Another Name Frame

This is a second Name Frame Christmas present I made for the new grandson of our best friends. Liam's room is decorated in sports and dark blues. The name of his bedding is All Star! I pulled out an old retired Stampin' Up! Scrappin' Kit Toy Box to decorate his name. I thought the plaid decorative paper in this kit worked well with his room, too! The All Star tag is "hanging" off the bat with natural hemp. I stamped the large letters with Headline Alphabet (retiring tomorrow!) I'm going to miss that alphabet! The small All Star letters were stamped with Short Order alphabet. The only ball that is stamped is the football (for some reason one wasn't in the kit!) from the retired Touchdown stamp set. I stamped the football in Really Rust on Creamy Caramel cardstock and then colored the stitches and stripes with my White gel pen.

I spent yesterday helping my hubby build wood shelves for my studio. Before I had some ugly metal ones that I will re purpose into the storage area behind my studio to hold all those items that need to be "altered" yet...like tin mailboxes, altoids-type tins, candles, etc. They will work great and be out of site. The new shelves will hold my retired collection of stamp sets and miscellaneous tools like the Cuttlebug and Bind-it-All machines. I can't wait until it is finished. It was a major pain to take everything off the shelves I had...now my stuff is just sitting around in boxes. He is painting the shelves today, so hopefully I can get my stuff back to normal tomorrow. Although I'd love to do some organizing and cataloging before I put them back, I don't think it will get done until I'm back from Leadership. And I have too many projects due before I leave to think about it now. I have a class coming in on Thursday, so it has to be cleaned up! lol!

Blogger's Challenge #27

This week's challenge was again to show something that you were inspired by and recreate it. I am chosing to use the punch animals that Meredith Burnsed posted on SCS to create a home decor item.

One of the things I made for Christmas for the new grand-nieces and nephews, were their Name Frames. This one is for Cadence. Her room is done in Red with Black Frames and a farm animal theme. Looking thru my huge stash of stamps, I found that I didn't have many farm animals...the ones I did were smaller in size than I wanted to use.

I could find nothing Meredith made for the cow, so I made him up. Since this picture was taken, I did add a tail. The body is a rectangle and I rounded the corners. The head is a small white oval and then a trimmed pink oval for the nose. Ears and horns are the slot punch. I colored the spots with a black marker. At the bottom of his legs, I colored the feet black, too, but you don't see them in this view.

I used Well-Worn Alphabet for the letters. The grass is Wild Wasabi textured paper, cut with my scissors to resemble blades of grass.

The sheep used the Circle Scallop punch and half an oval for the face and slices cut from the other half of the oval for the ears. The chick is a 1" circle and a 1/2" circle, then a 1/2" circle cut in half for the wing. The pig is a 1-3/8" circle for the body, 1" circle for the head and 1/2" circle for the nose...each layer is popped up. The fence was the Word Window punch, stamped with Weathered for a wood grain look.

It was SO much fun to make. Although Cadence is only one, I don't know how much she appreciates it right now, but her dad and grandma loved it!

2-5-7-10 Gift Boxes

I hope everyone had a very, merry Christmas! Ours went by TOO fast, of course. We try to fit SO much into those two days, but we do get to see a lot of people we only see a couple times a year. That makes it fun. My poor husband hasn't felt too well. We don't know if he ate something, or just is suffering from a bug. Today he is on the couch...hopefully he will feel better soon. The house is a wreck anyway...I can work around him and get things cleaned up.

I wanted to show you the boxes I made. These are the gift boxes that I made to hold gift cards and small objects we gave out at Christmas. It is a regular 2-5-7-10 box that I added the white scallop edge and placed a Scallop Circle on the front for the To/From tag. I cut pieces of the wrapping paper I used this year and glued to the flap of the box. I punched the holes at the top for the ribbon with my Crop-A-Dile...that makes it SO easy to go through several layers of paper. Inside was a gift card and some peppermint patties.

What craft items did you receive this year? I received Cut N Up cartridge for my Cricut machine, the Ribbon iron, a Michael's gift card, and a brand new flat plasma TV for my studio! It is already installed and I love it, because it gives SO much more space on my counter than that old TV took up!

Luckily, we don't have too many exchanges to do this year. I only had one duplicate gift and one item my son received is too small. I already purchased my wrapping paper for next year, so there is really no reason to go out today at all. Yeah! Hopefully you don't have to do too much today, either, and you can catch your breath after all the rush!

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Just wanted to wish everyone a Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays! We are starting off this afternoon on our yearly trek around the city with parties and gift giving!

Safe travels everyone...

Snowman tags

Every year I make my tags for the packages under the tree. All my packages are wrapped in the same paper, and I make the tags to match. Usually I change the color of the bows so we know which gift goes to which family and to make it easy to sort them when we are ready to go. This year I made the tags different colors instead so the separate families are easy to identify.

The base snowman is actually the snow globe from Doodlecharms cut on my Cricut and set at 2". The hat is the 1-1/4 square punch, the brim is the word window punch. The snowflake punch is retired. I stamped the faces with Cold Play (retiring this month...I'm sad!) To/From is from Holiday Tag Time set. I had the narrow ribbon in my stash. I think they make my packages FUN!

Hope you are enjoying the last few days before Christmas. I need to finish one more gift and do some baking on Christmas Eve. Feeling in pretty good shape. If I have time, I'd like to make up some coaster calendars for everyone. We'll see!

Week #26 Blogger's Challenge - Moveable cards

One of my favorite things to do is make moveable cards. I've always been intrigued on getting a blank piece of cardstock to be interactive. Shaker cards were one of the first cards I saw when I started stamping! I looked at the demo's sample most of the night, I think, trying to figure out how she made it! Soon after I started stamping, I attempted to make one...I'll try to find that original card and show you...it was pretty funny! Thank heavens I've perfected the art of making shaker cards now (after doing a shaker card swap and having to make 15 of them!)

So...here is this week's Blogger's Challenge card. I used the snowman from Wishing You Cheer as the focal piece and stamped him on Very Vanilla. I cut a piece of Real Red cardstock the same size as the Vanilla and sandwiched the beads between the two pieces with foam tape and a clear window sheet. I used the Giga Scallop Oval punch for the front.

A tip on getting words the correct way on a Round Tab Punch...maybe you figured it out already. I punch the Tab and then stamp the words "Merry & Bright" on it. That way the placement is correct. I added a little red Rhinestone brad under the words for some bling.

This was a fun challenge! Hope you check out the rest of the Blogger's who participate each week.

Sets: Wishing You Cheer, Holiday Tag Team, Merry & Bright
C/S: Real Red, Glorious Green, Very Vanilla, Sahara Sand, Dashing DSP, Clear window sheet
Inks: Black Stazon, Glorious Green, markers
Other: Non-SU Giga Scallop Oval punch, Mini beads, Rhinestone brad, Round Tab punch

Baroque Motifs coasters

You may remember that I told you I made a set of four coasters for each of my husband's employees. We gave these to them at our Holiday party last Friday. Here are pictures of the finished coasters. I think they turned out nice! I used the set Baroque Motifs and Stazon retired colors of Blazing Red and Olive. I placed them in the oven for 20 minutes on 250 and then used a light spray of Krylon Workable Fixative to seal them. I placed four felt "feet" on the bottom of each to help protect their tables. I wrapped them in Stampin' Up!'s awesome Pomegranate satin ribbon...that stuff is NICE. Everyone was pleased!

Still playing catch-up on all my Christmas projects. I have one more gift card to buy and then I'm DONE shopping and it is a Walmart. I plan to get up early and beat the traffic there tomorrow morning. Almost everything is wrapped, tags are all done. I have a few more Christmas cards to make and a couple name frames for the great niece and great nephew. All those I hope to whip out tomorrow. Yeah! I must work well under pressure...cause I've just been cranking everything out! lol!

Hope you are enjoying the holiday season! Less than a week away, now...