Sneak Peek of almost-finished Designs...

I did it! I put all the cards together except for ... embellishments. So you're just going to have to come and RSVP for the workshop to see the finished designs!

Used in this set of cards:
* Embossing folders
* Shinhan Touch Markers
* Cricut carts - Art Philosophy, Artiste and Artfully Sent

Date: Nov 22, 2015
Place: My house - contact me for address/directions
Time: Anytime after 1:00 PM.

I will need to put the order out soon to make our Nov 22nd workshop deadline, so please let me know ASAP if you are attending and how many you would like to make. Without further ado...

Card #1

Card #2

Card #3

Card #4 

Card #5

Card #6

I look forward to seeing you all at the Christmas Card workshop! Hope you are staying warm this chilly day.

Playing with Greens

The fun part about commissioned cards is that I can use whatever I want. In this case, I found a few sparkles, embellishments, and I just had to break out my Cricut machine once again.

The inspiration for this card is here: http://nikkispencer-mysandbox.blogspot.com.au/2014/08/just-add-ink-227chipboard.html.

I used Liquid Glass to make the red Baker's Twine behave on the front of the card but it wasn't easy as Liquid Glass takes some time to dry. Then, I cut up a few snowflakes with the Cricut and I used a few snowflakes.

I brought the eyes of the owl and the patterned cardstock inside the card.

Other
* Cream cardstock
* Copics B24, B21, Y11, Y13, Y21, R24, R20
* White cardstock

CTMH:
* Bundled Buddies - retired
* Shinhan Touch Markers R11 and C46
* Art Philosophy Cricut Cartridge
* Pear Ink
* Ponderosa Pine Ink
* Blue and Green Adhesive Rhinestones - retired

The little Christmas Village is lit and the Christmas lights are on!

Halloween 2013...

I always love creating for my office!! This is an old photo that never got posted - I made up these little boxes and also decided I'd do something different than the chocolate and candy floating ALL over the place. So I made spiced nuts as well.

I started with a basic container, and then just fiddled until I got something I wanted.

I filled them by buying freezer bags, spooned some spiced nuts (an almond and walnut mix) into them and tied them off with some orange ribbon I had laying around. Tags were cut with Art Philosophy and I used scissors to cut out the little counts and ghosties.

Other:
* Patterned Cardstock
* Ribbon

CTMH:
* Art Philosophy CTMH Cartridge
* Artiste CTMH Cartridge
* Creepy Creatures
* Magic Potions
* White Daisy Ink
* Outdoor Ink

Still hoping for this snow to finally go away,

When you don't have time...

... you make the time.

I'm still trying to get my Easter project for my office completed by tomorrow morning. So my pre-cut 3-D shape pieces, paper trimmer, and glue gun have been living under my desk for the last four hours in hopes that I will be gluing it all together during the lunch hour.

Today's card was inspired some time ago by Random Acts of Creativity but I can't remember the exact card.

Happy birthday to my father-in-law! I admit sheepishly that yes, today is his birthday and I haven't yet sent the card, but he snowbirds in South Africa over the winter months so I still have to find out where to send it to. I pulled out some random embellishments from CTMH that I have been saving for a little while and cut out a shape from Art Philosophy's cart in different sizes for the top of the card. I distressed the edges of the sentiment in Olive and created a bowtie by tying a knot in CTMH ribbon and then cutting the ends.

I brought in the stamping under the bowtie to the inside of this card as well. Can you recognize the paper? If you guessed Stella, you're right - I would have never thought to use Stella in a male card.

Other:
* Solid cardstock

CTMH:
* Ribbon
* Stella Level 2 Paper Pack (retired)
* Dreamin Level 2 Paper Pack (retired)
* Opaque Pearl Adhesives, Mocha
* Random CTMH embellishment
* Art Philosophy Cricut Cartridge
* You and Me (retired)
* Love Life
* Olive Ink
* Chocolate Ink

Happy Easter everyone! With luck I'll be able to get the Easter project up in the next few days.

Cricut Snowflakes

When I was cutting out snowflakes for my workshop, I noticed that there were several other snowflake shapes that are available in the Art Philosophy cartridge. I couldn't resist using them for this latest Christmas card.

Today's inspiration: http://tenealewilliams.com.au/2012/11/case-study-116/

I added two little star brads for the middle of two of the snowflakes, and finished it off with a little blue rhinestone in the middle of the third snowflake.

I thought I'd use the sentiment from October's stamp of the month which is a perfect partner to the snowflakes from the Snowflakes set. I also distressed the edges of the cardstock on both front and back with Indian Corn Blue Ink.

My Stash:
* Dark Green cardstock - Spice Market
* Background white paper (CM)
* Star brads

CTMH:
* Art Philosophy Cricut Cartridge
* Very Merry Christmas - Oct 2012 SOTM
* Artiste Birthday set
* Blue Adhesive Rhinestones
* Snowflakes
* Indian Corn Blue Ink
* Sky Ink

I'm less than a week away from the second workshop and cannot wait!

Winter's comin...

This feels like the last weekend of Indian summer, but I won't complain. With that fades into fall and then winter, and with winter comes Christmas!!

I did it - I have since made my first Christmas card of the year as I am thinking Christmas card workshops for October and November while we're still in September. I'm super pumped to do them - nothing beats a little wine, some munchies, and good company.

Today's inspiration is courtesy of Case Study: Case Study Challenge #95 based off Teneale's version.

Those dots look familiar, don't they - they're off the double sided stamp set featured in this month's promotion for National Stamping Month! And, I used the newest craze of "swiping" to give it a bit of texture. It doesn't show very well, but I used liquid glass to pop up the middle of the snowflakes and broke out my CTMH waterbrush to color in the little raccoon. He's colored with Grey Wool (retired), Barn Red, Blush and Pondorosa Pine.

I brought the blue inside the card and again used liquid glass for the middle of all those snowflakes. My favorite thing about liquid glass is that it takes on whatever color it's sitting on top of and it doubles as an adhesive if you have lost the adhesive backing on some of the smaller adhesive gems/pearls.

It would be fitting to enter my first Christmas card of the year into H2H's Christmas challenge!

Michaels, etc:
* Solid cardstock
* Ribbon
* Embroidery floss

CTMH:
* Snowflakes
* Bundled Buddies (retired)
* Pink/Red Adhesive Gems
* Opaque Adhesive Pearls
* Bling Assortment
* Liquid Glass
* Cricut Art Philosopy Cartridge
* Water brush

Designs for the workshop are well in progress!

Road trip to Seattle!

We're packing and about to head out to Kelowna tonight. I can't wait to get my fill of wine, good food, and good company. One of our friends in Seattle has a new house = card moment!

Today's inspiration is from Mojo Monday: Mojo Monday 256.

This looks like a crazy hodgepodge of patterns, but I had originally wanted to use the other side of the paper from Avonlea until I ended up putting glue on that side! I guess sometimes fate just wins out. I also distressed all edges of the other pieces with Olive Ink.

Interestingly enough I came across a blog that had talked about mixing and matching different paper packs from CTMH - and this card is no exception! If you look closely I mixed in Stella (retired) for a punch of pink.

This time I opted to not stamp a sentiment inside the card but I did decide to add a little growing tree - to symbolize a new house. I colored it using CTMH inks and a paintbrush. Bordering the writing area is the side of the Avonlea paper I originally had planned on using.

All papers from CTMH mix and match beautifully no matter what the color or the season you bought it in - keep that in mind if you have a few paper packets and are stumped as to what to do with them.

Michaels, etc:
* Solid cardstock
* Ribbon

CTMH: 
* Avonlea Level 2 Paper Pack
* Stella Level 2 Paper Pack
* Live Out Loud - July 2012 SOTM
* Beary Busy
* Art Philosophy Cricut Cartridge
* Olive
* Barn Red
* Moonlight
* Cocoa

Happy Labor Day Weekend!

Summer and more babies...

There has to be something in the water at my workplace. My manager is expecting #4 anytime these days, the Business Analyst on my project is expecting in January and one of my fellow developers' wife is expecting in December. So I suppose I will be planning a few of these "lets get something from the office to show we care" things.

I'm not ready to follow suit however, but I do love kids - right now I spoil my god children as much as I can. They're 4 and < 1.

This was inspired again by the same Case Study (101), this time based off Iwona Palamountain's take on it. I just loved her tag and tried to borrow a few elements from it.

It's more on the simple side, but now and again it's fun to go on the simple side for a change. The shape for the sentiment is from the three sheets of Dimensional Elements shapes that come with the Cricut Art Philosophy cartridge.

I carried over the same colors from the sentiment on the front along with the flowers - I admit I love doing this to give the card an all over uniform look.

Michaels, etc:
* Solid color cardstock
* Blue Ribbon

CTMH:
* Cricut Art Philosophy package, Dimensional Elements
* Card Word Puzzle
* Lucky Level 2 Chipboard Assortment (retired)
* Baker's Twine, Paradise
* Florentine Level 2 Paper Pack
* Dreamin Level 2 Paper Pack
* New Arrival
* Sky Ink
* Outdoor Denim Ink
* Sunflower Ink

Happy Heritage Day!

Farewell Jamaica, Hello Reality.

Jamaica was beautiful and a blast; everyone's laid back there and friendly and I even learned one Jamaican word! I visited Margaritaville and Seven Mile Beach which I walked off most of the vacation food I had. I would definetly go back again... gorgeous beach and beautiful place.

This is a picture of the sunset as we got near our resort on Seven Mile Beach, Negril, Jamaica.

Just wanted to show you quickly March's stamp of the month - Potential! It's gorgeous! Ask me how you can get this awesome set for only $5.00 more!

As you know when I'm not crafting I'm travelling and of course to continue on with the Denmark theme, I had to make a Mother's Day card for my mother in law to take with me. International postage these days is crazy!!

Today's card is inspired by an older Mojo Monday: MOJO228, and in particular HandKrafted By Stephanie : Valentine for my Girl's post.

I always like breaking out a new stamp set to use for cards and this was no exception. I'd gotten it early last year when I bought my Cricut Art Philosophy bundle, and it's a perfect match! I just cut out the flowers using the size recommended on my stamp sheet, and then stamped the flowers with Smoothie and added a small rhinestone center. The background was embossed by hand using Fiskars Scrapboss.

And of course, no card would be complete without something to open it up to! I used the same set again alongside with a set that includes Mother's Day greetings inside.

Michaels, etc:
* Solid cardstock
* Printed pattern piece
* Fiskars Scrapboss

CTMH:
* Art Philosophy stamp set
* A Little Everything
* Itty Bitty Sparkles
* Smoothie Ink
* Cranberry Ink
* Outdoor Denim Ink

Happy March everyone, hope the days ahead will be warmer!