thank you, redux

we're still making our holiday thank you cards at *JINGLE BELLES* and we'd love for you to join us!

(patterned paper: hambly, october afternoon, studio calico, love elsie, basic grey, my mind's eye, dcwv, making memories, glitz... and maybe a few more; snowflake stickers and bling: recollections; chipboard letters: american crafts; border punches: ek success, recollections, martha stewart; adhesives: staples brand gluetape runner, 3m foam tape, sewing machine)

this time i used unscripted sketch #232... plus a whollllllllllllllllllle lot of skinny scraps!

be sure to hop over to *JINGLE BELLES* and see what stephanie has made, then check out the readers' gallery and link up your own gorgeous creation!

SOS129: holiday/winter

i'm pretty sure you'll have already guessed, from the title, what this week's challenge is at shopping our stash, right? yepper, it's a timely one, in which you can make a christmas or hanukkah themed project...(card, tag, layout, etc) ...or go all wintery, and make something with snowflakes, sleds and icicles! i sort of split the difference, and made a "december daily" book. see?!

(vintage: christmas card "frame", sheet music, re-sized illustration from "a christmas carol", s+h greenstamps; (ancient) acrylic book dividers: 7 gypsies... i think... (i suspect discontinued, anyway, sorry!) patterned paper: dcwv,; cardstock: scraps of every green core'dinations ever made... typed on, layered together, machine stitched, and cut with a sizzix xmas tree die; sparkly snowflake stickers: martha stewart; badge: studio calico; numbers tag: pink paislee; labelmaker: dymo; bookrings: staples; adhesives: staples brand gluetape runner, scotch gluestick, 3m foam tape)

having read ali edwards' blog and seen all of the fun the DD folks have making their holiday compilations, i've secretly always wanted to make one, too. realistically* this may turn out to be one of those short-lived, hilarious-in-retrospect ideas; i mean, it's only jeff and myself-- no kids, no visits to santa, etc-- so i'm not all that sure we'll be doing enough "christmas stuff" to merit an entire minibook. on the other hand, it's our first year in the new house, we ♥LOVE♥ decorations and lights and giftwrap; and at least one of us (ok, me, lol!) realllllllllllllly loves collecting and playing with both vintage and new christmas supplies, so i figured why not? worst case scenario, i fill 25 pages with instagrams, old holiday illustrations and pictures of the nieces. or wind up with a sort of holiday-themed art journal. either way, i've definitely done sillier things than that. so let's go! :)

you've seen the cover, but these shots (kind of) show that it's actually two layers. the base of my book is a rather elderly set of acrylic dividers that i think were made by 7 gypsies. i always loooooooove acrylic, for minibooks, especially, since you get that awesome "peek-a-boo" effect of being able to add layers and still see behind them. or rather, i always love acrylic... right up until i have to photograph it. ugh. well, anyway. you get the gist of it, right?

as for pages, i've got a few cool patterned papers, including some pocket pages i made from double-sided sturdy prints, because in my opinion all minibooks need pockets. trousers do, too, but that's another story. :) the rest of the pages are made up of vintagey bits... book paper, old cards, sheet music, illustrations from "ideals" magazines, etc. no rhyme or reason, i just spent a really fun evening flipping through my supplies and if i liked it, it went into the book. some take up the full amount of space, others are shorter or longer to add variety. any paper i deemed too flimsy to be a page (for example, some of the super-old sheet music is VERY thin and a bit brittle) i either backed with patterned paper or shored up with an inkjet transparency run through my xyron.

i haven't decided yet if i'll be using fronts and backs of pages, or just fronts or... if there are some really exciting days... maybe i'll need more than one page for each? so i've started with about 20 pages, figuring i can add more as i go on. i thought about numbering them, but decided i'd rather not be locked in just yet; that way i can pick a page that "goes with" the content of a particular day. for example, this lovely 1950's painting reminds me very much of jeff's godfather's christmas tree farm, where we get our tree each year, and i'm thinking i might use it for the day we visit uncle john!

ok, so i think this is it for now. c'mon back on december second to see how it goes! meanwhile, be sure to check out the awesome projects my fellow SOS dt members have come up with, and be sure to link up your own winter holiday goodness, darlings!

*don't you just HATE the whole concept of that?! being realistic, i mean? yeah, me too. hence the book. wahey! ♥

thank you, thank you!

this fortnight at JINGLE BELLES we have a little bit of a change-up: we're making holiday thank you cards, so we'll all have something nice to send to our family and friends AFTER christmas! nice, right?! here's what i made:

(patterned paper: crate; journaling card: making memories; florals and leaves: prima; brads: my mind's eye; sentiment sticker: srm; cardstock: core'dinations; vintage ribbon from my stash; adhesives: staples brand gluetape runner, 3m foam tape; scotch doublestick tape)

I used this week's cardabilities sketch (#87) which i think you'll agree is rather awesome:

since it was sooooooooo easy to pull this one together, i've got a little extra time this week, which i plan to spend making sure all the christmas cards i made this year have my signed logo on the back, a sentiment inside, and the right-sized envelope ready to mail them. so when i sit down the first week of december to write these out, there will be absolutely no last minute card-related stress!

and now, why not jump on over to JINGLE BELLES to see what stephanie has made, and get a glimpse of a little prize that miiiiiiiiiiiiiiight just be on offer to one lucky cardmaker this week! :) 

another take...

...on the unscripted sketch, also from my journal; also using scraps of photos, illustrations, and foreign text. i think i really like this one:

here's the sketch again, obviously, i really like *IT* too!

i've been playing with the idea of a collaged or fractured landscape for a couple of months. here's a version i did ages ago, which is much more fluid-- and for some reason very wrinkly; it must date from the spring, when i was trying various brands of gluestick, many of which were completely and utterly useless*:

i have no idea why i find this concept so very interesting, but i do, so i suspect you'll be seeing more of these in future. consider yourself warned, darlings! :)

*if i had more time, i could easily produce a very long rant about this, but fortunately for the blog-reading public, i'm late already. however i do find it, as lady catherine de bourgh** so famously never said in this context, "MOST vexing!"!!! :)

**the eagle-eyed jan and jessi were quite right when they pointed out that my lady catherine link (directly above) mistakenly went to this silhouette cameo giveaway; on the other hand, said sweepstakes is open until nov 28th and heck, you might win; whereas lady cdb, for all her charms, is unlikely to be much help in terms of handcut titles! :) :) :)

sometimes temptation is irresistible

this is true for chocolate, of course; and daniel craig movies, obviously. on sunday afternoon the irresistible temptation i tried (but failed!) to fight was the urge to play in my art journal instead of making my card for shopping our stash. but then it occurred to me that i didn't actually have to choose one or the other, i could do this week's challenge... which is to use a bit of product packaging in your project... as an art journal page instead of a card. so i did. see?

(packaging bits: letters cut from prima + k and co cardstock backing, also stars cut from a clear acrylic package which once held chipboard; vintage: ledger page + foreign text and map scraps; patterned paper: scraps of basic grey, prima and making memories used to for diecutting the rest of my alphas; rub ons: basic grey, fancy pants; ink: colorbox; adhesives: staples brand gluetape runner, scotch gluestick, sewing machine)

i used several types of packaging here. some of my diecut letters are made of pretty prima or k and co backing sheets; and the stars are cut from a clear acrylic case i saved, which once held chipboard letters. i adorned the stars with leftover bits of a large basic grey rub-on flourish; then i cut star shapes just slightly smaller in my page, and sewed the see-thru ones on top, creating little windows. the black you can see behind them is a sheet of cardstock upon which i took my photo. here's a shot of the back that shows them a little more distinctly, i think:

i'm pretty sure this will be the oddest thing linked up at unscripted sketches this week, but i did follow their roadmap, thus link up i shall! :)

meanwhile a place i'd love to see ♥YOU♥ link up is at SOS where the projects of my lovely design team mates await your admiring gaze! won't you join us, darlings?!

more traditional traditions! :)

we're still thinking about-- and making cards inspired by-- our favorite holiday traditions over at JINGLE BELLES; here's what i made this week:

(vintage: s and h green stamps that the amazing stephanie found at an estate sale and generously shared with my swooning self! :) :) :) patterned paper: echo park, love elsie, making memories + a bit of prima packaging; jenni bowlin bingo card (resized slightly and printed on matte cardstock; crate paper fireplace diecut; sizzix xmas tree die; ink: colorbox; adhesives: staples brand gluetape runner, 3m foam tape, sewing machine)

one of the reasons hanging the stockings is *STILL* one of my favorite traditions is that jeff and i discovered, the first christmas we were married, that the childhood stockings each of our mothers had knitted for us actually MATCHED. i mean, *what* are the odds of that??!?!

some years later, i was bitten by the counted cross stitch bug, and in a fit of ambitiousness that still amazes me, i spent nearly nine months making us another set of matching stockings:

but now, let's get back to papercrafting; specifically, today's card. i used this gorgeous sketch from sunday stamps; however, since didn't actually do any stamping, i'm not entirely sure my card qualifies? i'm submitting it anyway, just in case, because their sketch really did inspire me to add more (and more interesting!) elements than i would have on my own, so i thank them for that! :)

speaking of coincidences, miss stephanie also made a stocking-related card (in fact, she made hers first!) which i'm positive you will love seeing, so why not jump over to JINGLE BELLES right now?!

leftovers, anyone?

ok, no, i don't actually have a slice of meatloaf for the entire blogiverse!* this week at shopping our stash the brief is to use something already on your desk or worktable to create a brand new project. i have to confess that fairly often at the end of the night i will paste my smaller leftovers randomly into my journal, just to avoid having to clean up! this time i challenged myself to use as many as possible... and get out as few new things as possible... to make a brand new card. here it is now:

(patterned paper: pink paislee, basic grey, rhonna farrer + vintage sheet music scraps + flowers cut from an old gardening guide; digi brushes from anna aspnes' "french kiss" set printed on inkjet transparency; rub-ons: 7 gypsies, fancy pants, basic grey; washi tape: october afternoon; ink: colorbox; adhesives: staples brand gluetape runner, scotch gluestick)

are you having a little deja vu? because yeah, it's definitely the kissin' cousin (or cousine?) of last week's SOS card, isn't it? see, i still had an extra eiffel tower, and a few other transparency bits and that pretty sprig of cut-out flowers sitting on my table. there was also a panel of light red/dark pink paper, and a roll of silvery washi tape that i didn't use in my jingle belles card. i have no idea why i had sheet music scraps, but i did, and it seemed a shame not to use them. in fact, the only things i went looking for were the large piece of ledger-patterned cardstock-weight paper from which i made my card base, and my handy file of assorted rub-ons! i like that this card has enough in common with last week's that you can see the evolutionary process; but it's different enough to still be fun. very unusually for me, this card is ENTIRELY flat! no gems, no lumpy flowers, not even anything mounted on foam tape... i'm pretty sure this can be mailed for 46 cents! SCORE!!! :)

and now i'm absolutely positive that you'll want to swing by shopping our stash to see what the rest of the team has done, and so do i! see you there!

*i'm pretty sure that would require a bigger loaf pan than we currently own! :) :) :)

what's ♥YOUR♥ favorite holiday tradition?

that's the question we're asking this fortnight at ♥JINGLE BELLES♥ as suggested by our lovely guest star marie bingaman! i really loooooooooove this idea, and have spent the week thinking about all of the fun traditions of my childhood, and even some of the newer ones that jeff and i have begun since we've been married. there are almost too many to just choose one!

finally i settled on the annual reading of clement moore's "twas the night before christmas" which started when i was tiny and continued until the last of my siblings moved out on their own. at first it was my father who read the story, then each of us children in turn as we learned to read. by the time we were five or six, we all knew it by heart... i still do, actually, it's the only long piece of poetry i can recite without any hesitation! :) as an adult, i collect copies of the storybook, and have a few lovely vintage ones. for my card, i scanned and slightly re-sized a page from one of my favorite versions, a 1953 "tell-a-tale" edition that gina found for me at a thriftshop. the illustrations are by a woman called zillah lesko, and i absolutely *LOVE* them!

(scanned and re-sized page from a vintage copy of "twas the night before christmas" written by clement c. moore, illustrated by zillah lesko, printed on matte cardstock and mounted as a faux polaroid on a scrap of ranger's glossy white cardstock; patterned paper: we r memory keepers, crate paper, echo park; chipboard stickers: my mind's eye; deco tape: making memories; clear sentiment sticker: oriental trading co; ink: colorbox; adhesives: staples brand gluetape runner, 3m foam tape, scotch gluestick, sewing machine)

i used the current retro sketch (#88) for my layout, and i'm quite pleased with the results!

and now, i hope you'll hop over to ♥JINGLE BELLES♥ to see what marie and stephanie have made, whilst planning your own gorgeous holiday tradition card! ♥♥♥

SOS126: thank you

this week at shopping our stash we'd like to ♥THANK♥ you for tuning in each week, and we're doing so by having a super-easy challenge: make a thank you card! see, i told you, SUPER-easy, so let's get crackin'! here's what i made:

(patterned paper (ALL scraps, wahey!): basic grey, pink paislee, october afternoon + scraps of papaya art glitter giftwrap + french book paper + a doily from my stash; eiffel tower digi: anna aspnes french kiss brush set, printed on an inkjet transparency; glittery heart gem: queen and co; (ancient) (but still awesome!) rub-on letters: making memories; ink: colorbox; circle punches: ek success; adhesives: staples brand gluetape runner, scotch gluestick)

i used this gorgeous sketch from jo's scrap shack, where i was delighted to find that cards, layouts and other papercrafting projects are welcome! it's one for the "print and save" file, too, i think, because i feel like i could use this over and over without tiring of it:

something else of which i never, ever, tire is seeing the amazing projects created by my SOS design team sisters, so i'm off to leave them some love. won't you join me, darlings?! ♥

it's EAD designs day!

and i could not be more excited! but what exactly *IS* EAD designs day, you ask? it's a brilliant idea that amy tsuruta came up with, in which those of us who loved (and hoarded!) the amazing and versatile stickers and rub-ons formerly made by the late, great EAD designs, would come together and show them off again. sound like fun? i thought so! so here's what i made:

(stickers: EAD designs; patterned paper: studio calico, crate paper, making memories; heart gem lines: recollections; adhesives: staples brand gluetape runner, 3m foam tape, sewing machine)

yep, it's a christmas card, made with my favorite EAD baubles. it's pretty minimalist, too, for me, isn't it? but then, the EAD designs are so lovely that i really hate to clutter them up. plus, i had the super-helpful starting point of the same gorgeous seize the sketch design, that all of us in the EAD tribute have used:

and now would you like to see some more gorgeous EAD goodness, and get a shot at winning some lovely goodies for yourself? well, miss amy lined up the most talented group imaginable, and there are some very lovely prizes up for grabs, for which you'll be qualified by leaving a comment on these wonderful blogs, between now and 11:59 (PST), this friday, november 8th, so get hoppin':

Amy

Jessica  

Lauren Bergold (that's me!)

Lauren Brewer

Liz

Rose  

Stephanie  

Wendi

ps: there's even more EAD goodness on amy's and jessica's EAD pinterest boards! wahey!

let's play flamingo bingo!

in honor of the second week of our creature feature prompt at ♥JINGLE BELLES♥ and the awesome "game night" challenge at city crafter!

(vintage: bingo card; patterned paper: making memories, ki memories, my mind's eye; glitter flamingo sticker: meri meri; snowflake: studio calico; gem: glitz design; bling +  border punch: recollections; adhesives: staples brand gluetape runner, 3m foam tape, sewing machine)

i'm excited to be playing along at CCCB after farrrrrrrrrrrrrr too long away! i'm also excited to have my first "three-fer" in quite some time, as i have also used this week's retrosketch in my layout:

and now i hope you'll hop over to ♥JINGLE BELLES♥ to see miss stephanie's card and start planning your own creative creature feature!