Today I'm going to give you some other blogs to visit while I continue to battle this stubborn cold. I have not had the energy to make any projects to share but I have been still admiring the work of some other talented crafters. Here are a few to check out.

Dannie Graves

Angela McKay

Inking Idaho

Stamp with Amy

Enjoy

Valentine

The other night I had some girlfriends over to make some Valentine cards. As usual, we spent more time talking than crafting....at least we all got some cute projects made! We made this cute little box that I chose to use as a votive holder, some of the other girls are going to use it to hold some little Valentine gifts.

This card used the silk technique and has a masculine feel.

And what would Valentines Day be without some candy. I love the new glitter paper and of course the sweet treat cups!

Quick Birthday Card

As I looked in my daytimer this morning I realized that next week is one of my sister-in-laws birthday....this card has to go in the mail.....should have gone in the mail a few days ago....so I needed to make something up quick. I headed over to Pals Paper Arts for some inspiration and they had this great sketch for me. I went to my new fave kit from the Sale-a-bration and quickly made up this cute card. Surprising to me was that I picked up the Peach Parfait again....well it was still on my desk from the card I made a couple of weeks ago....but it does look good with this paper!

Mojo Friend

Continuing along with my Mojo Month, I created a card for a friend who needs a lift....or chocolate. As soon as I saw this stamp set in the Occasions Mini, I HAD to get it! I am a chocoholic trough and through. I kept the look monochromatic, I find I'm really digging on this look right now. I teamed up chocolate chip, crumb cake and soft suede to achieve this look....and although my 9pm lack of natural light photo looks like I used very vanilla, it is actually whisper white.

Mojo Thank you

Continuing on with my month of Mojo here is the card I created for this week's sketch. I have not used much of the Peach Parfait from the new In Colors and with my sale-a-bration paper in hand I decided to pull it out for this card. I still don't totally love the color but I do like this card and I LOVE the sale-a-bration paper package....yes, a perk of being a demonstrator, early arrival of catalogues and specials!

Mojo Monday and Happy Birthday

One of my goals for January is to replenish my stock of cards and while I've looked to the Mojo Monday Blog for inspiration, I've never played along, so this is the month I'm going to get off the sidelines and play. I also wanted to play with the talented goddesses over at Stampin' Royalty for their 1 year birthday - congrats ladies! For the card above, I used retired Sweet Pea DSP (yes I've hoarded it and realized that I love to just flip through and look at all the beautiful paper, I really haven't used much of it), pretty in pink and whisper white card stock, old olive ink, curly cute stamp set (a new fave) and I scrunched up my 3 layers of punched circles to make a flower, added a few brads and I'm done.

Now this spinner card is not so much about the card rather than who it's for....my future son-in-law. Yes he's only turning 4, and my daughter is still 3, but she has told me that she is going to marry Max and they are going to have 2 babies. The boy baby is going to be called Fast Runner and the girl baby Leah (well the girl name changes every couple of days, today it's Leah). Max loves Star Wars so I thought a spinner rocket ship might come close enough. Happy Birthday!

Happy New Year Cupcake Toppers

Last year my daughter had the brilliant idea to make "Happy New Year Cupcakes" and we decided that the tradition just had to continue. This year we also made some cupcake toppers. My little helper picked the paper, the stamp and the ink and also did the punching. I did the stamping and the glue. They are quite basic, but I love that she picked out all the little details and I had to leave them just as she had designed!

Finally some more gifts

Last year my sisters sister-in-law made her a beautiful basket of homemade lotions and potions as well as some gourmet spices. I thought that making the spices would be a great gift so I decided to make some this year. I made the labels using My Digital Studio. I simply sized the circle punch to 2.5 inches, color filled with opacity set to 40% so that the color would be more muted and the image and writing would really stand out. Then I added a stamped image and text and printed them onto shipping labels. Then, using my large 2.5 inch punch, punched them out and stuck them onto the jars. I think they turned out great! I didn't make the box, because I was feeling overwhelmed with my homemade gifting, and it was 50% off....can't say no to that, but it would be super easy to make with paint and stamps, or even decor elements.

Inside the box my daughter made a nest. It was such a great activity for her, she used my paper trimmer and some old or retired paper that I had, and she set about cutting strips and squishing them up.

I got a lot of use out of my decor elements, including using the adorable cardinal on a glass jar filled with homemade granola as a hostess gift.

Here is another way to package up those spices. I found the BEST instructions on how to make any type of box on Splitcoast. For this one I took a piece of paper, 6" x 7.5", scored at 2" all the way around, folded, trimmed the long edge to where the score lines meet (yes this would best be seen in a photo, you can see a video on Splitcoast) folded and used sticky strip to adhere. Then I used the top note die and the Big Shot and trimmed about 1 inch of the middle out, stuck the outside rounded pieces on both of the long sides and covered the seam in ribbon. Voila - cute!

Finally, as I was making the scrapbooks rather than making calendars for the grandparents, my hubby mentioned how much he enjoyed his calender, so I made him one....again crazy easy using MDS. I used the calender template then saved the pages as jpeg. Then, because I wanted a simple way to print it out at home and I wanted the picture and month on the same page, I started a new project and brought the jpeg images back in as photos, lined up and resized the photo and months, printed them off and trimmed to my desired size. I cut a piece of chipboard, covered it with retired DSP, stamped and embellished, added ribbon to hang both the pages and the project.

Cards of course

Yes, a group of cards makes a great gift. I have a great auntie, as well as my husbands grandma (still kicking it up at 97) who have everything and want nothing and they are my favorite people to give a package of handmade cards to. I used the in colors to make 6 cards and I wanted to keep it simple. A touch of the in color DSP peeks out from behind the top note die. The stamp set is the Level 1 hostess set Because I Care.

You could put these cards into a nice clear bag tied with ribbon, or simply tie a ribbon around the cards, but I saw a tutorial on Splitcoast to make an A2 box and I gave it a try....I did make a little mistake along the way but managed to salvage the work I'd already put in and it still looks good. Now I hope to be able to get my project finished to post on Friday...but...it all depends on my 2 year old son's ability to go shopping with me. So if I don't get it posted Friday I will have it up on the weekend.

Month a Page Memory Book

Just a sneak peek at a perpetual memory book I am making for grandparents....I don't want to give away the whole gift now do I! In the past my sister and I had made calendars with a couple of pictures for each month for the grandparents, but this year I decided to make a month by month memory book that we can add to every year. I really think this is more of a keepsake for them and something that we can add to every year.

This was so fun and easy to make with My Digital Studio. I just gathered all my highlight photos up, and played, and played and played. I always feared making a scrapbook before because making a mistake was just too daunting, but with MDS I make tonns of mistakes and just hit delete - Love IT!

As I mentioned before, I am behind in my handmade holiday gifts, and that means I also missed the shipping deadline for guaranteed printing and delivery from Stampin' UP! (today was the deadline for printing and shipping for delivery before Dec.21), plus I need to ship one of these to Alberta.....but no problem! I'm going to print them off on my computer, stick them in a gorgeous linen album (still have to jazz that up a bit with ribbon, buttons and rhinestones) and away it goes. I'm sure this will be a much loved gift.

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!

So Easy Christmas Decor

I think this has to be one of the easiest and cutest little decor projects. I simply put Real Red ink into chipboard letters to spell NOEL then tied them to glass votives with silver string (I sure wish Stampin'UP! would bring this string back, I use it all the time!). I put votive candles inside but I also think it would look great with a sprig of greens tied with string or ribbon, or fill the glass holders with candy, or with little silver bells, or....well use your imagination, the possibilities for this simple little project are endless!

Gift Card Envelope Box

Finally for my brother-in-law, I wanted to come up with something to hold gift cards and a chocolate bar (I can never just give a gift card, I always like to include a little treat with them). I decided to try to make a boxolope. That is the name I've given this envelope box.

I stuck with the Parisian Breeze paper that I had used for the birthday cards and used not quite navy for the boxolope. My little owl buddy was from the 2 step owl punch and I used the teeny tiny wishes set for the "happy birthday". I punched it with the 1 1/4 circle, rubbed some chocolate chip on the edge and put in onto a 1 3/8 baja breeze circle. Finally, the clip to hold the flap down is from Hodgepodge Hardware.

So Nice I Made it Thrice

So in addition to my birthday and my son's birthday, my mom and two of my aunties also have birthdays in October. I first saw the idea for this card in the current Idea Book then saw the talented Marlene Peters take it up a notch with a card she shared at our group meeting. I thought it would be a great layout for the 3 ladies celebrating birthdays. I used the retired Parisian Breeze DSP with Baja Breeze card stock, chocolate chip ribbon and ink, and the Wonderful Favorites stamp set. The Wonderful mother card also has hodgepodge hardware and the bird is from the Aviary stamp set

The added flowers on this card are done using the Boho Blossoms punch and the circles from the Owl Punch.

This one just added a button from button latte.

Still one more birthday to come....my brother-in-law.

Birthday Place mats

October is full of birthdays in my family...starting with my own, closely followed by my son - who turned 2 this week. The theme for his party was trains. As a party favor I made these place mats using My Digital Studio then had them laminated at my local office supply store. They boys border and colors are from the Happy Birthday designer kit and the girls from Sunny Day designer kit. I created the trains using a variety of punches: square punch was stretched into rectangular shapes (yes you can stretch punches in MDS), oval punch was stretched and changed sizes to create the front part as well as the rounded top of the front tower, OK, I am very quickly realizing that I know nothing about the parts of trains, so here are the other punches I used, circle punch, modern label, photo corners, rounded square, butterfly and star, you can figure out where they are and if you know the train part associated with it let me know.

Upline Swap

Tonight I went to a demonstrator meeting with my upline Kari and participated in a swap....my first time doing a swap! Here is the card I created for the theme "Winter". I used whisper white, bashful blue and shimmery white paper, bashful blue ink, dazzling diamonds glitter on a strip of sticky strip, a rhinestone, whisper white satin ribbon and the Northern Hearts stamp set (hostess level 1 in the current holiday mini). The hole is punched with the 1 3/8 punch and the insert in punched with the 1 1/4, a piece of dental floss allows the inner circle to spin (and provides a minty aroma - hee hee) and two rows of paper piercing finish it off. I enjoyed challenging myself to swap with some very talented ladies!

Christmas Decor

Ever since I saw the picture of the ribbon wreath in the 2010/2011 IB&C (p. 190), I knew I wanted to make one for Christmas. My daughter and I started making this yesterday and with this week Stampin' Royalty Challenge being Anything But a Card, we were inspired to finish it today. At 3 1/2 Jessica couldn't quite tie the knots but she did enjoy selecting what pattern the ribbons were going to go in (it created a nice random pattern doing it this way, rather than my somewhat more regimented approach). We used white satin, old olive striped grosgrain, real red polka dot grosgrain (now retired), 1/4"chocolate chip grosgrain (also retired) and 1/4" real red grosgrain. I also used an 8" wreath form that we got at the craft store. Now we just have to pick the perfect spot to hang it at Christmas time!

Gift Certificate

My friend is just a few months away from achieving a lifelong goal of hers. She is going to Cambodia to build houses with the Tabitha Foundation. Yes, amazing! She needs to raise a bunch of money to go, and her team's major fundraising effort is going to be a silent auction so I just had to support her by donating a gift certificate for Stampin'UP! This cute card is a hybrid MDS creation and the coordinating gift certificate is held inside. The idea and instructions for the pinwheel came from Patty Bennett.

Best of Luck Estelle in your fundraising efforts!