Update

I think I will be posting the pictures of the kitchen re-do after Christmas.  The counters will be in by then and I am still not comfortable doing it sooner due to the situation in Connecticut.  Please continue prayers for Newtown.

Sorrow and Shock

Here I was ready to post pictures of my kitchen make-over.  How unimportant is that now? Way down on the must deal with list.  I am as shocked and stunned as all of you over the tragedy in Connecticut.  I heard someone say that the mother was a "responsible" gun owner.  I don't agree.  If you have a child you know is troubled you don't even belong having guns in the home and definitely not where they can be accessed.  But all this talk of gun control and responsibility will not bring those children and adults back.  This is a time for reflection on the lives of the lost, prayer for courage and strength for the parents and that community and hope to look forward and move beyond this tragedy.  May God bless and keep them all.

Vintage Christmas

This is a small gift I worked on yesterday for my very best friend.  She, like me, likes old things.  The silver sugar bowl I picked up at a yard sale.  The seam binding ribbon was tea dyed and the rhinestone in the center of the bow is vintage, cut from a larger pin. Some of the smaller pearls at the top are also vintage.  The star was also dyed and glittered with tea dye glitter.  The Peace sign was stamped and edged with TH Tea Dye ink.  I just love this piece and hope my friend does too.  I have to give thanks to Dawn Edmonds for the inspiration for this piece.  Thanks sweet Dawn!

A new addition to our home......

This was made from an old Country Cupboard pattern called Folk Art Garden.  The entire thing was done with a machine buttonhole stitch and I did a close up so you could kind of see that.  I cut out all the appliques and stitched them down a couple months ago, and then it sat, staring at me each time I went in my sewing room.  Finally, this past week, I got around to cutting out the scalloped background (2 layers).  You stitch the appliqued piece to one piece then buttonhole stitch the two layers together.  This way, no stitching shows on the back.  I'm very happy with it and I hope you like it too.

We are expecting new kitchen cabinets to arrive in two weeks.  I knew when we started this process back in June (yes June!) that it would end up smack dab in the middle of the Christmas season don't you know.  It is what it is.  I'll have to try and do before and after pics for you.  The cabinets are barn red!  Yes I said barn red.  Can't wait!

Happy Thanksgiving!

There is ALWAYS, ALWAYS, ALWAYS something to be thankful for!

More Pics of the Snowflake Wreath

Let It Snow.......just not yet!

I have been in a funk since the election.  Anybody out there sharing my gloom and doom?  Anyway, not much going on creatively until this past weekend when I started on the beauty above.  It was very simple just time consuming.  I used an 18" circle of styrofoam from which I cut a large circle in the middle.  The edges are 2.5" across.  It seemed like a good width.  Then I wrapped the styrofoam with wide white ribbon.  Get the cheapest you can find as it really doesn't show but keeps all the little balls of styrofoam from falling about.  The dies I used are the new Tim Holtz Snowflake Rosette, large and small, and a Sizzix snowflake die, and the new SU Snowflake.  I used three kinds of glitters, various colors of Stickles, pearls, SU's faceted buttons and a whole lot of hot glue!  I also used several shades of white for the papers, all were Bazzil from Michaels.  The thicker paper works better with the Snowflake Rosette dies.  It's kind of dark here now and the pics aren't great.   Doesn't do the wreath justice.   Be sure to click on the pictures to get an up close view.  It's very sparkly and light reflective.   I will try to get better ones tomorrow and post them. 

VOTE!!!

If you haven't already, please get out there and vote.  It's more important than ever and it's a privilege and duty in our free country. 

Heaven Sent!

All day today I worked on this card.  It features the new Tim Holtz layered wings die.  I think I made them a little dark.  Gold or silver glittered paper would have been good.  Anyway, the image was off the internet and the sentiment is from a PTI stamp sent....one of my favorite.  I outlined the wings in Stickles and the star and halo were purchased.  This is a very soft dreamy card.  I needed some calm after the last two days!!!!

During The Storm......

I was very busy crafting.  Below are some of the results of some new Tim Holtz dies and the famous Stampin' Up! Christmas ornament shown on the cover of the holiday catalog...with my own twist.

The first picture is the ornament.  I added half rosettes in between the petals and finished with a pre purchased gold star and a large smokey gem in the middle.  You still use 20 each of the two ornaments.  I just arranged them differently.  It needs some tweaking but not bad for a first effort.

The next picture shows the new Tim Holtz Snowflake Rosettes.  These were a little fiddly but worth the effort. I did two in Whisper White and two in Ivory.  Stickles along the edge and a button and pearls in the middle.  At CHA, they showed these snowflakes made into a whole wreath of just the snowflakes accented with silver and it was gorgeous!  Can you imagine a small tree full of these!

Lastly is the Tim Holtz poinsettia.  I made it up three ways.  One was just on very thin newsprint type paper with distress inks for color.  Next was one with DP. and finally one with glittered and metallic paper and I really like this.  So many ways you could go with these.  I used stickles and perfect pearls in the center and dimensionals between the layers.  I'll use these on cards and packages.

If you are north of Maryland and you survived the storm let us know with a comment.  NJ and NY and points north really got hit bad.  God's grace will get you through this.

WE SURVIVED!

God's grace is good.  No power out, although my daughter's was out.  No major flood here.  Lots of downed trees.  Continue to pray for those in NJ and NY who have major problems.  Back to creating..........will be posting this afternoon all the goodies I did yesterday during the storm!

UPDATE!!!

Well the latest is not too encouraging. The eye of the storm is supposed to pass through our county around 11 this evening.  They are even contemplating closing the bridge across the Susquehanna river on I95!!!  There are two other bridges that cross the river here in our county and they are already closed.  All fifty floodgates are open at the Conowingo Dam.  Winds tonight are supposed to be 80 miles an hour and if you could see what it looks like out there now, you'd wonder how it could get worse!  Please pray for everyone on the East Coast in the path of this storm. 

Be afraid.....Be Very Afraid......of SANDY!

Here on the East Coast we are preparing for a major storm and I just wanted to wish everyone well.  We haven't seen anything like this before and everyone is leery of what it will mean.  Just wanted to say...BE SAFE!

Halloween Mini

This is a small Halloween Mini I decided to tackle on the spur of the moment.  I pulled out all the stops on this one and loaded it with lots of embellishments.  The paper I used for this album is All Hallow's Eve by Carta Bella.  The first page is a spider and web from Mike's which I wrapped with that scary web-like stuff.  There's also a rose made from paper I made with Tim Holtz inks.  On the corner are two pieces of bling and I think you can get a gander at the ribbons and the small dangling key, medal and spider charm. 

The next page has a pocket with a vintage card inside.  And the next page is the only one I had trouble photographing but it has a small cabinet card that is holographic---meaning he has a normal face in some lights but if you tilt the card a little it turns scary! A cute bat also shares the page with him.

Next is a graveyard scene done mostly with MS stickers from a past Halloween collection.  There is also some Recollections bling.

The next page is my spider page, background spiders, a spider rosette from K&Co and a little card from the G45 Happy Haunting collection.

There there's the skeleton page which includes an articulated metal skeleton from years ago, a small bone from a $1 store necklace and some small skeleton and bone related single images.

The page with the large flower is next.  This was a Recollections flower I made larger with some Halloween paper cut with the TH
distressed flower die.  The leaves are the Marianne Anja Leaves 2 and the beaded trim is some from my stash.  The next page which also has that trim are puffy stickers which spell BOO and some more bling trim.  The little raised strip at the bottom lists all the things that are supernatural!

One side of the last page is an outdoor scene--moon shining above, leaves falling on Halloween night and the MS fence.
Finally is a page with a chipboard bat I stickled with Black Diamond, some Tea Dye Fragments and another MS sticker.

I hope you enjoy this.  It was a great deal of fun to make and great to use up a lot of my older stash.....so I can buy new, you understand!  If you're a papercrafter you understand.  Have a good evening!

Tweet Leaves

This is a Stampin' Up stamp called Tweet Leaves.  On first glance the stamp looks like it has to all one color when you stamp it.  But today I tried coloring the various parts of the stamp with Tim Holtz Distress Markers.  I don't have all the colors yet (try to buy them on sale!).  I was skeptical when I saw Tim's demo on using them.  You can imagine how long it took to color all the parts and I thought surely the ink will be too dry to stamp.  Tim's trick is to breathe (huff he calls it) on the stamp when you are done coloring then stamp.  It works!!!  It has a very soft painterly look and you don't have to be exacting about where your colors go.  If you let part of a leaf or flower be the same color as a stem it looks even better. 

I used SU cardstock and DP and the Spellbinders Marvelous Squares.  This Spellbinders set is wonderful....my new "go to" set.  It has five square dies....ALL DIFFERENT.  I love to do 5" square cards and this works perfectly for that size. The cocoa layer and the white layer are from this die set.This little stamp makes a nice all occasion card no matter how you stamp it. 

Snow! Not yet......

I've been wanting to try out this new die.  It's the first Marianne die I've bought.  This one is called Anja Leaves 2.  It has three different leaves in it and I thought this looked just like pine boughs.  I cut them out of several green cardstock scraps and highlighted them with Stickles.  Then I used a rectangle Spellbinders to cut out the sentiment from In The Meadow by PTI.  I had a silver pen I used to highlight the edges.  The little snowflake is a plastic one from a bag I purchased at Michaels.  The background is the snowflakes embossing folder from Provocraft.  I'm not ready for snow yet.  Enjoying the beautiful fall weather too much!  How about you?

My First Christmas Project

I didn't expect to finish this today.  The main image is a vintage holy card printed in Paris....year???  I decided to contrast the commercial symbols of Christmas (ornaments, snowflakes and flowers) with the religious image and the word Peace.  The page is glittery but very soft.  The star was a glittered sticker and the rays were made with gold Stickles.  I hope you like it.  Don't forget to click on the image to see it closer.  Have a great weekend!

PS:  After I saw this photographed, I didn't like the resin rose at the top of the image.  I removed it and like it MUCH better.

Can you tell I love fall? 3 posts in one day....

Here's the results of another new die from Stampin' Up.  I don't work for them anymore (used to be a demo) but I still love their products.  This is the Autumn Accents die.  It has four kinds of leaves and an acorn.  Some of these I ran through an embossing folder first and some I didn't.  On the embossed ones, after embossing, I went over them with the Rusty Hinge and Brushed Corduroy Distress Inks, directly from the pad.  These helps cover any "white" areas from the heavy embossing.  Some were also cut from two sided paper so that made an extra nice leaf.  On the acorn, if you can see it, I made the cap of the acorn darker to look more realistic.  So many projects these can be used for!  Thanks for stopping by!

If At First You Don't Succeed..........

As I said in my post below I was having trouble photographing these beautiful snowflakes.  I took them outside and it worked better but I don't think you can see the shine and shimmer.  Anyhow, this is the new SU Snowflake Die.  It has three layers as I think you can see and you can use all three or just two.  The small snowflake in the center has just two.  One (the tan one) is cut from shiny gold paper.  On one of the other ones I used Diamond Stickles on the points of the snowflake.  These would be beautiful on a card, the tree, in the windows or on pages in your scrapbook.  One tip I would give you is to use dimensionals to put them together.  It really makes the layers stand out.  A really nice die!

Bee the Queen!