It's Mrs. Claus

For Chris' Mrs Claus swap.  It's HARD to find a stamp of just the Missus!!  This is a digital stamp.  Cut out all the pieces for the hat, dress & apron.  There is stickles on the holly leaves.

Rudholph the red nosed reindeer!

This was for Angie's Reindeer swap.  I LOVE this stamp.  It's soooo cute!!!  I forgot to stickle the nose before I mailed them off but I think they still look cute!!  And I love the Jilly Bean Soup paper.  I'm trying not to hoard it but.....

Last of the TH Inspired Cards

This is my FAVORITE card of all that we did.  I LOVE this snowman & am going to have to get him (although I did get the die to cut him out, I still don't have the stamp).  I just love everything about this card!

TH Inspired Tag

 This one was pretty simple & easy.  All one stamp, colored Santa w/fired brick, added glue & flower soft.  Done & DONE!  Oh yeah, stickles on the beard & fur.

Another TH Inspired

This card made me fall in love w/Pumice Stone distress ink.  I love how light it looks in the b/g trees!!!  This includes flowersoft & the swirly made out of grungepaper.  I don't know what that green ribbon is but it's beyond YUM!!!

Nativity ATCs

These are for Chris's swap at the Stamp Shack. I loved this image when I bought it last year. I made some ornaments for the kids' teachers last year using acetate & they turned out kinda cool. I'm wishing now that I'd stamped these on a different color. I don't remember now WHY I was so set on using blues.... Oh well, they aren't too bad (not as cute as the ones Angie did here!)

Supplies: Stamp -- Inkadinkadoo, all else -- SU.

More Christmas Goodness!!

Also for one of Cindy's swaps. This one was a Christmas themed swap. More glimmer mistyness too!!!

Favorite Holiday ATC

For Cindy's "Favorite Holiday" swap at the Shack. Was there any question what my favorite holiday is? I got these Tim Holtz stamps last year for Christmas & this was the first chance I had to use them.

Supplies: Stamps -- TH, PP -- Basic Grey, Cardstock -- SU, Ink -- Versamark & Palette Burnt Umber, heat emobssing.

Not a new photo but, I wanted to share

I like to give the kids' teachers ornaments for Christmas. I had an idea about the ornament I wanted to make this year but time got away from me. I saw some BEAUTIFUL ornaments on Laura's blog and they look like something I could manage. How wrong I was.

I thought I followed Laura's directions exactly. They aren't hard directions? What could I be doing wrong. Well, I think I figured out the problem. It was 2 fold: I was draining them too long & was using semi-icky glitter. I had the MS coarse glitter & it was just too coarse & not sparkly enough. This picture does not show how truly UGLY this ornament is!!!

I decided to try again. This time, I could only find HUGE ornaments at Michael's, all the little ones were taken by people who planned ahead better & knew what they were doing! Oh well. I used Cool Caribbean reinker (I only have brown reinkers for some reason. Weird. I bought Cool Caribbean, True Thyme & whatever the reddish In color was at that time. This was before I started boycotting In Colors!) and my ultrafine glitters in colors. Here is the weird thing; the color of the ink is not that important; it's the color of the glitter that effects the color of the ornament!! (The pink was done w/Pretty in Pink ink)

I used pink glitter w/CC and it came out more of a true blue. I used light blue glitter and it turned out light blue. I used gold glitter & somehow, it gave a greenish gold tint to the ornament. When I ran out of the gold, I used dark green. WHOA, that turned out a dark, Dark, DARK green ornament!! I think if you click the pics below, you might get a better picture of what the colors look like.

So, if you decide to try this next year, here are a few tips:

1) use a waxy or plastic drink cup to drain them in. You will be able to reuse the ink (if you use one color of ink anyway) cause the ink will just pour right out of the cup. If you use the 3oz PAPER b/r cups, the ink soaks thru.
2) Drain the ornaments for 10 min or less!! But, before you turn the ornament back over, wipe the "mouth" of it off so it doesn't drain back into the ornament & make the glitter glob.
3) Experiment w/different colors of glitter. I'm dying to try a brown ink w/a gold or red glitter to see what happens!! (When does Michael's restock their ornaments?? Mine is COMPLETELY out now!)

I guess it's time to take the trees & the other decorations down now. :( I hate this day!! But, I bought a cool, big light up snow man & I can't wait to get him & the rest of my snow stuff out!! My upstairs tree is mostly snowmen: can't I leave it up til Valentines????