Sharing Their Creativity - Photo Challenge/Cold

I've been on a holiday break since the day before Christmas and you would think that I would have had this done by now, but no.  There was a little bit of procraftination going on here. Seriously, it's not that I didn't do anything, there were just a few other things that took precedence, like catching up with friends, after Christmas shopping, and yes, well, eating and napping.  

So tonight, after I cut out all the parts for my holiday thank you cards, I sat down with my ice cube snowman and my Frozen Falls soft yogurt for one last indulgence before getting back into a regular routine (getting ready to go back to work on Monday!).  Here is my photo for today's prompt - COLD.  Note to self: frozen yogurt does not taste that great after eating pineapple!

Thank goodness for my Silhouette.  I found a suitable Happy New Year card to use for my quick thank you's - some to be mailed, but most to be slipped into staff members' mailboxes on Monday.

And, as I normally do - I wanted to highlight the handmade cards that I received from friends this year.

This first one is from Lauren B. - she is one of the Jingle Belles and her cards are always stunning.

This one arrived from Sunshine in New Zealand - I love her color scheme here and that candle die is sooooooooo pretty.  

My SU upline Debbie sent me this gorgeous card.  The center of that poinsettia is gold glitter paper.  And those sequins just add the right amount of additional sparkle.

Sabrina sent me this stair-step card.  Each one of those blocks is a beauty in itself.

Even the tops of them are decorated!  Sabrina is always trying new card techniques and it sure looks like she mastered this one.

Sabrina is also a very accomplished knitter.  She knitted this beautiful "French Hen" for me.  I love, love, love her!!! (And check out that handmade tag too!)

These ladies have blessed me with their talent time and time again and I am so very grateful.  Thank you all!

Happy February Birthday

Today is my son's birthday.   As I was reading about a friend recovering from surgery yesterday, I was thinking about all the surgeries that my son had to go through early in his life and how brave he was.  If I could have spared him any of that pain, surely I would have but I'm very proud of how he has put all that behind and has grown to be a strong and caring man.  Happy Birthday Chris!

The card that I made for him had lots of texture on it. I splurged a little at Mike's and bought some cork and faux leather papers which I thought might come in handy for masculine cards and I think that it worked.  It didn't photograph very well but the base of the card is black.

Another project that I recently completed was this Winterberry shadow box.  It's all paper.  I found the cut file and was intending to have it made for HWNSNBP for Valentine's Day but the snow storm last Thursday put the kabosh on that - I needed 12 x 12 paper for this so I didn't actually cut it until Valentine's Day and finished putting it together over the weekend.  I really like how both of these projects came out.  I think I might be duplicating them both soon.

Jingle Belles - Text Me (and I'll tell you what I got for Christmas)

I got a new toy tool for Christmas - a Silhouette Cameo.  I had been pondering whether to get one for over a year and finally this past November when the Black Friday deals were coming out I told HWNSNBP  that he could get me the Cameo and if he didn't think he wanted to spend that much money to let me know and I was going to buy one for myself.  Well, he is very good to me and he did order it but I was not allowed to open it until Christmas which was fine with me because I would not have had the time to learn enough about it before the holidays anyway.  So, where am I going with this?  Oh yeah, I started experimenting a little a couple of weeks ago and then when the Jingle Belles challenge of "Text Me" came out I thought it would be a perfect opportunity to put my new toy tool to use.

You can get lost in the Silhouette on-line store looking at all the possibilities, but finally I settled on a couple and the Jingle Belles tree above was what I went with for this challenge - to use text as our main focal point on our card(s).  I put my apprentice skills to work maneuvering the image and then pressed the right buttons and the lovely toy tool did all the cutting for me!  

This is actually only part of the tree - the file has the complete verse of the song but I wanted to be able to read the words easily and luckily, the designer ended the midline in a good place to cut the tree in half without making jibberish out of it.  

I wanted to illuminate the tree so I took some daubers and did my "bokeh" thing with them in bright colors and then added the word JINGLE throughout the background.  Yes, I realize that these are pretty out-of-the-ordinary colors for a Christmas card, but if you could see it IRL......, well it's pretty enough that I think it might even become an decorative art piece and not be used as a card.  We shall see.

So what else can I do with this new toy tool?  Well, I found a pattern for a paper bird that I liked and I could have just printed it out onto white cardstock and sat there with my scissors to cut it out, but I decided to teach myself how to adapt the file so that I could have the Cameo cut it out for me.  

It took a little bit of trial and tribulation on one of our recent "snow days" but I did it!

And I think I just might have to "tangle" one of these birds soon.

Stayed tuned for more projects using my new toy tool.