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.