CHRISTMAS CARDS!!!

I finally finished my Christmas Cards around 1 AM this morning. I've been working on them for a few weeks and I am so happy that I am finished. Now I can start working on gifts. My sister in law gave me a box of blank cards with glittery fronts that I embellished on. I used every stamp in the Snow Swirl set and from a few other sets as well. I did my cards on a whim, not planning who I was giving them to or knowing how many to make. I decided that when I finished all the cards I would count them and then decide who to send them to and after I completed all of them I had a total of 50 cards!!! That's 25 less then last year but since postage has gone up I had to cut back some. If I really feel like I need more then I'm going to have some photo ones printed up at Walgreens because I have A LOT of gifts to work on. Some of the photos don't show how truly beautiful these cards are because almost all of them have glitter or some type of bling on them.

A few things to notice are:
- Rudolphs nose is a red rhinestone or "bling"
- The gingerbread man has cinnamon glued on him for a fuzzy look & nice scent as well.
- I used Crystal Effects on the poinsetta seeds & the small ornaments on the "make MERRY" tag & the snowflakes on the green card.
- I also used a little bling on the "make MERRY" tags as well.
- To me the Season's Greetings stamp looks crooked on all the cards but it's not, it's just the way the words are are connected, no matter how I stamped it, it always came out looking that way.

It takes too long to load this many photos so I did a pretty slide show.

My First Name Frame

I completed my first name frame! It turned out pretty well I think. I did it for one of Kent's girlfriends who turned 4 in the beginning of November. I drew & cut all the letters myself as I don't have a die cutter yet but I think they look really good to be free hand. I kept a template so in the future I can just trace the letters & cut. It took me a few hours to complete and Jeff asked me what was taking me so long because I don't usually need that much time to complete any of my projects but since this was my first time I took my time so I would get it just right. I think coordinating the different papers took the longest.


Here is the card, it was too pretty to put in an envelope:

Candles

Here are some Candles that I did as Birthday gifts. They are the Glade candles with the stickers peeled off and my own customization. The jars give off an optical illusion that they are complete perfect cylinders but they are not! They have a little bit of a taper in them so the paper doesn't lay perfectly flat against the glass but once completed you'll won't notice it at all! I love doing these as gifts because they are so simple but turn out so beautifully in the end.

I've also included the cards that I made for them as well. I've started to use cards as part as my wrapping as they really jazz up the outside of a gift, plus who keeps envelopes anyways?

Mountain Mist Scent
This one was for our 13 year old neighbor:


Card:


Clean Linen Scent:
And this one was for one of my bestest friends, Pat who turned 40 last month. I used some bling hearts for the cherries.


Card:

10/26/08 - Baby Shower

My mom, aunt, sister & I threw a baby shower for my cousin Dolores this past Sunday. I posted the invites a few weeks earlier but here are the thank you notes, baby bootie goody bags & hersey kiss flower arrangements that we used for gifts. I also did some Grandmother Brag Books that I've been wanting to do for a long time but couldn't find the albums. I finally ran across them at Dollar Tree on Saturday. I'm really impressed at how much I have learned since we did her bridal shower last year. The shower was supposed to take place almost a month before Dolores was due but the baby had other ideas and was born exactly a month early on Sunday, October 19th. She is absolutely beautiful!

This is one of the games we played. Pretty & Simple. The guests had to guess how many M&M's were in the jar. The correct answer was 311. The new mom won the prize.

These are the Thank you notes with coordinating envelopes. I also stamped a flower inside the card to coordinate it all together.

These are the Grandma Brag Books. I was really excited about how well these turned out. I will definitely be making more in the future.

Kiss Bouquets for guests.

Baby booties that I think almost my entire family played a part in. Mom arranged 3 templates on a page & printed them out. My sister cut them all out and rolled the flowers on them then she put all but 1 or 2 together...my dad had to get in on the fun! I punched the flowers and put the final touch on to finish them off.

Beautiful Baby Faith & Mommy Dolores.

This was the food table. Mom had the bouquet of Roses done up & my aunt made the yummy brownie cake.

Drum Roll Please....

The Craft Room is complete! Organized, clean & open for creative juices to flow!

Baby Shower Invitations

My mom, aunt & I are throwing a shower for my cousin and these are the invites that I sent out for it. Aren't they adorable? I get better with each party! I embossed the brown part & placed ribbon over the back of the eyelets to make it look prettier on the back.

Tags...

Ok so this is another thing that I learned at my hostess club party this past Saturday: Luggage Tags. I made the "B" for my Mom since she will be traveling to Vegas at the end of the month.

Then I put a twist on the next 2 tags I made. They aren't for luggage but for bookbags. The K is for Kent and he loves his. It has his favorite colors orange & green! On the bag of the tag I put his emergency contact information so it is really easy for the teacher to locate should something happen at preschool.

The last one I made for Tayven's birthday. She just started preschool this year and I thought she would like one for her bookbag. I incorporated it into the wrapping with a small tag for the to/from information.

September Hostess Club

Here are 2 of the cards that I made at my September Hostess Club this past Saturday. One is with the new Sock Monkey set that I haven't purchased yet but I can promise you that I will have to have sometime in the near future. I've never made a clear card before so that was fun. The other card is a simple card that turned out just beautiful. I hope to find some simple stamps in my craft room to do similar cards.

I've been working on organizing my craft room and I am almost there. I really can't wait to be done with it so I'm not always spending half my time looking for something thats impossible to find.

2 New Techniques

This past weekend we went to Charleston to visit friends. While the guys went riding (motorcycles) and the kids napped (or jumped on the bed rather) I learned 2 new techniques, cracked glass & gel. I absolutely love the gel effect and I look forward to doing it again!

50th Birthday Card

I made 2 of these and the other one was for a 50th birthday. I left the 5 & 0 off of this one so I could use it for any occasion. I really like how it turned out.

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