Filling up the Week of Days Off

Just a round up of some pictures from the week I've had off, starting with these farm fresh eggs that were gifted to me by a student.  I just love the colors!

Thank You notes I've been working on.

This is the book shelf that HWNSNBP made for our grandson as requested by his parents.  He did a wonderful job on it and they are very happy with the finished product now in place.  

Our holiday celebration on the eve of Christmas Eve found us missing our littlest celebrator and his mom and dad as they made an unexpected trip to the emergency room on the way to our house.  Everything turned out okay and we tried to get everyone together for this past weekend but illness in two households cancelled those plans.  So when our visitors couldn't come Saturday, we decided to visit the Raptor Trust.  

I couldn't get any good pictures of the snowy owl this time.  I think they have replaced the netting in its cage and neither of the cameras I had with me would give a clear enough picture.  Maybe this is a sign that I will be able to find one on the beach this winter and get my bucket list photo in the wild.

My good friend J gave me this wonderful blank book.  Don't you just love that cover!  It's got the largest pages of all my journal/sketch books and I'm looking forward to filling it up this year.

I started off with a collage of some memorabilia I collected during the month of December.  Parts of cards, postage stamps, gift tags, notes to myself, etc.  This might become a monthly thing.....

We'll be spending our traditional New Year's Eve with our Table 7 crew tonight.  There are games planned, food ordered, stories and plans ready to be shared which promises to be another memorable start to a new year.

Sharing Their Christmas Card Creativity

A few of my card-making blogging friends sent me some beautiful cards this year that I just had to share.  And strangely, it's like they color-coordinated them too.

This card came from Sunshine in New Zealand.  You know it's summer there, which I sometimes forget.  How different it would be to celebrate true Christmas in the summer.  

Sunshine used this sweet deer die in gold and added some little jewels to his antlers.  It's gorgeous!

This card came from a fellow Jersey Girl - Lauren, who has a way with layers and layers of vintage goodies.

Just look at this stunning Christmas snowflake flower.  And the stitching around the sheet music!  Like I said, she has a wonderful way with layers.

Flying across the Atlantic from Ireland is this beauty made by Sabrina.  Would you believe that the bird is made from fun foam and a Guinness beer can!  She really rocked this one. 

The placement of the graphics on the can and where it was used on the bird is simply genius!

Thank you all ladies.  You truly have made my heart sing with joy this Christmas!

A Couple More Christmas Cards and Tags

Of course, leading up to Christmas I realized that there were a couple of cards for special people that I had to finish.  This first one was for my daughter's boyfriend who became her fiance on Christmas Eve.  I used one of my star ornaments on an embossed panel.   

This one was for HWNSNBP.  Normally you probably see cardinals among those trees, however, I thought it more appropriate to add bluebirds - two of them.  

These were some of the tags that I made for Christmas gifts.  I love these little Polar Peekers!

I even used them for our grandson's Christmas card!

I received a couple of beautiful handmade cards also which I will do a separate post on soon.

Merry Christmas!

BELIEVE

The Christmas Elf Strikes Again - 2018

Here's the recipe:

Cut out a stack of these die cuts while watching Hallmark Channel movies.

Smoosh some Color Burst paints onto watercolor paper being careful not to get any on the back.

Take the die cuts and..........

Glue them onto the watercolor paper.

Cut away the excess from the back.   Punch holes in the top and add a hanger (fishing line).

Add clear gel pen stars or white gel pen snowflakes and a silver Christmas star if desired.

Or leave the background to speak for itself.

Add a message or sentiment to the back in gel pen.  Initial and date if desired.

Sneak into teacher/staff mailboxes the night before the last day of school.

7-Days in Black and White Challenge

This was a Facebook challenge - to post a picture in black and white daily for 7 days with no people.  My blogging friend Clare challenged me.  Sometimes seeing things in black and white brings out details that might otherwise go unnoticed.  No explanations - just the photos I took in the order of the days.

Adding to the Forest

Sorry for the lack of posting these last couple of weeks.  It's the busy season of getting things ready for the holidays.  One of the things that I wanted to get out of the way, so to speak, was these trees.  As you can imagine, even though they are die cut, there is a lot of scrap created.  Some of it very small as I tend to want to squish the very most out of every postcard advert that I use.  So my workspace and particularly the floor in that room get full of those scraps and I just wanted to get them done so I could clean it up and not track it around the house.  

I brought one of them into school for my desk and now people are bringing me junk mail from home, so this project will probably continue after the holidays and I just might have to stock up for next year and auction some completed ones off.

One last picture to share.  This little guy watching "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" for the first time with his big bowl of popcorn and yes, that's what's left of his first black eye.  No fighting involved, just a couple of little boy's heads knocking.    

Scribble Picnic - Say Goodbye to Autumn

Well, our Scribble Picnic theme for this fortnight is GOODBYE AUTUMN and I think we have.  At least here in New Jersey.  We've already had our first snow the week before Thanksgiving and it was an early Thanksgiving at that.  So my piece below is a little after-the-fact.  

We caught a little of what was left of the color on the way to Delaware for Thanksgiving dinner at our daughter's house.  We had made that trip a few weeks earlier and the colors were so intense and beautiful the time of day that we were traveling.  I do think the angle of the sun during the fall really highlights the show of color.  

That same night on the way home we played tag with the full moon.

Flipping back to the day of the snow - we had an early dismissal at school and when I got home the birds were all taking their turns at the bird feeders.  I happened to catch this bluebird as it was waiting it's turn.

Time to check out who else joined the picnic this week.  If you'd care to jump in, our theme due in two weeks is "A Few of My Favorite Things".  Sounds like fun, doesn't it!

Jingle Belles - More Figgy Pudding for the Christmas Feast

Well, with all the Thanksgiving feasting behind us, I had one more idea for another Jingle Belles card - this one a little healthier than the last.  Some holiday fruit.  Pears and strawberries fussy cut from a sheet of scrapbook paper in a filigree box made from the remnants of a fancy pastry box.  I stuck in lots of die cut greens, a twig wreath, and some self-created candles with flames.  The paper the fruit was cut from had a black background and it really popped so I thought I'd use black here hopping to get the same effect.  I edged that black paper with a glitter pen, and the sentiment is another die cut out of the pastry box paper.  

I know there's a Russian name/technique for brightly colored fruit and flowers on black but I couldn't think of it.  Originally this was to be a wreath with the pink and orange flowers from that sheet of paper also. I spent a day trying to remember the words Della Robbia, but when I looked at some photos of Della Robbia, I didn't think it lent itself to Christmas that well.   These these other dies were right in front of me on my work table and they coaxed me into using them - no shouting involved this time.  It was like putting a floral arrangment together and IRL the greens are very loose.

So now I will visit the other feast offerings at the Jingle Belles blog.  This is the last challenge for the year and I'm so grateful to Steph and Lauren for doing this all year and helping to keep a little of the crazy out of December.  Jingle Belles really do rock!

Happy Thanksgiving

Jingle Belles - Bring Us Some Figgy Pudding

Festive Food - that's the prompt for this fortnight's Jingle Belles Challenge.  Do you think that my bacon is festive enough adorned with the tiniest of holly sprigs?   I actually did stamp them with Ink on 3's Fadeout ink so I could color them with no lines with my Prismacolor pencils.  Then, whilst watching a bio on Netflix about Hedy Lamarr (she was more than just an actress!), I fussy cut them out to add to what I was assuming was bacon on this paper I found at Michael's.  (I had HWNSNBP's input on what he thought it looked like and he did agree with me.)

 

 

I used the pig stamp from a SU set and the sentiment was from a Unity KOTM which I altered to say HOGS instead of HUGS.  (I really was trying to come up with something punny regarding BAKIN and BACON but I struck out with that.)

 

I know this isn't much of a layout and frankly, I'm not even sure who I will send this to, but the idea for it just kind of took residence in my head until I got it out of my system.  I promise to make another card with festive food before the due date - hopefully it will be fruitful!