Snowflake Blessings Card

Our yard is still covered with snow. I love to look at it, but hate to go anywhere in it. Winter always seems to be a great time to stay inside and craft. I've been battling headaches and stomach flu all week, another good time to craft, to get my mind off of life's annoyances. Since I didn't have enough Christmas cards early in December, I'm starting now to get ready for next year.

I decided to use this simple sketch from Fetch a Sketch to make a snowy card.

 

This is what I imaged when I saw the sketch.

The middle panel was embossed, then matted on the blue plaid side of a piece of patterned paper. The other side used for the strip going across is brown with dots and was also matted with the blue plaid side. The silver ribbon was the final touch to dress up that strip.

The snowflake and it's shadow were cut using Cricut Artiste. I would usually have cut them both the same size so that the white one was a little smaller. This time I tried cutting the white one 1.75" using the Noel key with Accent 1/shift and the blue one 1.5" Accent 1 no shift. I liked the way they still fit and dotted the white one with sparkles and glitter glue. The embossed showflakes got their share of tiny bits of glitter glue in the center.

Here's the inside message using a stamp from Our Daily Bread Designs, "His Gift." I hope you'll find a blessing in this message:

I'm sharing this card with the following challenges:
Card Crafter's Circle #55 - Anything Goes
Crafty Hazelnuts #105 - Anything Goes Christmas
Creative Craft Challenges 2 - Non-Traditional Christmas colors (twilight and chocolate)
Die Cuttin' Divas #95 - More Holiday Spirit
Fetch a Sketch #40 - sketch
Stamp and Create December Challenge - Sparkly Christmas or Winter

6.5" x 5" Christmas Card Recipe:
Paper - Close To My Heart "Winter Wonderland" (retired), Twilight cardstock
Stamps - Our Daily Bread Designs "His Gift"
Ink - Memento Tuxedo Black, CTMH Twilight (sponged on snowflake shadow)
Accents - CTMH sparkles and Glitz Glitter Gel; Michael's silver holiday ribbon
Tools - CTMH Cricut Artiste, Martha Stewart snowflake punch (small one inside)

May God bless you on the snowy days of life!

Pal Penguins Brrrrr-thday Card

It has been such a joy to work with the ladies at Clear Dollar Stamps. Lisa Lara is so good at designing Clean And Simple style cards and the images that work well with them. I'm not usually so "Clean and Simple" but I'm using one of her images that I fell in love with at first sight. These adorable balancing penguins have paper that match their hats, so I had to try my hand at a quick, mailable card for a winter birthday.

The sketch from Unscripted Sketches  Challenge #190 seemed perfect for these little guys, their sentiment block and some snowflakes.

The digintal images are part of a set at Clear Dollar Stamps called, "Pal Penguins." I printed the images and four papers using Photoshop. I printed the sentiment and the penguin image on glossy photo paper for a change. The decorative papers were originally 6" x 6." I printed the blue one that size, but changed the Image Size to 2" x 2" for the other three. That made the black lines closer together. I enlarged the size of the sentiment block enough to fit the penguins. Increasing the height to 4.25" was good for my 5" x 6.5" card. I cut out the penguin image and pop dotted it.

The Cricut Artiste was used to cut the blue background for the Martha Stewart Punch snowflakes. They are the Noel key, Accent 1 cut at 1.5." A simple sparkle in the middle of each should be mailable, add some more sparkle, and still keep it simple with the focus on the penguins.

May friends and family give you comfort and warmth and may God bless your heart with peace and joy in this coming New Year!

I'm sharing this card with the following challenges:
Unscripted Sketches #190 - Sketch
Dutch Dare #197 - Celebrations
Bearly Mine #66 - Winter Birthday
Sweet Stamps Blog - Sweet and Simple Birthday



 

Snowy Lady Card

Saturday night as we drove home with my mother-in-law from her family's Christmas gathering, she talked about the days when she rode a horse to school. She had to walk a couple of miles to a cousin's house, then they rode a horse together about five more miles. She said they got really cold sometimes and if it was raining hard, they'd pull a blanket over themselves. Later, I asked if they had snow days like my grandchildren had last week. My husband reminded me they had no way to inform the students that there would be no school. Virginia said they could have called on the phone, but they never did close school for bad weather and she never stayed home. Times have changed so much since the 1920's and '30's.

I made this card for her with that story in mind. She'll enjoy the lovely girl in her bonnet in the snow. God has blessed my mother-in-law with many gentle years. She talks of those hardships with a smile and a laugh.

I was inspired to make this card using the sketch and colors from Sketchy Colors challenge #144:

They also provided this photo for inspiration. I used colors from the photo and a girl with a lovely hat.

 

 The white and cream background panels were embossed with a 5" x 7" embossing folder. I die cut 2 snowflakes using the cream colored cardstock and an older Spellbinder's die. The smaller white snowflake was punched with a Martha Stewart punch. The tiniest snowflake on the organdy bow is actually a button I've had for six years. I added a bitty pearl in the center so it would go with the other snowflakes. I've had the piece of "painted wood" patterned paper so long I can't remember what it was. The star of the show is the lovely girl in the snow. I found it at Magic Moonlight Free Images.

I'm sharing this card with the following challenges who also inspired this card in some way:
Sketchy Colors #144 - sketch, colors, and image
Crafts and Me - Winter Wonderland
Crafty Calendar - White Christmas (option - metal - not used)
Fashionista - Winter
Fab 'n' Funky #152 - add ribbon and/or lace
Crafty Mess #23 - Vintage Christmas
 

Lavendar and Lace Snowy CAS Card

When life is busy I wish I was better at Clean and Simple designs. This one came naturally with all the white and snow. I had all of the materials close at hand so it only took a few minutes to assemble.

The card base is made using Petal cardstock with a couple of dry embossed lines (above and below the white panel) made with a stylus. Part of my "white space" is dry embossed. The lace is white even though it looks colored in the photo. A single lavendar snowflake with a lavendar sparkle adorns the corner. It was cut using my oldest Spellbinder's snowflake die. A darker shade of lavendar ink was used to stamp the sentiment using a Close To My Heart stamp.

I'm sharing this card with the following challenges:

A Gem of a Challenge #61 - Lavender and Lace
The Paper Players #126 - CAS with snowflakes
Creative Craft Challenge - Non-traditional Christmas colors
Die Cuttin' Divas #95 - More holiday spirit ( used Spellbinders snowflake die)
CAS-ual Fridays #83 - 10 minute craft dash ( it took slightly less than 10 minutes)

Unscripted Sketch #189 Poinsettia Card

This simple sketch from Unscripted Sketches plus their challenge to do something to the circle inspired this card.

The paper has gold glitter beside all of the red lines which gave me the idea to add a gold edge along the white doily using a gold metallic marker from Close To My Heart. This was layered with two poinsettias and a black glittery doily from Wilton. I also combined it with the white ribbon edged with gold. The poinsettia digi from Clear Dollar Stamps is topped with a poinsettia from Close To My Heart that has a metallic rimmed pearl brad. It looked fine in person but seeing it on my computer makes me wish I'd highlighted it with black marker like the digi.

I'm sharing this card with the following:
Unscripted Sketches #189
Crafting for All Seasons #42- Green and Red plus glitter/sparkles (glitter paper)
Celebrate the Occassion #93 - Christmas Anything Goes
Penny's Papercrafty Challenge #107 - Merry Christmas

 

Snowy Vintage Christmas Cards

" Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they?" Matthew 6:26

I found some vintage images that reminded me of that verse above.  I have a thing about birds. I love to watch their antics from my kitchen window. I wonder what they did to ride out the storm and high winds yesterday. I know that Jesus told us told us that God cares for them to teach us of His watch care for us.

Here are two quick Christmas cards I made today with vintage images taken from my Vintage Christmas cd by Memories of a Lifetime. Once again I used the punched snowflakes with either mocha pearls or sparkles from Close To My Heart. Their vintage sentiments are really small so I'll reprint them for you.

This one uses a card background from The Paper Studio. It says, "Health and happiness to you at Christmas."

The next vintage image had red and pink flowers mixed in with holly. I used an older snowflake background from My Mind's Eye. The sentiment says,

Christmas Wish
As countless as
the Snowflakes
May your
Christmas
blessings be.

Tomorrow I plan to help God a little by spreading birdseed on top of the icy snow.  May He richly bless you during these busy holidays.

I'm sharing this post with the following challenges:
Craftymess Challenge #23 - Vintage Christmas
Order of the Opus Gluei #146 - Baby it's cold outside
Fashionista #10 - Winter
So Artful December challenge - Bird Life/Holiday Colors
Holly Jolly Christmas - Vintage Christmas

 

More Quick Snowy Christmas Cards

This is my second post today about the six cards I quickly made today. You can start at the beginning and find out more here. I put both of these cards together in the same post because they used the other two embossed snowflake strips and a combination of shapes I pulled out of my scraps and shapes bags. All of the shapes had been punched for other recent cards and were leftovers. I used card bases with snowflakes from The Paper Studio and white or cream organdy ribbon.  All so very quick!!


I'm sharing this first card with the Anything Goes challenge #82 because of the Traditional Colors.

 

Both of these cards have sentiments stamped with Close To My Heart stamps. This next one was stamped in Cranberry and in Twilight, then paper pieced. I have a LOT of sentiment stamps, but I find I keep going back and repeating favorites. Sparkles or pearls on snowflakes were a quick addition.

I made a total of six quick cards today, so hopefully I can continue to post them. (Last night our internet service was unavailable!!)

I'm sharing these cards with the following challenges:
Come and Get It - anything Christmas
Dream Valley #47 - Christmas
Quirky Crafts #26 - Last Minute Christmas (It was so quick to combine pieces from my scraps!)
Stamptacular Sunday #194 - Christmas (with stamping!)
 

Snowy Weather, Snowy Christmas Cards

Yesterday we had a blizzard with 45 to 55 mile an hour winds blowing the 3 or 4 inches of snow that came down. I never would have made a prairie wife in the 1800's. The sound of the wind constantly blowing drives me crazy! Since I live in the country with no other houses nearby, the wind scours the snow of the hills and whips it into deep drifts. I took my mind off of the wind by writing messages in Christmas cards. That's when I realized I needed even more!

Today it's sunny but too cold to go outside. Our roads are either drifted shut or frozen sheets of ice. I decided to play "catch-up" by pulling out odd scraps of designer paper, shapes I'd previously cut or embossed, images I had stamped or printed. It's a quick way to creatively match different ones to make quick cards.  I had stored the scraps in two plastic ziplock bags according to size. Also, I mostly used pre-printed boxed backgrounds. Another quick trick. I made 6 cards before I knew it!

Here's the first card:

I had colored and fussy cut several of these snowmen one night while watching TV. It's from a really old Close To My Heart acrylic stamp. The black shape is from Cricut Art Philosophy when I cut several in different sizes not know which size I'd need. I had also cut extra cream strips that were embossed with snowflakes a couple of weeks ago. The shiny ribbon is from Really Reasonable Ribbon. The word is from a zip strip cut off the edge of a piece of CTMH Pear and Partridge paper. I used my favorite punch for these cards - the Martha Stewart snowflake punch - with a center made from CTMH Silver Glitz Glitter Glue.

I'm sharing this card with the following challenges:
Robyn's Fetish #138 - Snowmen
Crafty Sentiments - Glitter
ABC Christmas - Y - Your Favorite Die or Punch (snowflake die in the winter!)
Crafting for All Seasons - Red and Green with glitter/sparkles
Crafts and Me - Winter Wonderland
Paper Pretties Wednesday #237 - Glitter
 

Winner of the CDS December Blog Hop

We have a winner of our December Blog Hop - congratulations An'Jenic of AJ Scrapbooking & Cards, your name was chosen from DT member Sarah Nelson's blog, Handmade with Love by Sarah.

CDS December Blog Hop

For today's blog hop, I have a simple card and tag using two of our stamps. The angel seemed appropriate in light of the recent shootings, my prayers are for the families and friends of the victims. It also makes me want to hug all of my own family and friends a little more, a little tighter. I'm making the card and gift tag set for this blog hop with those in mind.

When angels announced that the Saviour was born, it was the long-awaited fulfillment of a promise. He was coming to save us from the consequences of our own sinful ways. My prayer is that He will minister to the broken hearts of the families in Connecticut and that God's people will reach out to those who are hurting or troubled and be a light to lead them to Him.

On this blog hop, a winner will be randomly chosen from comments received on a DT member's blog. The winner will be announced on the CDS blog Thursday, December 20th.

PRIZES: One lucky winner will receive a $25 Clearly Digi Stamps gift certificate for digital images!

This is the card and tag I made for my xxxxx to hold her Christmas present. (She won't be named in case she's reading this!)  Digital stamps used: Angels, Little Bethlehem (sentiment on front), Christmas Card Sentiments (inside)

After you leave a comment, hop on over to Cassie's blog for the next stop! Thank you for visiting!


Blog Roll List:
CLEARLY ISTAMP
KATHY
DANA
VICKIE ( that's me)
CASSIE
SARAH N
LISA
LINDA
 

December Release at Clear Dollar Stamps

So many fun new sets of images are being released today at Clear Dollar Stamps. I have the privilege of sharing the following two sets that I hope you'll love. Two of my three granddaughters have their birthdays at the beginning of January. I thought these sets would be perfect for the celebrations.

Birthday Bash has fun papers and icons in color or outline form. I especially love the Happy Birthday sentiment that's colored to match the papers.

Here's the card I made. I colored two of the presents to match the papers. The middle present is attached on a pop-up coil so it stands out more than an inch from the other two.

I used this month's sketch from the challenge at One Crazy Stamper, rotated 90 degrees counter-clockwise.

Here's a preview of the set called Princesses. My granddaughters are blonde and love to play dress-up, so you can guess which image I used.

 

 

I used this month's sketch from The Craft's Meow Challenge:

 

 

The inside is decorated with the carriage:

 

I'm sharing these cards with the two sketch challenges and with two granddaughters that I hope will continue to grow beautiful inside and out!

 

If you haven't seen the other images and samples yet, you can hop on over to  the Clearly iStamp blog for much more.

 

Color Digital Images: CDSPrincesses, A Special Lady (inside sentiment)

Papers: MME Lost and Found, (pink stripe unknown scrap); white and gray cardstock
Accents: silver mesh fabric, CTMH silver and gray sparkles, CTMH baby pink organdy ribbon
Tools: printer

 

PSC59 - Anything Goes - Christmas Album

At the Perfect Sentiments Challenge this week we'd like to see Anything Goes with Christmas. Create anything you want as long as it has a Christmas theme and Christmas sentiment.

Our sponsor is Shelly's Images who will provide a free digital image to a lucky participant. This will be our last challenge this year. We'll return January 2, 2013.

I discovered I had an overabundance of Christmas paper collections from the days I designed for our local scrapbook store that closed. So I made four different Christmas mini-albums, each one using paper from a different company. Here's one I made with Echo Park paper and stickers from several years ago. Most of my previous albums had been rather vintage, so I thought this paper might appeal to younger members of the family. (The others were made with Basic Grey "Eskimo Kisses," Graphic45, and DCWV "The First Noel" with scriptures on tags). The last two were sold at a church craft fair before I could take photos. See the one with Eskimo Kisses on tomorrow's post)

The cover: The cover is 6" x 6 3/8." Both covers have patterned paper adhered to black cardstock mounted on chipboard. The cover is larger to accomodate anything that "sticks out" like the tag on page 5. The inside pages are all 6" x 6" mounted only on heavy black cardstock. Making all of the patterned papers 1/8" smaller than 6" x 6" allows the black outline to show.

The inside pages all have pockets for photos, mats or cards for more photos, and tags for journaling. I made the pockets in a variety of ways, most of which are unattached on the inside edge, allowing smaller shapes to be used or larger photos to be inserted.

Pages 1 & 2: (Page 2 has a black doily attached to a journaling spot, together used as a pocket.)

pages 3 & 4

pages 5 & 6 (Page 5 has the background paper attached only on 3 sides to made a large pocket. I used a circle punch on the open side to make it more obvious. The back side of the cutout was attached to the black photo mat. The Christmas tree tag is on top of a flip-up card for photo/journaling.)

pages 7 & 8 (Page 8 has a snowflake embellishment that I made by cutting out the remaining outline of a snowflake sticker and mounting it on white cardstock, then on a red scalloped circle.)

pages 9 & 10 (Page 9 has a vertical pocket. Page 10 has a pocket/book that is fastened by sliding the word collage embellishment under the edge of a large button.

Here's the booklet opened. It was made from a sheet of 8.5" x 11" black cardstock in the landscape orientation that is scored at 3" on each side folded to the center and 3.5" from the bottom, then folded up. Stickers and a trim of patterned paper decorate the pockets of the book and the tags. The middle pocket is big enough for a 4.75" x 4.75" photo/journaling card.)

pages 11 & 12 (Page 11 has a ribbon pocket. I used 7/8" organdy ribbon attached on the back of the green dotted paper with sticky red tape before it was attached to the black book page. The two ribbons should meet in the center and any photos, tags, etc., should be large enough not to slip through the openings. This type of pocket allows you to put in the largest photo/tag because no space is taken up with the attachment of a pocket.)

 I found that it was easy to make 4 mini-albums at the same time, even though I used different paper collections.  I could follow the general pattern and it went faster knowing what size to cut. For example, I cut all of the page 1 pieces at the same time.

I hope this will help give ideas to anyone who wants to make a pocket mini-album. I'm sharing this album with the following challenges:
Anything But a Card #8 - Winter Holiday
Anything Goes Challenge Blog #82 - Traditional Christmas colors
Jingle Belles "A December to Remember" - Anything Holiday Goes
Unstampabelles #18 - Christmas, no stamping. I only used stickers, die cut tags, and patterned papers.
Use It Tuesday #45 - Christmas - paper pack and matching stickers are my hoarded supplies




 

Scripture Display Album Final Post

This is my last of three posts showing pages I made for eleven Scripture Display Albums. You can find the first post here and the second one here. These last pages display Scripture words art from Clear Dollar Stamps.  I kept the design simple. I wanted the focus on the verses. Because I made eleven albums, I also used up some of my overabundance of paper. The albums are for 6" x 6" and are about to be discontinued by Close To My Heart. You can find them for purchase here if you are interested.

May God bless you with His Word!

I'm sharing these pages from this project with the following challenges:
Shopping Our Stash Weekly #81 - sentiment/quote as the focus
Through the Craft Room Door #48 - Anything Goes
Word Art Wednesday #57 - Anything Goes with Scripture
 

More pages in Scripture Display Album

Here are more pages of verses I've used in my display albums.  The albums are designed to sit on a table or mantle. Please see my previous post  about these albums if you haven't yet. Because there are so many pictures, this is the second post out of three for this album. (If you're interested, the albums can be purchased here.)

I remember teaching the following verse over 30 years ago when I taught 4th grade in Christian school. My hope is that those who receive these gift albums will be encouraged and will hide God's Word in their hearts. How thankful I am for the verses I've learned. I think I don't have a good memory any longer. I certainly couldn't recite Shakespeare that I had to memorize. But at the moments I least expect it, the verse that I need for a given situation just pops into my mind, encouraging and leading me. I'm so thankful for the Word Art Wednesday, Our Daily Bread Designs,Verve, and Clear Dollar Stamps blogs for all the beautiful verses they have designed for us to use.

I printed most of these verses from Word Art Wednesday's blog, but this last one is from Clear Dollar Stamps. I kept all of the pages fairly simple because I made 11 albums with 12 pages each. Making so many at once helped me use some of the overabundance of paper that I have and still keep each album similar. I hope they give you some ideas for your own creations. There will be one more post for this album.

I'm sharing the pages of this project with the following challenges:
Everybody Art Challenge #217 - Anything Goes
Inspire Me Fridays #88 - Anything Goes
Love to Create #45 - Anything Goes
Shopping Our Stash Weekly #81 - Sentiment/quote is the focus
Simply Create #13 - Anything Goes
Word Art Wednesday #57- Anything Goes with Scripture


 

Mojo Monday #271 Poinsettia Christmas

I've been making Christmas cards all year, but now at the last minute, I'm trying to focus on ones that will travel well in the mail. Here's the Mojo Monday sketch for this week that I used, along with the colors from The Color Throwdown.

I used the digital poinsettia and sentiment from Clear Dollar Stamp's "Holiday Nutcracker" set. I printed it twice so that I could cut out some of the leaves from the 2nd one to loosely adhere on the main image. I only adhered with a small glue dot so that the leaves stuck up a little for some gentle dimension.  I also used liquid glass, a clear, shiny glue, on the white berries and center of the poinsettia. The green dotted paper has shiny embossed dots that go well with the liquid glass effect. The black die cut is from the Cricut Artiste cartridge.

I'm sharing this card with the following challenges:
Color Throwdown 221 - red, crumb cake (I used kraft), green, black
Charisma Cardz #48 - Christmas
Dream Valley Challenge #47 - Christmas
Mojo Monday sketch #271
No Matter Which #5 - Christmas