Happy Halloween

Happy Halloween all!  I hope you all have fun plans for today, whether it is getting your kids dressed up, greeting the cutie pies at the door, or going out for some fun festivities this evening.  I'm off to a Halloween party tonight, and this will be my thank you card for the hostess.  I used this adorable image form Ildi Co, of Cuddles Kuma and sketch from Our Creative Corner (SASSC38).

Winter's coming!

This past week has been pretty chilly here, and that's a sure sign that Winter's coming!  In addition to dreaming of sunny beaches, I've also been preparing to make my winter and Christmas cards, and I just might have succumbed to a couple of new sets of Spellbinder shapeabilities--Snowflakes :-).  I've also just had word of a blog hop next weekend, for three companies (Ildi Co., Sunshine Stamps, and the Stamping Boutique) where we'll have a chance to see the release of their new Winter images, and also the opportunity to win some fabulous prizes.  Talk about great timing!  

Sunny skies

Well, it's been a cold and rainy week and my craft room has seemed awfully cold to linger in.  I've been snuggling in blankies in front of the tv when home.  But I will make sure to make a couple of halloween cards tomorrow and post them :-)

In the meantime, I've been thinking of sunny skies, a warm breeze on a warmer day, and hot sand under my feet.  A cool drink, and palm trees rustling....Here are some pics if you want to try to visualize too.
 

 

 

The butterfly

I snagged a bunch of die cut butterfly's from a fellow crafter a number of months ago and they have sat in a box waiting to be used.  When I saw this sentiment, which is a digi image from Paper Maniac, I knew I'd have a chance to use one.

I love the sentiment, and decided it would be really good for a birthday card.  Inspired by some of the cards I've received lately, I even decorated the inside a bit.

Leaves are falling

I made a few cards this weekend and this was DH's favourite.  I used this cute bear from Ildi Co, and combined it with the sentiment and leaves image from Paper Maniac (Raindrop Echo Designs).  I thought they coordinated so well!  Coloured with copics and on a cream rather than white base.  I thought the fuzzy felt ribbon went perfectly with a teddy bear :-)

More fall cards

I was in a fall card mood still today, and this is one of my creations.   This is another of the images I got from Paper Maniac (image now from Raindrop Echo Designs). The gorgeous ribbon is yet another of the pretty things I got in a secret sister swap in September from Laurie.

I remember at the end of the summer I was in a rush to make summer cards, and then suddenly one day summer was over and I had no interest in them.  Guess that's what's happening now.  Soon enough it'll be time for snowflakes and snowmen and the Pere Noel / Father Christmas, but for now there are fall leaves and pumpkins to play with.

Beacon of Hope

Here's a simple card I made for a lighthouse themed swap.  While it is a pretty simple layout it was a lot of work due to the colouring--oh, how I want an airbrush for sky's and ocean!  Until then, each of these is a labour of love.  I kept it simple since I think the lighthouse theme is great for cards for men or for serious times, so didn't want it to be too fussy.  The image is from a Cornish Heritage Farms set called Beacon of Hope.

Playtime with kitty

My kitty cat has been really bored since the weather turned and he sure does get into everything.  If I try to sit at my craft table he wants to sit on my lap or play with the ribbon.  Here you can see he thought photographing the cards was yet another fun game to participate in.

But he's so cute, that I couldn't resist including him, so instead of shooing him away I snapped off a bunch of pics.

And here is a close up of the card itself.  I used a digi stamp I'd seen in the SCS gallery, and which I got at Paper Maniac.  I love the saying and it really expresses how I feel about the beauty of the season.

Fall days

The last week or so I've been in awe looking out the window of the house/car/office at the glorious fall trees.  It is such a beautiful time of year, and I love to savour the beauty that is so short.  This is a digi image from Ildi Co that I enjoyed colouring and working with.  I chose the cardstock first - trying to use up scraps.  And then I coloured using my copics trying to tie in colours in the image to the cardstock and DP I'd already set aside.  It worked pretty good! (usually I do it the opposite way....).

I've been in a mood to make fall cards, so expect more of these in the next couple of weeks.

Happy Wednesday

This weekend a friend of mine came over and I had the chance to play with some of her stamps, get ideas from her, and have a bit of fun experimenting.  This card is one of the ones I made.  I was very excited to find an image with a bird that coordinated so well with this cuttlebug background.  I dressed it up with these mini pearls which are so nice to work with and a bit of ribbon too/

Reach for the stars

Working in a corporate office environment for a large company, I need lots of work related cards for recognition, congratulations on milestones and promotions and jobs well done.  When I saw this new digi image from Ildico's Emotibots line, I immediately knew how I would use it.

It was a super easy and quick card to make, and those for me are always the best!  I sized the digi image and printed the words on the printer, and then cut the main image out with my nesties, and the sentiment and background for it with a punch.

The gold stars are stamped with Encore gold, and the background to the sentiment is white card stock with lots of gold Encore ink smeared onto it.  I coloured the image with my copics, and presto!  it was done :-)

I've got a bunch of ideas for this image and sentiment, so watch my blog over the next couple weeks for more of these.

Snowy gift cards

Well, it's been a super busy week for me, so I haven't had a chance to do much crafting or blogging, but here are some pics of a project I worked on last weekend.  I'll have more time this weekend to catch up and post some more fun things :-)

So, given it was Thanksgiving and we were going for a big meal that someone else was slaving over, I wanted to make a set of gift cards to give as a hostess gift, but didn't have a lot of time for colouring.  Here is what I came up with:

I made the box using instructions from Splitcoast Stampers, made a series of similar cards, and also made a bunch of tags (about 3x the number of tags to cards) so that the recipient can choose what greetings to use.  There were also coordinating envelopes

Here's what they all looked like:

You can't see in the photo well, but it's all sprayed with Tattered Angels Glimmer mist, so very sparkly.  The big snowflakes are adhered with pop up dots and have rhinestones in the centre of them.

The box and coordinating cards are an easy gift and at this type of year we start needing these, I'll be making more of them in the next month or so!

Grateful...

Today I headed over to our local farmers market.  The mushroom vendor was there and knows me by now.  I was out of cash, and he said to take the mushrooms and give him the money next time.  I just can't imagine that happening at Safeway.

And there were fresh cranberry's, and the lady took the time to tell me how to cook them and gave me a recipe.

No one was dressed up, it was a cool day and they all had mismatched jackets and hats.  It was a bit sad, with things winding down for this growing season, and this being one of the last market days of the year, until next spring.

I hate leaving my house on Saturdays.  I will do anything to avoid getting out of my pj's and going out in public, but I love my fresh produce and the other treats that I find at the market.  And I think we have to do what we can to support those small local farmers.  I've talked with folks working in that industry, and it is a pretty tough business to survive in.  A lot of hard work and sacrifice is needed, and there are easier ways to support a family. We need more people to choose this way of life and we need to do what we can to help them out, without farmers there would be no food.  Simple as that.

When I got home I dug out this Thomas Kinkaid stamp and created this card using a modified version of the same sketch I used earlier today from Our Creative Corner.

I stamped the image using brown ink on kraft paper, and then applied pastels gently with a sponge applicator (like an eyeshadow brush) in general areas (orange to the tree areas/red to the barn/grey to the roof/green to the grass).  For the main background sheet I stamped vanilla craft ink on to the cardstock to give it a pattern.  The sheet in the top left hand corner is my favorite piece.  I stamped the cardstock with vanilla ink using a linen background stamp.  Then I sprayed it with a golden Tattered Angels Glimmer Mist.  Then I ran it through the cuttlebug with an embossing folder.  To finish it off and add a bit of colour I used a brown ink pad and brushed that over the raised edges.

I hope you are all enjoying this Thanksgiving weekend and taking time to reflect on the things we have to be thankful for.

Happy Harvest!

Happy Thanksgiving, fellow Canadians!

On the radio yesterday they were talking about why Thanksgiving is so much earlier in Canada than it is for our neighbours down South, and I was reminded that we are further North (how could I forget! LOL!) and hence we have a shorter harvest season.  For me, giving thanks also means taking a minute to appreciate all those folks who work in farming (not an easy way to make a living!) because they grow our food and keep us fed.  We wouldn't last long without them!!

In celebration, here is today's card:

This card was made using an image from Ildi Co. called Halloweenies Pumpkin Koko.  (I think Koko is the kitty cat)  Even though it is in the Halloweenies line, I thought it appropriate for a harvest card.  The pumpkins look plump and healthy, and what farm is complete without a barn cat :-)  Best of all, it was a nice easy image to colour with large spaces where there was no challenge getting my marker tips into.  I coloured with my copics, and then sponged around the edges with some ink for depth.  The scallop oval punched border to my sentiment I got from a swap, since I don't have that punch, and the pumpkin background is a Cuttlebug embossing folder, and I put some coloured ink directly on the folder before adding the paper to get more definition for the pumpkins.

For inspiration I followed a sketch challenge for the layout from Our Creative Corner.

I've got some other cards in the works or at least in my imagination on this theme, so come back in the next couple days to see!

Grab bag swap

Here's one set of cards made for the monthly grab bag swap I participate in.

In this grab bag swap, I get a bundle of goodies once a month from my team members and have to create cards with the goodies and then send one of the cards to eam of my team mates.  I normally try to do 3 totally different cards, but this weekend I was having trouble with inspiration, and I really liked the layout I got on the first one, so decided to make the three using the same format.

A morning without coffee

A couple of weeks ago I asked my blog readers for ideas on what type of sentiments I could use with the Cuddles Kuma Coffee image.  I've been picking away at these one by one, and here is the latest:

I chose the colours to go with the sentiment-yellow for being awake in the morning and blue for sleep :-)  It is such a clean and perky card, it's one of my favourite that I've made lately!  I decided to use a small size for the main image, and since it's a digi stamp was able to size it to just what I wanted before printig.  I coloured using my copics, and since it's a nice and simple image I was able to colour it really quickly using only two marker!  I printed the sentiment on my printer and then punched out, and then layered the card stock and DP with a bit of ribbon.  The main image is popped up with dimensionals.  Quick, easy, and pretty!

Silver Anniversary

My husband rarely has need for a card, but this week he mentioned (at the last minute as usual!) that we had a family dinner to attend to celebrate the 25th wedding anniversary for his sister.

Over to Splitcoast I went to take a peak at what a 25th wedding anniversary card should look like, and there is a whole section in the gallery just for these.  Here's the link if you 'd like to check it out: 25th Wedding Anniversary Gallery

Looking through it, I realized that this is the Silver Anniversary, and that the card should be made up of just white and silver.  So out came my Silver encore pad, silver brads, silver ribbon, and silver cord, and some white paper.  This card only took about a half hour to make, and looks better in person than in the picture!

As I don't keep silver paper on hand, I used the Silver Encore pad to spread ink over the edges of the paper that I used for borders.  Then I let it sit and dry in the sun while I got the rest ready.  I love those Encore pads, they are so versatile and last forever!

I don't have any number stamps, so printed the 25 on my printer, and then stamped the words using a stamp from Micheals with my Silver Encore pad, and then ran the background sheet through the cuttlebug.  The ribbon was a bit trickier since I didn't want a not or a cute bow, so I bent it the way I wanted it and adhered with double sided sticky strip.

Tonight we go for dinner and I'll pass this card on.  I hope my SIL likes it!

Batty for you

Once in a while I want to tuck a little "I love you" type card into my husbands gym bag or car as a little surprise, and when I looked at this new bat image from Ildi Co a ton of ideas came to me about what to do with it, and this was one of them.

I usually make small little 2x2 size cards for these little love notes, but this time I thought I'd do a full size.  I started off by printing the words on my printer in red and cutting them out with nesties.  I then used the jpg of this new Halloweenies batty digi stamp, and shrunk it to a small size and pasted a bunch of them to make the background sheet.  Then stretched one out bigger.

I was lazy and didn't want to go down to the freezing cold downstairs where my copics are "conveniently" located (in front of the tv...) so grabbed my watercolour pencil crayons to colour with.  I was disapointed with how the bat came out, but it was still good enough to use, it's just that once you get used to copics nothing else seems as good.

All in all I think this card will make my hubby smile, and that's a pretty important thing :-)