December Papertrey Bloghop

I hope all of you that that celebrated Christmas yesterday had a good one. Turns out Emilia really wanted to celebrate it this year but did not tell us in time so we kind of had a Faux Christmas. She went around the house wrapping things to give us and her dolls that we already had. When she asked Rich what he wanted he told her money so when he opened his gift that is what he got. It was all her play money but it was pretty funny though! Next year we will be better prepared for her to celebrate it right if that is still what she wants to do. Since Rich and I bought a new camera and computer this year we didn't do any other gifts for each other but as I was blog hopping on Christmas Eve I found a fantastic deal on a new Cricut Expression for 1/2 off with 2 cartridges plus free shipping here! I was trying to hold out until my birthday in March to get one but I could not pass that deal up! I guess you could say I bought myself an early birthday present! I can't wait to start playing with it.
Tonight is the December Papertrey Bloghop
The challenge this month was to Create a card or other type of project that reflects some of the holiday spirit found in your
home. Since there is not a lot of decorating to do for Hanukkah and my Menorah is a Winnie The Pooh one My inspiration for this challenge was this box my Hanukkah Candles came in this year.
The first thing I thought of when I saw the box besides Hanukkah was a baby boy. Since the box held Hanukkah Candles I thought a Jewish baby boy card would be the perfect thing to make.
This is what I came up with
I started with this weeks CPS sketch 147. I have been wanting to make a circle card for awhile now and finally got the chance to do it. I began by using a large circle Nestabilitie die to cut out the main circle base using Kraft Cardstock. When I was done with that I cut out a smaller circle shape from Spring Rain Cardstock then I stamped the thin stripe from the Faux Ribbon set on it and embossed with clear embossing powder. Next I cut apart the Mazel Tov sentiment from the Mazel Tov set and stamped it on a piece of white Stampers Select Cardstock with black Versafine Ink. After that I stamped the elephant from the Bitty Baby set on Spring Moss Bitty Dots Patterened Paper then I cut him out and added him to the end of the sentiment piece then I attached them both to the front of the circle piece. Next I tied a bow using Spring Moss twill then added it to the top of the card with mini glue dots. When I was done with that I stamped the small Star of David from the Mazel Tov Additions set on a piece of white cardstock, punched it out with a 1/2 circle punch and attached it to a epoxy dome circle then I added it to the middle of the ribbon with another glue dot. Finally I machine stitched around the blue circle and sentiment piece. That's it. I look forward to seeing what the other gals have come up with. I hope to be back with more things to share before the new year. In the meantime as always thanks for stopping by and I hope you have a wonderful night!

Technique Tuesday

So far this week has started off a bit better than the last one. Yesterday we had our monthly homeschool meeting. Each month we pick a different country to learn about. This month it was England. One of the moms taught the girls how to play Cribbage and brought real Fish and Chips. We also had a gift exchange for the holidays. Emilia and I made some Homemade Houses to put her gifts (littlekinzs) in. This is a picture of the girls with their gifts. You can see the houses in the photo too.
Unfortunately whatever has been biting me is back and has started to bite Emilia too. Rich still has not gotten bitten by anything. I spent most of the day yesterday Googling and trying to figure out what it is. I am besides myself with the thought of it possibly being something like bed bugs especially when I try to keep my house as clean as possible. I just talked to someone on the phone about this that specializes in this kind of thing and the lady I spoke to said it didn't sound like bed bugs to her from what I have described so that made me feel a little better. As soon as I finish this post I am off to wash the sheets and vacuum the bed again. Then I am going to set up sticky traps to see if we can catch anything. If I do I will email a photo to them so they can determine what it is that is biting us. If anyone has any suggestions for what it might be in the meantime and how to get rid of them let me know.
Today I want to share with you another Technique Video. This month I am going to show you how I made the background for this card.

Dimensions and Supplies are the end of the video. If you have any questions let me know.

That's it for now as always thanks for stopping by and I will be back after Christmas for the Papertrey Bloghop. Until then I wish those of you that celebrate it a Very Merry Christmas!

Celebrate The Season

It has been a crazy week around here. The week started last Sunday night when the sewer started to back up. It happens every year about this time but we never plan on it happening. Thankfully it was an easy fix but it still ended up costing about $200.00. On Monday I woke up with itchy bites. Nobody else in the house has them though which is odd. We thought it might be fleas from the dog but that has been ruled out. I have been cleaning like crazy trying to get rid of anything that might be the cause so far they seem to have stopped and are in the process of healing now. On Thursday night I was working in the studio when Lily came down and was making crying noises. I thought it was because the washer was making a lot of noise from all the bedding I was washing and it was scaring her but when it stopped she was still doing it. I picked her up and when I went to touch her stomach she started crying again. I took her upstairs and shortly after that she threw up all over the place then continued to cry after that. Luckily the vets office was still open so we rushed her over there. Thankfully they could not find much wrong with her except that she was a little dehydrated from throwing up. After spending another $200.00 we took her home and thankfully she has been fine ever since. I still have no idea what caused it because she was perfectly fine before that but it was really scary to see her in that much pain. Hopefully it was just something she ate in the yard and it doesn't happen again. I also hope next week is less eventful!
Last night was the final night of Hanukkah. Emilia's big present this year was the new American Girl doll Rebecca. She has been collecting American Girl dolls for many years, now she has them all. Even though our holiday is over I wanted to make one more card to help celebrate the season. A few months ago I saw this video on Lauren Meaders blog for how to make 3D elements. I thought ornaments would be a great thing to make with that technique. This is what I came up with.I also used CPS Sketch 146 from this week for the layout

I started by stamping some ornament images from the PTI Take A Bough Set using Spring Rain and Pure Poppy ink then I put them together following the directions in the video to make them 3D. Next I stamped the top of the ornaments from the Holiday Button Bits set on Stampers Select white cardstock using black ink then added the ornaments. The red snowflake paper is from the Cosmo Crickwt Jolly By Golly Collection. The Spring Rain piece is from the PTI 2008 Bitty Dots Basics pattern paper collection. After piecing everything together. I machine stitched with silver thread. To finish the card off I stamped and embossed the Celebrate the Season sentiment from the Take A Bough set in the bottom right hand corner.
That's it for now. I am off to work on this months technique video. I hope to be back Tuesday to share that with you. In the meantime I hope you have a great weekend.

Winter Holiday House

I have always loved small houses. I still remember my Little People House being a favorite of mine as a kid. My sister had a really cool dollhouse that our mom bought her when we were kids that I loved as well. When Emilia was born I started buying her all kinds of toy houses too because of how much I love them. Last month Papertrey Ink released a new template created by Lauren Meader and a coordinating stamped set created by Nicole Heady called Homemade. When I saw them both I knew I had to have them because of this. After the template was released I started thinking about what kind of house I wanted to make but was not coming up with anything that really excited me. One day last week I was reading my list of Twitter people that I follow and I saw this wonderful ceramic house here and I was totally inspired by it.
That was where I got the inspiration to create this.

I started by stamping and embossing snowflakes from the Rustic Snowflake set on SU Tempting Turquoise cardstock on the lower half of the house. When I was done with that I created the top of the roof using more Tempting Turquoise cardstock and stamping more snowflakes on each of the smaller sides. After that I used the SU corner rounder to create scalloped edge pieces on Stampers Select white cardstock then I started layering them to create the roof. Next I created the chimney using red Bitty Dots Patterned paper, then I added a top to it that I created myself. After that I added some more bitty dots patterned cardstock under the eaves on the long sides of the house then I created the steps using bitty dots cardstock again and added some snow with a white gel pen. For the door I stamped and embossed the rounded door stamp on brown mahogany wood venner which made the perfect texture for. The wreath was created by stamping the small wreath fron the Believe set and then adding some ivory flower soft that I colored green. The windows and doors were all stamped and embossed with silver embossing powder then cut out and added. The brown edging on the middle of the roof was cut free hand then I added white dots with a gel pen. Under the eaves of the roof I added Silver cording with mini glue dots for decoration. To finish the house off I added some white glitter to the roof to look like snow which makes it super shimmery IRL. The roof comes off too so you can use it as packaging to give a gift in.
This project took me over 3 days to complete but I am extremely happy with how it came out and submitted it for this months Papertrey GSS. I have had 3 honorable mentions this year but no wins. I am really hoping that this project will be a winner! In the meantime I will continue to create more houses like this in the future because of my love of them. That's all for now. I hope you have been inspired to create some miniture houses now too. As always thanks for stopping by and I hope to be back soon with more things to share.

Mojo Monday 116

Hi everyone. I hope your weekend is going well and it is warm where you are. Today I am back with an entry for this months Mojo Monday Contest.
I started working on the sketch last week but finally got it done this morning.I had good intentions of getting it finished before now but for some reason I always seem to wait until the last minute to finish things. I know this probably sounds crazy but I think something about that helps motivate me to get things done.


For this card I started by stamping the cute Gingerbread Man from the PTI Holiday Button Bits Set on some Kraft Cardstock with Dark Chocolate Perfect Match Ink. When I was done with that I added 2 Spring Moss Buttons and outlined him with a white gel pen. Next I used my circle Nestabilities Dies to cut out the all the circles from Pure Poppy, Dark Chocolate and Polka Dot pattern cardstock from the Rustic Snowflakes Pattern Paper Pack. The background piece is Spring Moss and Dark Chocolate Cardstock that I ran through my Cuttlebug using the striped embossing folder. A piece of Pure Poppy Saddle Stitched ribbon was tied in a bow around the middle. The sketch pretty much ended there but I felt it still needed something else so I added 3 brads in the upper left corner that I colored with a red copic and stamped and embossed the sentiment with white embossing powder in the lower right corner. For some extra pop I added some faux stitching with a white gel pen around the Pure Poppy Circles. I hope the Mojo Gals like it. It sure would be nice to win a free Verve set. That's it for now I will be back tomorrow to share my PTI GSS this month. I am really happy with how it turned out I hope you will be too. Until then I hope you have a great night and thanks for stopping by.

My Grafico Blog Hop

It's hard to believe over a week has gone by since I last posted. Time seems to have gotten away from me again. It feels like we have also been living in the ice age for the last few days here. It is suppose to be in the 40's this weekend. These are the days that I miss summer the most. Hopefully it will be here again before we know it though.
Today I am participating in the first My Grafico Customer Blog Hop. Last month I was asked to make some custom birthday cards for a fellow Sheteam members children. When I asked her what kinds of things her kids liked she said dinosaurs and princesses. I have hundreds of stamp sets now but believe it or not I didn't have any of those kinds of images. Instead of going and buying another stamp set I decided to check out the digital stamps My Grafico has and found some great images that would work. This is the card I came up with for her son.

I started by resizing the dinosaur from this set in Word then printed him out on some white cardstock and colored him with my Copics. When I was done with that I cut the dino out and added him to a piece of Kraft cardstock using dimensionals. Next I cut out a circle using a Nestability die then stamped the Happy Birthday Sentiment on it from the PTI Around and About sentiments set. Inside the circle I added her sons age that I cut out from some Kraft cardstock using a Cuttlebug die. After that I matted the dinosaur on a piece of Dark Chocolate cardstock that I ran through my cuttlebug using the Tiny Bubbles embossing folder then matted it on a piece of Leaf Green Cardstock. I finished the card off with some faux sitiching.
This is the card I made for her youngest daughter.

These images are from this set Once again I resized the images in Word then printed them out and colored them with my Copics. After that I added some Martha Stewart silver glitter to them to make them sparkle. When I was done with that I attached them to a piece of black cardstock. Next, I created the background piece by doing the Simple Green technique from the April 08 Technique Junkies newsletter then I matted the fairy piece on it. To finish the card off I personalized it with the birthday girls name using the PTI Simple Alphabet set.
I would highly recommend you check out My Grafico for digital images next time you need a stamp. As you can see their images are wonderful and I look forward to using them more in the future. You can also see the list of the other participants here
I am also entering these in the Caardvarks Digital Challenge
On another note Hanukkah starts tonight so I want to wish those that celebrate it a Happy Hanukkah! I will be back soon with more things to share. In the meantime I hope you have a great weekend and thanks for stopping by.

Ice Skating

I hope you all had a good Thanksgiving. We had our typical one where my dad buys the turkey then my family comes over and I do the cooking. I don't mind it though because I like to cook. Family is also the most important thing to me in life so I am always greatful when we all get together.
Ice Skating is something that is very popular in our house. Rich has played hockey most of his life, I skated a lot as a kid and Emilia has been taking figure skating lessons for over a year now and loves it. This month my Etsy Sheteam challenge is Winter sports. So in honor of our love of ice skating I came up with this.
I started by finding some free ice skate clip art here. I resized it in Word then printed it out on White Cardstock. When I was done with that I applied white glitter to make the boots shine. After that I matted a piece of Raspberry Fizz Cardstock on Silver Shimmer Cardstock then stamped some snomflakes on it from the Rustic Snowflakes set with snow white ink. When I was done with that I attached the skate image and sewed around it with silver thread. The great thing about this card is when you open it you have an Easel Card.

I have been wanting to make one of these for awhile now and finally got the chance to do it. This video is great for explaining how it is done. The base of my card is Papertrey's Spring Rain cardstock which I stamped more white snowflakes on. The Season's Greeting's Sentiment is from the Take a Bough Set and was stamped and embossed on a piece of Raspberry fizz cardstock.
Since this card is only 4 x 4 I made a matching envelope for it so it could be mailed using this tutorial.
That's it for now. I hope the rest of the week is a great one for you and I will be back soon with more things to share.