Spare Time?

It's fall break.  That means that I have a week off.  What I should be doing with my time is marking essays, reading some good books, drinking lots of tea, taking long baths, etc.  What am I doing instead?  Having classes and making stuff for ANOTHER craft fair.  This past weekend I had craft fair 2 of 3.  It went pretty well and I made enough money to not feel so bad about spending $250 on more stamps and supplies for myself.

In the past 2 weeks I've done 3 workshops, 2 kids classes, a craft fair, have more workshops tomorrow and Thursday morning, as well as my monthly stampers club on Thursday night.  And I have 4 teenagers and an 8 year old girl coming with their moms to make altered journals at my house tomorrow night.  

So this afternoon I sat down to work out what cards my monthly stampers were going to make.  I discovered that I have used up all of my white cardstock, and have a very limited amount of vanilla remaining.  Oh.  Crap.  Time for a challenge!  Who needs Connie and Mary, or Mojo Monday when I can whip up a challenge for myself anyways?  (It doesn't matter that it was out of necessity, it's still a challenge.)  How can I make 3 different Christmas cards with no neutral stamping base...  And here's what I got!

The top card is actually a piece of vellum over a layer of Bashful Blue.  You can't really tell here, but I've also added some Dazzling Diamonds to bling it up a little.

The second card makes me want white brownies with white chocolate chips and cranberries.  It's an emboss-o-rama (both the snowflakes and the greeting are heat embossed with white & Cherry Cobbler).

This final one is my favourite.  The picture in no way does it justice, so please copy it and make one for yourself so you can see how exquisite it is.  The embossed tree gives it some nice texture and looks sort of vintage.  (Learn how to selectively emboss here .)  I added some rhinestones to give it a little sparkle, and used the Winter Post set to add some lovely vintage images to match the feeling of the tree.  I worked in a Christmas store when I first moved out of the house, and there was a room with a decadent tree covered in gold and pink ornaments.  I like pink, but not enough to have a tree covered in it, but this fulfills my need.  However, I like it so much that I don't really want to give it away now.

CARD 1:
Paper:  Night of Navy, Bashful Blue, Vellum
Ink:  Bashful Blue
Stamps:  Winter Post
Extras:  Northern Flurry EF, Organza ribbon, Dazzling Diamonds

CARD 2:
Paper:  Crumb Cake, Cherry Cobbler, Chocolate Chip  (that sounds rather yummy...)
Ink:  Versamark
Stamps:  Snow Swirled, Four the Holidays
Extras:  White embossing powder, Cherry Cobbler embossing powder, Cherry Cobbler seam binding ribbon

CARD 3:
Paper:  Soft Suede, Blushing Bride, Very Vanilla
Ink:  Soft Suede, Blushing Bride
Stamps:  Winter Post
Extras:  Petals a Plenty EF

Cherries and Olives

I was in Costco this weekend, and I saw that they had their Christmas cards out.  Yay!  I am fully justified in posting Christmas stuff regularly.  I've been cooking up cards that I can use in a Christmas card buffet, and this is one of the newest.  I posted some cards that use the snowflakes from this set, but this is the main image.  I love swirly things, and I LOVE Christmas, (especially the tree) so this is a perfect set for me.  What I like about this card is the texture of it.  I stamped the notes on a piece of Very Vanilla, and then used Versamark to stamp the tree.  I then applied some clear embossing powder and heated it up with my heat tool.  Once the paper had cooled a little, I daubed my sponge into some Old Olive, and went in small circles from the inside of the tree out.  After each application I wiped off the excess ink from the embossed area, revealing the resisted imaged below.  I'm envisioning doing the same with some silver and navy ink as well.

Stamps:  Snow Swirled
Ink:  Old Olive, Cherry Cobbler
Paper:  Very Vanilla, Old Olive, Cherry Cobbler
Extras:  Scallop Trim punch, clear embossing powder

Is That What I Think It Is?

Yep.  It's a Christmas card.  Time seems to have slipped by me these past few weeks and I haven't really done a whole lot to get ready for the fair.  Yesterday I realized that I have next to nothing made, and that there are four sets of Christmas stamps waiting to be mounted onto their blocks and used.  Thus, Christmas cards in August!  I also posted some upcoming events for anyone local that happens to look at my blog, and figured it would be nice to show some photos of a few of the projects they'll be making at our Stamp-a-Stacks and buffets.

Don't get me wrong, I love red and green (you'll see many cards with that scheme as we get closer to winter), but I really like using non-traditional colours for Christmas.  We have two sets of decorations for our tree which we alternate between (red, gold, and green - turquoise, white, and silver) but I'm thinking it's about time to add another set into the mix (I have yet to figure out where we'll store those boxes...).  Night of Navy and Pear Pizzazz make a lovely duo, but I'm quite smitten by Basic Grey, Wisteria Wonder, and the amazing new Silver Glimmer paper.

If you don't recognize the sets used in these cards the snowflakes are from Snow Swirled, and the ornaments are from Delightful Decorations.  I'm not really into Santa cards, so these were a must for me. I made a few emboss-resist cards with Snow Swirled (will post at another time) and it makes for magical looking images.  I want to say that if you were only going to buy 2 sets for Christmas, these should be them, but I'll wait until I'e played with Winter Post before committing to such a remark.  However, if you really needed a few sets right now, buy these ones.  Of course the ornament punch is awesome, but if you had to choose between one set and a punch, or 2 sets, take the 2 sets.  It's not a super difficult shape to cut out.  If you're anything like me though (lacking any self-control when it comes to crafting items) buy them all!  And Glimmer paper, and silver embossing powder too!

Stamps:  Snow Swirled, Delightful Decorations

Ink:  Night of Navy, Pear Pizzazz (top)

Paper:  Night of Navy, Pear Pizzazz, Whisper White (top), Wisteria Wonder, Basic Grey, Silver Glimmer (bottom)

Extras:  Ornament punch, Silver embossing powder (bottom)