Merry Christmas - Chalkboard Style

To my friends and family here and all around the world, Feliz Navidad! May this season bring you and your family blessings and good health.

This is my annual photo Christmas card. The stamps are all from the Holiday Sayings set from Hero Arts, except for the Lawn Fawn banner stamp.

With all the inspiration on Pinterest regarding chalkboards and when I saw Betsy Veldman's chalkboard-inspired cards here, I knew I had to create our Christmas card with that inspiration. This card is probably one of the most time-consuming cards I've ever tried to mass-produce. It involved embossing, die cutting felt, using a white pencil to color in chalky details, rubbing white pigment ink over everything (my favorite step) to give the chalkboard authenticity, and slicing an opening above the banner to insert the photo. I ran out of steam after creating 60 of these babies. Sorry to all my local friends who will not be receiving one of these cards this year.

Thanks for stopping by! I've got to get downstairs to get dinner prep started. Ho, ho, ho.

Christmas Card Collage

I hope you had a great holiday weekend. Here are several designs of our photo Christmas card I created this year. All of the cards use the Holiday Photo Finishers from Papertrey Ink and the coordinating metal dies. The design is based on a design Dawn McVey created for the Holiday Card Boot Camp class I took last month.

The cards with the thicker embellishments were hand-delivered since mailing them would be harder and more expensive.

Christmas day was spent at my parent's house in Taos, New Mexico. It was fun and filled with lots of family, gifts, extremely delicious food, and fun.

One thing I noticed is my family is definitely an Apple family. Between us, my parents, some siblings, nieces, and cousin, here's a photo we took of the Apple devices at the festivities. Notice all the iPads, iPhones, iPods, and MacBooks. Almost every niece owns an Apple product. The photo doesn't include every Apple product there (AppleTV, and a Mac in the living room).

The only hitch in the day was I ruined the Pioneer Woman Cinnamon Rolls recipe. I started out scalding twice the amount of milk that the recipe called for. When I added the initial 8 cups of flour I realized my mistake. I still haven't made the cinnamon rolls, but I plan to go to the grocery store today to buy more yeast.

A 3D Christmas Tree Tag

Happy Christmas Eve! I'm drinking some eggnog and eating my favorite Danish butter cookies. I wish it was snowing outside, but it's sunny and cold here in Northern New Mexico.

Here's a tag I actually made over a year ago when I was visiting Ericka last year. She had this great Martha Stewart tree paper punch. I punched out 3 trees from Basic Grey paper and scored the trees in half before adhering them to each other. I wish I more time this fall to make more tags like this. I added some ribbon and some more Basic Grey paper to a die cut tag.

I gave this tag to our dentist and her staff with a large jar of mixed nuts and cranberries I bought at Target; easy and simple!

Thanks for stopping by! I'm still not done wrapping gifts, so I better get busy.

Turkish Lentil Soup and a Tag

Reminder: I have a giveway going on. See here.

Last year when I visited my friend, Ericka, in Seattle, she served me the most delicious Turkish lentil soup. I think I ate it at 3 different meals. I loved it!

I made a batch the night before the last day of school and I got the idea to give the principal a large Mason jar full of soup as a gift. He is a vegetarian, so this recipe was perfect since you can use water or broth.

I used Papertrey Ink stamps, paper, and a doily metal die to make a quick gift tag to make the packaging. This particular doily die looks like a snow flake to me, so I thought it was perfect.

Thanks for stopping by. If you make this soup, let me know what you think.

Joy Peace Love

Here's a holiday card I never posted. I designed it for PSA Essentials a few months. It uses the Treeo stamp set and it includes a die cut of wood veneer. I found this wood veneer paper at Michael's for a really inexpensive price. I love the wood veneer, but after working with it, I found I'm allergic to it; makes my arms itch like crazy.

Please add the PSA Essentials blog (PSA Stamp Camp) to your list of blogs you check-out. Become a follower on Twitter and Facebook too. Libby is hosting inspiration challenges and having frequent giveaways.

Thanks for stopping by!

Card Ingredients

Stamps: Treeo (PSA Essentials)
Paper: Tempting Turquoise (Stampin' Up), white
Ink: Turquoise (PSA Essentials)
Tools: Scoring Board (Martha Stewart), 1/2" circle punch (Stampin' Up), Big Shot with Papertrey Ink die, Crop-a-Dile (We R Memory Keepers)
Other: Tombow Mono Multi Liquid Glue, Tempting Turquoise ribbon (Stampin' Up), Build-a-brad kit (Stampin' Up), foam tape (3M), wood veneer paper (Michael's)

Happy New Year!

Hi everyone, I want to wish you a very happy new year! Thanks for visiting my little blog over the last 2.5 years. Thanks for your sweet comments and the inspiration you provide to me. I love how blogging has changed my life. I've gotten to know so many of you around the world. I've been lucky to actually meet several of you in real life, which has been a complete thrill.

Let me tell you the tale of my annual Christmas card that became this Happy New Year card instead. I struggled with the design this year and ran behind schedule. I stamped several "Merry Christmas" and "Feliz Navidad" cards, but then had to switch to making them "Happy New Year" cards instead, since they would not be sent out before Christmas. Several items were pre-determined: I was using this Simply Chartreuse and Plum Pudding paper from Papertrey Ink and the patterned paper from them as well. I also had some patterned paper from Stampin' Up. I loved this swirl background stamp from Hero Arts that I bought when I was in Seattle last month. I wanted to use baker's twine. I wanted the cards to be relatively flat, so they wouldn't cost extra postage. Normally, I'll make about 4 different designs for the card. This year, I had many more variations of the design! Come on, Anthonette, make up your mind!!!

Here's a photo collage of the variations of the design in making the 50 cards.

Next year, I'm going to order a pre-made photo card and then just embellish it slightly. I totally LOVED this card that Kim Hughes ordered from Snapfish and then embellished with baker's twine, buttons, and some cardstock leaves.

Have a good one!

Feliz Navidad!

Hi Everyone, Feliz Navidad to those of you who celebrate! Hope you had a happy & blessed Christmas. I'm lounging around & taking it easy. I thought I'd try blogging from my iPhone, since I've never done it before. I couldn't publish this post from my iPhone because there was a problem with the photo, so I still haven't blogged from my phone.

Here's a picture of our tree. I used the Hipstamic app on my iPhone for the picture.

The Little Guy had fun tracking Santa last night on NORAD's Santa website. He loved all his gifts (mainly Legos). He's been a really good kid.

This morning I baked Pioneer Woman's recipe for cinnamon rolls; oh my...delicious! Did you see her recently on the Today Show making this recipe? I'm going to make them every Christmas morning from now on; they are that good.

Have a good one!

Happy Holidays - A 3D Tree

Hello dear readers. Happy Hannukah to those of you celebrating the last day of Hannukah today. I am not ready for Christmas. There...I said it! I'm tired of always being behind schedule when it comes to this time of year. I've shopped for myself (do you do the same?). I have this new sweet machine! But when it comes to shopping for my family, I'm way behind schedule. I haven't started making the 65 copies our annual Christmas card. I designed this one, but I haven't finalized the design. Well, enough of my blabbing.

This is a 4.25" square card I made when I visited Ericka in Seattle last month. We worked till all hours of the night in her studio.

I loved Ericka's selection of paper punches! I had fun using this large tree punch made by EK Success. I punched 4 trees and then scored them in half verically. I glued each half to the half of the next tree. I love that the tree folds down pretty flat for mailing purposes. I added a rhinestone to the tree top and baker's twine to finish it off. The border stamp around the square patterned paper is from a Fiskars stamp set called Layer Away Dots. I'm not sure what company make the Happy Holidays stamp. I think the paper is from Memory Box; I'm too tired to go downstairs and check. Hehe!

Thanks for stopping by.

A Hambly Make-n-Take .....From Last Year!

This summer I found the make-n-take I made at Hambly Studios last December! I wondered where it was. The card and envelope were in the glove compartment of one of our cars. The card is a postcard-style card made from an awesome overlay. The sentiment is a rub-on.

Part of the make-n-take was to also create an envelope liner with their awesome paper.

If you are in the Santa Clara, CA area, there is a Holiday Open Studio event at the Hambly Studios on Tuesday, December 7th. Details here. I'm planning to go.

We Wish You a Merry Christmas & a PSA Essentials Giveaway

I completely neglected my blog for a week. Between Thanksgiving and design deadlines, it's been hectic. Sorry! Today, a few of my cards I designed for PSA Essentials were featured on their blog.

Here is my favorite card from that bunch. This card combines two of my favorites: photo cards and my cute son! I've been designing photo cards each Christmas since the Little Guy was born 7 years ago. This picture was taken at Legoland this summer. This kid loves Legos, so it was easy to get some great natural smiles.

The card is simple, except for all the paper piecing on this tiny Snoopy image. I used a glitter pen to give the string of lights some sparkle.

I think it's so cool that PSA Essentials has licensed classic Peanuts images, like this one of Snoopy.

Do you want to win over $150 of PSA Essentials products? All the details are at the PSA Stamp Camp blog. The deadline is Wednesday, December 15, 2010, at 11:59 PM, EST.

Thanks for stopping by!

Card Ingredients
Stamps: Peanuts Christmas Wishes (PSA Essentials)
Paper: Real Red (Stampin' Up), white, Pacific Point (Stampin' Up), HP Photo paper
Ink: Black (PSA Essentials)
Tools: Scoring Board (Martha Stewart), 1.75" circle punch (Stampin' Up), 1.25" circle punch (All Night Media)
Other: Copic markers, Tombow Mono Multi Liquid Glue, Red/White ribbon (Stampin' Up), white gel pen (Sakura), blue rhinestones (Martha Stewart), foam tape (3M), glitter pen (Sakura), small scissors

A Collage of Christmas Cards

The other day, I promised to show the variety of photo cards I made. I didn't intend to make 15 variations of our Christmas card, but since I was trying to use up mainly older supplies, it just happened.
 

I ended up mailing 40 cards. Last year, I sent out 60. I ran out of time and energy to create 60 of them.
 


I made some cards with "Feliz Navidad", so you'll notice #14. My favorite is still #7. Do you have a favorite?
 

Hope you have a great day today with the people you love.
 
Photo Card Ingredients
Stamps: Felicidades Siempre (SU!), Medallion (SU!) Holiday Button Bits (Papertrey Ink)
Paper: Kraft, Real Red, Riding Hood Red, Sahara Sand, Baja Breeze, Kiwi Kiss, Tempting Turquoise, Taken with Teal

Ink: VersaMark, Riding Hood Red (SU!), Brilliance Moonlight White (Tsukineko)

Tools: Scallop Edge punch (SU!), Threading Water punch (Fiskars), Corner Chomper (We R Memory Keepers), hole punch, Photoshop Elements, Paper Crimper (Fiskars), heat gun

Other: Corduroy buttons (SU!), Felt Flurries (SU!), brads (Making Memories), nail heads (Michael's), buttons (Papertrey Ink), silver twine, Tombow Mono Multi Liquid Glue, clear embossing powder, linen thread

Silhouette Print & Cut Feature

It's almost Christmas here in California. Still wrapping presents. I feel like I have had the same wrapping paper for years. I use it and use it and it never runs out. What is it doing in the garage during the rest of the year, mating? Seriously, I want new wrapping paper next year! I'm bored with what I have.

I made this card a few weeks back and had forgotten to post it. The Silhouette has several designs that you can print out and then use the Silhouette to cut. Registration marks print out which help the Silhouette cut out the design. I print and cut this simple design out twice and then trimmed the Merry Christmas sentiment and used mounting tape to give it some dimension. I punched out a snowflake with my Martha Stewart punch and added a red gem to finish it off. I also added a strip of Tangerine Tango paper and cut some scallops from Real Red paper.

I'm going to give out some blog candy very soon. Stay tuned.

Merry Christmas - An Oldie

Hola chicas! Here's a simple card and envelope I stamped a few months ago for a Moxie Fab challenge. I never entered this card in the challenge and I had forgotten to post it on my blog.

Peggy, my Stampin' Up demo, gave me a Pendant Notes card and envelope and some other goodies to try at home. So sweet! I stamped and embossed the SU! Medallion stamp on a piece of kraft cardstock and stuck it behind the Pendant Notes opening. I also did a lot of faux stitching around the openings. I like how that looks. I added some Martha Stewart half-pearls and some ribbon. I also stamped the Medallion stamp on the envelope with VersaMark ink.

Hope you are having a great day in your part of the world!

Card/Envelope Ingredients

Stamps: Teeny Tiny Wishes & Medallion (SU!)

Paper: Pendant Notes card & envelope, Kraft (SU!)

Ink: VersaMark

Tools: embossing gun

Other: Whisper White ribbon (SU!), white embossing powder, pearls (Martha Stewart), white gel pen (Sakura)

Holiday Wishes - Moxie Fab Holiday Style Stamping Challenge

Those of you who follow my blog are probably shocked to see me post so many blog entries in one day. I'm shocked too.

This is the last one, dearies! Last one for the day. This card is for Cath's Moxie Fab Stretch Your Holiday Style With a Stamping Challenge.

I CASEd my Christmas card from last year. I added a lot of faux stitching. Kristina has me addicted to faux stitching! I love the detail it adds.

Thanks for looking!

Card Ingredients (all SU!, excepted where noted)
Stamps: Holiday Collection, Merry
Paper: Kraft, Riding Hood Red, Whisper White, Riding Hood Red Patterns paper
Ink: Riding Hood Red
Other: White gelly roll pen (Sakura), rhinestones (Jolee's), foam tape

Feliz Navidad - Using the Medallion Stamp Again

Here's a second card for Cath's Moxie Fab Classy & Elegant Challenge. I started this card last week. I've been obsessed with the SU! Medallion stamp. Here's one more use for it. I took a large star chipboard piece and stamped the Medallion stamp on it. I embossed it with white embossing powder. I love how it looks. It felt "Christmas-y" to me, so I decided to post it on Cath's challenge.

I added small pearls to the star and continued with additional larger pearls. I used my Big Shot to emboss large dots with a Texturz plate.

Card Ingredients (all SU! except where noted)
Stamps: Medallion, Felicades Siempre
Paper: Whisper White, Kraft
Ink: Whisper White Craft Ink, VersaMark ink
Tools: Big Shot, Dots Texturz plate, corner rounder (Fiskars), Threading Water edge punch (Fiskars)
Other: Whisper White taffeta ribbon, white gelly roll pen (Sakura), pearls (Michael's), white embossing powder

Holiday Wishes

I used this SU! sentiment last year on my Christmas cards. I love the sentiments of Peace, Joy, & Love. This card is for Cath's Moxie Fab Classy & Elegant challenge.

I did some sewing on this card. I distressed the edges with my finger nails. I popped up one of the ornaments and hung it from my sentiment. I added bling to the card and I was done.

Thanks for looking!

Card Ingredients Stamps: Holiday Collection (SU!) Paper: Kraft, Very Vanilla, Merry Moments (all SU!) Ink: Chocolate Chip Tools: sewing machine & finger nails to rough up the edges, 1/16" hole punch Other: Gold cording, gold rhinestones (Michael's), foam tape

Merry Christmas - Moxie Fab Clean & Graphic Challenge

We're back from a long weekend and I'm rushing to get my challenge cards posted for Cath's Moxie Fab Clean and Graphic Challenge.

I love when I see clean and graphic designs! Here's my attempt. This card is 4.25"x4.25". I used my QuicKutz Silhouette to cut out the mod type of background. I used my gel pen to faux stitch the entire design.



Card Ingredients (all SU! except where noted)
Stamps: Teeny Tiny Wishes
Paper: Riding Hood Red, Whisper White
Ink: Riding Hood Red
Tools: QuicKutz Silhouette, Modern Label punch
Other: silver beads (Micheal's), foam tape, white gelly roll pen (Sakura)

Our Annual Photo Christmas Card

Finally on Monday I finished all 70 Christmas cards and mailed them out! I could've finished them sooner, but there were games to play (Chutes and Ladders is Kalino's latest favorite), stories to read, and new robot creations to look at. I'm trying to enjoy the season without stressing out about what I haven't done. It's Christmas Eve and we haven't assembled our gingerbread house from Trader Joe's, but that's OK.

Since we don't live near 90% of our families, we send out a Christmas card with Kalino on the card each year. This year, I knew I wanted to use Kraft cardstock as the base. I love Heather Nichol's (Pine is Here) work and her use of Kraft cardstock. I usually make at least 2 versions of the Christmas card. This time, I have 5 slight variations. I needed a few cards in Spanish, so some have Feliz Navidad on them. I had a 6"x6" sheet of Baja Breeze designer paper, so I made a few using that color. I also had some variations on the Martha Stewart snowflake punch.

We went to Pebble Beach near Carmel on a Friday afternoon in November to get the photos of Kalino. He had an early day at school and got out by noon, so we headed out on our day trip. The sun was shining, but it was cold. I took Kalino's jacket off while my husband got these pictures.

Thanks for looking!

Christmas Card Ingredients
Stamps: Holiday Collection, Felicidades Siempre
Paper: Kraft, Riding Hood Red, Baja Breeze, Riding Hood Red DSP, Baja Breeze DSP, silver foil
Ink: Riding Hood Red, Baja Breeze
Other: 4mm rhinestones and larger rhinestone (Michael's), Martha Stewart snowflake punch, Felt Flurries (SU), foam tape

Christmas Gift Card Holders

Can I ever get enough of these gift card holders? I guess not. I loved Kristina's template when I saw it on Two Peas in a Bucket. I made 11 different ones in the last week. Here are 5 of them. If I get time, I'll post a photo collage of the other 6 later.

Christmas is just hours away, and my poor little one is sick! Kalino has a fever. He never takes naps anymore, but this morning he was in his room playing. Before long, I couldn't hear any noise upstairs. When I checked on him, he was in bed asleep! Amazing! He woke up a few hours later with a definite fever. He thought he had slept all night long, so he greeted me with "Merry Christmas, Mama!" He was a little confused when I told him it was only the afternoon on Christmas Eve. So, I'm off to tend to the little guy. Feliz Navidad!

Gift Card Ingredients
Stamps: Holiday Collection & Tarjetas Con Bordes Festonados (SU)
Paper: Kraft, Baja Breeze, Riding Hood Red, Whisper White, Holiday Treasures DSP (SU), Mistletoe & Pear (BasicGrey)
Ink: Riding Hood Red
Punches: Square Scallop, 15/16" squre, circle punch, Martha Stewart snowflake
Ribbon: Alpine, Riding Hood Red Taffeta, Whisper White (all SU)
Other: Kristina's template, Wreath sticker (Sandylion), Fabric brad (K & Company, thanks Char!), Red Felt Fusion (Queen & Co.), felt snowflakes (SU), gold rhinestones (Me & My Big Ideas), Tombo Mono Metal glue, Velcro, SU square clear button

Miracle of Christmas

Just a quick post before the deadline passes in about 5 minutes! This card is for the Cinema Saturday Creative Challenge #8. The movie this week was Miracle on 34th Street. I've seen the original and the latest version of this movie. I loved it when I was a kid and I still love the movie.

I used some old stamps for this card. The "miracle" sentiment is from one of my first Stampin' Up sets. It's in the 1998-1999 catalog. I didn't know the name of the stamp set because I didn't put the label on the case...duh! I had to look at the old catalog...it's Miracle of Christmas. I thought I had more Santa stamps. I only have 2...what? I wanted the sentiment to have the word "miracle" and I wanted Santa on the card.

I paper pieced Santa's suit and hat...that was a little hard! I don't think I've paper pieced something so small. I messed up the embossing of the sentiment, so I had to add the layer on top of "Christmas" to cover up my boo-boo.

Thanks for looking!

Card Ingredients
Stamps: Miracle of Christmas, Little Hellos (both SU retired)
Paper: white (JudiKins), BasicGrey Mistletoe & Pear Paper Pad
Ink: VersaMark, Basic Black
Punches: oval, word window, scallop edge
Other: Oval Mattboard (Stampendous), Crayola colored pencils, BasicGrey ribbon, brads (Bazzill), Stickles, foam tape, black embossing powder