Cool Snap

 Autumn is here, dabbing hillsides, fields and trees with her paintbrush.  

Last week we took a drive north of town on Buck Creek Road, looking for bittersweet to stuff in the windowbox.  This scene below caught my eye.

This perfect weather puts me in the mood to add the stash of Christmas cards for my mother.  This one below I created by masking and sponging with Denim Kaleidacolor from Imagine Crafts for the background.  A few spritzes of sheer Shimmer Spray give it just the right amount of holiday sparkle.  I stamped my Kaleidacolor pad on an empty acrylic block and used this ink with a Fantastix to add a bit of "snow shadow." 

I used...

Denim Kaleidacolor inkpad

Cantaloupe Memonto Dew Drop ink pad

Mini Ink Blending Foam and handles

Fantastix, bullet tip

Sheer Shimmer Spray

(all from Imaginecrafts/Tsukineko)

white cardstock

Watercolor Splash patterned paper pad (Momenta)

Trees stamp set (Inkadinkado)

Holiday Sentiments stamp set (My Sentiments Exactly)

Card Creator 5 x 7 Matting Basics B dies (Spellbinders)

2-Way Glue (EKSuccess)

acrylic block

Royal Blue

Browsing through other blogs lately, I've been seeing lots of Christmas cards, and it's got me in the mood.  Perfect timing.  I wanted to create something to enter the latest Serendipity Stamps Challenge. 

 This month's theme is What's New.   I have a couple of new paper pads, but neither of them seemed appropriate for the stamp scene I wanted to create.  I do, however, have these die cuts that I received for Christmas a couple of years ago.  The package was a bit sticky, so I took them out and put them in a little box...and forgot about them when last Christmas came around. 

 I also have this new set of pens to use.

I knew for sure I wanted to make something blue, in honor of our Kansas City Royals playing for the ALCS pennant.  I went through my paper pads and picked out this lovely snowflake blue.  The stamping looked great, but it DID NOT go with the die cut I had picked out, so I tried two more cards and finally came up with this one.

Supplies:  Winter Homestead stamp from Serendipitystamps.com; Branches stamp set from Inkadinkado; Cloud Blue stamp pad from Ranger

I'll share those other two creations another day.

Thanks for stopping by!

Early Christmas: Part Two

Ever start on a design that went awry, but you just couldn't bear to waste it?

That's now this card began.  

I decided to just cover up my flaws, and it actually worked!

Again, I used Winter Homestead from Serendipity Stamps, and Vintage Pine Tree from Stampabilities; paper is Visions of Christmas stack from K & Company; brown dye ink from Imagine Crafts/Tsukineko

I didn't want to add any words to the front of this card, so it can be used as a birthday card if needed.  (We have plenty of winter birthdays around here!) 

I'm entering this in

SSCB #45 Challenge: Monochrome

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Early Christmas

It's hot and muggy here in Lawrence, Kansas, hardly the right time to be thinking about my Christmas card design. I'll get to that when we have our first cool snap!  It is, however, the right time to start stocking up my mother's Christmas stash.  

I made this one to enter the 

SSCB #45 Challenge: Monochrome

I'm using the SS Winter Homestead stamp, which looks like it came straight out of The Homecoming! Trees in the foreground are Vintage Pine Tree from Stampabilities; the sentiment is from an old set from Hobby Lobby.  I sponged all around the edges to give it a vintage feel.   

I'd love to be in this scene right now!!

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Merry Christmas to All

A Wish         

May He come to you

   this Christmas Eve

In a star or in a song

    painfully sweet,

In a pearl sunset, in

    a tree’s soft glow,

Or in the quiet of

a falling snow,

Bringing Peace on Earth,

love, laughter.  May

Your whole heart swell with joy

                  this Christmas Day.                   

by Sarah Ashley Posch

Simply Joy

Here's another card I created for my mother's stash, which I plan to give her for her birthday.......if I can wait that long!  I'd gotten the "My Notebook" Art of the Card set from Hero Arts  It's not Christmas-y by any means, but something kept nudging me to use this swash on a Christmas card.

I inked it in green on a muted tan piece of cardstock and mounted it on a dark green card.  Calligraphy pens tend to bleed when writing over a stamped area, so I sprayed lightly with hairspray before writing.  

I was so pleased with the end result, I went ahead and made several of these, also trying it on a muted blue background.  

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Silent Night

Here's another card I created with my mother in mind.  I fell in love with this stamp from heroarts.com the minute I saw it.  Thought I pair it with a little calligraphy.  

Patterned Cardstock:  Momenta pad 20469 R4

Stamps:  Winter Town (Hero Arts)

                Snowflake (Stampabilties)

                Small snowflake (Hobby Lobby)

Black Dye Ink (Tsukineko)

Watermark ink (VersaMark)

Embossing Powder:  silver and gold (American Crafts)

Fine nib calligraphy pen with black ink (Schaeffer)

Deckle scissors (Fiskars)

Gold leafing pen (Krylon)

2 small gold gemstones (The Paper Studio)  

Did the same basic design again, all in blue.  Didn't like it quite as much as I thought I might.  What do you think?

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Christmas Red

Here are two new cards to add to my Mother's stash.  I made them both the other morning, using a pre-folded kraft card, plain white cardstock, and this antiqued red from The Paper Studio's Christmas on Amesberry Street stack.  I wanted to keep that typewriter as the focal point of the first card.

My Merry Christmas stamp is several years old, from an unknown set.  I stamped only the Merry on the first card, in black dye ink.  For the second card, I embossed it instead and punched three snowflakes to show off the white underneath.  

Now it's time for a cup of chai.

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Christmas Time's a'Comin'

I can almost believe it this morning, with a delicious nip in the air!

I wandered over to the Hero Arts Club Blog yesterday and discovered a new holiday challenge underway.  Hooray!  That's just what I need.  For my mother's birthday this year, I'd like to give her a stack of Christmas cards ready for sending.  I only have two or three so far, so I'd better get busy!

This idea happened by accident.  I'd stamped these Winter Trees from Hero Arts and had that piece lying on my desk.  Meanwhile, I die-cut an oval for another card.  I tossed aside the paper that was leftover from that oval, and it landed on top of these stamped trees.  I fell in love with that look. 

A touch of scoring and the deer on the outside of the card really set it off. 

card outside

inner layer

a touch of calligraphy inside

I'm entering this card in the "White Out" category of the Hero Arts Holiday Challenge.  

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