More is More

It’s time for another Dirty Challenge with my fellow Dirty Girls past and present.  We had so much fun with our Elzybells challenge last month (details here if you missed it) that we decided to do it again!  🙂

This time the challenge is as follows:

Focus: Penguins

Required: Something icy

Restricted: No blue…none!

Ideally I would have stamped my card way ahead of time, but…you guessed it…I sat down at 8:00pm last night to come up with something.  Fortunately I had PLENTY of penguins to choose from since penguins are one of my favorite stamp images to collect.  Also fortunately I have no problem leaving blue out of a card….I’m just not a blue person.  So here ya go…

The color combo came from two different inspirations.  First I had considered making more tags to go with the Celebration wrapping paper…Real Red, Olive, and oh-no Bashful Blue.  Then I thought about making a card to match my adorable penguin flannel pj bottoms…Real Red, Pixie Pink, So Saffron.  That’s how I ended up with this combo of Real Red, Old Olive, Pixie Pink and So Saffron.

The four penguins are actually on one long stamp by Darcie’s.  I used to love to go to their booth at Carson Rubber Stamp Convention.  I stamped the image on shimmer white cardstock with Black Craft ink and heat embossed with Iridescent Ice embossing powder (my first icy element for the challenge).  Then I colored the images with a combination of Copic markers (I just got my first TWO Copic markers *grin*) and SU markers with an aquapainter before cutting them out and layering them onto Pixie and Olive squares.

 The snowflakes are an irridescent trim from Fabric Barn (my second icy element).  I adhered them across the bottom of the card, plus cut some apart to layer over the circle punches along the side.  Each one has an Adorn It droplet in the center.  The one in the center of the penguins is popped up on a pop up glue dot and has a green rhinestone in the center.

I can’t wait to see what everyone came up.  The girls will be uploading to the SCS gallery using keyword DCP1207 as well as to their blogs throughout the day today.  Be sure to check them all out here.

Good news!  My boxes of pre-ordered Stampin’ Up! Spring/Summer Collection 2008 catalogs arrived!  I’ve e-mailed my customers who pre-ordered and have a couple more available if you’re in the area and don’t have a Demo to get them from.  I can’t wait to be able to pour over it in more detail and chat with friends about it.  My very first favorite set is the Lovely Letters monogram alpha set on page 158.  I have been wishing for this exact set for about 3 years now.  I just purchased the Paper Trey Ink set…which I do really like, but it is much smaller AND as I mentioned before I do NOT like the “J” in that set.  Hallelujah – I DO like the “J” in Lovely Letters!  There are lots of new sets I like, but it will probably be after Christmas before I can get my catty spiral bound and have time to put post-its on every page of wishes!

Today is all about making gifts and I’ll be sure to tell you about those later.  *wink* Thanks for stopping by!

Tomorrow night I get to celebrate Christmas with the ladies in my prayer group PACT.  It’s always one of my favorite evenings of the year affectionately known as “Happy Turkey”.  I bought all the supplies to make gifts for these dear friends, but when I saw some adorable recipe binders at Costco last week I began to evaluate whether I would really have time to make the gifts I had planned.  The conclusion was that those gift sets would be perfect for next year and those recipe binders jumped into my cart!  To assuage my guilt over having not stamped the gifts I just had to make some nice tags to go on them.  Today was another busy day but I got a set of these matching tags made and got the gifts wrapped for tomorrow night using my SU Celebration wrapping paper and wide red and olive grosgrain ribbon.

I used Versamagic ink on Shimmer white cardstock and matted with Real Red and Old Olive.

Sorry about the funky color on this close up shot.  It’s late and I needed to just use the flash so the color is off here, but hopefully you get the idea.  The ink really does match the cardstock!

Big news!  I got my new SU catty today. 🙂  I’ve only had time for one quick run through, but so far I really like it.  More about that later.  It’s past my bedtime and tomorrow I work and then come home and make 2 different side dishes for the dinner.  Good night and thanks for stopping by.

I can’t believe it’s been almost a week since I posted.  This time of year is just so jammed packed and I always seem to be behind no matter how I try to plan.  For example I had originally planned for us to get our Christmas tree over a week ago, but stuff just kept happening.  We finally went and got one on Wednesday, brought it in the house on Friday night, put lights on it last night and decorated it today!  Growing up we always got rid of our tree the day after Christmas (sometimes it was gone before I even got up in the morning *shock*), so we usually got it fairly early in the month of December.  It kind of bugs me to get it this late, but we’ll probably keep it up now until almost New Years.

Here are some ornaments I made for our tree this year.

The plain glass balls were 50% off at Michael’s.  I got 2 four-packs of the large size and one six-pack of the smaller size (not all of my ornaments are pictured here).  The balls are filled with curled pieces of Dashing and Cerise designer papers.  Such an easy project – great to do while watching tv.  And really quite inexpensive as well.  For the small balls I used a 1/2 sheet of the 12 x 12 paper and cut strips 6″ x  1/2″.  For the larger size I used almost a full sheet of strips cut 4″ x 3/4″.  Strips were just rolled around a pencil and dropped in the ball.  I don’t know who first came up with this idea, but I really like it!  if you’ve made some of these please post a link so I can check them out.  Although I’ve seen them several times before, when I got ready to make mine I couldn’t find any photos.

It’s going to be a very busy week.  As much as I love Christmas I’m really looking forward to Pajama Day which is a well-loved tradition at our house.  It usually occurs the day after Christmas but sometimes has to be put off one day.  Curt cooks a huge breakfast and we stay in PJ’s all day and watch movies and read and play games.  I’d better have my brand new Stampin’ Up! catty by then so I can devote a good chunk of time to making my wish list.  Some SoCal friends already have cattys, so I’m thinking mine might come tomorrow – that thought makes me simultaneously happy and sad – I’m dying to see it, but honestly do not have time this week to really savor the joy of it.  I truly love making it an *event*.

I hope you are enjoying the Christmas season!  I will post as much as I can.  Thanks so much for stopping by and sticking with me during this busy, sporadic time.

My sweet friend Emily (WaterPixie) made me a new blog banner while I was at work today.  What a wonderful surprise to come home to!  She lost her blog banner also in the update and I think she felt my sadness and frustration!  How cool is it that she knows me and my style well enough to create a custom banner for me all on her own without even having to ask me anything?!  Wow!  Curt thought it was really cool too – he loved the bird!  The whole thing is very *me*.  So a huge thank you to Emily – you made my day!  🙂

No, I haven’t fallen off the face of the earth!  It’s been awhile since I blogged…it’s just the busy-ness of the season! I know y’all understand!  I’m working on lots of projects so I’ll have things to share soon, but I really have to concentrate on finishing Christmas decorations and gifts.

Here’s a quick and simple thank you card I made a couple of weeks ago.

I’m so glad I got Block Party!  It’s such a versatile set – I love the way you can easily cut out just a part of one of the long images to make it just the perfect size for various projects!  Here I inked it up with Old Olive classic ink and stamped on Poison Ivory shimmer cardstock.  Designer paper is Daisyd’s from ecelctic Paperie.  Card base is SU Basic Gray and I layered it with Ruby Red.  Ribbon is Old Olive grosgrain  – loving that wide ribbon!  Kind of an odd color combo, but it works.

Currently my blog banner is messed up and I’m frustrated with that.  It’s due to a server update.  Curt looked at it for me last night, but it was late and he wasn’t able to fix to it.  We may have to start from scratch and that’s NOT going to happen anytime soon, so we’ll just have to live with it for now.

I need to rush off to work.  Thanks for stopping by.  I’ll really try to get some Christmas projects up this week.

Oh my!  What a busy week this has turned out to be!  All good, just really busy.  I’ve been meaning to show you the ATC I did for Taylor’s swap.  I was in an Elzybells round.  I have a really hard time with ATC’s – they are just so small (2.5″ x 3.5″) and not much room for lots of *stuff*.  In the end though I was happy with what I came up.

I love using those tiny little pom poms for the snowballs in this Elzybells juggling penguin image.  Penguin was stamped on Shimmer White cardstock and colored with a black marker and red re-inker with Fantastix – my first time using them and they worked great!  The Soft Sky background was stamped with Flannel Plaid in Soft Sky and little snowflakes where embossed with white craft ink and irridescent ep.  Sentiment is from So Many Sayings and I just thought it was perfect for this happy little guy.  Mini button is actually a brad.  Colors used are Soft Sky, Real red and Basic Black.

The ATC’s I received from the swap were really fantastic.  Maybe I should contact some of the creators to see if I can share them with you here. So fun to see what everyone came up!

I’m hoping to get our Christmas tree on Saturday, but it’s supposed to rain here over the weekend.  Hopefully it won’t be that bad.  I also have lots of stamp projects to finish for the holidays and yet I haven’t stamped all week.  I guess a good rainy weekend could be good for that.  I need to get to work.  Thanks for stopping by.

It’s so fun that The SCS Dirty Dozen has added play along Challenges for the Fan Club Members each month!  If you are a Fan Club Member check out the current challenges here.  This is my take on the Sketch Challenge using my new Time Well Spent set.

My original idea was to do an all black and white card….but then I decided to just add Soft Sky cardstock…and then I just couldn’t leave the flowers black and white so I started coloring them with a blender pen and ink…so much for all black and white!  LOL!  The white cardstock is shimmer white and that really adds a lot to this simple design. 

Recipe:

Stamps – Time Well Spent

Cardstock – Soft Sky, Shimmer White, Basic Black

Accessories – Blue grosgrain (Fabirc Barn), Black gingham, Marvy Mega scallop circle punch, blender pen with ink (Not Quite Navy, Soft Sky, Mellow Moss), foam tape, DD glitter, white gel pen, corner rounder

The Stampin’ Up Retired List came out over the weekend.  Click the following links if you haven’t seen it yet.

Retired List by Page Number

Retired List by Alpha

The Retired Accessories List wil be out on December 10th.  The accessories usually sell out rather quickly  – so order those immediately if you want them.  The stamp sets should be available all month, but it’s a good idea to go ahead and get your orders in with your Demo ASAP with the holidays so quickly approaching.  I was surprised how many brand new sets were on the list and a little sad about Abundant Joy and Heartspeak.  Those were my first two favorites when the catalog came out in June and I got them right away, but haven’t used them nearly enough.  Of course I will continue to use them after they retire, but it’s just hard with always focusing on new stuff and planning classes with all current sets.  I have 16 sets retiring (incuding 2 Christsmas and 5 Backgrounds).  On the flip side I’m super excited to see the new catalog!  🙂

Happy Monday and thanks for stopping by!