More Christmas Cards

October has been Christmas card making season for me so far - I'm even playing Christmas CDs to keep me in the mood!  I mailed my box of cards for Operation Write Home and am now going to town on mine.  Here's a few I have finished so far:

I used a Stampin' Up stamp from the Holiday Lineup set, colored these cute reindeer with Copic markers and used some glitter stickles for that great red nose; paper is from an old DCWV Christmas mat stack and some ribbon finished off this card.

I just love these adorable little hedgehogs from Penny Black!  I water colored them with some Stampin' Up ink pads, and matted them on some DCWV cardstock and Christmas patterned paper, then added some ribbon.

Here's another of those adorable little hedgehogs.  My daughter has a hedgehog named Lola who is much cuter but we can't get her to push a sled with gifts :)



This stamp is also from the Stampin' Up Holiday Lineup set - I love these little snow people!  I colored their accessories with some Copic markers and added some snow glitter Stickles for sparkle, matted them with DCWV cardstock and patterned paper, and cut a snowflake from a Cricut cartridge.

This is the last of the trio from the Holiday Lineup stamp set from Stampin' Up - what a lineup!  Once again I used Copic markers, cardstock and patterned paper from DCWV and a cute little chipboard Christmas tree.

I colored each card differently, sometimes with matching colors and sometimes with colors you'd never think went together, but it really made these characters jump off the card.

This last set was made using a lovely stamp from Flourishes.  I just love, love, love their stamp sets.  I used some Stampin' Up ink for these along with solid blue cardstocks and ribbons, but have also made a few more with embossing powder. 

I hope you're enjoying the rest of this lovely weekend!

Time for Christmas Cards

The calendar may say it's October, but it's almost the deadline to mail my Christmas cards for Operation Write Home.  If you're like me, you may have Christmas embellishments and paper you bought after the holiday last year when they were dirt cheap.  I pulled them out and got busy - here's a few of the cards I just finished working on:

I used a Cuttlebug snowflake embossing folder for the background, precut foam snowflakes I found at Michael's and the precut sentiment from K&Co.

I used another precut sentiment from K&Co and used some small dimensional pop dots behind it.  I also added a few snowflake punch outs from a Martha Stewart punch and corner punch at the bottom.

For this red card I used more snowflake punch outs and a Cosmo Cricket border for the sentiment on the bottom.  These cute little pre-assembled felt snowmen are from Michael's - love 'em!

More pre-assembled felt Christmas trees from Michaels go with the K&Co sentiment and paper for this card.

Another K&Co sentiment and some Cosmo Cricket borders were used for this card and a felt gold dove.

This last little card isn't quite finished yet - I took the picture before I added Glossy Accents in the snow globe to make it look like water.  The little snowman was cut from a Sizzix Sizzlit and colored with a few Copic markers; the snowflakes were punched from a Martha Stewart punch and the stamps are from a new Christmas set from The Stamps of Life.

I tried to keep these cards simple without too many embellies, and absolutely NO GLITTER which against the rules for O.W.H.  The deadline to mail Christmas cards is October 31 so if you have some free time, please consider making a few cards for this wonderful organization.  Now I'm off to box 'em up and get 'em mailed!

Cards for a rainy Monday

Autumn is here but it was amost 100 degrees in NJ the other day, and I'm trying to squeeze some yard work in before it gets too cold.  A little weeding here, and trim a bush there, pull out the sunflowers that are done blooming and replace them with a pretty yellow mum, and dig up my potato crop before the squirrels have too much fun digging in that nice soft dirt.  And now that my yard is ready for fall I had some free time to play in my craft room and make some cards. I've been playing with my new Cricut cartridges lately and have been neglecting my rubber stamps and copic markers, so that was what I decided to play with.  Whatcha' think?

I have a thing for paper - I can never have enough, and if I live to be 200 I would never use all the paper I have. I love to touch it, sort through it, even organize it, and I really love to use my scraps.  I have 4 big drawers filled with scraps and like to challenge myself sometimes to make a card or a layout from just scraps.  The 3 cards above were made using only scraps, mostly from DCWV paper.

For the next 2 cards I played with one of my Tim Holtz Sizzix dies and a Martha Stewart border punch:

The paper was from a DCWV stack called So Crafty - I love that stack.  For this last card below, I used a Tim Holtz Sizzix embossing folder and a Stampin' Up stamp. I lightly ran a piece of sand paper over the card after embossing it to make it a little more distressed.

So that's how I spent my rainy Monday.  I hope you had a fun Monday!

Playing with Cricut carts

It's a rainy, dreary day in NJ today - perfect for doing a little laundry and playing with a few Cricut cartridges.  I haven't played with Cindy Loo or Create a Critter too much, so it was time to make a few cuts.

I'm lovin' these carts - they'll be great for more cards for Operation Write Home cards.  They're sent to service men and women over seas to write home to their families and cards of all kinds are needed.  Please check out their site and consider making them some cards.