Kreative Jewels

Merry & Bright Shaker Card!

  What can be more fun than a shaker card made with a cute little snowman? I think I make a snowman shaker card every year for my Christmas card classes. I can't help it, they are just so darn cute!

This adorable little snowman comes form the Merry & Bright set. He is the perfect size for a shaker card.  He was stamped with Jet Black Stazon on Whisper White Cardstock. I used Real Red and Old Olive markers to color him. I used a piece of chipboard from the On Board Something Seasonal set for the chipboard frame. I used a sponge dauber to sponge Riding Hood Red Classic Ink on to the frame.

The colors for the card came directly from a piece of Holiday Treasures Designer Series Paper. The dots on the paper are Riding Hood Red, Kiwi Kiss and Baja Blue. This is such a fun color combination, I have used it on a number of Christmas cards this year.

I stamped the sentiment in Chocolate Chip classic ink on Baja Breeze cardstock. This stamp comes form a level one hostess set, Punches Three. This is a great little set that works perfectly with our Scallop Square Punch and the large Oval punch. I however, decided to make things a little more difficult and I cut out the frame.

The finishing touch on the card is of course the ribbon! Stampin' Up! came out with an absolutely amazing ribbon this year! The Kiwi Kiss/ Very Vanilla Satin Ribbon is soooo gorgeous! This ribbon is luscious! You really can't tell how beautiful it is in the Idea Book & Catalog! It is a wonderful thick Satin ribbon that is completely reversible. Kiwi Kiss on one side and Very Vanilla on the other. So, so gorgeous! Again, my ribbon addiction/ obsession is showing through! lol

Holy Triptych and To You & Yours

Here are a few more cards from last months Christmas card classes. I always try to do a variety of styles, color combinations and difficulty levels to keep everyone happy. This first card was a new color combo for me and it was one of the more time intensive cards we made! I used Bravo Burgundy, Sage Shadow and Brushed Gold Cardstock.  I must have seen this combination on someone's blog as I have no idea how I came up with it! lol

The stamp set I used is Holy Triptych. I am not a huge fan of religious stamp sets, but I truly love this one! I stamped the angel onto Sage Shadow Patterns Designer Series Paper using Versamark. I then embossed it with our Gold embossing powder. I stamped the frame from the same set onto Sage Shadow cardstock. Again I used versamark and with the gold embossing powder. I then used a hobby blade to cut around the inside of the frame. Depending on how comfortable you are with a hobby blade, this could be the tricky part of the card! I then put the frame on top of the angel image using dimensionals to give it some depth.

Once that part of the card was done it was all easy stamping! My ladies love it when I say that! lol The sentiment came from one of Stampin' Up!'s fantastic greetings sets, All Holidays. I embossed it in gold to match the angel. For the background I used Baroque Motifs, a favorite stamp set of mine. This set is so perfect for so many occasions. I finished the card off with some of Stampin' Up!'s wonderful Grosgrain ribbon in Bravo Burgundy and Sage Shadow. Have I mentioned that I love it when my ribbon coordinates perfectly with my cardstock?

This next card was definitely a lot quicker than the first one. To You & Yours is a fantastic new Stampin' Up! Christmas set in this years Idea Book & Catalog. There are a few reasons that I love this set. First, I love both the house image and the image of the dove. I also love that there are a variety of great greetings in this set, they are perfect for the outside of a card and for the inside sentiment. I love it when you get everything you need in one set to make a fantastic card. Oh, and did I mention that the set is only $22.95! You can't beat that!

This is a typical Julie card. I used three main colors, Rose Red, Old Olive and Chocolate Chip. I used Designer Series Paper in Rose Red and Old Olive and I used coordinating ribbon in Chocolate Chip, Old Olive and Rose Red. As many of you know I absolutely love ribbon and I love to layer it on my cards. Stampin' Up! now has a variety of great ribbon in different widths so I can layer ribbon upon ribbon and it all matches! It just makes me happy! lol

I used Whisper White craft ink on Kraft cardstock for the main image. I then sponged around the edges of the cardstock using Whisper White Craft ink. This gave the image that snowy Christmas feel that I was looking for. I love the look and feel of Kraft cardstock, especially at Christmas time. The sentiment was stamped using Chocolate Chip ink.

Holiday Line Up!

  I am still here! Life has just been a little crazy lately and I just haven't had time to blog. I have tons and tons of things to share with you, I just haven't had the time to post them! I'll try to be a little more consistent with my blogging but I'm not making any promises! lol

Have you seen the new set Holiday Line Up in the Stampin' Up! Idea Book & Catalog? I fell in love with this set the minute I saw it! It is so cute and funny! The facial expressions on the snowmen, reindeer and the elves are just priceless!

We made this card at my September Christmas Card Classes. I love so many things about this fun card! One of my favorite things is the simple color combination. I used Real Red, Certainly Celery and Tempting Turquoise cardstock, patterned paper, ink, markers and grosgrain ribbon. I did add a bit of Pumpkin Pie for their noses and Chocolate Chip for the branches, but other than that I stuck with the three main colors. I just love how well everything is color coordinated! Sometimes being all matchy matchy is good! lol

 I used the wonderful Top Note die to create the great shape that I stamped the image on. The greeting was stamped with the Curly Label stamp set and it was punched out with the Curly Label Punch! I just love this punch! I layered this on top of a Certainly Celery Oval cut out with the new Wide Oval Punch. Guess what? I LOVE that punch too! lol

I have a ton of Christmas cards to share with you this week. I also have a few MFT projects to show you as well. Don't forget to join me next week for the MFT sneak peek at the brand new MFT stamp sets that will be released on November 5th! Trust me when I say you are going to LOVE them!

A Quick Puppy Update

  Some of you may remember that my family welcomed a new puppy back in April this year. This first picture of Duke was taken on May 1. He was about 10 weeks old at the time. He was so tiny, cute and cuddly.

He has grown a bit in the last five months! lol  The bottom two pictures were taken last weekend.

Duke is still wonderfully cute and cuddly, he is just not so tiny any more! Even though he doesn't look like it, Duke is still 100% a puppy. My parents have the chewed up rugs to prove it! Oh, and did I mention that he ate a bit of a hole in a wall in the garage?

  I'll be back with more stamping later today, I just couldn't resist showing off my puppy! 

Canadian Ribbon Share

 It's time for my annual Ribbon Share!!! If you love all those yummy ribbons in the Stampin' Up! Catalog & Idea Book but don't need a whole roll of ribbon then this is the share for you. You can purchase a sample of each of the ribbons in the catalog in either one or three yard lengths. Ribbons can be found in the catalog on pages 186 and 187. I have separated the ribbons into 7 different groups. You can purchase one or two groups or go for the whole bundle.

 

All the details can be found Here

 

 

A Few MFT Challenges

Happy Thanksgiving to all you Canadians! I hope you are all enjoying the weekend with family and friends!

  I finally had a chance last night to work on a couple of this weeks MFT Challenges. Each week MFT hosts a few fantastic challenges over in the MFT Forum on SCS. For each Challenge they will pick a winner of the challenge and that person will receive a $5.00 Gift Certificate. At the end of the month all of the challenge winners will be thrown into a draw for a $25.00 Gift Certificate! You can't beat that! So head on over to the MFT forum and see what they have in store for us this week!

This first card was for this weeks sketch challenge. I think this is my favorite challenge of the week as I would never come up with these layouts on my own! Cindy and Frances do such an amazing job with these sketches. Participating in them will really help to increase your creativity!

Now anyone that is familiar with my work will be in shock over this card! There is not a single embellishment on it!!!! How did that happen??? I used a great new MFT set called Hey Chica This is such a young, fun set, I just love it! Something else I love is the amazing Eva paper from Basic Grey! I just received this paper pack the other day and I can already tell that I am going to need to stock up on this one! WOW! The colors are just amazing!

The base of the card is Basic Black. I stamped the image on Papertreys White Cardstock with Memento Tuxedo Black Ink and I colored it with Copics. Everything else on the card is from the Eva Collection of papers. I am just thrilled with how it turned out!

This next card was done for one of the newer challenges on MFT Forums, it's the Oldies Plus Goodies Challenge. This week the challenge was to use Falling For You! I love this set! It may be because I love fall, or because I love to play in the leaves, or it could be because I love to use the earth tone colors on my projects. Whatever the reason this is definitely a favorite set of mine!

Since it is Thanksgiving weekend here in Canada I thought I would make a Thanksgiving card. For this card I used Really Rust, Chocolate Chip and Creamy Caramel Cardstock. Along with some of Stampin' Up!'s brand new Autumn Vine Designer Series Paper. Love it! The main image was once again stamped with Memento Tuxedo Black Ink on Papertrey's Cardstock. It was colored with Copics and then I sponged the edges of the cardstock with Really Rust Ink. The gorgeous ribbon is from May Arts and it is a perfect match to Stampin' Up!'s Really Rust.

I have tons of Christmas cards to show you this week and I have a special MFT project that I have been working on that hopefully I will be able to share in the next few days. Don't forget to head over to the MFT forums this week to participate in the new challenges!

The House That MFT Built!

 

Hi everyone! I have been so incredibly busy the last few weeks that I haven't had any time to stamp, much less post on my blog. I do apologize. I hate it when the day job gets in the way of stamping!

I wanted to share this project with you. Each month My Favorite Things has a contest to become their Guest Designer for the next months new release of fabulous stamp sets. I think I have entered this contest almost every month they have held it. I had to miss a few because I was on vacation. In the past I have come close a number of times, but this month I can finally say that I won!
  I just can't tell you how excited I am! This month, as always, there were a ton of amazing entries by a group of very talented stampers. I am so thrilled and honored that I won and that I will be MFT's Guest Designer for November! The challenge for the contest was to use the Paper Piecing technique. I just love this technique and I especially love using it with MFT stamps! They just go so well together!

So here is my project. A few months ago when I received one of MFT's stamp sets, I believe it was Call Me, I started to think that I had enough images that I could create a house full of MFT scenes. I originally had something a little more elaborate in mind for the house, but I wasn't feeling so hot the week of the contest so I scaled things back a bit and created this house.

  Each room has a different MFT image and the entire image has been paper pieced. You may have heard me mention before that I have an addiction to Basic Grey. That addiction came in very handy for this project! Each room was designed from a different Basic Grey Paper pack.

The top room was done with Serenity Now, using Archaic and Off Beat papers.

The room on the far left on the middle floor was created with Here's the Scoop and Sultry papers. The Middle room was done with Call Me and Two Scoops Paper. The last room on that floor was created using Time For Bubbly and Euphoria papers.

On the bottom floor the left hand room was designed with Meet Me at the Cafeand Mellow papers. Finally I had to add in the token man! lol The last room was done with Let's Hear it For the Boys and Offbeat papers.

I stamped each image with Memento Tuxedo Black ink on Papertrey Stampers Select White Cardstock and I colored the images with Copic markers.

The actual house was created with Close to Cocoa Textured cardstock. I used my Score Pal to create the bricks. The door was done with Chocolate Chip Textured cardstock and the Distressed Stripes Cuttlebug folder. The brad was from Basic Grey, again think about my addiction! lol I created the roof with Basic Black textured cardstock and Stampin' Up!'s Scallop punch. There is actually four layers to the room. It looks really cool in person!

So there you have my project. Hopefully you all think it was worthy of winning the contest! I will be participating in MFT's new release party on Wednesday November 5th in the MFT forum on SCS. I will be showing you all the sneak peeks of the brand new stamp sets starting Monday November 3! I hope you will all join me that week to see what I managed to create with the fantastic new releases!