand new die that they recently released.

Since we are challenging ourselves to use stuff in our stash I used paper from S.E.I. that has been sitting on my shelf for a while. I liked the orange polka dot paper, it just seemed to pop out at me.

I cut out "home" 4 times and then glued them all together to get some dimension. I used one of the sentiments from the SugarPea set Happy Mail, it goes perfectly with this die!

To finish off the card I took put a strip of the orange paper along the bottom and then rounded the bottom corners of the card.

Do you have dies in your stash that you haven't used? Join us and get that stuff out of your stash!

I'm also entering this into the SugarPea Designs Anything Goes Challenge!

*I'm playing along with the Get This Party Started linky party at Paper Issues.(celebrating new home)*

Stamps: Happy Mail (SugarPea Designs)

Paper: Neenah Solar White, decorative paper from S.E.I.

Ink: Lost Lagoon(SU)

Accessories: Cuttlebug, Home Sweet Home die(SugarPea Designs), Round Corner Punch (SU)

Into The Light for Friday Mashup

Happy Friday! I hope everyone has had a great week. We just finished up our first full week back to school here and so far, so good!

This week Holly is our hostess at The Friday Mashup and she has a technique for us to try out called the Bokeh Technique. If you are familiar with photography then you may know a bit about this look already....it's the aesthetic quality produced in the out of focus parts of an image produced by a lens. At Christmas you can see a lot of photos that use the Bokeh technique!

I wont lie, this was a hard one for me. I watched the video that Holly provided for us and my watercolor background looked like junk and I finally gave up after about 5 attempts at it. I decided to go another route by grabbing some Night of Navy cardstock and stamping various circles on it with White Craft Ink and also silver metallic ink. That seemed to give it the dimension that mimics bokeh.

Holly also wanted us to use die cuts on our project so I used the Festive Flurry Framelits to cut out some snowflakes in Night of Navy and Silver Glimmer paper. The sentiment is from the Holiday Home set and I used the Bitty Banner Framelits to cut it out.

Make sure you head over to The Friday Mashup blog and check out the awesome projects from the DT team, the other ladies really nailed the Bokeh technique!

• Create a project with the "Bokeh Technique".  Link to technique here.
• Create a project with "Die Cuts".
• or Mash it Up! and create a "Bokeh project using a Die Cut". 

Supplies used(all supplies SU unless otherwise noted):

Stamps: Holiday Home

Paper: Night of Navy, Whisper White, Silver Glimmer

Ink: Night of Navy, White Craft Ink, Metallic Silver

Accessories: Big Shot, Festive Furry Framelits, Bitty Banner Framelits, dimensionals, sponge 

DIES with Jingle Belles

Its time for another challenge over at the Jingle Belles blog and this week Stef and Lauren say:

Create a Christmas card to die (cut) for! This week we're featuring *DIECUTS* in our cards. They can be store bought, mechanically made (a la cuttlebug), electronically generated (think cricut or spellbinders), or... if you're feeling ambitious... all of the above?!

**I had to come back and edit my post because I left out a very important part of this weeks challenge, and I have to apoligize for that! I'll blame it on being very tired when I originally posted last night......This week the Jingle Belles blog is having a cross-over with the Betty Bee's Buzz blog. One of their designers, June Houck, did a guest spot for Jingle Belles, and Lauren, 1/2 of the Jingle Belles team, was a guest on Betty Bee's. How cool is that? You can enter your card on BOTH blogs. Doesnt that just make you want to DIE....die cut that is!



I'm not going to lie, this challenge wasnt easy for me. I think it ranks up there with the 'make a funny card' challenge in terms of stumping me. I'm really not into die cuts so I pulled out the main one that I do use, the Sizzix Top Note. I played around with several stamp sets, wasnt satisfied with any of the results and finally ended up with this card.

Supplies used(all supplies SU unless otherwise noted):
Stamps: Scenic Season
Paper: Very Vanilla, Chocolate Chip, Ski Slope DSP
Ink: Chocolate Chip, Soft Sky
Accessories: Chocolate Chip ribbon, Sizzix Top Note die, Dazzling Diamonds, sponge