'Tis the Season

Can you believe summer is gone, gone, gone and I'm already heavy into making Christmas card samples for classes at my local craft stores - Rubber Stamp O Rama in Philomath, Oregon and Runaway Art in Salem, Oregon.

The national craft trade show, CHA, meets in January annually but this year added a regional meeting in July. Smaller than the mega show it gave me an opportunity to talk to manufacturers at length and pick up some great card making tips from Art Impressions of Keizer, Oregon, just up the road from me. They always have new designs, new techniques, new dies.....and to die for watercolor stamps. I've been cranking these puppies out ever since. Here's a peak at what I've been up to in my studio.

This is a beauty. Watercolor and Art Impressions new Christmas doorway stamp.....plus the new sentiment dies from Elizabeth Craft Designs which are absolute show stoppers!

....another AI watercolor image new for this holiday season, very quick and easy to make if you want a stack of handmade images for the holidays as greeting cards or thank you notes or even gift cards.

.... did I mention I'm head over heels for watercolor this season and once again AI images plus dies provide a customizable mail box image that you can add greenery, background (snow covered pines) and red cluster flowers around, pop a Memory Box die birdie on top and call it done!

Not to be outdone by Art Impressions is Stampendous with the most luscious poinsettia rendition ever. Check these out.....same stamp done three different ways. Cool, huh.

The fabulous die cut sentiments are the new signature sets from Elizabeth Craft Designs.....get your hands on these, they lift any card to a whole new level of design.

Thanks for stopping by!

Easter

I've been die cutting tons and tons of Easter eggs for cards sent to family and friends as well as getting ready for my April card class at Rubber Stamp O Rama. Here's a few samples. What a fun thing to do in my studio, plus I've used up a bunch of Gelli plate prints as backgrounds for "eggs" using a new die set from do crafts

Thanks for stopping by! Happy Easter.

More Valentine Cards

This is such a great card to make for almost any occasion but super fast to whip up a bunch of Valentine cards either clean and simple or embellished to the hilt with Karen Burniston's new dies for Elizabeth Crafts.

The die set comes with several heart shapes making details a breeze to create.

Another great die is the accordion panel. Cutting more than one creates a book like form that has infinite card and album making possibilities. In the example below I created a multi frame Get Well card for a dear friend going through a second round of chemo.

A Valentine POP

Heading off to the annual CHA trade show in Anaheim, California this weekend but I wanted to add these darling pop-up cards based on Karen Burnisten's designs for Sizzix. If you're in the Corvallis, Oregon area the first weekend of February come join our class as we make these for some lucky valentine.

This card was created at the summer CHA workshop Karen did when she was still designing for Sizzix. This year she announced she'll be working with Elizabeth Crafts Designs so it will be interesting to see what new products will be introduced at CHA/Anaheim with her new partners.

This one is just too cute. Memory Box heart die on the cover and some Cosmo Cricket/ Tea for Two paper to pop that pop-up even more on the inside. You can decorate this house for any season or occasion, that's the beauty of generic pop-up forms. And so quick to make. Thanks for stopping by.

Family Christmas project

Every year my family gets together for our annual "Fish Night" a traditional meal using only fish as the main protein dish. In my extended family that can mean 60-70 relatives and wanna be relatives showing up at my cousin Barb's house for dinner. Every year I take pictures and the following year put the pictures into a special Christmas card that is sent to the family. This year I decided to use Karen Burnisten's Accordian Flip die cut to create a double sided photo show. Here's how it came out:

 The edition was 25 cards, but that meant creating 300 pictures that were hand glued onto each and every frame of 25 accordion folded sections spread across several weeks of construction.

One of the great things about this project was using up most of the horde of Christmas paper stashed in boxes from years past....whew... glad to make use of all that great paper.

 The image below shows one of the cards before it's all taped together.....

More Autumn themed cards

In addition to Halloween, our Saturday class made some clever Autumn themed cards using Impression Obsession dies and hand colored papers using alcohol inks and glossy photo stock.

 Also some very cool wood paper and metallic embossing over a Tim Holtz die cut.

Below is a quick and easy folded pocket card that can hold pictures, bookmarks, or gift cards and can be made up in a variety of papers to suite the holiday or celebrated event.

 Below are IO tree and leaves that were cut from hand colored paper using a variety of alcohol inks and patterned papers

 The leaves in both of the next two cards plus the wreath were die cut using IO thin steel dies and again a variety of printed and hand colored papers.....

Holiday Village class

Last year the fabulous and resourceful Paula of One Lucky Day created a holiday village using Tim Holtz dies and embellishments. So I spent most of August trying to teach myself the tricks of putting those darling houses together in order to teach a class in October.....and here is the result:

 Four women took the class and spent most of the day creating their "villages"....

 ...with each house a little different from the next but darn cute all the same.

 Below are the three sample houses I used as the basis for the class....really a fun, fun project.