Merry Christmas!!! XOXO

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas to all of my blog friends, I hope you had a wonderful time with your family and friends and may you have a joyous New Year!!

God Bless!!

Christmas Morning with lots of Tim Holtz goodies.

My Daughter and I being silly on Christmas Eve.

A Daughter's Gift Box

I've been trying to complete several projects before Christmas and, alas, I don't think I'm going to get them all done. I did happen to finish this little gift box the other day. This one is for a special gift that my wonderful husband got for my daughter while I was away. He is so great! Anyway, he wanted me to make a special gift box for her and since I'm in a bit of a rush, I quickly put one together with Tim's Poinsettia die and some other riff raff. I really am loving how it turned out. I'm amazed at how a little decoration can go a long way. 
I'm also entering this little project into Simon Says Stamp and Show challenge this week, the theme is Gift-spiration! They are also giving away a 50.00 gift card to one lucky random winner. YAY!! Love SSS. 
I did not add what goes inside this little box because I think my daughter sometimes visits my blog and don't want to spoil the surprise. :)

A Few Fast Christmas Cards

Hello Crafty Friends, 
 I'm back from my family emergency. Those of you who know me, know that my father had a massive stroke about three weeks ago and he is now in a physical therapy center. It's been tough but he is on the road to recovery and getting back to where he was. It's going to be a long road for my Dad and entire family. I trust in the Lord to take him along this process and see him through.
I've been back home for about a week now and I had so many things that I needed to catch up on (home wise and crafty wise) I sat down in my craft room for the first time since my Dad's stroke and made a few quick Christmas cards. I really needed it too, I missed crafting and using my imagination. 
These two cards were quick but I think they turned out fun and festive and I hope the recipients enjoy them. I'm also entering these into the new challenge from Simon Says Stamp Challenge Blog The challenge this week is Christmas!! Anything Christmas goes. They are giving away a 50.00 gift card to their wonderful store to one lucky winner.

Update

Hello blog friends, I wanted to write a post and let you all know that I won't be updating my blog for a week or more. There has been an emergency in my family and I am having to help with that so I won't be creating or updating the blog for a bit. Please hang in there with me until I can post again.

Claudine

Monster Reindeer Ornament

I have a little story for you, my nephew was drinking this Monstertm Energy drink when i was visiting the family in Colorado this past summer and I'm always looking for stuff to craft with so I grabbed the top from him because I thought it would be perfect to make something out of it. Well, it's been sitting in my craft room since June and the other day he asked me about it. I had forgotten all about it, so I got it out and brainstormed and made him an ornament for his tree. He has a new home this year and it will be a great gift for him for his first home and Christmas tree of his own.
I went with an idea from Shelly Hickox's blog. She did this really cool tutorial of a 3D reindeer tag. I thought this would be perfect for this little bottle cap. 

First I sanded it a little so that the glue and tissue would stick well. I used modge podge to adhere Tim's tissue wrap to the outside and inside and then went over that with Faded Jeans Distress Ink. Once that was all dry I sprayed the entire thing with Perfect Pearl Spray in silver to add some shimmer and I let that dry. I used Shelly's technique for creating the reindeer and added some holiday project paper to it with glue and seal. I used a Dollar Store mini wreath, cut the red bow off of it and created a bow in the color that I wanted and glued it on. A friend of mine Anita Houston inspired me to use real acorn tops and some pearls for the acorn. (you should have seen me out in my back yard gathering up all kinds of little acorn tops LOL.) Everything came together nicely I think. I hope my nephew likes his ornament. I just love it and I want to keep it. haha!!

I am entering this ornament into Simon Says Stamp Challenge Blog this week it's "Anything Goes" and they are giving away a 50.00 voucher for their online store. So generous!

Thanks for coming by :)

May The Heart Be With You

Well, this week over at Simon Says Stamp and Show Blog, the challenge is "A Project With a Heart". I love this one because I just love hearts. Of course SSS is giving away thier usual 50.00 shopping card to one random winner, they are so great over there!!! 
I am currently in process of making jewelry for gifts for family so I decided to take a little break and make something for this challenge and wanted to do a jewelry piece. 

For this particular piece I used some really cool heart beads that I found at a thrift store. They were attached to a necklace and weren't that great looking with the beads that were with it. I love buying old jewelry and taking it apart and making something new out of it so I decided to do that with these little purple hearts. I added a glass bubble heart to the middle part of the necklace that was actually clear glass and I dyed it with Tim Holtz alcohol inks on both sides and strung some beads with it. I love the way it turned out. I also wanted to make some earrings to go with this as well. Hope you like :) My daughter modeled it for me :)

Octopode Factory Challenge

Over at The Octopode Factory Challenge Blog they are challenging us to use "words" in our creations. A few weeks ago I made some ornaments out of printable stamps that I purchased from The Octopode Factory Shop on Etsy and I really wanted to make some more. So this time I added a little arrow by Tim Holtz and also added some silver ribbon around the edges.
I have really protested using my glue gun, I just hate the mess it makes, but honestly it's the best stuff for attaching the ribbon to the edges here. Goes on fast and dries quickly.
Hope you like "the Mad Hatter, Christmas this way"

Face of Art

For this project I'm joining a challenge over at Ink On My Fingers  Sunday Stampers Challenge - the challenge this week is "Faces". I just love Hels over there, she is a truly talented gal. Go check her out if you haven't done so already. She is also giving away a new book from Creative Expressions just for leaving a comment on her blog you get an entry!! What a deal!!

I created these little book pages for a Mystery swap that I joined in along with ten others on my Yahoo Group... ATC_FUN. We were each to create 10 pages and send them to our hostess (who is also our list mom) Jeannie and then she will be putting them together for us. I cannot wait to see the final outcome, they are sure to be wonderful!!

This will be my submission:

These little beauties came out so wonderful. I just love to incorporate Dyan Reaveley and Wendy Vecchi stamps together. 

This is a picture of the background before I added the gals face, wings and words. I just layered and layered. I used Tim's Distress stains to cover them and then layered up some stamps and finished them off by inking the edges. After all this was done I used my little cut out face, wings and words and lastly added three little pearls in various colors.

Thanks A Snow Lot

I want to say "Thank You" to all my wonderful followers right here on my blog. I wish that I could make and send each and every one of you a card but since I can't I'm posting one here, just for YOU!! I appreciate all your words of encouragement and to all my loyal followers, YOUR THE BEST!!! You have no idea how much I appreciate your feedback, it really keeps me going.

For this card I really wanted to do something that was an Un-traditional thank you card. (is that a word? Cause I just made it one). I also just love the new Tim Holtz snowman Stamp from his Christmas Blueprint set. It's such a great set and snowmen are my favorite at this time of year so I had to use him. I also used some leftover Poinsettia cut outs from the ornament in the last post. I had some leftover and I just couldn't let them go to waste. I also added a little "thank you" sign that I created from black cardstock, I just cut it out myself and then wrote the words, trying to mimic Tim's stamp letters and doing a horrible job haha! I then cut a little slit in the snowman and put the sign through so it looks like he is holding it. I added a little dimensional sticky behind the sign to make it pop a little off the card too.
I'm using mostly BoBunny paper for this card, I really love the blues in this paper combo.
I'm entering this card into the Simon Says Stamp and Show Challenge this week, which is "Thank You" and what a fitting time of year to give a Thank You. 
I'm also going to enter this one into the Simon Says Challenge Blog the challenge this week is to do something in Dawny's sketch, use the template she created. It's beautiful, you should go have a look.
Of course Simon Says Store is offering their usual 50.00 gift card to a random winner again this week, for each of these challenges. YAY!! Double the pleasure double the fun haha!
I hope you like the card!!

Ornament With Tim's Poinsettia Die

Hey there bloggies. For this project I made an ornament with Alcohol Inks and Tim Holtz' new poinsettia die from Sizzix. I couldn't wait to try it out so I thought up something I could do with it.

I started with one of those clear plastic ornaments from Michael's. Literally costs like 79 cents or you can buy a set of four. lol...I didn't buy glass because after all the work I didn't want any chances of it breaking. Anyway, I only bought one because I knew I wanted to do something with it but wasn't sure at the time exactly what.. 
I am entering this ornament into the Unruly PaperArts November Reader Art Quest. My first time entering a challenge like this. I guess people have to go and vote for your project, so if you have time... go vote!! haha
So for the first step, I used the alcohol inks in the colors Eggplant, Stream and silver and the globe really turned out so pretty.

While the globe was drying I went through my paper stash and grabbed some blue tone paper and also an off white sheet of music paper. I used those to cut out my poinsettia leaves in the three different sizes. I cut out more than just one because I knew I was going to need about two or three of each leaf in order to go around the entire globe. I then cut them apart and inked the edges with distress ink in the Faded Blue Jeans color. Once those are cut your going to want to bend them a bit so that they sort of lay on the globe well.

 Once everything is dry and the poinsettia leaves are cut, I started hot gluing the leave around the edge and overlaying the leaves a bit. Start with the larger and then move to the medium and then the smaller leaves last. 

After that was done, I wanted to cover up some of that hot glue so I used a frilly white and blue ribbons to top it all off.

Easy Peasy!! Here are some finished pictures....(I took one picture of the ornament without the red background so you could see the pretty colors in the globe, it came out so pretty.

Three Wise Men

I went down into my craft room today and locked myself in there until now. (well, except to pick up my daughter from school, eat and use the bathroom lol)
Otherwise I was in my craft room today.
I have a swap due date coming up on the 20th and I wanted to get those done as well as incorporate some  challenges of course.
So with this project, I'm entering it into the following challenges:
Simon Says Stamp and Show - Who's Challenge this week is "Stampin Without Ink" (love this idea) and of course they are giving away their usual 50.00 gift card to their wonderful store
AND
Studio L3 - Who's Compendium of Curiosities Challenge this week is Texture Fades Technique's. This technique is from Mr. Tim Holtz Book Volume II
and is on page 64. 

I made two project this time with the same exact theme because once I made my Rolodex cards for the swap, which the theme is Christmas! Yay!  I really wanted a greeting card with the same idea so I made that as well.

I knew I wanted to use the Three Wise Men from Tim's Joyful Song stamp set. I embossed them on some scrap card stock. I used this really cool embossing powder from a company called Stampamania, it's called Red Chili Powder and it has elements of Red and black together and it was perfect for what I wanted here. 

It doesn't matter what the cardstock looks like here because I'm going to cover it so I just used misc scraps.

I then used Black Soot Distress Stain and went over the wise men and cardstock. Once that was done I went over it again with Black Soot distress Ink just to cover all the cardstock really well. 

I then took some black Rolodex cards that I made out of card stock and used a stamp from Tim's stamp set called "Bitty Grunge". I painted the stamp with Snow Cap paint dabber and stamped it directly onto the card. 

Once the paint was dry I took a Sakura gelly roll metallic silver pen and wrote next to each line on the beams to make them shimmer and bit and stand out a little more. 

I wanted a pop of red here so I cut out a piece of white foam from the new Tim Holtz mini poinsettia movers and shapers die. (one of my new favorites) I then used the cut out shape and dipped it into red acrylic paint and stamped those directly onto the black background.

I think the red poinsettia's look so pretty on this background. After that was done, I fussy cut the three wise men out. One step that I forgot to take a pic of, was the Star, I just used my Memory Box Star die and cut them out of bright yellow card stock, I then used Glossy accents on each of them so they would have a shiny look to them. They look so cool in person. I used some ribbon and stamped onto it with black Adirondack ink the words "Jesus is the reason for the season." I went over the edges of the ribbon with Barn Door Distress Ink and then stapled them on with the mini staple tool.  Lastly I added little white dots to the center of each poinsettia.

This Rolodex card came out so cool that I really wanted to make a greeting card as well. So here we go...... LOL

For the greeting card I did the background a bit different. I used the Texture Fades folder "Rays" for the card instead of stamping on it. I then went over the embossed design with Silver paint dabber and also Black Soot distress ink to make it pop a bit more. I also used the silver gel pen.

Other than that the steps were pretty much the same as the Rolodex card. Although since this greeting card has a bigger front space I wanted to add a little more to it. I used my brand new Tim Holtz Mini Snowflake Rosette die to cut out a snowflake. I created the music design with Tim's stamp and some off white card stock and also inked up the edges with Barn Door distress ink. I also added some silver ribbon and the phrase "Wise Men Still Seek Him." Love that saying.

I hope you enjoyed the tutorial, now you can go make your own card or rolodex or tag or whatever you want. !! YAY!!

Journal Page for Brittney

This is a page that I have created on the entry of my daughter's journal for Christmas. I really want to add one page for her, from me. I wanted the page to reflect something I want her to know, so really, what better words than "I love you". I also added a saying that I often tell myself when I'm creating. "Spread your wings and create",  when I say this to myself it reminds me not to worry too much about the "mistakes" or trying to create perfect pages or items and to just enjoy the process and whatever comes to be will be. Her middle name is Raven, so I used a raven for the bird on her page.

I am hoping to join in some challenges this week but I wanted to finish this first so I could get it in the mail to her before Christmas. 
Thanks for looking and see you soon,

Christmas Time Ornaments

I really wanted to try out some new challenge website this week and went searching around the web for a few. I found three that I really wanted to participate in. So for this project I entered them at the following website challenges:

Stampotique Designers Challenge - This week's challenge is Hanging Decorations (challenge 73)
They also give away a 30.00 Gift card to the winner
Inspiration Emporium - Making a little something for your guests at Thanksgiving to show how thankful you are for them. They are giving away 50.00 to spend in their store
Stampin For The Weekend - Challenge 21 -  Real or Faux Stitching, this challenge is sponsored by Simon Says Stamp this week. 

So for these challenges I made some really fun Ornaments. I am going to send these to my Daughter for Thanksgiving and tell her how thankful I am to have her as a daughter. 
She is really into funky items and really funky characters and I just love the digital stamps from Lily Chilvers over at The Octopode Factory so I decided to make these with the Alice In Wonderland digi stamps I bought from her. I cut out some small circles from cardboard and used Tim Holtz Stitched Metal technique for the backgrounds. I then used green and Red Pepper and a little Caramel alcohol ink over the metal tape once it was all embossed and holes were made. There is faux stitching in the background as well. It's hard to see but I promise it's there. LOL
The stamps were already colored when I bought them so I just cut them out, how easy is that?!! I wrote the words "Christmas Time" onto white cardstock and edged it with black marker. I adhered a few metal gears with E6000. I created a gold hanger with some metal wire and attached that to the back and also adhered magnetic paper to cover up the wire and so that they can also hang on the fridge with the magnet backs. 
To finish it all off I added some fun and funky green yarn. These are so fun, I might have to make some for myself. :)

Thinking Of You

I have a few things to show you today and quite a few challenges that I'm entering. So there will be two posts today. :) I hope you will take the time to check them both out.
For the first challenges I am joining Simon Says Stamp & Show this week the challenge is "Inspiration Francaise" and of course they are so generous and are giving away a 50.00 gift card. YAY!
I am also entering this one into the Simon Says Stamp Challenge Blog and their challenge is "Thinking of You" or "Sympathy" and of course, they are also giving away a 50.00 gift card to Simon Says Stamp. Double YAY!
So for these challenges I decided to make a greeting card. For this card I used a combo of different stamps from Hero Art and other misc companies as well, (can't recall where they all came from) 
I embossed the Paris stamp in clear embossing powder and then went over it with Fired Brick Distress Ink I then took a strip of white paper and wanted it to match the color in the Paris stamp so I went over it with Fired Brick distress stains. I used white lace for the bow. I also embossed the words "Thinking of  You" in Ranger's black embossing powder.
For the background words, I used the Fired Brick ink and a LaBlanche stamp. The whole card is on black cardstock for the background. I just really love the colors red, white and black together. I also really like to clean and simplicity look to this card.

Hope & Change

NOPE - this is not a political post! Thank goodness

that all the adds and phone calls are O-V-E-R.

This post is about two great ATCs that I made today. They came out of an idea to use Tim Holtz' Tissue wrap over chipboard cut out shapes. 

I am submitting these in the following challenges this week:
Frilly and Funky - This week's Challenge is Tic-Tac-Toe three in a row!! I went straight down the middle with Chipboard, Metallic Distress Stains and sprays. Frilly and Funkie awards a winner with a wonderful 25.00 gift card to their shop, woot!! 

I have two swaps that are due this month, one is for the AllthingsTim yahoo group and the other is for a group that I swap with offline each month. 
For my Tim group the theme this month is Forest Floor and when I think of the forest floor in Mid November I really think of falling leaves and sometimes snow. I'm from Colorado and we usually have snow by mid November. So for this ATC, I used two Tim Holtz Big dies, Tattered Leaves and Winter Wonder. I cut out one leaf and the snowflake with chipboard and adhered it to a piece of burnt orange card stock and then used glue to adhere tissue wrap over them, for some reason I did not use Tim's tissue wrap on this ATC (what was I thinking?). I sort of crunched it up and smooshed it around with my fingers while it was still wet so it would have a wrinkle effect, but it really got messy with the thin tissue wrap, I finally made it stay. Once it was dry I trimmed the edges and went over the entire thing with Paint Dabbers in Gold and a tad  bit of Espresso. I wanted to give it some shimmer so I added Metallic Distress stains in Tarnished Brass first and then added a lot of Brushed Pewter to the snowflake. I also used Distress Ink in Walnut Stain over the leaf. Once that was all really dry, I cut small letters to spell out the word "Change" in black card Stock. I used Tim's Typeset strip die for the letters. 
I wanted those to pop a little more so I also used Adorandak sprays in two colors mixed together to make an oval shape on the right hand side so the letters would stand out a little more. For the last step I added a little doodling around the word "change."
I really love the way it turned out, simple but classic. 
I think the snow and leaves definitely go hand in hand in November.

The "Hope" ATC was for a swap that I join once a month. This group is offline and the theme this month is "One Word".. what better word than HOPE?

For this one I used the Tim dies "Love Struck" movers and shapers (heart) and the word Die "Hope" and of course card board. The words are normally inside of an oval and I just cut them out. 
So for this the steps in the beginning are the same, EXCEPT this time I used Tim's Tissue Wrap, it worked SO much better. Since it's thicker it holds up so much better to all the paint and sprays. After everything was dry, I used white picket fence paint dabber over the entire thing first. After that was dry I sprayed the entire thing with different colors of Dyan Reaveley's sprays but concentrating mostly on the blue. Once that was comepltely dry I went over the words, heart and edges with Distress Ink in Black Soot, just to make them really stand out. Finally I sprayed the entire thing with a little bit of silver perfect pearl spray, you know how I love my shimmer!!

So those are my finished ATCs for this months swaps. YAY!

An Art Journal For my Daughter

I have been working on Christmas gifts and have been making my family members homemade gifts. (Which are near and dear to my heart, I love HOME MADE!!)
At any rate, I really wanted to make my 20 year old daughter an art journal of her very own. She is a very talented young lady, a writer and also loves to draw and make art. She doesn't really have an art journal that is truly personal so I decided to make her one that hopefully she will love. 
I just love the way this came out so I had to share with all of you the final outcome of the front cover. I'm also going to create one page inside specially for her from her Mommy!! HaHa!

The first thing I did for the cover was sand it a bit. and then painted the entire front and spine with gesso in order to prime. 
I wanted to make the cover pop with lots of beautiful color so once the gesso was dry I sprayed the entire cover with different colors of Dyan Reaveley's sprays.  I didn't really think about it before I did that but I had a delima after the sprays were dry. How was I going to seal this cover so the colors would not run. Being that they were Dyan's they are water based and I couldn't use traditional sealers. I ended up using some Krylon glossy spray sealer and started with a very light coat and added two other light coats after the first was dry. Being very careful not to spray too much at a time so that the colors would not run.
Before I sprayed that I used acrylic paints to create layers with stencils and stamps and I also added the letter there. The letter was part of a letter than Brittney has written to me awhile back. It was heartfelt and wonderful so I really wanted to add it into my creation of the cover of this journal. I didn't want the paper to be white so I added some sprays to that as well. You can't really see what it says here but you can read it when your holding the journal in person. Her writing is very tiny. lol...
I added some embelishments and the words "Expect the Unexpected" because Brittney is a poem writer and her poems are very real and unexpected. I also added to Raven at the bottom because her middle name is Raven. I added the symbol to the book mark because her favorite football team is the Saints, she loves them! haha! I also wrote her name on the spine and added a few steancils there. 

The Following Two pictures are a few I took prior to adding the  three acryilic parts to the bottom, I wasn't sure what I was going to do there and decided to add the Raven after. I also changed the charm that was added to the bookmark ribbon as well. I wanted it to be more personal.

I will be posting this journal into the following challenges this week:

Order of the Opus Gluei It Figured Challenge

Sunday Stamper  Something Blue

Thanks for checking me out here! Be Inky everyone!!

A Pearl-ish Christmas Card

This week at Simon Says Stamp & Show challenge blog the theme is "Just Add Pearl". Any kind of pearl as long as you have something pearl on your project. As always, they are giving away another 50.00 gift certificate to a random entry. They are so generous!!

Since Hurricane Sandy has me staying home and inside, I figured I would use this free time to work on this challenge. Besides, I'm thrilled that I can spend the day creating in my craft room. 
I decided that I needed to get to work on some Christmas Cards and this year I really want to do something different than I have ever done before so I plan to make several and then go with one of them. 

I really wanted to use Tim's new stamp set "Blueprint Christmas" and I just love snowmen so I went with that. 
I used Tim's craft resist paper in a sort of blue print design and sprayed a ton of red and silver Perfect Pearl Mist onto a sheet and dried it with the heat gun. You can really see the shimmery goodness on this. I destressed the edges with a distress tool and used Walnut Stain distress ink on them.

I used an old folder for the card base and covered it with Peeled Paint distress stain and brushed pewter metallic.    

I used a piece of burlap and cut it to size and sprayed it with Adorondak sprays in various Christmas colors and then sewed that onto the base of the card.

I also created a cool tree with a Tim tree die and some glossy paper. I used alchohol inks to color the tree. 

I used some more of the burlap to make a ribbon and stamped Merry Christmas onto it to spread across the front of the card. I stained the burlap with forest moss distress stain. 

I also cut a button out of another Tim Holtz die and some cardboard, added some embossing ink and red glitter embossing powder. Heat set that and added burlap ribbon to it. 

To finish it all off I added some silver ribbon, pinecones and misc greenery. There are lots of layers and loads of distress stains, inks and perfect pearl mists. 

Enjoy!!!