colourQ 167

I was a little intimidated by the sketch this week at CAS(E) This Sketch, but I really wanted to challenge myself and see what I could come up with.  Well inspiration struck Sunday night when I sat at my stamping table and contemplated the great colors from colourQ that Arielle has served up for your challenge pleasure!  The two make beautiful music together, I think!

I know these colors are supposed to invoke images of snowmen and all other kinds of holiday cheeriness, but I needed a little break from Christmas so I hunted around in my stamp room looking for inspiration.  When what to my wondering eyes should appear but a stamp set called Inspired By Nature that has these wonderful grass images.

Once I stamped the grass I turned to Summer Silhouettes and stamped some little flowers in Sage Shadow, a wispy stem in Always Artichoke and topped it off with some little Real Red flowers.  I came this close to adding a sentiment to the bottom of the card but changed my mind at the last minute because I thought it would clutter up this clean and simple design.  Good decision, I say to myself!

So head on over to colourQ and check out the cards from our amazing design team.  There's an awful lot of inspiration to be seen over there so don't miss out!

Noel for LIM97 & FabFri08

This week's one layer challenge "in a row" at Less is More worked perfectly for me with the color challenge at Fab Friday.

I spent last night addressing all my Christmas cards and although I had just enough, I'm worried that I may have forgotten someone so I thought it might be a good idea to make a few extras "just in case."  This card is one of those extras!  I like this stamp of lights on a string because it reminds me of the big lights we always had on our tree when I was a kid.  And those lights were always the most improbable colors which is why I thought this fun color challenge was perfect!  This stamp is actually pretty small and I stamped it four times to achieve this look.  I didn't do such a great job of matching up the tails of the light string, but I think it looks ok.

Today I hope to get my Christmas presents wrapped and the last of my decorations up, then it's smooth sailing until the big day!  Thanks for stopping by!

Tis the Season for FTL220 & CTD221

Every once in a while I'll see a color challenge that makes me want to drop everything and participate. That's pretty much what happened to me when I saw the awesome colors at Color Throwdown this week.  There was no way I was going to miss this challenge, unfortunately, I wasn't able to make a card until Friday night.  I just got a few washi tapes lot of washi tape and I've been anxious to try them out on some Christmas cards when along comes this great FTL sketch which pretty much screamed "please use washi tape on me!"

This is a pretty simple card using the tree image from Perfect Presentation (one of those retired sets that I'll never part with) stamped in Gumball Green.  I added a few wee snowflakes from the aptly named Snowflakes and once I stamped them I wish I hadn't.  I was going to color some pearls to use as small accents but didn't have a red sharpie so I opted for this stamp instead.  I think the pearls would have been prettier.  

I am committed to finishing up wrapping my Christmas gifts and getting my Christmas cards ready for mailing this weekend, so I'm going to hole up in the house and get busy!  Wish me luck!  And thanks for stopping by!

Sparkle for CASology 22 and Cardabilities 64

You would think that a challenge about sparkles would be pretty easy at this time of year, but apparently my mojo has gone on walkabout because I had a hard time with the CASology Sparkle challenge.  I spent some time at my crafting table on Tuesday night and despite drawing, cutting, stamping and dreaming I had nothing.  So I took a little break, which means I went to bed then went to work the next day, and sat back at my table Wednesday.  Armed with the Cardabilities sketch I finally got some inspiration and made a sparkly snowflake creation.

And how cool is it that I actually have a stamp that says "sparkle?"  It's from Warm Words and I'm pretty sure this is the first time it's seen any ink.  The snowflakes are cut in Silver Glimmer and Champagne Glimmer paper and I stamped the sentiment directly on some silver striped washi tape.  Super simple and super sparkly!

I've recently been reminded that Christmas is slightly less than three weeks away (yikes) and I'm beginning to feel like I'm not quite prepared.  I've almost got my shopping done, but I think I'm running behind in my wrapping and tag-making duties.  Hopefully this weekend, I can get caught up.  I'd really like to enjoy the magic of the season rather than worrying about shopping and all the things that Christmas is NOT!

Thanks for stopping by and I hope that you take some time to enjoy this holiday season!

Freshly Made Sketches 64

Hello!  It's Wednesday so that means there's another great sketch at Freshly Made Sketches!  This week Cindy has created a fabulous sketch that I know you're going to love!

Isn't this a great sketch for showing off layers of pretty DSP?  I thought so!  I used some pretty paper called Wintergreen (that has been long-retired) and added some zig-zag stitching to the Always Artichoke layer.  I layered the snowflake layer on some Sage Shadow (which I saved just because I've got oodles of this DSP still hanging around) then jazzed it up by layering that on some Cherry Cobbler.  I struggled for a bit on what to do for the round element of the sketch and changed my mind a bunch of times before I decided to use this round stamp from Sweet Season.  I added a red glimmer brad in the center to make it a little more festive.

I hope you're inspired by the amazing creations of the Freshly Made Sketches design team and can join us in the gallery this week.  Just click here to check them out!

colourQ 166

Are you feeling blue?  I sure hope so, because this week at colourQ Arielle has cooked up some fantastic shades of blue for you!

My first thought when I saw these colors was snowflakes.  This lead to thoughts of snowmen.  Then I saw the latest sketch at retro sketches and was inspired to go in a completely different direction.  

I stayed true to the sketch and used some simple graphic shapes in the various shades of blue for my backgkround.  I love how they let the sentiment be the real showstopper.  I left them un-embellished and sneaked in a small circle from the super-fabulous Silver Glimmer Paper for a little pizzazz.  

The colourQ design team has created quite an amazing batch of bluesy cards to show you so be sure to head on over to check them out!

                                           

Christmas Tags!

I think it's a sign of the season that the challenges this week at CAS-ual Fridays and Stampin' Royalty were to create a gift tag or to use a tag on a project.  I've been trying to stay on top of my Christmas projects this year and I was already in tag-making mode so it was kind of fun to be able to share one of my tags on a challenge site.  To keep things interesting I used the colors from Color Throwdown and the sketch at iSpy.

The Tempting Turquoise with the obvious Christmas colors of Lucky Limeade and Cherry Cobbler threw me for a bit of a loop and I considered a couple of different images on my tag before I thought it might be fun to combine the red and green with some blue snowflakes.  There are actually two snowflakes here layered together and the top one has been covered in Dazzling Diamonds to add some glitz.  At the last minute I added an Ice Circles Rhinestone Brad, which looks way better in person that it appears here.

The holiday season is truly upon us because later today I'm off to Borderland State Park to help out at a holiday concert.  Time to Jingle Those Bells!

Jolly Old St. Nick for CTS7 & PDCC159

Now that Thanksgiving is over it's full steam ahead to Christmas.  I seem to have caught the Christmas bug and have begun making tags for my gifts and I'm making cards fast and furiously to make sure I have enough for mailing.   Today I've made a card with the colors at The Play Date Cafe and I used the sketch from CAS(E) This Sketch.

As I was putting this post together and I uploaded the picture of my card, I realized that I completely forgot the little scallops on the side of the main layer.  Yikes!   Thankfully, it was a pretty easy fix to adhere some half circles that I punched from Red Glimmer Paper and take a new photo to upload.  

Of course, St. Nicholas is front and center on a card that features colors like these.  And on a side note, I think I had a tricycle that looked an awful lot like the one in the graphic.  Only mine was purple.  Dark, sparkly purple.  I wonder what happened to it...

Thanks for stopping by!