More is More

I’m sorry I haven’t been blogging much lately.  December has been such a busy month!  I’ve had some things ready to share, but just no time to sit down and type blog posts.  Plus we’ve been transitioning to a new computer and some of my photos haven’t been moved over from the old one yet.  I just had to get one more post in for 2009.  Overall 2009 has been a really good year for us and I’m very thankful. At the same time it’s always exciting to start a new year and have that fresh blank slate.  🙂

I need to be quick so we can get over to the Game Night at church celebrate with friends!

The project I have to share tonight is the group of gifts I created for the girls in my prayer group (PACT).  Each year we have a Christmas dinner together that we lovingly call *Happy Turkey Night*.  We exchange gifts and mine have almost always been handmade. This year I found myself in a pickle as the day of the dinner arrived and I had nothing prepared.  I went through my stash of alterables and came up with skinny notepads and acrylic frame post-it note holders.  Since I was short on time I worked with a SU Scrappin Kit (I think it was from SAB a couple of years ago.)  It really made things go together quickly.

I had the patterned post-its in my stash and I printed the Bible Verse on my computer and cut it out with nesties.  The felt bags came from the Target Dollar Spot.

I literally snapped these photos on my way out the door that night as I was running a few minutes late for the dinner.  Here are a couple of photos of the group.  My friend Kathy gave us all homemade egg nog.  I’ve never been a fan of egg nog and must admit I tasted it with some trepidation, but OH MY WORD that was some incredibly YUMMY stuff!  I hope she makes it next year too!

Darla, Nancy, me, Kathy

Darla, Nancy, Maggie, Kathy

These ladies have been with me through thick and thin – through years I couldn’t wait see come to an end.  I love them dearly and consider myself incredibly blessed to call them sisters and friends!

I finally did some stamping today, so I’ll be back in the morning with a card for the Taylored Expressions Sketch Challenge.  I hope you have a wonderful New Year’s Eve!

May your Christmas be a time to reflect

on the simplicity of His birth

and the magnitude of His purpose.

Merry Christmas!

Jami & Curt

Beaker, R.B. and Tessa

Tessa wanted to show you her new coat…  🙂

and our tree all decorated and ready for family to come and open presents…

Hope you have a wonderful Christmas Eve!

-Jami

Well hello!  This is just a quick post to let y’all know I’m still alive!  I didn’t intend to take a break from blogging – in fact I have several photos to share – but the past couple of weeks have been so slammed busy I’ve barely been able to breathe!  Seriously!

I spent a good part of the last couple days dipping various stuff in chocolate – pretzels, oreos, peanutbutter smeared ritz…

The Ritz crackers stuffed with peanutbutter. covered in milk chocolate and covered in Heath pieces are DA BOMB!!!!  Those I will be making again!

Also Curt and I have been working on getting our Christmas cards out  – over 100 of them.  Here’s one of the designs – I made 30 of these using one of my all-time favorite Christmas dp’s – SU Dashing.

It’s waaaay past my bedtime, but I just had to stop in and touch base with you.  I hope you are having a wonderful week and I hope you are more ready for Christmas than I am.  LOL!

-Jami

Happy Friday! It’s time for another fun sketch from Taylor – TESC94 – and I encourage you to play along with us.  🙂

I have another penguin for today’s card.  This one is from the Our Craft Lounge Crafty Clear set Snow Place Like Home.  You know I LOVE cute penguins and I considered doing *a penguin a day*, but I’ve just got so much going on right now that I’m not sure I can commit to anything else right now – even if it’s just stamping a penguin card every day!  LOL!

I paired Snow Place Like Home with my TE Pretty Please Card Kit (ummm…it might have still been out on my table.)  First glance at that kit might not scream Christmas at you, but I think it works well with these cute images.  (I did add some SU Old Olive cardstock for the matting.)  I added some KaiserCraft rhinestones (along scallops created with a Crafter’s Workshop stencil) and some rose satin ribbon from my stash.

Image is colored with Copics and a Zig Painty Pen.  Sentiment is from Holiday Wonder and I used my new Martha Stewart icicle punch at the bottom.

Yesterday was my BFF Ruth’s birthday.  She’s been living up in Washington for the past few years and I love to send her something I’ve made.  I mailed out the Sweet Occasions card set I posted last week – click here to see it.  I wanted to show you what I did for the insides of the cards.  Rather than stamp sentiments in each card, I made an asssortment of sentiments that she can add in as she needs them.

All of those sentiments and little images are included in the Sweet Occasions stamp set.  Each sentiment is matted to coordinate with the cards and has Taylor’s sticky tape on the back so they are ready to be stuck in the cards as needed.  I think this will make the cards more versatile and more useful than if I had finished off the cards myself.

Tonight I’m having a special class just for my Club girls.  We’re meeting early for pizza and then making a card set using the Sunny Day Scrappin’ Kit.  I’ll share pictures of that project soon.  I’m looking forward to hanging out with the girls tonight.  I hope you have a fantastic weekend.  Thanks for stopping by.

ETA:  Wow I was really tired when I wrote this post last night…I totally forgot to link the Sketch Crew Girls – D’oh!!!!!  Let’s see what everyone else has cooked up today:

Two friends came over today so we could all work on our Christmas cards.  It was just what I needed to get me going on the final batch I need! 

 I was up early, so before they came I had a chance to play the Sketch Challenge at SCS and I’m just tickled with how my card turned out!  I got this adorable Gillian F. Roberts clear stamp from Jacksonbelle Embellishments awhile back and he has been begging to get inked up!  Today’s sketch was just perfect for him!  I used some retired SU designer paper (maybe Ski Slope?  I can’t remember for sure) along with Baja Blue and Riding Hood Red cardstock.  I colored him with copics, paper pieced his scarf and added lots of texture with Flower Soft for the snow, liquid applique on his cap, stickles on his pom pom, crystal effects on the ornaments, glitter on the star, and blue candy dots along the side.  Sentiment is from the SU set Teeny Tiny Wishes.  A simple card really and I’ll be using this sketch again I’m sure!

Thanks for stopping by.

WooHoo!  Everything you’ve been seeing over the past couple of days is now available at Taylored Expressions. 

Another stamp set will be given away to blog commenters – see details at the end of my post.  Today I get to join the Baker’s Dozen again as we showcase the new Taylored Card Kits along with all of the new stamp sets available today.  You’re going to love the Taylored Card Kits as they are geared toward card makers and especially toward making it super quick and easy to make coordinated sets of cards.  All of the new release TE sets lend themselves well toward gift sets so today Taylor challenged each of us to use one of the new stamp sets along with one of the three new Taylored Card Kits to make 10 coordinating cards.

Each Taylored Card Kit includes:

10 Choice Cardstock A-2 card bases
10  A-2 envelopes
15 sheets of patterned paper sized for cardmaking at 4″ x 6″ (3 sheets each of 5 double-sided patterns)
20 sheets of 4 1/4″ x 5 1/2″ Prism cardstock (4 sheets each of 5 colors)
1 package of Kaisercraft Pearls
8 panels of Choice Cardstock size 4 1/4″ x 5 1/2″ (for images and layering)
5 yards of ribbon (2.5 yards each of 2 different styles)
1 Perfect Package Card Box

Plenty of supplies to make a gift set of 10 cards and even the Perfect Package to give it in,  plus there’s a good chance you’ll have supplies left over like I did!  My set features the brand new stamp set Sweet Occasions and the TCK Pretty Please.  My intention was to make a total of 12 cards (one set of 8 using Sweet Occasions and another set of 4 using Crafty Cuppie) by adding just one more sheet of TE Choice Snow White cardstock cut in half for 2 more card bases.  I’ve been feeling under the weather this week and I just couldn’t quite get the other set of 4 done.  In fact if you look close you’ll notice that I didn’t get the images colored on my last 2 cards in this set.  *oops*  I just hit a wall and knew I still had photos to take and a post to type!

I wanted to show you how I started on this set.  I laid out all of my card bases on the table and picked out which sheets of designer paper I would use – I wanted to have 4 pairs of matching cards.

Next I decided which solid Prism cardstock panels I wanted with which dp.  On the left you see the 4 card set that I didn’t get done.  In the upper left corner you see all the additonal pieces I had.  I could have worked those into this set of cards, but as it turned out I didn’t need those pieces because of the layouts I chose to work with, so I have enough stuff for another set of cards.  I just need to add in more white bases.  In fact as it turned out I didn’t even use whole panels of dp.  I ended up cutting each piece of dp in half and using one panel per 2 cards.  I also had plenty of ribbon and KaiserCraft pearls for at least the 12 cards.  My suggestion when you purchase one of the Taylored Card Kits is to buy a pack of the Choice Snow cardstock at the same time and you’ll be able to stretch your kit quite a bit further.

Taylor also has selected a group of 5 Copic markers to coordinate with each card kit.  Click here to see the Pretty Please Copic Kit.  I didn’t have all the markers in that kit, but here is what I ended up using and I was happy with my results:

My set of 8 is a pair of each of the 4 cards shown here.  I liked the idea of having a good amount of white space on these cards and that also had the effect of stretching my kit further.  I need to make several Christmas gifts with this stamp set *grin* so I’m very happy to have all the coordinating pieces at my fingertips.

As I was coloring my images I was thinking about how nice it is that Taylor and Nancy made sure the lines in this set are thick enough to make coloring easy and that attention was paid to how wide the open font  is for that same reason.  That was something we discussed as the set developed.  We’ve all had images that were too narrow and difficult to color and we wanted to be sure to make this a fun one to work with.  I’ve now colored these images with Copics, a watercolor brush and with Prismacolor pencils and they’ve all been a breeze!

Here are some individual close ups.  These are super easy peasy cards.  Each has just a little glitter or stickles added for some sparkle and all of the images are up on foam tape from TE.

Come blog hoppin’ with me to see what the Baker’s Dozen girls have cooked up with the Taylored Card Kits and all the new stamp sets today.

And now it’s time to go SHOPPING!  Have a great weekend!