62 to Give

A big thank you to the ladies who joined me last night to make cards to give to the North Shore Homeless Shelter. We powered through 4 designs and ended up making 62 cards in just over 2 hours. I am so excited to be able to do this over the holidays. Last year I remember reading an article about a man who was at the shelter and all he wanted was a phone card to call his daughter on Christmas. I got thinking that there had to be other people that the shelter serves that want to be able to contact family or friends but do not have the resources to do so...and thus the idea to make and give cards was born.

The ladies were also very generous in bringing donations of personal care items and warm clothing as well as stamps for each card. Thanks again ladies, I am sure our donations and cards will go a long way to bring some Christmas cheer to some people experiencing tough times.

Below are samples of the cards we made.

A Week of Giving

I haven't posted in a bit because I've been busy, OK, frantically, trying to get my handmade Christmas gifts started....yes I'm way behind, but this is my week to catch up and I'm going to share some project with you.

I needed a little inspiration for this first example so I turned to Stampin' Royality this week hoping for a sketch or color challenge and I was rewarded with a great sketch.

I just love these 5x5 notebooks as gifts. You can give them to anyone and they are my go to gift for the person who stops by with something for you and you have nothing for them. I keep a couple of them wrapped with some chocolate at the ready.

I used some retired DSP ( I'm surprised I had some of this left since I adore the preppy look of it), with my fave Pacific Point card stock, and very vanilla. I added some Poppy Parade ink and card stock for a pop. I used the scallop border, scallop circle, and two step owl punches. The stamped owls are from Aviary stamp set.

Tonight I am having a great giving class that I will post tomorrow....I'm very excited about it!

Christmas Countdown

Last year I made a Christmas Countdown Frame for my sister and her family. I LOVED it and decided that this year I had to make one for my family. I'm also going to use it to play with the Paper Players and their "Anything Goes" theme this week. I used the small Christmas Countdown Decor Elements and put the oval portion onto the glass part of a 11x14 inch frame (putting it onto the glass will allow me to change the background if I ever want to in the future). For the numbers, I made a tags out of the piece of cardboard that comes in the DSP packages, cut into squares, then using certainly celery, real red and chocolate chip I covered those squares, then cut a smaller square in whisper white for the centre. Then put the numbers onto it. I used the smallest Command hook that I could find to stick to the glass to hold the hanging number tag.

Using the stamp-a-ma-jig, I used the snowmen from Holiday Lineup, lined them up all together and colored in with stampin' write markers. Finally, I used sticky strip to wiggle on a strip of real red dotted ribbon (retired) to add a bit of additional Christmas color.

I hope it inspires you to create some great holiday decor for your home too!