Christmas Sticker Cards

I found some really cute glitter stickers at my dollar store (Honk's $1.05) and decided to use them to make more Christmas cards.

The top two cards are matted on black cardstock, and the french horn is matted on red and GREEN--not blue. I can't wait for the day that I can get a new camera. I have to use the "Night" or "cloudy" setting on my RAZR cam to take pictures this well--but it changes the colors on me.

The last one is my favorite. I bought some Stikopatamus vellum snowflake stickers a while back and never used them. Then I remembered I had this cute pink circles paper from the dollar store and put it all together. The vellum stickers have silver foil as an accent. I actually used pink passion and pixie pink, although the picture makes me look like a liar. I wish you could see the stickers in real life--they are so pretty.

The Candy Cane Poem

For those of you who are Christian, you may be interested in this post. I just wrote a poem about the symbolism of the candy cane and created a printable file to help you make quick and easy gifts. If you are interested, here's the link to my freelance blog and the files. If you stamp your candy cane tags, let me know where I can view the final product. *excited grin*

I created three dozen gift sacks for teacher appreciation gifts. I got cute little Christmas sacks at Target (12 for $1.99; they had 16 kraft sacks for 3-4 bucks, I think), stapled the poem to it, placed a red or green jingle bell ornament (at Target, 6 for $4.99 less 20% sale--I had to buy metallic ribbon to tie on) inside with two candy canes (75 minis for $1.99). With my Target discount and sale price on ornaments, it came out to about $1.05 per teacher. Not baaaad. (The ornament goes with the following story: The Symbols of Christmas.)

Disclaimer: Because I was making 3 dozen, I didn't stamp the bags or the tags. I was saving myself time and sanity.

Have A Very Vintage Christmas

This is my first vintage-esque Christmas card. I'm not good at creating the look, but I'm practicing. (Or, maybe I'm way off and this isn't vintage to you. I dunno.)

Stamps from Inkadinkado.

If I had to do it all over again, I would not have stamped the ornaments in white on the background. Oh well. I stamped the other snowflakey-circles on the burgundy cardstock with versamark. The snowman is matted on Cranberry Crisp and Always Artichoke, which has distressed edges. I stamped the snowman in burgundy, as well as the snowflakes, but I stamped off to create a softer snowflake image. I sponged Bravo Burgundy to give it the warm, worn look. The Merry Christmas oval is on cranberry crisp with burgundy ink.

I really liked the way this card turned out, especially since I rarely use these colors. But I'm sure it would make some sweet soul happy to receive it.

Red, White & Blue Christmas

I had such a fabulous Thanksgiving weekend with three of my four sisters, two BILs, my brother, and my parents. The best part was getting to stamp with my cute sisters and seeing how different our cards were. I'll try posting a few of theirs later. I don't know if I got pictures of them all. (Darn it.)



My parents have a huge dining room table that we commandeered for our stamping supplies. We eventually had to bring up a folding table to make more room. I only brought a portion of all my stuff, and I took up half of the table. I bought the cutest Inkadinkado Christmas stamp set from Michael's. So you could say that I found my groove with my new stamp set. And here's a peek at what I produced.

Card 1 Recipe:
Cardstock: Whisper White, Brilliant Blue, Ballet Blue, Real Red, Glorious Green
Inks: Brilliant Blue, Ballet Blue, White Craft
Accessories: Hemp twine, eyelet, stickles (in center of snowflakes), dimensional

Card 2 Recipe:
Cardstock: Whisper White, Ballet Blue, Real Red
Inks: Real Red, Ballet Blue, White Craft
Accessories: Brads, Sponge

Card 3 Recipe:
Cardstock: Whisper White, Bashful Blue, Real Red
Inks: Bashful Blue, White Craft
Accessories: dimensionals, cute red staples

*Sorry! BLogger made my images disappear and now they won't insert again! Arghghg.

Cutest Nativity Stamp Set

I just had to warn you that I just found the cutest precious-moments-like nativity stamp set at www.stampsbyimpression.com. These would be perfect for making little Christmas cards for the children in my church where I serve. Or even for my Christmas cards that I'll send out. Adorable little people, huh?

BTW Does anybody have experience with this online store?

Blogging Tutorial: Adding A Watermark to Photos

For those of you interested in watermarking your photos like a profesh stamper, follow the link to my other blog. It's not a video, but a step-by-step picture tutorial that I think you'll find helpful. (I try to only post paper-craft related things here.)

I'll be going to my parent's house Wednesday morning for Turkey Day and probably won't post again until November 26th. (For a cool tutorial on how to create animated GIFs with Photoshop, visit SBS sister Savitri's blog. She stamps and digiscraps wonderfully.)

Blogging Tutorial: Adding Labels

If you want to learn more about labels on blogs and why you should have them, click here. If you're thinking "What the heck is a label?" This post is for you. This will take you to one of my other blogs.

Tidbits

I don't have any stamp creations to share, just some tidbits.

Blogging Hint: Galleries
If you are interested in including a gallery of all your card pictures on your blog, go to http://picasaweb.google.com and get signed up. It will give the HTML code to put in a page element to include a link to your card gallery. Also, you can upload any pictures and create albums on this site. Very handy little feature. Thanks, google.

....And I have to share my cute little treasure. My DH works as a manager for Target (luv my discount). They all got some freebies two days ago. My hubby came home with a cute gift bag and told me it was all mine. I found some hersey kisses, EMPTY milkyway wrappers, and this cute tiny stapler with red staples! I am so excited. It even staples well. Now I'm anxious to get to work on my pretty red embossed images so that I can put my pretty little red stapler to good use. Isn't it so tiny and cute?

Red Dragon EP

Okay, you can't tell by these pictures, but all of these red images were embossed with Stamp-N Stuff's red dragon EP. It is spectacularly glittery, red with golden sparkles--perfect for Christmas. The star images really twinkle, and the other hard-to-see images are little Christmas trees. So I created all these UFOs and now I have more work to do today.

I get to see my parents, brother, and 3 of my 4 sisters for Thanksgiving this year. We're having a huge Un-Birthday party, since we're never together to celebrate each other's birthdays. We'll be making all of our favorite desserts and snacks and eating ourselves sick. Anyways, what I meant to say was that we'll be spending a day or two stamping Christmas cards. Which is why I made all of these images to begin with, but I don't know if I can wait another 9 days to use them.

BTW I am too cheap right now to buy and embossing heat tool, so I just use my gas stove. I turn a burner on about 6 or 7 and hold my paper with paper tweezers. I have burned more than one image before because I was not paying attention. But mostly it works just great. I know my sister puts her cardstock on the back of a hot iron to emboss, but it always seems to curl the cardstock.

Tiny Gift Tags

These are smaller versions of the Gift Card Holders from yesterday.

Very Punny is one of the best sets for these cute little gift tags. (If you don't have the set, I have two extra that I'd be willing to trade.) The finished size of these cute chocolate chip and pink gift tags is 3-3/4" x 2-3/4" (scored at 3-1/4" and cut at 7"). I use them as little cards on the gifts my daughter gives to her friends. They love the miniature size! In fact, I made some of these for my mother, and she sent one to my four-year old on her birthday with a $20 bill, and she handed us the money and kept the card!

Recipe
Stamp Set: Very Punny
Cardstock: Pixie Pink, Pink Passion, Close to Cocoa, Chocolate Chip
Inks: Pixie Pink, Chocolate Chip

Again, I'm sorry for the lack of picture quality. Read the disclaimer in the top right corner--it will take you to a post on my family blog that explains in a round about my current camera situation.

Using My UFOs

I decided to finish off some gift card holders/gift bag tags for my stash using my UFOs (Thanks for the motivation, GinaP). I try to keep about 15 on hand at all times for those emergencies that always seem to crop up.

Alana's Gift Card Instructions
Finished size: 2-3/4” x 4-1/4”

Each card is 2-3/4” x 8” long, which means you can get 4 from an 8-1/2” x 11” sheet of CS. If you aren't worried about saving paper, 3" x 8" looks great.

1. First score sheet at 3-3/4” (x 11”).
2. Cut at 8” (x 11”).
3. Cut into strips 2-3/4” wide x 8" long.
4. Layer and embellish card. *Hint: I always use dimensionals to adhere the layered image to the card (it allows for more flexibility in opening and closing the card flap--otherwise layers tend to rebel and fall off).
5. Use slit punch to create flap to hold card closed.
   
6. Attach gift card inside with mini glue dot(s) if desired. If you want to hang it just as a tiny note from a gift, punch a 1/8” hole at the top left corner and set an eyelet.
7. For a SMALLER CARD to attach to gift (without a gift card inside), you can score at 3-1/2” and cut at 7-1/2” OR EVEN SMALLER score at 3-1/4” and cut at 7”. (If they aren’t holding a gift card, they don’t need to be so long…in my estimation☺)

Paisley Peacock

Another sneak peak...

I know I haven't posted a card in a while, but I promise I've been busy. We had some family in town that just left today. *sad sigh* I just wanted to show you what I've been up to lately, besides trying to manage the Sisterhood of Blogging Stampers.

This is part of my Paisley Peacock stamp set. This is by far the most time-consuming stamp set I've worked on and I still need to add more detail to the feathers. But I've ignored my DH enough this afternoon, so I'm going to go watch football with him on the couch. Thanks for looking!