Surprise, it's NOT a Christmas Card

Yes, I do actually own some Stamping Boutique images that aren't Christmas related. This little girl is one of them:

Challenges:
Dare U 2 Digistamp: sketch
The Stamping Boutique: use a Stamping Boutique image

Ooops, I tore my paper!

Okay, it really wasn't an "oops" because I did it on purpose because the Bah Humbug challenge told me to! This is another super cute image from The Stamping Boutique.

Challenges:
Bah Humbug:Christmas and tear your paper
Stamp Something: Christmas Something
Stamping Boutique: use an SB image

Yep, that's a sticker

Wow, it's been a long time since I've used a sticker on anything but this week at Raise the Bar, the challenge is to use a sticker. Luckily, I had some Christmas stickers left in my stash that worked for this card. This image is from the Stamping Boutique.

Challenges:
Eat Sleep Stamp-sketch
Raise the Bar-use a sticker
Maimi Doodles-anything goes
Stamp Something-Christmas Somethings
The Stamping Boutique: use a SB image

It's a Love Story

Have you seen the movie, UP!? Such a sweet movie. This image from Meljen's is based on the sweet old couple in the movie.

This is a zig zag card which is kind of hard to photograph but here's my attempt to show the zig zag:


Simply Saturday-simply flowers
Create for fun-use flowers
Pollycraft-love and marriage
Cute Card Thursday-text
ABC Challenge-zig zag card
Meljens challenge-sketch

Sneaking in a Christmas Card

I know, I just went on about how hot it is outside and I even made a summer themed card yesterday. But I came across this adorable image from Pink Gem Studio called "Christmas Penelope" and really wanted to make something with it so here it is! This makes the 60th Christmas card in my stash!

Challenges:
Our Creative Corner Sketch Challenge: sketch
Charisma Cardz- something with a tail
Winter Wonderland- No designer paper

One Stuffed Bunny

How cute is this little bunny, stuffed with cake, from Tracey at the Stampin' Boutique? He's adorable, right? You can pick him up for yourself for free if you join the SB group at Paper Craft Planet. Find out more HERE.

Challenges:
Speedy the Cat-masculine card
Cardmaker-tilt a whirl
Sweet Sketch Wednesday-sketch

Feels Like Summer

Yeah...no kidding. It's been in the high nineties and humid here all week. And last week too, though we were on vacation in Virginia where it was HOT too! So I took a break from making Christmas cards to make a summer themed card. The image is from Bugaboo and the sentiment says "Hope your day is full of sunshine", in case you can't quite read it. Those little pink dragonflies are from a punch I got from my friend Alison!

Challenges:
Sketch Saturday-sketch
Paper Play Challenges-anything goes
Colour Create Challenge-hot pink, warm orange and saffron
Rainbow Lady's challenge-oranges and lemons
Digi Doodles Challenge-punch or cut me
Treehouse-spots and dots
Crafty Creations Challenge-summer
Bugaboo stamps challenge-sweet summertime

A Pastel Christmas (in July!)

Oh no...vacation didn't cure me from my current obsession with making Christmas cards. Nope! I was happy to come back and find several challenges having to do with Christmas in July. While I would normally not combine Christmas challenges (because my goal is to have a lot of cards before December) given the fact that I'm struggling to catch up from vacation, both at home and work, and I'm having trouble getting back in the cardmaking mode, I decided to combine all the Christmas card challenges this week into this card:

Here's a close up so you can see the sparkle (hopefully!)

This adorable image is from Di's Digi Downloads.
Challenges:
Cupcake Craft Challenge-pastel Christmas
Corrosive Challenge-pink and blue
Little paper shop-pink, light blue and celery
Tuesday Taggers-Christmas in july
Tuesday Throwdown-Christmas in july
Digital Tuesday Challenge-dazzle me and digi image
Papertake Weekly Challenge-sketch
Little Red Wagon-Christmas in July
ABC Christmas: P for presents

Feeling A Little Rusty

It's been almost two weeks since I've made any cards or posted anything to my blog. I spent the week before vacation organzing my photos and papers to catch up on two years of scrapbooking for my kids. I worked on the scrapbooks all last week on vacation and am pretty happy with the results. I do need to go add some "somethings" to several pages and make sure I've got dates correct for certain events but for the most part, I feel like my scrapbooks are caught up (for now!) So...it's time to get back to cardmaking. It felt good to anticipate making cards yesterday. I summed up my challenges, printed a couple of images and looked forward to crafting. Until I got to my craft table and felt out of sorts and awkward! My mind was blank, I felt like my tools were all in the wrong places (they weren't), I couldn't remember what markers I liked to use for certain colors. UGH! Here's what I came up with, hopefully things will go better today:

Challenges:
Rosie and Dee-all creatures great and small
Crazy challenge-birthdays
Crazy 4 Challenges-photo inspiration
Just Cute Bears-clean and simple with a bear
All sorts-something for a baby or child
Critter Sketch Challenge: sketch

Taking A Break

Okay, I haven't posted all week and that's because things are in chaos right now! No, nothing serious...just crazy busy at work in addition to trying to get ready to move our offices. Half of the office is moved..the other half goes next week. Try getting anything done in that circumstance!
Also, I'm getting ready to go on vacation. We leave Saturday for a week with my husband's family. I've been getting photos and paper ready so I can spend my down time updating my kids' photo albums.
So, I'll be back to playing challenges again around the 24th.
See you then!

A Beary Merry Christmas

Di from Di's Digi Downloads has added some super cute Christmas images in the last couple of weeks. You might want to get over there and check them out so you have plenty of cuteness for your Christmas in July cards!

Challenges:
Die cut dreams Christmas Club-Beary merry Christmas
Bugaboo stamps challenge-Christmas in July
Speedy the Cat-punch it
Sketch Saturday-sketch

'Twas the Night Before Christmas

Take a close look at this image from Sassy Cheryl's. I think we all hope that poor Rudolph does not lose his nose like this on the night before Christmas! What would we do?? :)

Challenges:
Bugaboo: Christmas in July
Winter Wonderland: Twas the Night Before Christmas

A Sassy Little Snowman

I was on a shopping spree the other day and picked up several new images from Sassy Cheryl's, including this cute little snowman. It's called "First Snowman".

Challenges:
Bugaboo: Christmas in July
Paper Cutz Challenge: Christmas with no red or green

A "Latte" Christmas Cards Today

Sorry for the bad pun but I am going to post a lot of Christmas cards today. This is an image from The Stamping Boutique called "Jennifer Latte Chrismtas". I have a friend who is one of my few coffee drinking friends. I'm not sure why, but my friends tend to like tea (hot or iced) and are not so into coffee. My friend Chris and I LOOOVEE coffee and when she comes to town we like to go get Milky Way Lattes at a little place nearby. Really, we did that the last time she was here and I'm making it sound like it's an ongoing tradition or something. It's not...YET but I'm sure the next time she's here we'll be visiting that little coffee shop again. So, of course I thought of her when I saw this image and had to get it.

Here's a closeup of the image:

Challenges:
Paper Cutz: Christmas with no red or green
Crafts and Me Challenge: pink, black and white
Bah Humbug: Christmas for a special friend
Bugaboo: Christmas in July
Stamping Boutique: Monthly contest if you use their images

Love's Healing Hands

Aww...isn't that sweet? "Love's Healing Hands", that's the name of this super sweet image from Sassy Cheryl's. See the teddy's eye hanging on by a thread? Too cute! This image comes as a girl holding a teddy too but I chose the boy one for now because it reminded me of my younger son, Brendan. He's twelve now but when he was about five years old, he was entertaining himself by rolling off one of our chairs on to the family room floor. He used to love the Disney movie "Dinosaur" and at the end, the Carnataur falls off a cliff. That's what Brendan was pretending to do. And he did it about 20 times until, on the last one, he fell off and broke his collar bone. OUCH! It was very painful and there really isn't much you can do about it so, to make him feel better, I went to Target and got him a stuffed bear which is known in our house...still to this day...as Feel Better Bear. Even today, when Brendan is hurt or sick, we go get Feel Better Bear and it cheers him up.

Challenges:
Little Red Wagon-use nesties
Digi Doodles Challenge-texture
ABC Challenge-Y for You and Me
Eat Sleep Stamp-sketch
Teddy Stampers-love my teddy
Stamp Something: recipie-1 paper, 1 image, 1 ribbon

A Lazy Summer Day

Ahh...what's better than a lazy summer afternoon nap in the hammock? I'm not sure, but this bear from Di's Digi Downloads sure seems to be enjoying the day.

Challenges:
Cute Card Thursday-summer theme
Shirley's 2 Girls-summer theme and sketch

Happy Birthday Dad!

Today is my dad's birthday. He's 70. It feels weird to say that because when you picture someone who is 70, you think it's an old man. If you met my dad, you would definitely NOT think "old man". He plays softball and golf, goes to all my kids' sporting events and does not seem to be slowing down in any way. Tonight, he and my mom are coming over for cake and tomorrow we're taking them both out to dinner because my mom had a monumental birthday earlier this year, she turned 65. So we thought it would be nice to all go out and celebrate.

I know, this is the third time you've seen this image on my blog in the last ten days or so. I just love this little guy from Designed to Delight. He makes a cute birthday card for any age!
Challenges:
Meljens challenge-circles galore
Paper Play Challenges-feature a number
Our Creative Corner sketch challenge-sketch

Watch the Birdie

I don't know if you know this about me, but I'm not a fan of birds. Nope...don't like 'em. A lot of people seem to really like them but they honestly don't do anything for me so I almost didn't do a couple of these challenges that involved birds this week. I was looking through some of my images and found this one from Designed to Delight and thought it would make a pretty card. It's called Spring Peep.

Challenges:
Copic Creations-birds
Moving Along with the times-sketch
Charisma Cardz-watch the birdie

A Christmas Card Explosion

Thanks to my friend Terrie, I've discovered a new technique that I absolutely love. Terrie hosted the challenge this week at Cardmaker and asked us to use the "distressed newsprint" technique which I had never heard of before. So, I watched the video and gave it a try and made this card with one of my all-time favorite snowman stamps (yes, an actual wood-mounted stamp..GASP!) You can watch the video from Stamp TV HERE. The distressing is done with Tim Holtz Antique Linen, Old Paper and Frayed Burlap distress inks. The simple coloring on the snowman was done with about four Copic markers.

I really loved how this card turned out so I made some more, although I made these ones longways/horizontal..however you want to describe them. I had just enough newspaper to make twelve of them, so that's what I did:

And a close up:

While I was making these I was wondering what the Christmas Cards All Year Long challenge was going to be for July because it hadn't been posted the last time I looked. I was hoping that maybe somehow my cards would work for that. Turns out, the challenge is "Anything Goes" so I'm entering these cards in that challenge. If you've never played along before, the challenge is to make five Christmas cards in a month based on the given theme. Since you can do anything you want this month, why not give it a try and jumpstart your Christmas card stash?
I'm not finished yet, the second challenge this week at Cardmaker is a sketch brought to us by Mrs. Jones. Since I've TOTALLY caught the Christmas bug, I decided to make this a Christmas card too. This is from a new image I won from The Stamping Boutique. Of course I had to use my Snow Dots embossing folder!

Now I'm finished. I'm going to post this and then go add FOURTEEN more cards to my Christmas card totals on my sidebar. WOO HOO!

Love My Teddy

Who doesn't love a teddy bear? Have you checked out the Teddy Stampers challenge? A card challenge all about using teddy bear stamps! How can you possibly not play along with that one?

Challenges:
Colour Create Challenge-baby pink, peach and black
Teddy Stampers-love my teddy

Santa Baby...Again

Remember that I made about six Christmas cards with this image last week. It's from the Digi Shack and I know people were having trouble finding it in their store last week. Maybe it's been added by now, but if not, their contact info is on their store site and you can order it that way. It's only $1. I KNOW! Can you believe that? So at the time, I printed several of these guys and colored them up. I decided to use him again for this card:

Challenges:
Sparkle Creations Christmas Card-sketch (rotated it)
There She Goes Challenge-orange red and brown

Sending Donkey Smiles

Currently, there is a card drive going on for Michelle Oatman. She's an active cardmaker/blogger/DT member who was involved in an accident on her farm a couple of weeks ago that caused her to lose an eye. Michelle has a long road to recovery ahead of her and her online friends want to brighten her days with cheerful cards. If you'd like to participate, all the info is HERE. You can even get this ADORABLE little donkey image, along with several sentiments you can use for your card for Michelle. Did I mention that Michelle LOVES donkeys? She does, and that's why this card drive is called "Kickin' It for Michelle"

Challenges:
Papertake Weekly Challenge-sketch
Spoon Full of Sugar-michelle card drive

A Card for Sam

I realized that it's been about a week since I sent a card to Sam! I'm sorry Sam!! **If you're wondering who Sam is, he's a five year old boy who lives in Colorado who is undergoing chemo treatments at the moment. If you have a spare card lying around, why not send it to Sam to cheer him up...I know he'd love it. You can find all the details HERE.** I made this card with an adorable new image from Pollycraft called Cuthbert with Balloons. Okay, I think Cuthbert is a boy, but I felt like coloring "his" shirt pink. :) I thought this made a very cheerful card so it was perfect for Sam.

Challenges:
Just Cute Bears-decoupage and a bear
Pollycraft-sketch
Crazy challenge-up in the air

Winter Wonderland

This cute little mitten is from StretchNBubbles. It's such a great image for a winter/Christmas card and fits with so many different color combos because, you know, mittens can be ANY color. So if you want to make a bright pink Christmas card with it, you can!

Challenges:
Winter Wonderland-use punches/die cuts & Christmas theme
Paper Sundaes-white plus one ( I chose blue)
Incy Wincy-punches

More Fun in the Sun

Lots of challenges lately with summertime themes. There are several images from Di's Digi Downloads that work perfectly with these kinds of challenges...although I have noticed that Di is posting some super cute Christmas images too so I need to get over there and pick some up. For this round of summer fun challenges, I used this Gone Fishin' image.

Challenges:
Just us Girls-sketch and just rite stamp(if you have one)
Secret crafter-water
Crafty Hos-fun in the sun
Cupcake Craft Challenge-sporty image

A Big Birthday Wish

This is the latest image from Faith at Designed to Delight. I printed and colored it twice and pop dotted the smaller image onto the larger one. You can do so many different things with this image, I'm sure I'm going to get a lot of use out of it.

Challenges:
Designed to Delight: Wish image
Speedy the Cat: use a die cut (Nesties)

Christmas in July

If you've read my blog lately, you know I've been on quite a Christmas kick. This will be my 40th Christmas card added to my stash. Woo hoo! I'm excited to get to December without a ton of cards to make!

You'll recognize this bear from last week's Designed to Delight challenge. I thought he worked well for a Christmas card too, with just a few changes in the colors of the present.
Challenges:
Cards for Men-christmas in july
Sketch Saturday-sketch
Simple doodles-holiday
Corrosive Challenge-christmas

Vintage Tones...

I have to admit, I'm not a fan of the red, white and blue card. Despite that, I've made several this summer. I toned down the brightness on this one for the Friends Having Fun challenge. Red, white and blue is also the challenge at Digital Tuesday Challenge. I used this Bella image from Pixie Dust Studios and the sketch from CPS Card Sketches.

Fruity AND Sparkly

Isn't this a fun image? It's new from Pholkart Blessings.

Challenges:
Cute Card Thursday-fruity
Shirley's 2 Girls-summer theme and sparkles
I used my circles and scalloped circles Nesties, my houndstooth embossing folder and added some black Stickles to the seeds.

Less is More

Less is more..that's the challenge this week at Bah Humbug. It's up to you to determine what that means. For me, it was to make a simple card without a lot of embellishments with a simple Christmas wish.

This is another image from Dustin Pike. I used my favorite SNOW DOTS embossing folder and my circle and scalloped circles Nesties.

The Comfy Chair

We have a chair in our house that we call "the comfy chair". It's the softest, most comfy chair we own. It's perfect to read in, watch tv in and even sleep in. It doesn't look like this chair, but it's the same concept! This super comfy chair is from Little Musings.

Challenges:
Create for fun-sketch
Crazy 4 Challenges-two or more ribbons
One Stop Craft Challenge-distressing-used my TH distressing tool (LOVE IT!) and lots of TH distress ink
Simply Saturday-kraft

Summer Fun

This super fun summer image is the freebie at Bugaboo stamps this week. Head over and pick it up for yourself. And while you're there, check out the rest of their awesome images. Through the 4th of July, EVERYTHING is 50% off...how awesome is that?

Challenges:
Raise the Bar-colors of your flag
Stamp Something-colors of your flag
Meljens challenge-red white and blue
Eat Sleep Stamp-sketch
Crafty Calendar-summer
Dare you to Digi Stamp-the great outdoors

A Green Christmas

I'm getting a lot of use out this image from The Stamping Boutique. Don't worry though, I recently won their contest for June so I'm about to get FIVE MORE SB images so you won't have to keep seeing these same snowmen. If you make a card with any SB image in the month of July, you can enter to win the July prize which is also FIVE images of your choice. They have a wide variety of images to choose from, I just happen to choose the Christmas/Winter themed ones but if that's not your thing, you will surely be able to find something awesome in their store.

Challenges:
City Crafter-shades of green
ABC Christmas Challenge-n for noel and embossing
Treehouse-sketch (rotated it)

Who Beat Up My Tag?

Oh, I guess I did. I used my new Tim Holz distressing tool on this tag and I LOVE IT! I know this tag looks like it's been through the wringer, but I'm liking that look.

This is another Dustin Pike image. It was a freebie last July.
Only one challenge this time: Little Red Wagon-Make a Tag

How About Some Orange Sherbet?

I know sherbet isn't ice cream, but it's cold and yummy like ice cream so I'm stretching the challenge this week that asks us to use ice cream colors and I'm actually using sherbet colors. I hope they forgive me. :) This adorable image is Michael from the Bugaboo Brats line.

Challenges:
Crafty Creations Challenge-ice cream and cakes
Sweet Sketch Wednesday-sketch and bugaboo image
Digi Doodles Challenge-circles and dots

Frosty the Snowman

Actually, I don't think that is this image's name. It's an image I got from Dustin Pike last fall and I think it's actually called Bundle 2. I'm going to stick with Frosty for now.

Challenges:
Sparkle Creations Christmas Card-based on christmas song (Frosty the Snowman)
Our Creative Corner-sketch
Tuesday Throwdown-black and white with a splash of color

You are one Cool Cat!

Remember the book, The Outsiders? My youngest son is reading it this summer as one of his summer reading books. I remember liking this book, but I don't remember the details of it so I'm going to read it again when he finishes. This week, the Sisterhood of Crafters' challenge is to make something based on a book or movie so this is my "Outsiders" inspired card. I guess this cat is a "greaser". This image is from Bugaboo Stamps. They have several more cool cat images in their collection and right now, all images are 50% off.

Challenges:
Paper Play Challenges-child or teenager
Color Throwdown-cream chocolate turquois
Sisterhood of Crafters-fave book or movie
Moving Along with the times-sketch

Hang In There

This is another one of those images from Sassy Cheryl's that I just can't get enough of. How adorable is this little bear hanging on the clothesline? Just too cute!

Challenges:
PPC: Yellow, Dark Red, Soft Suede
Critter Sketch: sketch (I rotated it)
Simple Doodles: Fun in the sun (not sure how much fun this bear is having!)
Digital Tuesday Challenge: summertime
Spoonful of Sugar: animals