Christmas in November

Can you believe it?  It's November 5 already and i haven't made a card yet.  Hahaha.  Trust me, for a craft enthusiast, that's a dilemma.  It gets so overwhelming looking at the blogs and all the tutorials going on - it's like being in a class with so many homework to do. 

Anyway...  I made a Christmas card today.  I used HA Cl464 Sending holiday cheer set.  I love the set but somehow, i find the sentiments too large to fit regular card size (4 1/4 x 5 1/5") or perhaprs, i'm not too creative to figure the best way to use it. 

Since i will be spending my first white Christmas, i made a winter landscape.  I stamped and embossed pine trees for the background.  I stamped a house, colored and tried adding mod podge matte to it.  It was my first attempt to use mod podge and i like it.  I added designer paper on on the bottom.  I added shades of green to offset the "blue winter" scene.

Thanks for looking.  Blessings!

Materials:

HA CL464 Sending holiday cheer

Clearbox white ink; Judikins opaque white embossing powder

Versamark; Judikins Black embossing powder

Marvy markers

Cardstock:  cream, blue, white

Check out:  my Flickr

Getting ready for Christmas

Christmas is in the air!  You can hear the good ol' Christmas songs being played in the radio.  It's the season that I love the most.    It's a time to celebrate the birthday of my Saviour and King, Jesus Christ.  It's a time of rejoicing with family and friends, giving gifts and exchanging cards.

I have my first Christmas gift all boxed up today...yay!  I combined my love for crochet and crafts and came up with a nice gift for a very special person.  This is also my first time to make a box using MS tools... awesome!  For this project, i used the block stamping technique (thanks, Jennifer McGuire and HA tutorials) and a lot of embossing (thanks Nancy Taylor and Nicky Hsu).  You can hop on to the  HA blog and check out their great tutorials and creative cards.

Thanks for dropping by.  May you have fun being creative as well!  Blessings!

 I made a square box measuring 7"x7" and decorated with with stamped images and added a border and ribbons.

Materials: 

HA F526 Flourish ornament rubber stamp

CL 464 Sending holiday cheer

Versamark ink, Ranger distress ink Walnut stain

Embossing powder Medieval metals and Black

Cardstock:  red, green, brown, white metallic

Floss:  red and green

Martha Stewart punch around the page:  Bubble bath
Martha Stewart scoring board

markers, foam tape, tape adhesive

Christmas in October

2 days ago, my husband lovingly drove me to my favorite craftstore were i found a nice HA Flourish ornament rubber stamp.  I deviated from the usual red and green christmas motif and used yellow and green shades.  I made a background stamp using the block stamping method that i learned from Jennifer McGuire HA/2 Peas Thinking Inking.
I stamped it on a DP and embossed the image using black embossing powder.  I added extra fine glitter and a ribbon.  I stamped the sentiment inside the card.
I had fun making this!

Christmas in October 2010

The best season of all for me is Christmas!  It's the time when people have long breaks from work and school.  Christmas was fun in our home.  We'd often spend it with our brothers' in-laws - we would play games, laugh and have our "white elephant" style of gift giving.  When I was in Pediatric residency training, we had to take turns either for Christmas or New year break.  Even though we had to be on duty, it was fun spending it in the hospital with colleagues and friends.  This year would be my first Christmas away from my family in Manila and my first to hopefully, have a White Christmas.  I anticipate that it would be a time of "confusing emotions" for me, having to miss my family but making happy memories with my husband and the whole of America.
Whew... getting kinda sentimental here.
So folks, here is my first Christmas card for this year.  I recently saw Hero Arts' Jeniffer McGuire's lessons and I decided to give it a try.  I used the "block stamping" technique for the blue background and then I added the pine trees using the "Generation stamping" technique using Versamagic hint of pesto.  I masked the house and stamped the trees; then I stamped the house using Memento rich cocoa and colored it with Derwent watercolor pencils and added glossy accents for the "snow" effect.
The sentiment and all the stamps used were from heroarts CL 464 Sending holiday cheer.

That's it for now.  Hopefully, my Christmas card making bug will keep me going.  Blessings to you!

Happy Thanksgiving 2010!

It's been exactly a month since my last blog.  Haha... the lazy bug caught me for quite some time.  Things have been fine with me - i decided to try other crafty things like crochet (more on that at a later blog). 
I checked out HA's blog last week and made a couple of not-so-nice thanksgiving cards.  I had a "mental card block" once again and it took some time to get those creative juices out.  Anyway... i'd like to share them.

My MIL and i went to my awesome SIL's house to do some stamping.  I used her "Thanksgiving stamps" and leaf embossed punches.  I loved punching out the maple leaves - i distressed some using Ranger's walnut stain then added glitter on the edges.

In one card, i masked/stamped the pumpkin with a stamp from the same HA clear stamp set.  It was fun to mask but it was quite tedious.  As you can see, the colors are not as pretty as it should be - hmmm...i think i should buy, stock up and try using those wonderful copic markers next time.

This is all for now, friends.  Thanks for looking!