Winter green Tilda

Do you have 'happy' and 'sad' stamps? I've noticed when I'm sad I reach for my Tildas. I've been paper piecing four of them the last two days and it soothes something inside of me. I seem to pull them out when I'm feeling a bit blue.

This fits a sketch challenge at Just Magnolia. I bought this gorgeous, wide ribbon at Michael's a few weeks ago intending to help use it to dress up a Tilda and went searching for a sketch this morning that would suit it. I know it is awfully large, but such a rich ribbon. You can see the sketch challenge here.

I used PTI's Damask Designs on gold cardstock from Gina K's, embossed in gold with gold tinsel embossing powder, to try to match the nature of the ribbon. Tilda is paper pieces with a piece of SU DP, sorry, don't know the type. It has tiny red dots in it, so part of her sleeve is red. Martha Stewart branch punch in two types of gold paper for some of the embellishments. If you look at the sketch there are five graduated circles on it, I used roses with a jingle bell to make a large cluster since I didn't have a large jingle bell and the height would make it near impossible to mail this card if I did. Then I used different sizes of rhinestones for the two smallest circles.

So what are your New Year's traditions? When the kids were younger we used to sit down and make a list of all the things we were thankful for from the previous year and what we would be praying for in the year to come. Its hard to corral them now that most of them are so much older, but I find today a good day to reflect on the blessings of the past year and there are many. Thanks for looking and have a safe, happy and health new year!

New Year's Stampin' Sisters in Christ challenge #19

Happy Sunday stampers! This card is up a bit late today. . . we were up late last night. Combine the fact that I was laboring under the delusion most of yesterday that it was Friday, with an emotional bubble that burst late in the evening, and you have a late post.

Anyway, this is for challenge #19 with Stampin' Sisters in Christ, and our lovely hostess this week is Lisa who has chosen the verse from Psalm 25:4-5, "Show me your ways, O Lord, teach me your paths; guide me in your truth and teach me, for you are God my Savior and my hope is in you all day long."

The challenge is to create a New Year's Card. Lisa tells us that as we embark on the new year, let all of our resolutions include focusing on God's word and teachings and following the path He has laid for us.

Our sponsor this week is the Cutting Cafe and they are donating any three digi sets to one lucky winner. Check out the main blog here for more details, or visit the Cutting Cafe here. The owner donated some new year's digi stamps to the entire design team and I had a favorite picked out right away, the verse on my card, do you see it? What a great resolution and I thought it fit in so nicely with Lisa's verse. Because God is love and following the path he has laid out for me means in part loving the people he has placed in my life, more, and deeply, each year that passes.

The new year is a great opportunity to practice that! The penguin is a Memory Box stamp and the paper is from Papertrey Ink. Thanks for looking. Happy stamping!

Inspirational Penguin PTI blog hop

My computer is refusing to hook up to the internet, and that is where my PTI blog hop logo resides, so here is my post for the hop from my husband's computer, I'll try to add the logo later if I can.

My inspiration is going to seem a bit odd, but here you go. My youngest daughter made a clay penguin in school that she brought home right before Christmas break. He has lived right next to the nativity set since then and when I'm not looking, she moves him right in front and center instead of by the sheep and the cows where I had placed him. Notice where he is in this photo.

This is significant because not only is he the cutest little penguin, she made sure the whole family got to enjoy the penguin she made. This is big news because my youngest child has RAD. I don't have time to explain all of what that entails, but we've had her home with us for five years (she is eight) and I am seeing significant progress with attachment this year -- this is one sign of it. And that is a great Christmas present.

So using the penguin as my inspiration, I chose the little owl from the newest PTI set Tiny Treats: Valentines because of his outstretched wings remind me of the penguin (plus he's a bird too). I am going to give this card to my littlest daughter. I've had this in my head for a while, I'm pretty pleased with the card that resulted. Thanks for looking and happy hopping. P.S. . . . Stole the layout from a card by Melissa Phillips.

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas to all of my friends. Wishing you joy and peace this holiday season.

My favorite reference to Jesus is Emmanuel because it means "God with us." Christmas is the time when heaven reached down to earth to deliver to us a savior, who lived here, with us, part of us, because God loved us so much. I find such comfort and peace in that word, Emmanuel.

Looking forward to a new year of celebrating our Lord and to stamping with all of you! Big hugs!

Some Big Family News

Do you see my smiling daughter? Do you see her smiling with someone else? Tonight we have happy family news! My dear oldest daughter is engaged to a wonderful young man she has been dating for seven(?) years. He is a part of the family already and now it is just going to be official.

I will wait until someone with better photography skills than I possess can take a close up of the ring, it is gorgeous. But not as gorgeous to me as those two smiling faces.

The only one who is a bit sad is my youngest daughter, who is only eight and thinks this will take away her big sister, who is very, very special to her. She wants them to come live with us when they are married. :)

Stampin' Sisters in Christ challenge 18

Happy Sunday stampers! The week zips by so quickly sometimes, hard to believe we're so close to Christmas now! But the reminder is the wonderful story in scripture that our hostess Kathy chose for this week from Luke 1:26-32.

"In the sixth month, God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, a town in Galilee to a virgin pledged to be married to a man named Joseph, a descendant of David. The virgin's name was Mary.

The angel went to her and said, "Greetings, you who are highly favored? The Lord is with you."

Mary was greatly troubled at his words and wondered what kind of greeting this might be. But the angel said to her, "Do not be afraid, Mary, you have found favor with God. You will be with child and give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David." (NIV)

This week's challenge is a sketch challenge. If you want to see the layout check out the home page here, where you also can catch a glimpse of the beautiful samples from other members of the design team. Our sponsor is Scrapbook News and Review magazine, filled with great tips for not just scrapbook layouts but papercrafting in general. One lucky winner will get a three month subscription.

My friend Linda in Maryland kept talking about all the snow they are getting this weekend, so when I went to my stamp table on Friday I had snow on the brain. Here you have yet another blue, silver and white card. I promise, I do have other colors in my stash. The one deviation I made from the sketch is that I incorporated my three dots or three little specks in the right hand corner into my circle otherwise they wouldn't have worked. Thanks for looking and we hope you get a chance to play along!

Stamps: Verve snowflake set (sentiment), Stampin' Up Scandinavian Season

Ink: silver craft

Paper: PTI spring rain, Holly something flocked DP, PTI white, silver and shimmery white dp random

Other: rhinestones, silver tinsel EP, snowflake punch, paper lace, SU fancy brad, silver cord, Martha Stewart chunky glitter

Frosted Windowpanes . . . Stampin' Sisters in Christ #17

Happy Sunday stampers! It is time for another challenge at Stampin' Sisters in Christ. This week's hostess is the talented Kristine, one of the challenge blog's founders. That makes her sound old or something . . ."founder." :) She's not!

Her verse this week is from Matthew 6:19-20 "Do not store up for yourself treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy and where thieves do not break in and steal." And the challenge this week is to use 'treasures' on your card, gems, pearls, glitter, bling! Bling it up!

Our sponsor this week is Simon Says Stamp. Any stamper who enters a card using bling is eligible to win the cutest little stamp set! I think I might create an anonymous account and enter to win it myself. :)

This card is blingy but you can tell I had winter on my mind because we have a good covering of snow and if you live where you get lots of snow you know all about the glitter it reflects when the sun is shining on it. Also, the other day my window in the kitchen was completed frosted over and I wondered if you could recreate that look in a card.

Not only does this card use a lot of bling or treasure, I also thought of what we as women so often treasure in our hearts . . . our homes. That's where our family is, that is where we hope to have love, togetherness, peace, rest and warmth. We will have all those things and more in our heavenly homes but I wish you all of that and more during this Christmas season.

So, for the card . . . I used Tim Holtz' distress crackle in Rock Candy for the first time a little over a week ago and I'm addicted. I think I need to get a gallon jug instead of the cute little bottle they sell . . . there has to be a gallon jug for refills somewhere.

I painted the crackle on a piece of acetate and pasted it in the opening of my card for my 'window.' In the close up you can tell that you really can see the scene on the inside of my shadowbox card, except when the light is reflecting directly off the crackle.

I stamped SU's backgrounder Fine Lace in white craft on white and embossed with white detail powder. Then stamped the wreath in silver and added silver tinsel embossing powder. Loaded it up with gems and stickles for my wreath's baubles.

I stamped the house from Stampin' Up's To You & Yours inking it in Brilliant Blue and then overinking with Not Quite Navy to tone it down. Then I toned it 'up' by using the dazzling diamond dust technique over the image. For that you press a versamark pad on your image, sprinkle with Irridescent Ice embossing powder and emboss. The whole thing sparkles amazingly, hard to capture in a photo. Stamped and added the sentiment, added a ribbon to complement the bling and voila! My winter scene. You are inside with your white wallpaper looking through the frosty window, framed by the wreath at your neighbor's house nearby, at twilight, which is why their house is blue. :) Thanks for looking, hope you're able to play along this week.

Stampin' Sisters in Christ challenge

Happy Sunday stampers! It is time for another challenge from Stampin' Sisters in Christ. This week's hostess is Ceal, who chose the verse from 2 Chronicles 7:14 "If my people who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land."

The challenge this week is to make a card or project using images of people such as children, men or women, to let someone know you are praying for them.

This is the same image I used in my last post, so a bit of an explanation is in order. We are redoing our kitchen and that's where I usually stamp. We're installing new cabinets and my husband is doing all the work himself. We've had no countertops or cabinets for two months now and we're moving closer to that happy day, slowly, but this weekend he's working on replacing drywall that had to be torn out to work on the pipes. Then it has to be taped and sanded. Then we paint. Then we start to put up new cabinets.

So everything that was IN the kitchen is now somewhere else in the house. There are very few places you can walk downstairs without stepping over a box of dishes or food items. And with the drywall installation there is dust over everything. Let me emphasize that . . . everything. So I used the items I had pulled out for my last project for this card, because any time I stamp I have to dig things out of boxes in the garage. It just makes stamping (and cooking) a bit of a challenge, but one day we'll all be put together again.

Back to the important stuff, Ceal's passage is a great reminder to us to spend some time in prayer this week. Did you know the bible contains 500 passages that refer to prayer? An important topic and one of our most accessible means of building a relationship with God. You can pray any time, anywhere. "If my people . . . humble themselves . . . " -- humility is the attitude to seek as you approach God when you pray. You can pray while driving in the car, while taking a walk . . . any time during the day, it isn't your external but your internal posture that matters. It is a good idea to have a quiet place in your home to pray, to get down on your knees, but prayer isn't limited to a time, location or physical position, so try to find yourself in prayer more often than not this week.

When I'm stumped over how to use an image, I always find a good sketch will help clear the roadblocks. I had all these pieces of things that I wanted to use, so I went to Priscilla Styles blog to look up this week's sketch challenge. The sketch for this week helped me out tremendously. You'll find the challenge for sketch #30 here. I turned the sketch on its side and moved the position of the little 'circle' in the sketch to be my sentiment. The image is double layered. I stamped the angel twice and embossed the frame in the frame in the bottom layer with irridescent ice EP. The whole card sparkles quite a bit IRL. Thanks for looking!

Stamps: Magenta, Clear Dollar Stamps (sentiment)

Ink: Distress inks in Faded Jeans, Broken China, Concord Grape, Weathered Wood, black craft

Paper: PTI white, SU shimmer white, black, PTI Spring Rain

Other: Rock Candy crackle distress paint, pearls, snowflakes, irridescent ice EP, rhinestone, prismacolor pencils, snowflake cuttlebug embossing folder, dazzling diamonds glitter

Tim Holtz 12 Days of Tags -- Day one

I know I'm a bit behind the times with posting my first tag for Tim Holtz 12 Tags of Christmas. You can find his gorgeous creations here. I understand he is getting tens of thousands of hits every day. This is the third year he is presenting Christmas tags for twelve days. Today is day four I believe, but I just finished up my tags for day one.

I used distress inks in Faded Jeans, Broken China, Weathered Wood and Concord Grape. I use wax paper for the misting technique, it works just as well I think, as any other extremely smooth surface, when you're done, just crumple it up and toss it away. This is the first time I've used the distress crackle paint, kind of cool! I like it. However, I took his instructions too literally and really spread the stuff on thick for my first tag attempt and the paper could not hold that much moisture, it curled up and couldn't be salvaged. I wouldn't say spread it on like frosting, I'd say spread it on with a generous hand but don't make the layer too thick.

I didn't have a snowman image to use, as was illustrated in day one's example, but I like the Magnolia image with these color. I embossed it in black first, spread a bit of white over the entire image, then colored in lightly a shadow on the wings and the skin and face with prismacolor pencils. Then I overlaid frosted lace stickles on the wings. I also used the frosted lace stickles for the icicles at the top of the tag. Used grungeboard pieces painted with Stampin' Up's new platinum paint. The flourishes and snowflakes in the background on both tags were made using an Inkadinkado set.

Second tag I chose these Impression Obsession candy piece. Its a nice, large stamp and suits a tag pretty well I think. What I liked about making these tags is that you can think outside the boundaries of your paper, it expands your space, you're not mailing it like you would a card that has to squeeze into an envelope. For the candy, I also didn't choose to leave the images starkly black and white, but colored the candy pieces with two different shades of blue of Twinkling H20s, put on a fine layer of glue and then SU's dazzling diamond glitter. The snowflake embellishments are clear plastic, I think I bought the pack at Michael's two years ago. The 'joy' sentiment is from Papertrey Ink Believe, stamped in silver craft ink and embossed with silver tinsel EP. I notched the edges of the black paper and then brushed the edges with a silver gel pen. Thanks for looking.