More cards!

Here's a bit of updating from September's pictures: (My new Christmas cards are at the end.)



I LOVE the birthday card above... I had so much fun with stamping and layering. I made the little piece behind the flower using a few flourish stamps which I stamped in different directions to form the shape. I also stamped it with a graph patterned stamp I have, and before I did any of that, I had started with a plain white sheet and aged it with some Antique Linen distress ink. I love making cool stuff with my stamps.


I loved this card, too. I love the mindscape stamps by Inkadinkado. If you look closely at the humming bird, you can pick out several pictures, mainly butterflies, that make the whole. Do you see the one in the wing? That one's easy. How about the one on the face? Cool, huh?

And HERE are my new Christmas cards. I just made these a couple of nights ago. The one on top here is continuing my theme of stamping stuff. I started with plain cream paper and stamped these gorgeous images for top and bottom to create the patterned paper look. All of the red stamped images are from Stampin' Up!: Tiny Tags, Artistic Etchings, and Day of Gratitude. Over the tops of these papers, to add some extra interest, I stamped another pattern with Antique Linen colored Distress Ink--music notes on top and my graph stamp on the bottom. Most patterned papers, if you look at them, have several layers of images. You can create the look yourself by adding a bit extra like this. ^_^



I love this one, too. I cut the red piece from an old patterned paper scrap I had on hand that I couldn't throw away because it was too pretty. The paper was stamped with the Joyeux Noel first, then I covered it with another paper and stamped the rest of the sheet with the pretty french script stamp from Stampin' Up!. The Joyeux Noel and the cool tree from the other card are both from the Mistletoe & Co. stamp set by Pink Paislee.

I also really loved the fun sequin addition I did to the bottom card. It's SO easy. I love sequins, first of all, because they're super cheap and you can really load up on colors without breaking the bank. I used to glue them one at a time all of the time (like on the first Christmas card, come to think of it), but in the last month or so, I've started stringing them in a lump and tying them to things. Once everything is set, you can play with spreading them out a bit and making them look cool. They're very garland like, aren't they? I thought they worked for Christmas. But I'm putting them all over my scrapbook pages right now, too.

Okay, that's it for now. Gotta go do some laundry. I'm also probably sewing some napkins today, finally. I'm redoing my table in fall colors, so I've got some nice burnt orange cloth from JoAnn that I'll make into napkins with instructions I got from the Martha Stewart Encyclopedia of Fabric and Crafts. I love Martha Stewart and I'm not afraid to admit it. She is one incredible woman. She had a vision and she really went for it and she achieved it. What a success story! I think those of us who are really young don't even realize that the world used to not have all of this information out there, and she is really one of the pioneers that started this entire sharing of information thing, not only in household stuff, but in crafty stuff, too. And it's just awesome! I'm really glad I live in this time! And in America. But that goes without saying. And I said I was doing laundry, but I kept typing instead... so now I'm actually going to go do laundry. ^_~