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.

Hey There, Sorry I Forgot Your Birthday

Whew...not enough time in the day! Today is my sister Leonel's birthday. I called her, but didn't send a card in time.

Hope your day is going well. It's rained here every single day this week. I made this card the other day, but wasn't able to get a picture with natural light. I'm packing and hoping to get to Anaheim safely tomorrow for CHA.

I didn't make Dawn's deadline, but I used the colors from her Raspberry Suite Color Challenge #21.

I'm looking forward to the next two days. I hope to meet a lot of my favorite bloggers. Today, I was happily surprised when Ashley emailed and said she decided to attend CHA. We are both scheduled to arrive in Orange County with 2 minutes of each other. Fun, fun, fun!

Thanks for stoppng by.

Card Ingredients

Stamps: Big & Bold Wishes (Papertrey Ink)

Paper (All SU!): Very Vanilla, Soft Sky, Chocolate Chip, & some retired designer series paper

Ink: Soft Sky, Chocolate Chip, Yoyo Yellow

Tools: 3/4" circle punch (SU!), Threading Water border punch (Fiskars), Embossed Curve (EK Success), Paper Crimper (Fiskars), Corner Chomper (We R Memory Keepers)

Other: brad (Making Memories), felt flower (SU!), stripped ribbon (SU!, thanks Peggy!)

Happy Birthday - Dawn's Color Challenge

I wasn't going to create a card for Dawn's Raspberry Suite Color Challenge #11, but I have some ribbon that had all the challenge colors, except for black, so I had to play along. I barely got K to his karate class on time because of my persistence to create and post this card.

Today I continued playing with my new QuicKutz Silhouette. I created my own SU! Top Note-type shape with a QuicKutz image. I used my paper piercer to pierce the border. I also love the "Birthday" welded word I downloaded from QuicKutz. I cut the image twice and glued it together to give it more weight.

Have a good one and thanks for stopping by!

Card Ingredients
Stamps: All Holidays (SU!)
Paper: Going Grey, Real Red, Basic Black (SU!), Chloe's Closet
Ink: VersaMark
Tools: QuicKutz Silhouette, paper piercer, word window punch (SU!)
Other: pink felt flower (Making Memories), large green button (Making Memories), grey button (my stash), white embossing powder, white embossing powder, ribbon (I think it's American Crafts), foam tape, twine, linen thread (SU!), glue dots

Dad, Happy Father's Day

Here's a card for Dawn McVey's Raspberry Suite Color Challenge #9.

(Edited to Add: Here's the card description)

I've got to mail a Father's Day card to my sweet Dad by tomorrow to get it to him in time. I used Dawn's color combination (grass green, cream, & black) to help me out.

It was hard finding items in my stash that had the specified green color and cream or black with cream. Most of my stuff had white mixed in, so luckily the Making Memories Chloe's Closet collection had the right green and cream colors! I used strips of black cardstock to thread the buttons (I've never done that); I like the effect.

Thanks for looking and have a good one!

Card Ingredients
Stamps: Men of Life (PTI)
Paper: Black (CA Paper Goods), Very Vanilla (SU!), Chloe's Closet (Making Memories)
Ink: Memories Black
Tools: Scalloped Scallop punch (EK Success), corner rounder (Fiskars)
Other: Thickers (American Crafts), Chloe's Closet ribbon (Making Memories), Chloe's Closet buttons (Making Memories), foam tape, linen thread (SU!)

Miss You

I've had a busy week! I'm helping at school every single day this week. I'm posting two blog entries in a span of 2 hours? And I made dinner (chicken breasts and basil pesto pasta) while I was trying to get these cards finished. I missed Dawn's deadline for her Raspberry Suite Color Challenge #6. I also did my first challenge for 365 Cards. The challenge today was to use 5 squares on the project.

Have a good one! We're going for a little walk around the neighborhood.

Card Ingredients
Stamps: Taggers Dozen (retired SU! set)
Paper: white (JudiKins), Baja Breeze - textured, Chocolate Chip, Parisian Breeze Specialty DSP (SU!), Pink Flamingo DSP (SU!)
Ink: Chocolate Chip, Whisper White Craft
Tools: 3/4" punch (EK Success), Dotted Scallop punch (EK Success)
Other: foam tape, Chocolate Chip ribbon, white embossing powder, brown colored pencil

Happy Mother's Day

I can't believe Mother's Day is already approaching. I used Dawn's Raspberry Suite Color Challenge #4 for the colors to get cracking on my Mom's card.

I also recently bought my first Papertrey Ink stamps sets....finally! I had to use Dawn's Damask Designs on this card. I don't have a distressing tool, but I used my fingernails on the circles. I also braided the ribbon like Kristina did for a recent Two Peas class.

Thanks for visiting my blog!

Card Ingredients
Stamps: sentiment (SU!), Damask Designs (PTI)
Paper: card base already embossed with polka dots, Chocolate Chip, Soft Sky, Whisper White (SU!)
Ink: Chocolate Chip, Soft Sky
Tools: Martha Stewart Circle Cutter
Other: Chocolate Chip ribbon, pearls (Martha Stewart), foam tape

Easter Greetings

There is not enough hours in the day to do everything I want to do. I volunteered at school two days in a row for a few hours each day, so I've have less time in my little studio. I finished this card for Dawn's Raspberry Suite Color Challenge 3 a few minutes past her deadline. That's OK...I needed an Easter card today to mail to my parents in New Mexico.

Dawn's colors this week were: kraft, soft pink, red, vanilla, and berry

I got to use some new goodies I received as blog candy from Craft Critique and Cornish Heritage Farms. I received 3 6x6 inch Scrapblocks and a large 6x6 inch acrylic block. Very nice!

Card Ingredients
Stamps: Distressed Grid (Cornish Heritage Farms), Easter Greetings (The Cat's Pajamas)
Paper: cream cardstock (my stash), Poppy (Making Memories), Kraft, Pretty in Pink, and Riding Hood Red DSP (SU!)

Ink: Riding Hood Red, VersaMark
Tools: Big Shot with Sizzix and Cuttlebug dies, 1/2" circle punch, 3/4" circle punch, paper crimper (Fiskars), Threading Water punch (Fiskars), Scallop Edge punch (SU!)
Other: clear embossing powder, foam tape, chipboard, cream lace (Thanks, Char!), pink flower brad (SU!)

Thanks & Inspirational

Hi everyone! Here's a thank you card I made yesterday for Dawn's Raspberry Suite Color Challenge 2.

Edited to Add: The layout for this card comes from a gorgeous card Teri Anderson created in Paper Crafts magazine (June/July 2008, p. 85).

Here are Dawn's colors this week:

I got a nice email yesterday from Julie Allain. She asked me to join the Inspirational Team. Since I love looking at SO many blogs, I thought it would be fun to write articles showcasing the talent of so many great paper crafters.

Thanks for looking!

Card Ingredients
Stamps: Four Square (SU!)
Paper: White (Judi-Kins), Certainly Celery, Chocolate Chip, Taken with Teal, Green Tea DSP (SU!), white embossed paper (Lasting Impressions for Paper, Inc.)
Ink: Whisper White craft ink (SU!)
Tools: Tiny scallops (EK Success), 1" circle punch, 1 1/4" circle punch, butterfly punch (Martha Stewart)
Other: white embossing powder, silver wire (Making Memories), rhinestone circle frame (Heidi Swapp), 3 mm Swarovski Elements (Jolee's), foam tape

Happy Anniversary, Mom & Dad!

Hi everyone! Just a quick post before I go to school. I'm helping at our school's library this morning. I still have to get dressed and be out of the house in the next 30 minutes.

My parents celebrated their 46th wedding anniversary on Monday. I made a card for them last week for Kristina's color inspiration challenge, but I hated the card. I didn't post it.

This new card is late, but I wanted it mailed out today! I used the colors from Dawn McVey's first color challenge.

I'll post details later today. Thanks for looking!

Love

Happy Valentine's Day everyone!

The fun at Papertrey Ink continues. Our challenge today was to make a card using a color combo that Dawn McVey used last week. I choose the color combo in the first card on this post.

I made this card for my Sweetie! He's been in the studio with me this morning watching "Cranky Geeks" on his computer, but I don't think he noticed what I was making. Valentine's Day started off with him making me a yummy breakfast (french toast, eggs, and bacon).

I hope you have a great day. Thanks for looking!
Card Ingredients

Stamps: none
Paper: white textured card base (Lasting Impressions for Paper, Inc.), Black & White Basics Collection (Papertrey Ink), Yellow (Momenta), Basic Black & Bella Rose DSP (SU!)
Ink: none
Tools: scallop edge punch, 1 3/8" square punch
Other: heart stickers (Generations Now), foam tape, Old Olive polytwill ribbon (SU!), sentiment (Love & Happiness Rub On - SU!)