Sympathy

 A card making friend in my stamp group lost her father just before Christmas.  I lost my own Father on Christmas day night, so I understand how hard it is to lose a parent at this time of year.

I cut everything out with watercolor paper and used my distress inks and spectrum aqua pens to watercolor them.

• Tim Holtz, Sizzix - Wildflower stems #1, colored with distress ink and spectrum aqua markers
• Paper Studio - Antiquity paper
• Taylored Expressions -  Care & Comfort sentiment stamp
• jute

Thanks so much for taking the time to stop by today,

Connie

Birthday Fox

 Time to break out another image from my coloring calendar, a fox in the snow for a winter birthday, she loves foxes and she actually received the card already, some of mine have not made it so I send out a little early and they make it ahead of schedule, who knows.

• Coloring for calm 2017 calendar image - colored w/markers
• Lilybeedesigns - Head over heels paper
• Spellbinders - Classic ovals lg. due
• Hot off the press - Black think line dazzles
• Papertrey ink - Happy die
• Stickles - Diamond

I am hoping to show some presents I made this year soon but I pulled my ankle or sprained it or something and it is quite painful for me to sit at my desktop computer that has all my pictures on it for too long.  

Thanks so much for taking the time to stop by today,

Connie

Trees

 The Memory Box Challenge for this month is trees, my nephews birthday comes up in January and he just got his first deer on his property the other day so that was my inspiration for this card.

I started out by sponging in the my background, had to have snow as Michigan just had a snowfall on Christmas. Then I used some distress inks in 3 shades of brown and smooshed my woodgrain cardstock, I dried the paper in between adding the inks. I cut the tree dies out from those papers and the deer and owl were cut from scraps of shades of brown cardstock.  I glued the trees in the background directly to my paper and then popped up the frame to give it more dimension.

Memory Box - Grand Forest Archway, Small forest Archway, Valley Deer Trio and Forest Neighbors dies (Distress inks in brown shades for trees)
Tim Holtz - Wood Grain Cardstock
Background sponged with Distress inks

Thanks so much for taking the time to stop by today,

Hope you have a great week ahead!

Connie

Embossing

 I have many embossing folders and some I have never used yet, so I think I will be doing a few of the challenges over at Let's Squash it Challenge blog .  This months challenge was to use dies or fussy cutting with your embossing folder.  I went with fussy cutting my flowers from the embossing folder.

I want to say that I had not tried this embossing folder yet, I found it at Michaels and many embossing folders came in the set together, well as you can see it didn't emboss well in parts, I even ran it through my machine several times adding shims so that it would give more pressure, not sure if it is a defect or just cheap production, just thought I would let you know in case you thought to try out their brand of embossing folders.

While the cardstock was in the folder I did a little sanding of the raised areas.  The sentiment was a couple of stamps and dies that I had in my Gemini advent calendar this year.

• Recollections - Embossing folder, sanded cardstock while still in the embossing folder
• 7 Gypsies - Conservatory paper
• Pizzazz Aplenty - Butterfly die
• Gemini - Stamp and die sentiment
• Mark Richards - Gems

Thanks so much for taking the time to stop by today,

Hope you all enjoyed a lovely Christmas,

Connie

Merry Christmas

 Wishing you all Peace and Joy as we arrive at the birth of our Lord and Savior. It has been one very hard year for us all, some much harder than others as so many have lost so much, jobs, homes, and worse of all family members.  Praying for a year ahead that we can show our love to our fellow man by being caring and thoughtful of their needs and their health.

I am sharing my last Christmas card for this year.  I found this magazine with this fun stamp set at JoAnn Fabrics, I just had to pick it up, especially now that I am making my cards all year long, and I am thankful I started doing that, it made for a lot less stress this time of year.

The tree comes in different stamps, I just used the outline of the tree on this one, added the tiny ornaments in different colors, some are gold and silver the others are colors.  Then I colored the tree in with my marker, added the gold star and then I stamped out many presents, colored them and fussy cut them out, popping some up for more dimension.  Cut the whole scene out with my die.  At the last minute I decided to add some glaze to my ornaments to make them look more like glass.

Crafts Beautiful Xmas2020 magazine- Tree, star, ornaments and present stamps
PPD - Stitched Postage die
Wild Rose - Annabelle's Christmas paper
Nuvo Crystal Glaze on ornaments

Merry Christmas!!

Hugs,

Connie