Winter Home

Today's card combines 2 great challenges......

Over at Jingle Belles they want to see a winter themed card, a Hanukkah card....any card that celebrates a winter holiday other than Christmas. I immediately grabbed my new favorite sets, Holiday Home and White Christmas, as they are so versatile and can be used for pretty much any occasion! I stamped the trees from White Christmas in white craft ink and then used my while gel pen to create snowflakes. I then stamped my house from Holiday Home, colored it in with blendabilities and popped it up with dimensionals in between the trees. The scene was then cut out with the circle framelits.

The great sketch at Create with Connie and Mary was the perfect way to highlight this little scene. Taking the colors from the house I used papers from the Trim The Tree paper stack and adhered it all to a Crumb Cake base. I love the darker colors as we only get 5 hrs of daylight in the winter months where I live and so "dark" totally speaks winter to me! The little sentiment from Holiday Home finished it off .....the full sentiment in the set reads " from our home to yours at Christmastime"...I just left off the Christmastime part to create a neutral winter card that would work for any celebration!

Thanks for stopping by, and make sure you stop by both of these blogs to check out their challenges!

Supplies used (all supplies SU unless otherwise noted):

Stamps: Holiday Home, White Christmas

Paper: Crumb Cake, Night of Navy, Whisper White, Trim the Trees Paper Stack

Ink: Cherry Cobbler, White Craft Ink, Blendabilities-Cherry Cobbler, Bronze, Mocha, White Gel Pen

Accessories: Big Shot, Circle Framelits, Homemade Holiday Framelits, sponge, dimensionals

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 

Halloween Fun for Freshly Made

I didn't have anything to do today so I was able to spend my afternoon stamping, I love it when that happens! I grabbed my stamps and sat down to work with the current sketch from Freshly Made Sketches, Linda C. has a great one this week.

As soon as I saw the sketch the houses from Holiday Home popped into my head. Linda C used them to make a great Halloween card and I didn't want to seem like I was copying her (yes, I'm weird like that LOL) so I grabbed the Halloween set Tee-Hee-Hee to work with instead. I don't make many Halloween cards but I could not resist this new set from Stampin' Up!, it is too darn cute (and will be available for purchase Aug.28!).

I combined some old with the new because as I said, while I absolutely adore Halloween and go nuts decorating my house for it I don't make a lot of Halloween themed cards so I've got DSP from years ago that I still haven't touched. I grabbed some of this DSP, Ghostly Greetings, to make the strip at the bottom of the card. I backed it with some Basic Black to help it stand out against the embossed panel of Pumpkin Pie. I used the Honeycomb folder for embossing and also sponged around the edges with Pumpkin Pie to get a little more definition to the panel. 

All the images were stamped and the cut out and adhered to the card. The witches dress and hat are popped up with dimensionals. The "bubbles" are non SU sequins I had in my stash.

Thanks for stopping by!

Supplies used(all supplies SU unless otherwise noted):

Stamps: Tee-Hee-Hee

Paper: Pumpkin Pie, Basic Black, Whisper White, Ghostly Greetings DSP (retired)

Ink: Memento Tuxedo Black, Mossy Meadow, Blackberry Bliss

Accessories: Big Shot, Honeycomb TIEF, non SU sequins, sponge, dimensionals

Back to School for Friday Mashup

This week at The Friday Mashup Cindy is our hostess and she is taking us back to school! She wants to see school inspired projects, and she'd also like us to use our school colors.

Here in southcentral Alaska school started back yesterday (Thurs). I've got a sophomore and junior this year, pretty exciting! In my town the schools are small and our middle school and high school are right next to each other. I work at the middle school and since the colors for both schools are the same I used them on my card, red and black.

As I was thinking about what to do for this card my eyes fell on the Holiday Home stamp set. This set will be available in the holiday catalog coming out in a few short weeks and I love it! One of the houses reminded me of a schoolhouse so I grabbed it and started working from there.

Now, when I think of back to school I think of crisp fall air and beautiful fall colors. I grabbed the tree stamp from White Christmas, another set coming out in the holiday catalog, and used the leaves from Holiday Home to stamp different colors on the trees, to give it a nice fall look. I die cut the house I colored and popped that up with dimensionals in between the trees and then cut the scene out with a circle framelit. My cardstock base is Real Red and I stamped the Hardwood background stamp on it with Versamark. I then added a strip of Basic Black DSP across the middle. I added a small sentiment in the corner, also from the Holiday Home set, and then called it good! I really love the fall feel to this card!

I hope you'll come by The Friday Mashup to see what the rest of the design team came up with, and then play along with us!

Here's your Mashup Challenge:

• Create a project with " a School theme". 
• Create a project with "Your School Colors".
• or Mash it Up! and create a "School themed project with your school's colors". 

Supplies used(all supplies SU unless otherwise noted):

Stamps: Holiday Home, White Christmas, Hardwood

Paper: Real Red, Whisper White, Basic Black DSP(retired)

Ink: Blendabilities- Cherry Cobbler, Memento Ink Tuxedo Black, Old Olive, Daffodil Delight, Real Red, Pumpkin Pie, Early Espresso, Versamark

Accessories: Big Shot, Circle Framelits, sponge, dimensionals

Black and White for 'Tis The Season

This week at 'Tis The Season we have an inspiration photo for you and I think I went pretty literal when making a card based off it. I stuck with the black and white color scheme and also with the banners, creating a simple strip of banners that says "Merry", with the word Christmas stamped below them. I had embossed part of the background with the Stylish Stripes EF and then scored lines across the end of those areas to enhance the spot where the banners are. I was going to add some sequins to the card but those seemed to take away from the simplicity of this card. The picture doesn't do it justice, in person its quite elegant looking!

We hope you'll come by 'Tis The Season and play along with us!

Supplies used(all supplies SU unless otherwise noted):

Stamps: Brushstroke Alphabet-Lower (retired), Bright Christmas (retired)

Paper: Basic Black, Whisper White

Ink: Black StazOn

Accessories: Big Shot, Stylish Stripes TIEF, Silver Stretch Cord

Watermelon Poppies for Friday Mashup

Wait, what? Watermelon poppies? No, I haven't lost my mind, I promise! That's just part of the challenge Lynda has for us this week at The Friday Mashup, the colors of a watermelon......Melon Mambo, Wild Wasabi, Basic Black and Whisper White.

As you can see I decided to use the Pleasant Poppies set. I colored the flowers with Melon Mambo and the stems were colored with Wild Wasabi. From the Bitty Banner set I stamped the birthday sentiment in Black StazOn and used the matching framelit to cut the banner out. The DSP is from last years color stacks and I used Basic Black with the pop of Melon Mambo in the middle. The layout was inspired by a Try Stamping on Tuesday sketch I saw on Pinterest (I believe its #96).

Lynda also wants us to use a wooden element on our card but I do not own any, so that's why my card doesn't have one, sorry Lynda!

I hope you'll come by The Friday Mashup blog to see all the great projects from the rest of the DT, and then play along with us!

- Use the following colors: Melon Mambo, Wild wasabi, Basic Black & Whisper White (watermelon theme) 

- Use a wood element on your card

- Or mash it up and create a card with the above colors and also use a wood element on your card

Supplies used (all supplies SU unless otherwise noted):

Stamps: Pleasant Poppies, Itty Bitty Banners

Paper: Basic Black, Whisper White, Basic Black DSP, Melon Mambo DSP

Ink: Black StazOn, Melon Mambo, Wild Wasabi

Accessories: Big Shot, Bitty Banners Framelits, dimensionals

Christmas Home

It's no secret that I love Christmas, and every year I look forward to seeing what new sets Stampin' Up! has come up with for the holidays. This year in the holiday catalog they have 2 sets that I am totally in love with....one is called Holiday Home and the other is White Christmas.

I love house stamps and Holiday Home has 3 different houses, plus all kinds of other stamps you can use to create different scenes for the entire year! Halloween, Thanksgiving, new home...the possibilities are endless! Even better, you can get framelits that match the houses,making it easy to cut them out. I love it!

White Christmas has trees, a polar bear, a deer, a banner, a car, different sayings...again, another great set!

I wanted to break these sets in so bad (I just got them yesterday afternoon but since I work nights I had no time to play with them yesterday before leaving for work) so I checked out the current Freshly Made Sketches challenge and sat down to play this afternoon (in between taking one kid to a student govt meeting, another kid to football practice, making dinner....oy vey!).

I hope Jen M. can still see her sketch on my card. I didn't get a big left margin like she has in the sketch but I do have that layer around the main image panel. I wanted to get the sentiment on the front of the card so I used the same DSP that I used for the panel going down the left side of the Sahara Sand base and created a break, finishing it off with a scalloped piece of Cherry Cobbler cardstock. It's really hard to see in the photo but I added Dazzling Diamonds to the tree branches and to the hills in the yard. It's very sparkly and pretty in person! The house and the string of lights along its roof are from Holiday Home and the trees are from White Christmas.

Supplies used(all supplies SU unless otherwise noted):

Stamps: Holiday Home, White Christmas

Paper: Sahara Sand, Cherry Cobbler, Early Espresso, Whisper White, Trim the Tree DSP Pack

Ink: Memento Tuxedo Black, Smoke Slate, Cherry Cobbler, Garden Green, Island Indigo,   Blendabilities- Cherry Cobbler, Skin Tone

Accessories: Scallop Edge Border Punch, Dazzling Diamonds, sponge, dimensionals