Pink Snowflakes and White Space

Hi friends! I'm popping in again today with a couple more quick Christmas cards I made this weekend before packing all the Christmas goodies away again.  The snowflakes are printed using the Snowflake Tidings Printable that comes with purchase of the Snowflake Tidings Die Set.

I colored the snowflakes with  a watercolor pencil and blended with a clear wink of stella glitter pen, then cut with the coordinating Snowflake Tidings Die Set.  I layered the two sizes of snowflakes together and accented with a fun rhinestone embellishment.

For the layouts, I just played around with scraps of paper and a Lacey Trim Duo die cut that were on my desk until I got something I liked. The silent night sentiment is from the Winter Peace DIGITAL Set and the let the earth rejoice sentiment is from the Christmas Blessings DIGITAL Set.

I embossed each background with a different embossing folder to add a little texture to the white space.

Thanks so much for stopping by!

Enabler's List
Stamps: Winter Peace DIGITAL Set, Christmas Blessings DIGITAL Set, Snowflake Tidings Printable (Verve)
Paper: Sugar Plum (My Mind's Eye), riding hood red (SU!), white
Ink: Julie Nutting watercolor pencils (American Crafts), laser printer, wink of stella clear glitter pen (Zig)
Accessories: Snowflake Tidings Die Set, Lacey Trim Duo Die Set (A Cut Above by VERVE), rhinestones, circle and rectangle dies (Cottage Cutz), snowflake embossing folder (Tim Holtz), polka dot embossing folder (Park Lane)

Keeping Christmas Tags

It's the 25th of the month and time again to join some of my crafty friends for our monthly Keeping Christmas Inspiration Hop! The idea of the hop is to both to bring you a little dose of holiday inspiration throughout the year and also have some Christmas cards and projects in our stash all ready to go for December 2018. If you've already been hopping along, you should have arrived from Claire's blog. If you're just popping in, read on for all the details!

Updated photo. Capturing the foil shimmer without losing the white balance is tricky. :)

I can't believe we're already half way through the year! I've been a little heads down this month preparing to close Verve for good on June 30th. So when the reminder popped up for this hop, I was taken by surprise once again!  LOL  How can I forget every single month? Maybe I'll be a little less forgetful in my "retirement"! Haha!

Anyway, for my June installment, I decided to do some pretty tags to add to handmade gifts. The pretty plaid paper is from the Prima Sweet Peppermint collection. I recently added some printable PDFs with purchase of our remaining die sets that no longer have coordinating stamps, so was pretty excited to pull our my Minc machine to do some foiling on these snowflakes that come with the Snowflake Tidings Die Set. Foiling is the equivalent magic of embossing to me, so I just *might* have gotten distracted and foiled and die cut an entire sheet of snowflakes! So. Much. Fun.

Keeping up with my quest to start using the mountain of blank tags I keep accumulating, I pulled out a couple of tags, cut the plaid paper to 2.5" x 3.25", then inked the edges of everything with antique linen distress ink and glued them together. Next I inked up my foiled and die cut snowflakes and added some flowers from my stash to the centers.  I cut a border of white using the Lacey Trim Duo die set, sponged with antique linen and cut to the size of the tags for the bottom border.  I wrapped some pink & white divine twine around the top four or five times and then tied in a bow.

The sentiments are printed from the Winter Peace DIGITAL Set and die cut with stiched dies, before adding to the tags. I topped them with long twine strings so I can tie them onto gifts come Christmas time.

Okay, now it's time to hop along and check out all the other fabulous posts on the hop. I'm so excited to hop along and see everyone's creations! The hop is hosted on the fabulous Kelly Lunceford's blog, so head over there to start from the beginning. Or continue on to visit Lori Tecler if you've already been hopping along!

Kelly Lunceford

Lesley Croghan (taking a break)

Anita Madden (taking a break)

Broni Holcombe 

Claire Broadwater

Julee Tilman {You are here}

Kim Heggins (taking a break)

Lori Tecler

Nance Salkeld

Nina Forsyth

Rachel Bergfeld

Vicki Finger 

Thanks so much for stopping by!

Enabler's List
Stamps: Winter Peace DIGITAL Set, Snowflake Tidings Printable (Verve Stamps)
Paper: Sweet Peppermint (Prima), white, blank tag
Ink: laser printer, antique linene (Ranger Distress)
Accessories: Snowflake Tidings die set, Lacey Trim Duo die set (A Cut Above by VERVE), stitched dies (Cottage Cutz), flowers (Wild Orchid designs), pink baker's twine (Divine Twine), pink Minc foil and Mini Minc machine (Heidi Swapp)

Wonderful Keeping Christmas

It's the 25th of the month and time again to join some of my crafty friends for our monthly Keeping Christmas Inspiration Hop! The idea of the hop is to both to bring you a little dose of holiday inspiration throughout the year and also have some Christmas cards and projects in our stash all ready to go for December 2018. If you've already been hopping along, you should have arrived from Claire's blog. If you're just popping in, read on for all the details!

For my May installment, I played paper roulette and closed my eyes and blindly pulled out a pad of paper from one of my Christmas bins. It happened to be a lovely collection by Teresa Collins. The vintage images and feel to the papers was enough to get the creative juices flowing.

I have amassed a huge collection of blank tags and have recently been trying to challenge myself to use them, so pulled out a chipboard tag to start off. I liked the wonderful time sentiment (except the grammar error where the apostrophe is missing) from one of the collage papers, so cut the little collage pieces apart and then layered them on the tag, inking all the edges with old paper and walnut stain distress inks to pull together the vintage feel.

For stamping, I pulled out the Glad Tidings set and the coordinating Snowflake Tidings die set. Not only are Christmas sets 25% off today at Verve, our current sale is buy a stamp set and get the coordinating die for 75% off so this is a great time to pick up this combo if you want it! Anyhow, I embossed the snowflake in white on patterned paper, then die cut and sponged with the same inks as before.  One snowflake is popped up on dimensionals with a fancy brad as it's centerpiece and the other is tucked behind the tag near the sentiment.

I added some wrinkled seam binding, then layered all my papers and attached to a kraft card base.

Okay, now it's time to hop along and check out all the other fabulous posts on the hop. I'm so excited to hop along and see everyone's creations! The hop is hosted on the fabulous Kelly Lunceford's blog, so head over there to start from the beginning. Or continue on to visit Kim Heggins if you've already been hopping along!

Kelly Lunceford

Lesley Croghan (taking a break)

Anita Madden (taking a break)

Broni Holcombe 

Claire Broadwater

Julee Tilman {You are here}

Kim Heggins

Lori Tecler

Nance Salkeld

Nina Forsyth taking a break)

Rachel Bergfeld

Vicki Finger (taking a break)

Thanks so much for stopping by!

Enabler's List
Stamps: Glad Tidings (Verve Stamps)
Paper: Santa's List (Teresa Collins), kraft, chipboard tag
Ink: versamark, old paper, walnut stain distress ink (Ranger)
Accessories: Snowflake Tidings die set (A Cut Above by VERVE), white embossing powder, crop-adile, fancy brad, seam binding

Snowflake Celebration

Hi friends!  It's Friday and that means it's time for a new challenge over at the Viva la Verve Sketches blog.  This week's hostess is Chaitali and she has a super fun sketch and inspiration pic for you.  Play along with the sketch OR the inspiration, or combine them both.. it's up to you!

I knew when I saw the inspiration pic that I wanted to use the new gown from Masquerade along with the coordinating Gown Die. I'm also playing along with the HYCCT Hope Floats challenge and figured a dress floats across the dance floor and snowflakes float through the air.  I had images of a fun holiday bash or winter formal going through my head, so interpreted the circles on the sketch as snowflakes.  While I was making the card, I discovered the major reason why I'm not a clean & simple stamper... I'm too messy!  {grin}

I had a pretty clean and simple concept for the card, using the snowflakes from Glad Tidings and sentiment from Moments Remembered.  I whipped it up really quickly, glued everything down, then OOPS.. my inky fingers got blushing bride ink where it wasn't supposed to go while I was adding the silver pearls.  {big sigh}  So, out came the Snowflake Tidings Die Set and I stamped a few more snowflakes and die cut them to layer over my oopsies.  I finished with a thin mat of brushed silver cardstock and a white card base.

Thanks so much for stopping by today!  I hope you have a wonderful start to your weekend!

Viva la Verve October Week 3

Enabler's List
Stamps: Masquerade, Glad Tidings, Moments Remembered (Verve Stamps)
Paper: blushing bride, brushed silver (SU!), white
Ink: blushing bride (SU!), Versamark
Accessories:  Gown Die, Snowflake Tidings Die Set (A Cut Above by VERVE), adhesive silver pearls, silver embossing powder

Christmas Joy

Hi friends!  Another weekend is over and it's time for a brand new Mojo Monday card sketch to jump start your week.  With as fast as the time has been flying, I think I needed to start working on my Christmas crafting like 2 months ago!  {grin}

As I was blog surfing last week, I was completely inspired by Lynn Mangan's use of the Snowflake Tidings Die Set and had to give it a go.  I had every intention of using them as snowflakes, but once I got them all glittered up, I thought they would look so pretty as a poinsettia with some cranberry pearl centers, so I went with it.  Pretty simple to make... cut from cream cardstock using the Snowflake Tidings dies, embossed with the Crackled Texture Fades, then sponged with a bit of Antique Linen distress ink before outlining with a glue pen and dipping in glitter.  Easy peasy, and so classy looking!  I added some Dreamy Leaves die cuts as greenery, using a pencil to sketch in the outline of the leaves.  The only stamps here are the Christmas and the Joy, both from the Merry Wishes set.  Otherwise, it's simply patterned paper, cardstock, a bit of embossing and some glitter.

Enabler's List:
Stamps: Merry Wishes (Verve Stamps)
Paper: Joyeux Noel (Glitz), cream
Ink: Schoolhouse (Mix'd Media by Colorbox), Antique Linen (Ranger Distress)
Accessories: Snowflake Tidings Die Set, Dreamy Leaves Die Set (A Cut Above by VERVE), Classic Circles Nestabilities (Spellbinders), Curvy Label punch (SU!), ribbon, Crackled and Snowflakes Texture Fades (Sizzix), clear embossing powder, fairydust glitter, distressing tool, glue pen, cranberry pearls (Pizzazz Aplenty)

Holiday Snowflakes

Hi friends!  It's Monday again already (doesn't it seem like the weekends just fly by?!) and that means it's time for another Mojo Monday sketch.  This week's sketch was designed by Debbie Carriere.  I have more than a little addiction to Christmas paper (two 12 x 24" drawers filled to the brim with it) and even though I told myself I wasn't going to buy any new Christmas paper this year, I still ended up buying several 6 x 6 pads that called my name.  {Sigh}  So for today's card I dug into my as yet untouched 25 Days of Christmas pad from Simple Stories.

I did a little tilting of the main panels of the sketch to accommodate the gingham bow, and also added little tails to each of the horizontal panels.  The snowflakes are stamped onto Snowflake Tidings die cuts, then I layered a black die cut, offset behind each snowflake and accented with shiny gold pearls and red rhinestones from Pizzazz Aplenty.  The sentiment is stamped onto cream and then made into a sentiment flag to finish things off.

That's all from me this cold November Monday.  We're getting much closer to our house completion date and I'm starting to think about packing up the studio.  When we checked in on things this weekend, we had cabinet doors, appliances, tile, stained hardwood and plumbing and lighting fixtures!  Hooray!  Just three more weeks until our closing date... can't wait!  Thanks so much for stopping by.  I hope you have a fantastic week.

Enabler's List:
Stamps: Glad Tidings (Verve Stamps)
Paper: 25 Days of Christmas (Simple Stories), Black, Cream
Ink: Black Soot, Old Paper (SU!)
Accessories: Snowflake Tidings Die Set (A Cut Above by VERVE), gingham ribbon (May Arts), red rhinestones, shiny gold pearls (Pizzazz Aplenty)

Snowflake Tidings and a Spotlight Hop

Hi friends!  Tonight's the night!  It's almost time for new Verve to release.  I hope you'll join us as we count down to our release from 9-11pm Eastern in our SCS Forum.  Until then, the Divas have more eye candy previews for you to hop around to for Day 3 of our New Release Spotlight Hops.  One lucky commenter on one of today's hop spots will win the stamps and dies featured today.  Deadline for commenting is tonight at 5pm Mountain.  Winners will be announced during our release party tonight!

Today the Divas are showcasing a mini set called Santa's Helper, plus some dies that coordinate with previously released sets.  Snowflake Tidings Die Set (which I've used on today's card) coordinates with the snowflakes in Glad Tidings, one of my all-time favorite holiday sets.  Frosty Snowflakes Die Set coordinates with the snowflakes in Frosty Flakes and Christmas in the Air.  And last but not least, a die I've received the most requests for, the Lovely Marquee Die coordinates with the frame in Love Story.

My card today uses Glad Tidings, Love Story, the Snowflake Tidings Die Set and the Lovely Marquee Die.  I embossed the medium and small snowflakes from Glad Tidings in white onto Sage Shadow, then cut with the Snowflake Tidings Dies.  I loved the way Amy used the Lovely Marquee Die as a border on her card yesterday, so I decided to take her idea and run with it.  I embossed the frame from  Love Story in white on Early Espresso, then cut with the Lovely Marquee Die and trimmed in half to tuck under each side of my panel.  I used the snowflake stamps as a background on most of the panels, then added a sentiment flag with Peaceful Wishes embossed on it and tied some rusty jingle bells on with linen thread.

The layout for this card is Jackie's Viva la Verve! sketch for this week.  Play along with all of our November sketches for a chance to win a $100 gift certificate to Verve!  Now that's something worth stamping about!  (grin}


Enabler's List:
Stamps:  Glad Tidings, Love Story (Verve Stamps)
Paper: Sage Shadow, Crumb Cake, Early Espresso (SU!)
Ink: Sage Shadow, Crumb Cake, Early Espresso (SU!), VersaMark
Accessories:  Snowflake Tidings Die Set, Lovely Marquee Die (A Cut Above by VERVE), Lacey Circles and Fancy Tags 2 Nestabilities (Spellbinders), rusty jingle bells (Frost it Pink), linen thread (TCP), mini library clip (SU!), Copic markes (to recolor library clip), liquid pearls (Ranger), damask embossing folder (Sizzix), Swarovski Crystal Rhinestones (Pizzazz Aplenty), white and clear detail embossing powders (Judikins)

Okay, it's time to hop along to the next stop...

1. Julee 8. Sankari 2. Andrea 9. Teresa 3. Vickie {Guest} 10. Charmaine 4. Amy 11. Tosha 5. Maureen 12. Wanda {Guest} 6. Laurie 13. Jackie 7. Gretchen {Guest}