Christmas Card Stamp Camp Approaching

The snow may be falling but it's time for a camp-out. Okay, it's a camp-in at Oasis Angel Studio. I have put together 10 fabulous Christmas cards that your friends and family will love. First Camp date is on Friday, November 18th from 7-10pm. $15 for 10 cards.  Bring some of your favorite Christmas cookies to share and I will brew up some hot apple cider and we will stamp out some cards. Second Camp date is on Sunday December 11th 1-4pm.  RSVP Here    Here's a sneak peak of one of the cards...

Birthday Card on the Fly...

I have been getting the reminder message on my computer about my Dad's birthday coming up on the 23rd for over a week and kept snoozing it but woke up this morning and thought yeah, I better get to it. So, I called on the Cricut Art Philosophy to help me make a simple and fast birthday card for a male. I used the Celebration stamp set that is one of the 3 sets that comes with your Cricut Art Philosophy cartridge. I pulled out some coordinating paper from the Typeset Paper Pack, grabbed my Bamboo and Chocolate inks and got to cutting.

I made the mistake of cutting my green mat at 2.25" and knew it was too big when I pulled it out. Oh, duh, it should have been 1.75" to go with the 1.5" stamped image I was going to use. Okay, so sleeping last night on the chair wasn't the greatest thanks to my hubbie snoring up a storm. In any case, I thought to myself 'how can I make this work'. I used it and just trimmed off the edges. I used the words 'Fun, Love, Joy' from the Celebration stamp set and placed them all together randomly on a block to create my worded background. Stamped 'Best wishes to you' on the inside and all done in about 15 minutes. Yeah. Now it's time to get ready for work but I will be back playing with some new Close to My Heart stuff that came yesterday!

Snow Inspiration

This past Saturday we woke up to a blizzard, at least it seemed that way at our house. You can drive 1 mile south and it's not snow, it's rain. It makes living here interesting to say the least. But the snow kept me from getting out to do errands and in the studio to craft. I had just recevied the Wonderland Paper Pack from Close to My Heart and was just inspired to create using this wintery paper. I decided to try making another magnet card so that the recipient can take off the front piece and use as a fridge magnet. It's a card and a gift all in one.  I dropped it in the mail box on Monday to get it in for the World Card Making contest but discovered that the post office was closed on Monday. Great! They specifically said it has to be postmarked by Oct 10th but the darn post office wasn't open.  I will see about emailing them and ask that they consider counting my card towards the contest even though the post mark is going to say the 11th. I don't think they realized it was Columbus day either.

I did lots of embossing on this card including edging the papers in ink and applying sparkle embossing powder so I would have a sparkly edge. I found some pre-made silver bows that I had in my stash forever that worked perfectly. I will have only two of these available to make at the Project Playground on Oct 23rd so 2 lucky ladies will be able to come and make but if you really like this all you need is the Wonderland Paper Pack, I Believe Stamp Set, Blue ink, Sparkle embossing powder and some white card stock.  I would gladly give you the card recipe so you can make this wonderful winter card. www.ctmh.com/janinerobertson

World Card Making Day is October 1st

I have been playing around some more and creating more card projects with my newest stamps and paper packs from Close to My Heart.  I am looking forward to crafting all day on Saturday and hope that some people will join me and keep me company. I love the fall season the most of all seasons because of the colors. There is something about oranges, golds, reds that just speak to me so much.  I have been having fun with the Dreamin paper pack which you can also find available as a paper kit on Studio J. Kits really do make putting together a scrapbook page so easy. No color coordinating to worry about! I created a two page layout with the Dreamin paper pack and used the Trinity alaphabet stamp set and the owl is from the Pair-a-Phrase September special double stamp set that I got free with my $75 order. It's not too late if you want to get one of these.  http://www.janinerobertson.myctmh.com/   Okay, time to get back to bed. Menapause is not fun but I have to get back to bed and get my beauty sleep.  I hope to get to Dreamin of some more creations I will make on Saturday.

New Products and Tools Give Boost to Creativity!

I am a so guilty of spending way too much on anything to do with cards and scrapbooking. I admit it! I am addicted! But the plain truth is that new products, new tools, new techniques, new craft magazines arriving in the mail all give great boosts to my creativity. I started playing around with my templates I got at the Expo this past summer and am tickled by what I came up with. My friends at Project Playground last week, were wonderful in giving me their thoughts.  I got this awesome tree template and wanted to play around with it. Mind you, this is out of my realm of expertise. I was embarking on new territory using a template. I finally got some glitter and flock at Joann's so I was ready to give it a try like I had seen at the Expo. Well, my first tree, I just did with green flock. Cool but not good enough, So, friendly advise said go with fall colors and I could because I got a whole set of glitter and flock in lot of colors. So, I decided to use several colors of glitter and some flock to and was so totally BLOWN AWAY by how it came out. I just love it. Well, I had to improve upon it so I added some distressing ink from Tim Holtz but wasn't quite satisfied so I did the distressed background first with spritz of perfect pearls and started to add the tree. The paper was a little warped from the wetting and heat setting so my template did not want to lay flat but I gave it a go and thought, "let's see what happens". OH MY GOSH! It just got SO much more beautiful. That warpness in the paper allowed more of the paste to get through the template design that it made the tree look fuller. Well, I loved the final outcome but found it only really looked awesome in full light because the red background blended with the red in the tree too much so I did it all again with tea dye color distressed ink from Tim Holtz. Yeah! I think I finally got it the way I like it most but they all look good in their own way too. It's never boring trying new things that is for sure.  What are you wanting to try out in your crafting?

Never Under Estimate the Power of a Scrap!

Yesterday, on my lunch break at work, I took a look around the Spellbinders website to check into this new Presto Punch machine and looked in their gallery for ideas.  Well, I ended up getting a bad virus from the site onto my work computer and it is looking like they will have to re-build my computer. Great!? But the good news is I did get inspired to try the concept of using multiple spellbinders dies to create a card. So, this morning I looked at the dies that I currently have and saw a few scrap card stock pieces on the table and decided to use those and go from there.  I am very pleased with the results.  But as many of you may have already figured out I am not one to let scraps go to waste.  I looked at what was left over and ended up making three more cards of various designs utilizing what I had left. So the thought came to me that you really can Never Under Estimate the Power of a Scrap.  You may end up making your best card ever from scraps leftover from the last card you made! I have tried to organize my scraps but that is still a work in progress. I do have a left over envelope box I use for card sized scraps and another little basket for smaller scraps that could be used to create an photo corner or other embellishment piece. I also started a box of 1/2 paper strips because I like utilizing strips of paper in my designs for both cards and scrapbooks.  I have two over-flowing boxes full of larger scrap pieces that I need to get to and do something more with before they take over my whole studio. I have Major Mom coming to my house on Monday evening to do an evaluation. I heard them speak this week at my networking group and realized that maybe it was time to get some help before the clutter takes over everything. So, dig out some scraps today and see what you can come up with! You might be pleasantly surprised.