Friday, October 30, 2009

Vintage Santa With Bear Christmas Card

Hi everyone. I haven't done a bear for a while...so you know me...I had to find something with a bear to do today. I was feeling "Vintage" and pulled out this image and went to town putting it together.This sketch comes from the Sketch Challenge at Split Coast Stampers from Wednesday's challenge. I really liked the looks of it and had to try it with this lovely card. I crocheted this Poinsettia from a pattern that I made today. You will find the pattern for this in the post below this one. Please let me know if you tried it, if you liked it, or if I had anything incorrect or confusing. This shows the details of my card. I used crystal effects on the image and lots of layering. A Fiskar sunburst border punch was used as well as a sizzx die for the corner treatments. I used seed beads for the center of the Poinsettia as well as a bit of gold stickles. This shows the inside of my card. I crocheted another flower to match the front. The sentiment has been gold embossed.Here's one last picture to show all the details and layers.

Hope you have a terrific day. I would love to hear what you think!

Carol

Thursday, October 29, 2009

Crochet Poinsettia Directions for your Cards

Tomorrow, you are going to see more of this card. For right now, I would like to share with you the directions I drew up to crochet this wonderful Poinsettia.

We are going to start with a size 7 crochet hook and one skein of embroidery floss. You can use crochet thread, but I like how the embroidery floss looks. It is a personal choice and either material will produce this flower.

To beg: ch 4, join with a sl st in first ch.
Row 2: *ch 9, sc in 2nd chain from hook, hdc in next ch, dc in next ch, 1 trc in next ch and in each of the next 2 chains, dc in next ch, hdc in last ch, sl st in circle*. rep from * to * 4 times for a total of 5 petals.
Row 3: *ch 3, sl st between petals", repeat * to * 4 times for a total of 5 ch 3 loops.
Row 4: sl st in first ch 3 loop, *ch 9, sc in 2nd chain from hook, hdc in next ch, dc in next ch, 1 trc in next ch and in each of the next 2 chains, dc in the next ch, hdc in the last ch, sl st in next ch 3 loop, repeat from * to * 4 more times, sl st in first sc of row and fasten off.



I would love to see your Poinsettia if you should decide to use my pattern. Just leave me a comment and I will come to visit you. If you have any problems, or find a mistake in this pattern please let me know so I can fix it. Enjoy!!!

Hugs,
Carol

Phantom of the Opera-Fred She Said

Happy Thursday everyone. I wanted to share with you today a card I did for Virtual Stamp Night which was last Saturday, October 24. We were to be inspired by "Phantom of the Opera". We had a link to the video for Phantom of the Masquerade Ball. While viewing this I kept thinking of the word "opulence". I have a "thing" for words...lol Anyway, the colors were white, black, and gold with lots of over the top accessories of pearls and jewels....in other words "opulence". Opulence is defined as - a great wealth or abundance!So here you can see I have an abundance of embellishments. You know I love my embellishments and I don't need an excuse to use them. But I really piled them on here. You can just tell I really enjoyed myself doing this too...don't you???? Come on, you can tell me!!! LOL These are those flowers I talked about yesterday that are from Fred She Said and her Whirly Collection. I took gold ink and distressed the flowers with them and put stickles on top of the gold. Really shiny and beautiful IRL. The reindeer was gold embossed from a stamp from Inkadinkadoo as well as the Noel sentiment. The gold feather is from Michael's in the floral section where you get your wreath making picks. I used the Fleur De Lis Spellbinders die cut, and the Grand Lace Borderibilities. Here is the inside with more of the flowers from Fred She Said. I was able to use every bit of them I printed out...no waste here!!! And when I was trying to find something clever for the inside....wouldn't you know I came across this stamp in my stash that I have had for years. It was absolutely perfect for my card!!! lol It doesn't get any better than that. So I think I achieved the "opulence" I was going for. So don't be surprise if I visit you at your blog or on Split Coast Stampers to find a comment from me with my new word....opulence!!! LOL

Have a wonderful day.

Carol

Wednesday, October 28, 2009

Fred She Said-Rosie Shaker Card


This card is something that I have been wanting to create ever since my very own team member Carolyn - Creative Card Corner gave the tutorial at Priscillastyles at Midnight Madness for MMSC#21. If you haven't made one of these yet, may I encourage you to do so. It was so much fun. It does take some planning if you are going to do lots of glitter. I didn't realize that stickles took so long to dry. I more than once smudge it and went to an interview with glitter on my face...LOL I guess they got to see my "sparkling" personality!!! hahahaThis is a tease of a picture isn't it??? I wanted to show you how the little door opens to reveal the shaker part of the card.And here is precious Rosie. Oh my my this is an image from Fred She Said. You can get it colored just like this one is here or it comes not colored and you can do your own. Isn't she just about the cuties doggie you ever saw. Now you know why I have been chomping at the bit to make something really special with this image. I love working with digi stamps and I want to invite you to check out Tracey's wonderful designs at Fred She Said. You will be so pleased. You can just about see the glitter I have in the shaker box and I found some cute tiny buttons I snipped the backs off to put inside as well. There are puppy faces, a couple dog houses, dog bones, a few fire hydrants. LOL Just so cute, cute, cute!!!
Here is the inside of my card. What is so great about digi's is that I reduced the size of Rosie to put her inside the card as well. With a face like this little puppy dog has, you just have to use it more than once on the card so you can keep smiling and be happy!!!

Stayed tuned tomorrow. I had some Whirly flowers left over from Fred She Said from that cake I made for the blog hop. I made a splendid card with them. What until you see it!!!



Carol

Tuesday, October 27, 2009

Midnight Madness Sketch Challenge #25 Rosebud's Castle

Hi, everyone, welcome to the Midnight Sketch Challenge. We have a real treat for you this week. Shawne, one of our Design Team members is sponsoring us this week and has provided us with her fabulous images to create our submissions. I choose "Rosebud's Castle" for my image. I thought this was absolutely gorgeous and perfect for either a Birthday Card or a Wedding Card. This was so easy to color and blend. I actually went for my pencils and blending solution for this one. I really like how the sky, background, and castle came out.You can see a nice closeup of the many layers of the castle here and the pretty flower I got in the clearance bin at Michael's. I am a glitter lover so I applied plenty of it for all that sparkle and shine.Speaking of that sparkle and shine, I also love rhinestones and am always looking for an excuse to include them on my cards. I managed to get some on this card too!!! LOLThis is the inside of my card. I used plenty of stitching and more rhinestones to sparkle it up. You have to read the greeting inside this card. It is perfect with my image. I tried to create something that would compliment the card image and overall feel. I used to dabble in poetry and I suppose I should try again so that I can really customize my cards. Isn't that cool and it goes so well with my card!!! I love it when things come together!!! I encourage you to give Shawne's images a try. I know you will love them as much as I do!!!

You have one more week to get in on our Month End drawings. Our sponsor for the month of October was....Winner will get 3 free stamps of their choice AND a $50 Certificate that is valid till June 2010. WOWZER :) Thank you again Chelsea

We would like to thank this week's sponsor----- Studio 313-Creations by Shawne

Shawne, from our very own DT has her own stamp line and has very generously offered up a $25 Gift Voucher to the store that features her line.


This week's Midnight Madness Gold Star Winner is - #33 Cabio

Our Midnight Madness Remarkables for this week are:

#14 Grace
#25 Vickie Basement Stamper
#44 Stephanie Hester

Congratulations ladies on some really wonderful entries. It is really so hard to choose. But I encourage you to go check out what these talented ladies created for MMSC #24--you will be entertained and amazed.

Upcoming Midnight Madness event

Our DT has already scheduled our next Blog Hop which will be coming to you all on Dec 8th. Our Holiday Blog Hop will be a week long Hop filled with surprises and of course prizes. If you would like to help spread the word about our next hop by posting this logo on your side bar we would appreciate it.

We will be awarding an appreciation gift every week to one lucky person who has posted this link until our Holiday Blog Hop is launched, so the search starts NOW!!…good luck!!!


Have a wonderful day! I can't wait to see what you come up with this week. I'll be around saying hello!

Carol

Sunday, October 25, 2009

Pumpkin Gingerbread

Hello Everyone: Did you ever make a card and wish it was one that someone would send you....well this is that card for me. If you know me at Splicoast Stampers, I am Gingerbeary which is a name I have had as a Secret Sister from the Boyds Bear Forum and has stuck with me for over 15 years. It is a combination of my love for Gingerbread and Bears....well I do love pumpkins too so I came up with this card for a Challenge for Virtual Stamp Night.The challenge was to make a card with an image that is normally known for one Holiday and Masquerading it as another. I knew I would have to do a Gingerbread which is traditionally a Christmas Holiday image and Masquerade it as a Thanksgiving image.To really add to the charm and flair of this card, I thought I would combine two of my favorite recipes: Pumpkin Gingerbread Trifle and Pumpkin Gingerbread Streusel. I really love the pumpkin Gingerbread Trifle and would highly recommend that for your fall baking. The Streusel is great too!!This is a nice close up to show my paper pieced pattern and all the luscious layers. I used some puff paint on the gingerbread girl to make it look like icing. I faux stitched the pumpkin and the bow and hand drew the leaf veins.Here we have another close up that show some of the glittering I did on the edges and more of the layers of the pumpkin at a different angle.On the inside of the card I made a pocket that these recipes fit in very nicely and paper pieced another pumpkin just like the one the Gingerbread girl is holding on the front.

I hope you have enjoyed viewing my creation today and that it will have you thinking outside the box on what you could use your own holiday images for. I invite you to go check out the challenge entries that some very talented card makers have done for this challenge. They are all clever and fun cards. When doing so please use the key words NOV09VSNMINI1 in the search box.

Thanks for stopping by, have a great day.

Carol

Tuesday, October 20, 2009

Cocoa Cup Holder Tutorial


Today, I am going to show you how to make a mug to hold cocoa. This is something that really happened by accident. I guess you could say, I really got into this card and just kept adding things as I went along. Who could resist this sweet Cocoa Girl that Chelsea created. The more I look at her the more I can think of things to make with her. Just think how wonderful this would be as a get well card. Instead of including a Cocoa packet, you could include a Cup-of-Soup packet. The same thing goes for tea or coffee. You are only limited by your imagination!!!So here you have my card that I originally started with a pocket for the recipes for Cocoa. My card is 6" x 6" and the pocket is 6" x 3-1/4". This will hold your mug nicely. Make sure to either stitch your pocket or use a strong adhesive so it will not pull apart when you place the mug inside. It is optional to put the recipes inside, but like I said...this all happened accidentally and I am keeping the recipes in here. lol
You are going to get the template for your mug here at Mirkwood Designs. It is actually a template for a card, but I modified it. You want to make sure your printed template is 10 inches tall. So you will need to print on 8-1/2 x 11 paper. I glued this template to an old cereal box, cut the cup in half on the dotted line and cut the handle off. This is what you are going to use to trace on your card stock. After cutting, you could emboss these pieces.Once you have your card stock cut out, then you are going to cut out the handle. I wanted a bulkier handle than the one on the template. So I used two dies from my oval nesties the 3-1/4" and the 2". Place those nesties as you see here in the picture. I cut both handles out at the same time. I used two pieces of card stock. It is optional if you want to emboss the handles after cutting. I did on my sample one, but not on my finished one. It's up to you.Next we will assemble the handle. I found that you need to cut to size for placing inside the mug portion of this holder, otherwise your cocoa packet will not slip in and out of this nicely. Measure down 1/2 inch from the top and place a mark where you are going to place the top of the handle and 3-3/4 down like you see in this picture.

Now you are going to want to cut away a portion of this handle. I just guessed at about how big I wanted my handle. You then want to place a small amount of adhesive to keep it in place. Put the top piece on and either sew or use a nice strong adhesive so that it won't come apart when you put your goodies inside.
So here is what it looks like after you put it together. I used a 3-1/4 x 3-1/4 piece of decorative paper to match my card in the front. Just as an idea, I thought this would be really cute with a picture of a child framed on the front of this as well.We are going to assemble the flower next. As you can see, I used every little bit of this wonderful wood paper. I only have shreds left. I just love this stuff. I have a variety here of punches for making the flower. The base of the flower is made by punching 2 of the largest punch from the cork. The middle is 2 punches from the medium punch of the sitka wood, and the small punch is only one punch from cork. I have shown a brad here that I use to keep the flower all together.You are going to punch a little hole in the middle of all the flowers for ease in assembling on the brad. The tool I am using comes from the Cricut tool kit. I can't tell you how much I use this...it is so versatile I would buy that tool kit again just for that!Put the smallest flower on the brad first, then the two medium and then the large. Twist so all petals show. This is how your flower should look. I put some stickles just on the sitka wood paper because I want to keep the natural look of the cork.You can decorate your mug as you like. As you can see here, I put some feathers with my flower and attached my matching image and a bow on the handle. I would have put a charm on my bow if I could have found a mug or a spoon one...and that would have been really cute.This is a picture of what the mug looks like inside the card. You can see it fits perfectly!Here is a picture of the whole project. The card, the envelope, the recipes, and the mug.Thank you for stopping by to view my tutorial for this project. I really appreciate it and would love to hear what you think about it. If you should make this project, I would love to come and see it.

NOTE: Because of the request for the recipes I have provided the links as follows:
Orange Cinnamon Hot Chocolate
Maple Hot Chocolate
Brown Sugar Hot Chocolate

Midnight Madness Sketch Challenge #24 Cocoa Girl

Here is today's Midnight Madness #24 Sketch Challenge. I did Chelsea's Cocoa Girl this week for my image and I used some fabulous cork paper for Sue's McMahon Five store.Here is a picture of my card and the matching envelope. Notice these gorgeous flowers and wonderful feathers I was able to use on this creation. The largest part of the flower was made from Cork, the middle is Sitka wood, and the small flower is Cork again. They are all layered and held tother with a brad. I am so in love with Chelsea's images and I took liberties again to drawn in some boots on this girl. I thought she had the "Hip" 70's look going on and thought the boots were super. It is so easy to do. I just used a sharpie and a ruler. Don't you just love it!!This is the inside of my card. I started out with the three recipes for hot chocolate, then I decided to make a cup to actually hold a package of Swiss Miss chocolate.This picture shows the cup of Cocoa and the recipes all nestled snug inside the pocket of the card that I made. I really isn't too bulky.The cup has some machine stitching and an image to match the card and evelope. You could actually use this for a get well card by using different colors and include a package of cup-a-soup. You could do one with coffee or tea that would be really cute.
Here is everything altogether. I think it makes just a darling set. Be sure to stay tuned to the Midnight Madness blog tomorrow. A tutorial on how to make that Cocoa cup to fit in this card will be feature. I hope you enjoyed viewing my card for this week, I would love to hear what you think about it.

MIDNIGHT MADNESS MASTERPIECE AWARD
Each week we are awarding a special Badge Award to one person for their outstanding sketch submission. If you would like to be considered for this award, please make sure your card link is posted to Mr. Linky by Sunday of each week. This is our way of let you know how wonderfully talented you are and how much we appreciate you sharing your craft with us. This week we are proud to say the“MIDNIGHT MADNESS MASTERPIECE” Gold Star Award goes to.....


Sketch Challenge Star Award MMM
The MM REMARKABLES AWARD!!
The Midnight Madness Team has created a very special award called The “Midnight Madness Remarkables” Award !! We would like to acknowledge those entries that are just exceptionally Remarkable!! During our voting each week, due to the caliber of the cards entered in our challenges, we end up with so many ties and close votes, so this Fairy logo is for those recipients to display proudly. If you would each like to take our fairy logo for your side bar, she would love to come stay with you.

Thank you all for playing and please help me in congratulating our “Midnight Madness Remarkables” award winners…..
49. Cabio
72. Brenda Kluge
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OUR WEEKLY BONUS SPONSOR THIS WEEK IS.....



This week are sponsor is Sue McMahon from “McMahon Five Designs” She is also on our very own design team. Sue has been making cards for 11 years. Her love for the craft has fueled the opening of her online store, McMahon Five Designs. Her store offers real wood paper, downloadable digital images, and a large variety ofproducts from Prima and Ranger. More items are being added every week! Besure to sign up for her Weekly Newsletter to receive special coupon codes and tutorials! She also offers FREE SHIPPING on ALL orders over $50.
MMSC24 BONUS GIFT THIS WEEK!!


Bonus Prize this week is:
12 sheets Exotic Real Wood Paper

1 package Prima Flowers

1 Girls Silhouette stamp with Gems

1 Tim Holtz Idea-ology Foliage Hardware Set

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Midnight Madness Sketch Challenge #24 (MMSC24)


Below are the Design Teams samples this week and some are made with *Gurlee Girl Design images Our Monthly sponsor that has donated a huge prize to our month end winner. Be sure to click on them to find out all the details of each one. We had a really good response to last weeks sketch. This Weeks sketch has some different added elements to it so we hope you will enjoy this one just as much.