Gratitude

This year I have been lucky to have some scrappin' time - WOOT!!! I created this simple card for Thanksgiving. It's an "A" size stamp from Close to My Heart. I do love my trees! To create this, I first inked the tree in Goldrush, rolled the edges in Ruby, and added the sentiment in Cocoa.  I also put down a piece of scrap paper for a mask and sponged on some cashmere ink. Inside the card says Happy Thanksgiving.

We travel soon. I will be thankful that Mr. Baggins goes with us, even if he is NOT! I'll post from the other side, but this might be the last for a week, as I'm sorting the MN studio and creating inventories to have as a reference.

Hugs!!

Birthday - embossing on vellum

Did you know that I will prepare Close To My Heart gift certificates for you to use as gifts? This is a good time to be planning one - let me know who it's for (so I can personalize the certificate and card) and how much you want to give. Sent me the gift payment, and I'll send you the gift! I put a generous 12 month date on them as an expiration date. Most of the time these are used within a month! I can redeem the certificates with an e-mail, phone call, or hand-written order and the certificate can be combined with other discount specials and can be used as partial payment for big orders. I'm flexible like that!

The reason I used this particular post to explain all that is that this card was one I made recently for a surprise birthday party and it contained a tag gift certificate.  

I have tried embossing vellum before with near disastrous results! (The vellum was burning!). This time it worked. Whew! I think next time I might use silver embossing powder. Silver might stand out better . . .

Tags

Perhaps the reason I love making tags is similar to the reason I do FAR more cards than scrapbook pages? Can you say "instant gratification"? Sure you can! (Does anyone else miss Mr. Rogers?)

I was inspired by some tags posted for a new Papertrey Ink release with birds. I realized that I had the perfect birds in a vintage CTMH set and whipped them out right away! The two bird tag designs are double layers - the top swings to the side and the Kraft piece is stamped with "to/from" for labeling packages! The polar bear was in the October stamp of the month reward from CTMH and I used the CTMH Snowhaven papers. I free-cut the hearts from some red felt, and plan to label these on the back of the tag. So, the lesson here is possibly, don't miss those CTMH specials!  

On another note, it snowed here yesterday (all day!) and my world is bright and crisp this morning! {deep sigh} I love it as long as I don't need to drive anywhere! *giggle*

Gratitude

A dear friend was showing photos of some leaves she stamped, and then colored with pencils. I recognized the stamps as vintage Close to My Heart, and lamented that I have them, but they are in AZ and I'm not. So what did my friend do? She stamped them for me on both black cardstock and off-white watercolor paper and mailed them to me. I was both surprised, and yet not at all surprised by her sweet and generous gifts!! So, this is the first thing I made with them - for Eve. 

We had a wonderful Halloween! 84 trick-or-treaters! So blessed!!

Halloween fun

The new CTMH treat projects are a blast to make! They are attractive and easy-peasy! I took the project pre-cuts and designed my own just a little bigger to hold the home-made dog cookies I made for the doggies in our family.  I believe these will be a hit, whole wheat, oatmeal, peanut butter, YUMM. They are pictured below.

 

And this last photo is a close up. The back of the tag says "To Miley From Bilbo". *giggle*

Steve said we can expect 100 trick-or-treaters tomorrow! I hope so!!

Hope your holiday is fun and fabulous! Hugs!

Red, white, blue, and Kraft!

Having fun with my favorite colors! I love red, white, blue and Kraft!! 

I've been working on some Halloween treats - guess I forgot to photograph them but it's not too late! Tomorrow when the sun is up! 

The second photo is just a little fun - we were tricked and treated by the family to visit AMaze'in Pumpkins in Nisswa, MN. They had two corn mazes, one easy and the other harder, and scarier! There was a petting zoo, pumpkin patch, corn kernel "sandbox", horseshoe game, loads of photo opportuniti and hay-rides! They had daylight fun for families, and after dark fun for adults complete with a live band and "over 40 volunteers" that might dress up and jump out to scare you half to death. You can see which category we were in ( the only one I want to be in, frankly)!!!

Water coloring with color pencil highlights

I have been so impressed by the gorgeous watercoloring people have been creating recently that I've been trying over and over and over!  Can you tell that this is my current obsession?  LOL. EDITED TO ADD: I found the inspiration for this card and was surprised at how closely I copied it! Please give creative credit to A Blog Called Wanda on this post here. In keeping with Wanda's copyright, I can attest that this was used for my own personal use. No contests, sales, etc. 

These butterflies were done with the waterbrush, picking up color directly from the ink pad and layering it on.  At the end, I decided there were a few edges that needed emphasis so I pulled out the color pencils to add a little highlighting.  These two things work so beautifully together!

But the really new, and fun, thing I tried on this card was to get my water brush full of ink and then flick it at the paper!  Yes, I did clear my work table of other projects before trying this - why do you ask?!  I love the result and in fact, I still have a small scrap that was trimmed off that I just haven't been able to toss - yet.  It looks so pretty with the color freckles!  

Below is the inside of the card:

This butterfly was stamped in the lighter color and rolled in the darker one.  Then the body of the butterfly was detailed with the pencil after it was good and dry.  I hope my dear friend who receives this for her birthday knows that she is in my thoughts.  

Just for fun, I thought I'd share a photo of the STAR of the baptism yesterday.  Introducing (again) Thomas James Grover (the baby, not the photo bomber)!