It's about the Journey

Merry Christmas

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Card Caravan - Snowflakes

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Gift Bag Tutorial

Here are a couple of gift bags I made using my Silhouette and templates from the Digichick.

You can see more bags using these fabulous templates on the Hybrid Chick website.

Card Caravan - Holidays

Happy Sunday!  The holidays are rapidly approaching so the Hybrid Chicks have pulled together some lovely cards and projects featuring the holidays for the current Card Caravan.

Here are some cards I made for the challenge (you know I LOVE holiday cards, LOL!)

This first one features digital stamps from the stamp set Wish List Letter to Santa Bundle by Etc by Danyale.  To dress it up I put glossy accents over the stars, white craft ink over the embossed background panel, and then a little bit of a cotton swab glued to Santa's hat.

This second one uses paper from the Sugar Sands Christmas Beach Bundle by Etc by Danyale, sentiment from Christmas Foliage Digital Stamp Set by Paper Garden Projects, racoon from Loving Critters Digital Stamp Set by Paper Garden Projects, and Poinsettia made from Christmas Foliage Digital Stamp Set by Paper Garden Projects

This last coordinates  Snow Flurry Cut Outs by Paper Garden Projects, Tis the Season by Wishing Well Creations, The Merriest by Elise’s Pieces.

We hope you'll join us and play along.  The challenge is open to both cards and projects and is open for 2 weeks.  Please share with us the lovely holiday creations you are working on at the Hybrid Chicks challenge page.

I'm entering these cards in the following challenges:
Craftymess challenge - Vintage Christmas
One stop craft challenge - Christmas friends
Speedy and Friends - Red and Green
Card Crafters Circle - December Celebrations
Emergency crafter - Deck the halls
Critter Sketch - Christmas anything goes
Love to Create - Holiday Cheer

New Releases at the DigiChick - Christmas!

Happy Thursday!  I always start to perk up around this time of the week since I know the weekend is around the corner :-). And for me it's kind of like friday since tomorrow I get to go on a course instead of to the office---I will get to wear jeans instead is a skirt, yay!

Anyway, another good thing about Thursdays, I've discovered is new releases at the Digichick, and today I've got some creations to share featuring the new Christmas Retrospective set by Quirky Twerp.

Card Caravan - Winter photo inspiration

Here are a couple of winter photo inspired cards I made for the Hybrid Chick, for the current Card Caravan.  They provided a beautiful winter picture for us to use as inspiration, and this is what I came up with.

This card (above) is made using papers and images from a new digital kit from Etc. by Danyale called Christmas Magic.  I printed the digital paper, frame, and bird on to card stock, cut it out (using my new Silhouette!), rubbed some brown craft ink on the edges of the background sheet, layered up the bird and frame with pop up dots and added some tule and pearls.  Super quick and easy!

This card features  lovely papers with swirls and tree from the Winter Caprice set by Sherwood Studio, as well as sentiment from an old SU set, and the fancy label die by Spellbinders.


I hope you will check out the challenge and play along with us....you've got a couple days left to do so!

Recycling yogurt containers

So, that time is here where we are trying to put together gifts, both large and small, for all those people in our lives.  The malls are busy, and so are our craft rooms!

I have a few projects I've come up with over the years and recently that work well for me for Christmas gifts, and today I wanted to share with you a cute little decorating container that can be used to hold change, paperclips, or a plant, whatever the need is....and more importantly, it's made with stuff from around the house!

I've prepared a detailed tutorial, which is posted at the Hybrid Chick site, I hope you will check it out.  And of course, if you have any questions or need more details, please let me know.

And here's another finished picture of it, holding a plant (ok, I made a "new" plant for this with clippings, I hope they take!)

I have a couple of other projects coming up to share with you for quick and easy gifts, but would you take to time to fill in the little survey on the side, or in the comments, let me know what types of home made gifts you are making this year?

Got my Silhouette!

Finally, after weeks of waiting, the postman delivered my Silhouette...Yay!!!   I was very excited to pull it out of it's box, and immediately had to find something to do with it LOL!

Lucky enough, I had a chance to play with a new set of vintage Christmas Ephemera from Quirky Twerp at the Digichick shop, that I was able to quickly and easily set up a cut file for in the Silhouette, so I could show off to hubby the neat print and cut features of the machine.

To make the background, I used a digi paper/shape from the  Valentine Retrospect scrapbooking set, also by Quirky Twerp (am I not creative??!  who else would be using Valentine papers for a Christmas card LOL!)

After printing and cutting the base and the puppy, I simply embellished with some ribbon, dew drop, and the punched holly is from a Martha Stewart punch.

Best news--it only took about 15m to put it together!  I love colouring, but sometimes I also love not having to colour :-)

I'm entering this in the following challenges:

Creative Cutting Challenge - Christmas card (using digital files)

Forever Friends Challenge - use ribbon

The Paper Girls Challenge - Christmas or Winter

Designing with the Hybrid Chick

Today I have a couple of cards to share with you featuring digital goodies from the Digichick.  I am excited to share with the news that I am now part of their Hybrid Chick design team!  Yay!  Here are the first couple of cards I made experimenting with the digital images and papers:

The first one, above, uses the doodle border, Dear Santa letter and the stars from the Wish List Letter to Santa Bundle.  I laid the items out on my page in the computer using the MDS software, and then sent to print.  I added some red sparkly stickles over the stars, added the holly leaves (Martha Stewart punch) and made the envelope, then layered all together.

This second one was actually very easy and fun, and something quite different than I have done before.  I used the digital kit called Sugar Sands Christmas Beach Bundle.  There are a ton of cool digital papers there, but the thing is, I haven't used digital papers, so I wasn't sure if my printer would do an adequate job, or if this was really going to work for me, but I have to say, apart from the brown base layer in the card, the rest of the card was all made using one sheet of card stock (I used Aquabee marker paper).  And everything coordinates!  The flower, the leaves, the sentiment, the vintage image, and the background paper all came from that kit.  So nice to not have to dig through my craft room to find that perfect sheet of paper or that perfect prima!  For the leaves and flower, I printed them, cut out (by hand) and then shaped on a mat and layered on the card, adding a button and some ribbon to dress it up.

Anyway, I know that many of you, my crafty friends, haven't tried using digital images yet, and I am planning a little tutorial on how to use the digital images using different software.  I tend to use MDS now, but all of what I did could have been done in Word, which most folks already have on their computers, so let me know what types of things you'd like a tutorial on with some step by step photos and I will put something together for you :-)

And also, a huge shout out thank you to Laurie at Doodle Pantry for helping me out with getting my watermark edited to integrate with the Hybrid Chick one.  If you ever need a custom watermark, Laurie is the go to person!

I am entering the following challenges with these cards:
Robyn's fetish - make it vintage
Just keep on creating - Christmas
Simon Says stamp and show - stamp without ink
The Pink elephant - punches and dies
Speedy Fox/Marks Finest - pop up (hard to see in the photos, but several pop up dots used on both cards.