Tag Challenge

One of my favorite holiday activities is checking out the 12 Tags of Christmas with a Feminine Twist 2012 on the Ellen Hutson blog. This year, I have been inspired by this tag done by Paula Cheney done on Dec 9 and shown below mine. She has great instructions that I most followed - with just a few substitutions here and there.

 I love Paula's use of Tim Holtz products; with lovely, soft colors - and a bit of sparkle. I don't have the wreath die (aren't you surprised), but substituted his snowman - one of my favorite holiday images. I also used the bird and holly mover and shaper dies and a circle die and substitued the snow embossing folder for the poinsettia.

 I really like Paula's use of Spun Sugar, but thought that broken china was a better choice for snow. The bird was colored in Victorian Velvet stain. I picked up the die cut for the JOY when I was in St Pete for a class at Whim So Doodle last weekend. I  am still waiting for my order of the platinum glitter so I used another gold glitter in it's place; it came out great. I love her directions for using the powder glue - I had it in my stash, but this was the first time I have liked the results. It is still not as permanent as I would like for glitter, but forthis tag it worked great on these small pieces of  greenery. I also like the way she used rolled glue dots to attach the narrow letters. I added a layer of Antique Linen Distress Stickles to the bird and the JOY. All pieces were distressed with Vintage Photo.

Journal Love

Anita, Elaine and I headed off to Whim So Doodle in St. Pete yesterday for a wonderful journal class with Stephanie Ackerman. She is so warm and friendly; we learned lots of techniques and her class is creative and stress-free. You can find her blog here. These are pictures that I took of our time being creatively messy.

Cyndi and Stephanie

My tags showing embellishment techniques that we learned. I am going to include them in my December Daily Journal instead of putting into an art journal.

 I love the cover of my altered book. I think I am going to gut the inside totally and just use the cover. I saw the directions on pinterest for altering books - I think I pinned it. I don't care for the inside appearance of an altered book. I would rather have a more flexible binding where I can add/shift and change out pages when I want.

 

Here is my December Daily journal page for this day showing some of the cool collage and embellishing  techniques that we did in class.

 I created an envelope this morning to store receipts and class notes - aren't you surprised to hear that I already typed up my class notes. I had to before I forgot how to interpret my scribbles.

The girls and I are heading off to MFT for another Road Trip next weekend to Mingle and Jingle!

MFTWSC99

It has been awhile since I have had time to play with the weekly sketch challenge. I made the first card using Thankful Leaves and then decided to use the same dp and ink up a new image: PI Angel for another card. She is stamped in memento on copic blending cs. The dp is MME: Lost and Found and called Portobello Road. Dies used on the card include MFT's tab, crochet border and snowflakes. SU cs is baja and gray. Rhinestones, dimensionsl, stickles, and a SU snowflake embossing folder. She is paper-pieced and colored in copics.

Her skin is E50, E00, E11, R20 and BV00. Her hair is E33, YR23 and E39. Her wings are layered and colored in  C1, C3 and BV00. A sakura stardust pen and aqua brush were used for some sparkle. Shoes are C1, C3 and BV25. Her dress is paper-pieced and shaded in C1, C3 and BG70. The ground is E50, E43 and 0. The background is BG70, C1 and 0. Her halo is a spica glitter pen: sand and gold.

Thankful

I am so thankful for life's many blessings. Family came together last weekend to celebrate my husband's 60th birthday; it was so wonderful to have family gather from near and far. Thanksgiving day was quiet and a small gathering of friends.

I spent today playing with my new air compressor. It came in a couple of weeks ago, but I haven't really done more than turn it on. I made the following cards:

The sympathy card is done with a masked oval window using V15, BG72 and G99. The SU image is stamped in Memento on SU whisper white cs. The image is layered on SU plum and then mounted on whisper white.

Happy Holidays uses SU artichoke ink on whisper white cs and stars my all-time favorite SU stamp set: Lovely as a Tree. I air brushed copics (Y21, Y28 and BG72) to create the sky. I used MFT's new die: Snow Drifts with an edging of Frosted Lace stickles and a retired SU greeting stamped in artichoke. The card front was spritzed with Perfect Pearls mist, layered on artichoke cs and mounted on whisper white.

I'm so Grateful from MFT's stamp/die set: Thankful Leaves is stamped with SU Suede ink on Vanilla cs and mounted on Crumb. A band of suede cs is embossed in an SU embossing folder. The leaves are cut from SU text paper using the MFT Fall Leaves die . They are air-brushed using E49, E35, R29, Y15 and YG97. They are mounted on the suede band along with SU crumb tulle and seam binding and a button.

The next card also used the MFT Fall Leaves stamp/die set. The layout is MFTWSC99. I air-brushed E49 and BG72 around a leaf die cut on the main image and also distressed the edges of each piece of paper. The script from Thankful Leaves is stamped in SU suede. The dp is from MME: Lost and Found called Portobello Road. The card front is layered on SU cs: suede and mounted on a card base of baja. SU crumb tulle and baja seam binding accent the image. Other MFT dies include a lace border and oval tab.

November Cult Challenge

This month's cult sketch challenge use Mojo Monday #259. I used MFT PI Birthday Girl. She is stamped on Copic x-press-it with Memento Black. The card base is SU: Marina Mist and the dp is MME-A Mother's Love. Dies used include: MFT flag, flouish and layered rose. A PTI doily and leaf are also used. Her dress is paperpieced and colored with copics. Dimensionals were used under the dress; I remembers to shade under the dress with W1 this time. Stickles and a pearl were used in the center of the rose.




Copics used for the skin were E50, E00, E11, R20 and BV00. Hair is  Y21, Y35 and E33. The balloon is BG72, BG75 and BG78. Her shoes, dress shadows and ground were W1, W3 and W5. The background is shaded with BG70 and 0.

I also used this sketch (in reverse this time) to make a Thank You card for Anita. She made me the most beautiful beaded doll. You can see her at the end of the beading page. This time I used MFT PI: Blowing Bubbles that just came in my last order. The dp is another from MME callled Bluebell. The cs is copic x-press-it and SU: Indigo and Starfruit. The dies used are MFT doily oval, nestie scallop oval and oval; a MFT flower and a MS border punch. Also used are dimensionals, Stickles (Scattered Straw-for the flower center) and a Sakura Stardust gel pen (blended with an aqua pen over the top of the bubbles). Her skirt is paperpieced and she is colored with copics.










I used  the same colors as above for her skin and hair and background . Her shirt is BG70, BG11 picking up a bit of BG72 and W1. W1 is also used for the ground and skirt shadow. The bubbles are BG70, BG10 and BV00. Her socks are W and 0.

Odds and Ends

Still crazy busy at school; I guess it's just going to be one of those years. I haven't colored in a while, but I did finish up some projects this weekend. Check out my Charm page for an update with the rest of the "Human" theme and the first of the "Patriotic" Theme. I finished my Patriotic charms yesterday;  now I need to get the packaging done. It's our last swap. I have really enjoyed doing this swap, but am glad to take a break. I think that 6 is my limit for members of a charm swap; more is a chore.

We had our last Spirit Doll swap yesterday. I gave this doll to Elaine. Check out the bottom of my Beading page to view all of these treasures. I can't believe the work Anita did for my baby!

What is going to be our next challenge swap? Let's schedule it for January, please; I have Christmas to plan.

I have been spending a bunch of time on Pinterest; check out my boards: http://pinterest.com/celliott53/

Charlotte really wanted to be a part of our swap - actually, she wanted the yummy carrot cookies that Anita made.

 

Cult Challenge and Birthday Celebrations

Jan chose the sketch this month: SCCSC134 and I thought it was only fitting that I use the sketch to make her birthday card - with flamingos of course. The image is from Custer's Last Stamp: Flamingo Standing Tall CR1058-L. The dp is MME: Nolstalgia. The cs is copic x-press-it with black Memento. SU cs is also used: blush and pool. Pearls are used for embellishments as are retired SU shell stamps. MFT dies were used: fish tail flags and mini doilies. I think the flamingo die is from

Copics are used to color the images: Y21 and Y26. R20, R22 and R14. E30, E33 and 0 for the ground. The background dots are BG11, G00, Y21, E50 and R00. The "dot" background technique is one that I learned at my copic certification class. I am not sure if I like it better than the one that I normally use.

We celebrated both Jan and Joyce's birthdays tonight with cake and more raspberry slushes. I hope they like their presents - I made them each a "December Daily Smash Book." I really enjoyed writing in mine last year and have been planning these presents for a while; my first plan was to make these over the summer-needless to say- I operated on plan B: get them done by their birthdays. I used 31 printed, one-sided pieces of cardstock. On the white side, I spritzed with perfect pearl mists; stamped and embossed the date, and decorated with a strip of dp. Jan's is in blue and silver and Joyce received the earth tones. I included a variety (sizes, colors, papers, designs) of embossed envelopes and decorated a number of tags. I also included a folder of embellishments - many are die cuts along with some stamped and colored images - for them to use to personalize their pages. I had so much fun making their "card candy." I have included a slide show of some pages from their books.

St Augustine Treats

Just getting ready for our monthly stamp club meeting. Our challenge this month was to create a Halloween Treat Exchange. I found my idea on pinterest. I love how it came out. The 'skirt' at the top is black cs cut with the top-note die the folded in half and embellished with the Holtz large rosette cut from dp and has ink blended around the edge. The rosette is layered with a scallop punch and the verse is from SU. The striped ribbon is also from SU. The shoes are just cut, embossed and decorated with trim and a button. There was only one slight problem: peanut MMs do not easily fit the skinny cello bags. I had to pick through the bags and find ones that fit. The regular MM are too small and I couldn't find any of the fat ones; and I would prefer another color. Of course, if I hadn't left it to the last minute..... all in all, I liked how it turned out.

I plan to take my camera to the meeting and will add pictures of other treats - if Jan reminds me to get the camera out of my bag.

Inky Fingers

The cult came together yesterday to get inky. We worked on creating backgrounds for our art journals. Jan catered - delicious BBQ and raspberry adult slushes. We laughed from 9 to 5 and made a wonderful mess. I really love creating the backgrounds using sprays and stencils. Anita came over again today to finish up some pages. I completed the first page in my journal - I thought it was the "perfect" words, my favorite colors, some doodling, copic coloring and of course - glitter! I intend to fill this book with inspirational words.

Here are a couple of pictures of of play day.

It didn't take long to get inky fingers.

MFTWSC#92

It's seems like forever since I have had time to color a weekly challenge. For this birthday card I used MFT: Lil Pumpkin. She is stamped on copic x-press-it with black memento ink. The dp is from BoBunny: Apple Cider that I picked up on our last cult road trip. The cs is from SU: expresso and gumball. I used nestie circle and scallop dies and only partial cut the circle so the pumpkin can extend past the border. The ribbon is from my stash.

She is paper pieced and colored with copics. Markers used include: E30, E21, E11 and R02 for skin with BV00 for cast shadows. Her hair is YR23, Y28, and E39. Her paper-pieced dress is shaded with YR23. The stem is YG25, Y28 and YG17. The pumpkin is R23 and YR15 as a base with shading done with YR18 and YR68. The background is Y000 and YR0000. Her hair barette and dress heart is colored with a Melon spica glitter pen.

MFTGUESTDT1012

I used this month's sketch to make a card for my friend, Beth, who was voted Teacher of the Year at our school. She is a terrific math teacher. I stamped MFT ALM "An Apple for Teacher" on neenah cs with Memento black ink. The sentimenta are MFT's:"Teacher's Pet" and "Clearly Sentimental about Teaching." The apple is from PTI. The dp is from Echo Park: Happy Days. Our school colors are red and black and the graph paper background is perfect for a math teacher. The cs is from SU: red and black. The red ribbon is from Ellen Hudson. Fishtail flags stax and a MFT star border die are used. I used the negative part of the star border along the bottom edge. I partially cut one of the smaller rounded banner stax dies to extend the length to fit the longer ALM image without adding unwanted width.

She is colored in copics: Skin is E21, E11, E13 and R02. I am trying to use the darker tones like Colleen suggested in our class. The hair is YR23, E13 and E37. Her shirt is E40 and E42 and her shoes and skirt is C3, C5, C7 and C9. The apple is YR21, R14, R24, R29 and R39. The leaf and stem are YR23 and E37; YG25, YG63, YG95.

OSW Cult Challenge

Two weeks ago we decided to stamp a half sheet of paper using the SU stamp set: By the Seashore. I bought this new set because I love shells, but haven't been real thrilled with the cards I have seen using it. So, I challenged the Cult to make some DP using this set and their choice of colors and create at least three cards. We are going to share our cards/directions this week. I used Baja, Midnight, Crumb and a touch of Suede ink on Vanilla cs. I used Crumb or Baja for the card base and then layered with Midnight and Suede and Baja (one uses Pool because I grabbed the wrong color!)

We all used the new set and then raided my stamp drawers for a smaller shell image that we used to fill in the blanks. One of the problems with this set is that there isn't much variation in size or texture. I also dug out my air splatter tool and sponges to add some depth and interest. I used an SU embossing folder and a variety of SU ribbons; as well as, a variety of punches and dies and sentiments (new and old) to complete the cards. I have included the cutting diagram if you want to create your own pretty paper.

A

B

C

 

D

E

F

 

 Here are some of the other cards made by the cult:

Joyce

 

 Kitty - with lots of nice glitter

Anita and one from Jan