In God We Trust

While it's really easy to get going with loads of Christmas cards and Thanksgiving cards, here is a great card for Veteran's Day, which is coming up this Wednesday.

The challenge at Anyone for Anya was to make a card using the colors of your nation's flag. I decided to go all out and make it very patriotic. At Dutch Dare, you were to use felt, so I added this great stars felt ribbon. At Stamp Something, the recipe was to use 1 ribbon, 2 papers and 3 embellishments (the 3 gold star brads). And by making Anya a blonde this week, I was able to wrap up the challenge at Cute Card Thursday to use Primary colors.

God bless our veterans! and thank you for the freedom we enjoy!

Thankful

I am in love with Michelle Perkett's images, so when she issued a challenge this week for earthy, fall colors, I knew exactly what image I wanted to use. I started with the sketch from Cupcake Craft Challenges. I sprayed my background with Tattered Angels and then distressed the edges with ink and sandpaper. My background papers are from CTMH - Twitterpated. I ran paper through my cuttlebug to emboss, and inked the raised designs - so this was great for the Thanksgiving challenge at Cuttlebug Spot and Cuttlebug Challenge. The challenge at Simon Says Stamp was also for Thansgiving or Thanks, and at Pixie Cottage Challenges it was for celebrations. I colored the image with copics, but painted the background moon with Sparkling H2O's. After that, I covered the entire image with liquid glass and then cut it out. Finally, I added some of my first crafting love - some beadwork. I made the beaded sheath of wheat in place of the typical flower. I love all of the dimension of this piece!

I love the 80's but...

I have to tell you, I love the music of the 80's, so the challenge at Stampin' for the Weekend was great from the musical inspiration side (I used Girls Just Wanna Have Fun), but the colors that we had to use (Orange, blue and purple) were just not my favorite. After all, I would really rather forget the fashion faux pas of the 80's (You know, the parachute pants and humongous shoulder pads -ugghh!) Anyhow, I did manage to use these colors and pull together this card for the challenge. It was still a fun challenge, and made me reminisce about some great times!

Miss Money Bags

Since my supply of Tildas is rather limited, I have to be creative. I took Tilda carrying a pumpkin and made her pumpkin a purse - and since this challenge was to be monochromatic (at Just Magnolia), I made everything green - my and my nephew's favorite color. I thought it was appropriate to make her Little Miss Money Bags (I think that is what I would have to be to get all of the Tilda's I would love to have! LOL).

I used the sketch from Crafting Life's Pieces, and added bling to try to help Simon Says Stamp Challenge make it to 300 entries this week. I colored Tilda's hair red for the challenge at Copic Creations.

Strawberries

The challenge at Colour Create was to use all white, with only your image colored. And at Flourishes, it was to use a neutral of your choice plus the colored image (this strawberry stamp set is one of my fav's from Flourishes).That was most definitely challenging for me! I knew I would have to use lots of texture to make this interesting. I used a great sketch from StampARTic . I added some pearls and ribbons, for the Creative Card Crew challenge to use ribbons and gems. I must say, I was pleased with the results.

Card for Jaimie - Spread the Love Bloghop

I got notice of a blog hop today, Spread the Love. This is a hop to try to bring some joy to a family struck by unthinkable evil. You can read the story below. Jaimie is a survivor of this terrible crime, and probably needs as much love and encouragement as she can get. This is my card for Jaimie. If you would like to follow the blog, please start at the beginning with Katharina's blog.

On October 4th, 4 teenagers armed with knives broke into a home in a small town in New Hampshire. These 4 boys broke into this home with the intent to rob and kill anyone inside. They stabbed Kimberly Cates to death and left her daughter, Jaimie, for dead in the driveway. Jaime’s father was away at the time. It was a completely random act; their home was chosen only due to its secluded surroundings.

This is the horrifying news that was brought to my attention by my blogging friend Ann, last week. I could not sleep that night and found myself actually wishing I had not heard this story of Jaime and her family. I have a very hard time dealing with the emotions that come with hearing of anyone’s pain or suffering especially at the hands of such evil. I felt it deeply. When I thought more about it, I felt even more awful when I realized I wanted to “turn a blind eye” to it. When Ann first told me about the blog hop that Denise and Erin were planning, my first thought was, how will cards help this girl now? But of course I realize that it’s not the cards, but the powerful unity of love behind them, that might send Jaime and her father a reminder that hope and love does exist in their suddenly darkened world. If a blog hop will help do that, then participating is a small yet positive action I can take to help them.

Erin Bailey and Denise Lynn started this blog hop in response to a plea for help from Erin’s long time friend who is also Jaimie Cates’ neighbor.

Erin and Denise hope that everyone hopping around today will stop for a moment and think about Jaimie and her father and what life must be like for them now. One moment in time has changed their lives forever. They are asking that everyone reading this message please take some time to make a card and send it off to Jaimie. Please share some words of hope and love and let her know that people do care and want the best for her.

Christmas Cupcake box

ISB is searching for members to add to their design team. Ilona issued a challenge to make a Christmas box. I wanted mine to have a bit of a twist, so I made the top of the box like an easel card, and then made the box from cardstock using a template for a large cupcake box that I found at Scor-pal's website. The cute stamp is called Candy Cane Snack, and is from The Greeting Farm. The paper is one of my favorites, from Cosmo Cricket. I think this would be so cute to give as a gift filled with homemade candies.

First Snow

This is the first snow I've seen this year, and hopefully it will stay that way for awhile. I enjoy the snow as long as it melts and goes away quickly, but it doesn't always seem to work out that way. So for now, I will be happy keeping the snow on this card.

This adorable stamp is from Whiff of Joy, and I used it for their challenge this week - to use red, cream and one other color (mine was the blue-green color). I colored him with copics and spicas, and cut him out and glued him to the stamped image on my cream circle (this way I could keep the fine details around the birdhouse). I added a base of snow with Flower Soft (polar ice).

I loved making the snow globe! I took a piece of plastic packaging and cut a circle with my nestabilities. Then I ran it through my cuttlebug with the Swiss dots folder. I then added stickles to the raised dots, so it would really look like snow. This was great for the Simon Says Stamp challenge, for sparkle. I used 3-d Zots to raise the globe away from my image . When I was looking through my stash of paper, I remembered this Cosmo Cricket paper - that is one of my favorites. The challenge at Cuttlebug challenge this week is "favorite things".

I used the sketch from Create 4 Fun, which was perfect for my snowglobe card.

I cut out snowflakes using Winter Woodland cricut cartridge, so that it was perfect for the challenge at Creative Card Crew (to use snowflakes). The challenge at Creative Craft Challenges was to make something with the "1" on it.

I'm keeping my fingers crossed that this is the only snow I see for awhile!

Pixie Cottage has candy

Halloween may be over, but there are still plenty of treats in blog land. Head over to Pixie Cottage and register to win these adorable stamps. My favorite is the Sweet Treats (The little bear with the lollipops).

Here are some details from there website:

This Blog Candy includes six Pixie Cottage stamps, including one mystery stamp from a new illustrator that will soon be joining us.

To qualify for this blog candy all you have to do is post this Pixie Cottage Candy on your blog and tell us on your blog which stamp is your favorite from the five showing and why. Make sure you leave us a comment so we know you entered!
You must use a direct link back to this blog.

This candy will end November 22, and winner will be announced on November 23. Drawn randomly. MSRP of prize is $65.94

2-5-7-10 bag

This little bag is so easy to make, and I love the results. It's a 2-5-7-10 bag and you can find a tutorial at Splitcoast Stampers. I used the cute image from Michelle Perkett. I found out about this little bag from the Scrappy Frogs challenge. I used the Diamond plate cuttlebug folder to emboss my background (and used black, green and purple) - so it worked for the Cuttlebug
Spot challenge of the week. My 3 year old nephew saw the bag and immediately had to open it to see if anything was inside.