THE LAST CHRISTMAS CARD OF 2022

And an announcement! I'm very pleased that the Design Team at The Paper Players has invited me to be Guest Designer for 2023. I'll be in very good company - nothing like a weekly challenge to keep one's skills sharpened!

My Christmas cards got completely away from me this year. I just mailed the last batch of out-of-town cards today (40 minutes in line at the post office). I still have a couple more for the weekend but they're local ones. I didn't have a single design this year and decided to use up some scraps that have been in my stash for years. I made a bunch of envelopes from an old stack of BasicGrey printed paper from 2010 that I was sick of looking at and designed a card to use with the envelopes. Unfortunately, I didn't get them photographed.

I made several of these cards this morning to finish off the last couple of cards I needed.

This sentiment is one of my favorites from Impression Obsession. I gold heat-embossed it on white cardstock and then blind embossed a border on it, double-matted it with gold and red cardstocks, glued it to a red side-folded card base, and added a die-cut white poinsettia from Spellbinders "Christmas Blooms".

I am sharing this one over at Christmas Kickstart Challenge #69 - "If it's Christmassy, link it up"! 

Christmas Kickstart Challenge: Christmas Kickstart Challenge #69 - If It's Christmassy, Link It Up!

Here's wishing everyone the most wonderful of Holiday seasons, and we'll meet up again in 2023!   

YUMMMM!!

Halfway through December here at Two Old Bats Anything Holloween Challenge! I made, for your pleasure today, a plate of Halloween iced cookies similar to those in the upper right quadrant of our mood board. My crafting stash has a rather large hole in it with no food-related stamps or dies (drinks, yes - food, no) so I improvised a bit. 

I started with a black and white plate that I constructed out of a series of circle and scalloped circle dies. My cookies are made with kraft cardstock and stitched circle dies and then I used a tan Copic market to suggest slightly browned edges. I iced all of them with a variety of plain and glossy card stocks with inked and/or plain cardstock, and cut with a small, scalloped circle die. The images are several small images from my stash of Halloween stamps. I stacked them on my plate with some fussy-cut candy corn and glued everything to a square stitched cloth, which in turn was attached to a gray printed 6" square folded card. I added a bit of dimensional foam to the back of the "Trick or Treat" sentiment cookie so that it would pop out a bit.

You know that you can enter more than once, and if we get 25 entries, we'll be doing a drawing for this prize below. So, get cookin'!

 

  

BRRRRR!

I've really had my nose pressed to the grindstone the past couple of weeks, so gave myself a pass today to make a holiday card. I was inspired by two challenges - Tic Tac Toe #191 for content and Time Out Challenge #228 "Winter or Holiday Season". 

For the Tic Tac Toe challenge, I selected the middle across row Dots and/or Stripes/Arctic Animal/Add an Envelope. I don't really have any Arctic animals, so I made do by using a little PTI fox and embossing him in white on gray cardstock to make him into an Arctic fox. I have never been able to find a really white embossing powder - it seems like all of the ones I've tried are slightly off-white. On a gray die-cut rectangle I white heat embossed some snow and overlaid Impression Obsession's Birch Trees die-cut from white cardstock for my stripes and/or dots. I also die-cut stitched snow layers of white and gray printed paper. Before gluing the fox to the card, I added a black nose and pink cheeks. The pink cheeks were the inspiration for the blush mat. The sentiment was heat-embossed with Zing! in "Blush" on a black tag and a blush ribbon was attached.

Inside I added a white heavy paper die-cut into a rectangle, stamped a blush snowflake and added the sentiment in black. You'll notice that the pale pink envelope is lined with gray and white stripe/dotted printed paper.

TTTC191 - Featured Designer Jeanne - Tic Tac Toe Challenge

TIME OUT Challenges: Challenge 228 - Winter or Holiday Season

 

HOLIDAY CHEER

Life has been a bit crazy of late and, other than trying to work on my personal Christmas cards, I haven't been participating in the challenges that I enjoy so much. Today I decided to take a break from the chaos to play a bit. I combined a couple of my favorite challenges into one card - Freshly Made Sketches for layout inspiration and Tic Tac Toe for additional elements.

Freshly Made Sketches #564 called for a circular element with other layered images. I chose a wreath image from Impression Obsession and decided to play with the idea of the wreath white heat embossed on two different papers - black and kraft, using the wreath image to suggest the white markings of fawns. I think this little die character is from My Favorite Things. I die cut a stitched circle out of a stitched rectangle and overlayed it on a black and white wreath and trimmed it for a mat. Then I matted that with an additional silver panel and silver heat embossed the sentiment from Impression Obsession. Finally, I tied silver threads around the fawn's neck, glued him over the wreath, added a couple of silver stars, and mounted it all on a black side-folded card base. 

For the Tic Tac Toe Challenge #190, I selected the center row across - Animal/Winter Foliage/Metallic. 

Freshly Made Sketches: Freshly Made Sketches #564 - A Sketch by Cécile

 TTTC190 - Featured Designer Vicky - Tic Tac Toe Challenge

On a personal note: Several things have been cutting into my cardmaking time. At the end of the summer, we had our large front yard completely torn out in preparation for renovation into a waterwise garden of native plants and a much smaller lawn. We hired a crew to scrape and turn the soil. We brought in plumbers to install a backflow valve for a new drip irrigation system and are having part of the perimeter layered with decomposed granite and rocks. But we've pretty much run out of money for the project because of having to replace our heat pump system and roof. In July we also had a solar system installed. 

All of that to say that because of coming to the end of our allotted resources for all of these projects, I've taken on a couple of design projects to earn a bit more money so we can finish up the yard in the spring. This isn't a complaint because they are fun projects - a medical spa, the second floor of an historic 1896 brick building, and a consultation with an architect on the county courthouse in Grants Pass. However, I'm finding my personal time temporarily diminished and feeling a bit rushed as we barrel toward Christmas.

And then there are the cats... well, I'll talk about them in a later post.    

DECEMBER TWO OLD BATS CHALLENGE

December already and Two Old Bats Halloween Anything Challenge is kicking off today with a new inspirational mood board. I was inspired by the colors in the upper left - ghosts, orange, and black paper with white stars.

Two Old Bats Halloween Challenge: DECEMBER Anything Halloween

My slim-line card started with a piece of Park Lane printed papers matted with black cardstock. Over this I layered a couple of stitched waves in black, one of which was white heat embossed with an old rubber stamp sentiment. I tucked in a couple of Tim Holtz Halloween houses with purple cobweb printed paper showing through the windows and added one of his ghosts. The envelope is custom made from one of the Park Lane papers.

Yup, we're all working on our Christmas cards, but isn't it nice to take a break and squeeze in a Halloween card?