THANKSGIVING AND A COPYCAT CHALLENGE

Happy Thanksgiving!  I hope wherever you were and whoever you were spending time with, you had a day full of joy and blessings!  I know I did!  Here are some pictures of my two kids around the dining table full of food - can you believe I cooked all of that just for the three of us?  We'll be eating a lot of leftovers for the rest of the long weekend, that's for sure!

This week over at The Outlawz Saturday Paper a la Mode, we are having a "Copycat" challenge.  We all had the same digi image from the lovely Anne Fenton, and we all used that same image for our projects.  Isn't that fun???  Here's mine.  I have to admit that I still need a lot of practice on my Copic coloring skills, but it was such a cute design that Anne did for us, I still love it, even if I don't love my coloring quite so much!

I am so thankful to God for every blessings He has given me!  Jesus, my two wonderful children, my home, nature, my family and friends, and on and on and on.  I may not have much money, but I am rich in the joys of life!  I hope you are too!

Thanks again for stopping by!   Big hugs to you and showers of blessings!

DIE CUTS

Hello, and thanks for stopping by!

This week our Saturday challenge over at The Outlawz Saturday Paper a la Mode is to use diecuts and punches for our projects.

I made this card using a die set from Spellbinders.  I had some glitter cardstock in my stash, and used that for some of the snowflakes - I do love my bling!  The background snowflakes are stamped using a Tim Holtz stamp that I have had for years.  It's one of my alltime favorites!

Nothing like some pretty snowflakes to bring in the Season!

Thanks again for stopping by, and hugs and blessings to you!  Have a wonderful Thanksgiving with your loved ones!

STARS UPON THARS!

Hi!  Thank you for stopping by to visit!

I just love this time of year - I can get out all my Christmas/Winter crafting stuff and just go to town!  This week I needed to make a project that uses a star and/or a snowflake.  I wanted to do something other than a card, so I put my thinking cap on and came up with a little door hanger project - L is for my last name.  Conveniently, L is also the unit my son is in at Virginia Tech Corps of Cadets, so I will let him take this back to school after Thanksgiving break to use as a decoration in the dorm if he wants to.  It's a bit "girly" for him, but I guess he can always tell everyone that his mom made it!

I used a chipboard letter, covered it in some paper, and added a few rubons and some snowflakes.  I also used some pretty gold ribbon for the hanger.

I used a chipboard star, covered it in tiny glass beads, then made some beaded drops to hang from several of the points.  Can't have too much bling!

 

The first picture is of it hanging on my front door. This next photo is more of a closeup of the star and the beaded drops.

   

 This final photo zooms in on a portion of the star, so you can see the detail of the glass beads. I love those things, although they're a bit of a mess to work with. I'm sure I got quite a few on my craft room floor - hopefully the cats don't think they're something yummy to eat!

   

I got a new camera! Can you tell? I sure can - seems like my photos are so much better. I haven't figured out how to use it other than on the "auto" setting, but why even bother when the auto does such a good job! And here's one last picture of me and my son, Chris, on Veterans Day. I went down to Blacksburg to visit him, and a really nice lady working in the Burger King offered to take out picture. I love my son's pose - so much swagger!

  

Thanks again for stopping by! Hugs and showers of blessings to you!

GETTING READY FOR CHRISTMAS WITH RICK ST. DENNIS

Hi, and thanks so much for stopping by to visit. I am so excited! Our Saturday Paper a la Mode Challenge this week over at The Outlawz has a new sponsor - Rick St. Dennis! If you are not familiar with his digital stamp designs, you need to hop on over to our challenge and see what the Design Team has created, because we were lucky enough to be able to use his digis for our weekly projects. And if you like what you see, stop by his shop at Zibbet and see all of his designs - he has a bunch of them, and something for everybody's taste and style. For my projects, I chose the Holiday Cottage Scene digi - I just love nostalgic winter scenes like this one.

My first project is a framed piece to sit on my mantel.  I printed the digi onto sticky-back canvas, then colored it with Copics.  It was the first time I have tried Copics on canvas, and it's a bit tricky.  The colors come out much darker than I would normally expect, and there isn't much blending you can do.  You also have to be careful because the canvas can wick the color through its weave and you'll get bleeding outside the lines, so start out gently and see how each color works with the canvas.  I added some embellies, and even though you can't really see it in the photo, all the snow has Stickles added to give it some bling.

 

 The second project, which you can see leaned up against the frame in the other picture, is a couple of little ornaments/gift decorations that I made using shrink plastic. I first printed the digi onto the shrink plastic - since it shrinks to about 1/4 of its original size, I printed two copies of the digi onto one sheet of shrink plastic (it's letter size paper). Then I colored them with Copics, let them dry, and used my heat gun to shrink them. I also stamped some sentiment banners and shrunk those as well to add an extra element to the design. Then I made some little beaded decorations to add as well just for some bling.

 

I hope you like the projects I made using this fabulous Rick St. Dennis digi. Please stop by his store and check out his work - he is an amazingly talented artist, and we certainly appreciate his generosity as our weekly sponsor! Thanks again for stopping by! Big hugs and blessings to you!

SNOWMEN

Hello, and thanks so much for stopping by! This week's challenge over at The Outlawz Saturday Paper a la Mode is to make a project with at least one snowman (snowwoman?). I had this cute little digi in my files, and unfortunately I can't recall the name of the artist - so sorry about that. But I just thought it was precious, so I tried it out and put this cute little card together.

Last week I was making a Christmas card and could not find any red cardstock - seriously, who doesn't have red cardstock on hand??? But I found some this week that has a little snowflake-like shape embossed into it, but you probably can't see that really well here just because of the way I cut it and the other paper that's on top. I seriously need to order some red cardstock. I used to have a LLS that I could get all my cardstock from, but she shut down a year or so ago, so now I have to order it. Not that I mind - it's just making myself take the time to do it, and also keeping my spending in check at the same time. They probably have some at Michael's though now that I think about it, so perhaps I'll check there in the next few days. Always up for a trip to Michael's! Thanks again for stopping by to visit! Hugs and showers of blessings to you!