Merry Christmas!

Just wanted to wish everyone a Merry Christmas! I hope that you are enjoying the company of family & friends, fantastic food and safe travel during the holidays!

The sample on the right is from my Perpetual Calendar and uses the great Delightful Decorations and Season of Joy stamp sets as well as the Ornament Punch, Merry Moments DSP, a red Rhinestone Brad and Garden Green & Real Red Craft Inks and Clear Embossing powder. The ornament heat embossed as is the snowflake.

The sample below is another Jingle All the Way Decor Elements sample. It uses a glass block and non-SU ribbon - we didn't have the wide ribbon last year or I would have used that. I love the Decor Elements - so easy to make these type of projects - I will have a few more projects to share after the holidays.


Enjoy this wonderful time of year - it looks like we'll have a rainy Christmas here in Elmhurst!

More "Jingles"

Another Jingle All the Way gift to share with you today - this is my favorite Christmas Decor Element, that's for sure.

I made this for my downline for Christmas - I'm glad that they are all part of my life and my Stampin' Up team of demonstrators!

To make this, I bought some Tumbled Tiles at the home store, cleaned them off (they are dusty) and then adhered the Decor Element trying to avoid the holes that are part of this kind of tile. Then I tied a knot with the gorgeous Old Olive wide striped ribbon, strung the bells through some linen thread and tied those on and that's all there is to it. I think that you could seal them with modge podge if you wanted to.

I hope that you enjoy your celebrations with family & friends this week!

And now for something completely different...

Today's post is not stamping related but crafty nonetheless.

A little backstory...many years ago before I got into stamping and paper crafts, I was a cross stitcher. I decided one year to cross stitch stockings and I did for my husband Bob, myself and my younger son Shane. However, because my older son Jordan already had a cute cross stitched stocking my sister had made him, I never made one for him. Time flies and I was cleaning out some cabinets in my basement and found the unmade stocking and decided I should make it for him this year. Of course at some point, I had pulled out all the Stampin' Up colors of floss and put them somewhere I can't remember so after a trip to the craft store last week, I made this stocking for him. Here's what I learned: I'm too old to cross stitch - even with my bifocals on I could barely thread the needle! Also, stamping is more fun! But I'm glad that I finished this project and in only 5 days!

Since much to my husband's dismay, we don't have a fireplace, in our house the stockings are always hung by the console table with care (and we can watch a fireplace using Comcast On Demand).

Merry Christmas everyone!

The Holiday Mini Won't Be Around Forever!

I thought I would remind you that the fantastic Holiday Mini Catalog sets will only be available until January 4th. The stamp set I've used for this card is one of the Hostess Sets in the Mini called Patterned Pines. I love this set because it's so easy to stamp with. Here I colored the two Taken with Teal trees using a Stampin' Spot and the tree in the middle with the Sahara Sand marker. Of course these colors and the trees matched the Holiday Lounge DSP perfectly. The colors are Whisper White, Sahara Sand and Taken with Teal and the sentiment is from Short & Sweet.

I came up with this card for a holiday shoebox that my good friends Dee & Katherine put on in November. A shoebox swap is where you come up with the card, make a sample and then bring the supplies for everyone to make your card and you make everyone else's card. It was great fun!

Hope all your shopping is done! I'm glad mine is and that my Christmas cards are done too!

Grab Bag Gift

Hope that you are enjoying all of these holiday projects! The next one is something I created for my SU demonstrator Christmas Dinner this week - a great part of being an SU demo is all the great people in my group! We all bring a grab bag gift that we made to exchange. I created 3 sleeves for a jar I had recently purchased. This one is for Christmas and uses the Christmas Cocoa DSP and Real Red. I used the Snowflake punch and punched out circles from the opposite side of the DSP with the 1" circle punch.

The second sleeve is for Halloween and I used one of the Window Sheets from the Night & Day DSP as well as Only Orange cardstock. I stamped Little Boo in Versamark and then heat embossed it in Black. I punched out Little Boo with the 1.25" punch, the Pumpkin Pie circle in 1 3/8" circle punch and the Black with the 1.67" punch. I used the Timeless Type Big Shot alphabet for BOO!

The third sleeve is for Fall/Thanksgiving and I used my favorite fall set Autumn Splendor from the Holiday Mini. I heat embossed the leaves in Gold after stamping them with Gold Encore ink. I added the Chocolate Chip wide stitched ribbon and Autumn Meadows DSP.

Hope you've been inspired to make something for a gift!

Pop Can Snowflakes

Happy Monday Stampers!

Today's Christmas card is another use for the Big Shot - Pop Can Snowflakes! Because the Big Shot will cut metal, someone said you could cut pop cans and make snowflakes. In this card, I used 2 cans of Diet Sierra Mist Cranberry, which is one of my favorite flavors of pop and has the right colors for Christmas. After my dear husband cut the cans apart for me, I ran them through the Big Shot with the Snowflake Die. added a Red Rhinestone Brad put it on a card with Real Red and Whisper White cardstock. I added Mistletoe Ribbon (from the set of ribbon available in the holiday mini ONLY until January4) and the sentiment from one of my favorite sets Short & Sweet embossed in white on Real Red punched with the Large Oval Punch and the Scallop Oval punch in Silver cardstock. I love this idea and will be trying to figure out more cans of pop to use for this very fun technique.

There are quite a few Big Shot dies on sale from now until December 30 - see the top link on the left sidebar of my blog for details! The Big Shot is a fantastic tool - is it on your Christmas List?

Today's card is one of the projects from my Holiday Stamp Camp. The idea comes from a very talented stamper named Patty. Her clever idea was to use the Petals a Plenty embossing folder to only emboss the tree on the card. You do this by cutting a triangle out of chipboard (I used the SU Longboard for my triangles). You put the triangles on top of the Embossing Folder before you run it through the Big Shot. Remember this embossing folder is only available until January 4. After you run the Sahara Sand cardstock through the Big Shot, you have a Pointsettia Tree. Using the negative of the longboard I cut for the triangle pieces, I sponged Old Olive ink onto the tree using a Sponge Dauber and then colored in the berries with Real Red marker. Then I used another sponge dauber (another of my favorite accessories) and the Champagne Mist Shimmer Paint over the tree for some sparkle. I used the smaller star punch in Real Red for the top of the tree and used the Shimmer Paint on that as well. The greeting is from Short & Sweet and I used the Modern Label punch for that (it's stamped in Old Olive on Very Vanilla) and the Large Oval punch in Real Red behind that. I love the stamping world, where someone is always thinking of another way to use the tools we have!Stay in and stamp - it's too cold to go out that's for sure! I didn't think that we'd have quite so much winter in just one week.