A Pile of Christmas Cards

Okay- I have a bunch of Christmas cards to post as there have been quite a few friend requests for cards for the holidays.

So I've been a little bit glitter crazy obviously! Glitter is absolutly essential for any Christmas card- don't you agree? lol. I just loved being challenged in this way with many people wanting something different. Before now, I've been making my own Christmas cards so it was a batch of all the same, my own style. Now there is trying to make other people's style and tastes fit into my cardmaking skills. It sure stretches me as an artist, but I have found it VERY fun!
So the first card was a photo insert card that I made to fit a wallet size photo in it. It was challenging to think how I was going to work it- but she just wanted something simple, one page, no open up- so it was basic stamping and layering. The second one was fun too- and I lifted the card idea off of a Stampin' Up idea page. I got a LOT of use from my Martha Stewart snowflake punches for these! I got the two that were available last year. The third one I had NO clue how to start. My friend wanted something more spiritual as we both, being christian, wanted to focus on the reason for the season. I used some Prima pointsettas to finish it off. The last card I tried something different. The glitter snowflakes are my FAVE! What I did was punch the snowflake out- added my mix of embossing powder and fine glitter and inked the entire front of the snowflake and poured the mix on and heat embossed it. Then I punched a brad in the center and dangled them from some sheer ribbon. I used the same glitter technique on the "Season's Greetings" sentiment- making it POP! I love it- and I think it looks store-bought- but for much less! It just took my Cricut and Jasmine cartridge, mix, ink and time.
All cards are basic A2 sizes. Stamps are clear stamps from Inkadinkado, flowers from Prima, ink from Colorbox, glitter and snowflake punches from Martha Stewart, embossing powder from Stampendous, leaves and snowflake border punches from EK Success.
SO! I have a couple more cards to share but I'll save that for later- thanks for stopping by!
~Brandie~

A Bit Busy

With babysitting, creating gifts and cards for people on my FB store and just life in general- I have, yet again, become a VERY bad blogger :( Sorry guys. I do want to do better after Matty gets here. BUT that being said- I have a LOT to share, so I'll just take a few posts to share everything with :)

The first thing I want to share is a baby gift I made for a friend for HER friend. The baby onesies seem to be a big hit and it's fun to stamp on them. I am thinking of doing something Christmas-y for the heck of it and then again something for my new little bean. TWENTY NINE WEEKS DOWN WOO HOO! Even tho I've done this three times before, I am PETRIFIED of going thru the labour again. Aigh. I know it's worth it but still....

OKAY- back to the subject on hand- CRAFTING :) SO here's my little set:

She wanted a keepsake box to hold the cards that her friend would be getting for her new baby. I thought it was a cute idea and whipped up the box. It's personalized with the baby's info on the front, and has a "T" for his initial. Then I got one of my acetate 2 4 6 8 boxes with a lid all decked out to hold the onesie in. I used Inkadinkado's baby boy stamp set for everything stamped and my corner punch for the borders.

So the box all opened up shows two little 'shelves' that you can store the cards in- standard A2 cards- which I am hoping fit. I made it a little bigger so it would have space for a bit larger cards. What I loved was adding glitter to the ribbon I wrapped around the onesie box. Then on the onesie itself I added fabric glitter to the stamped image and buttons for the 'wheels' on the cars- I don't know if you can see it too well in the first photo.

I find that adding glitter, flock, embossing powder and stickles to different images lets you take a plain peice of CS and make it wonderful. I save a LOT off of patterned paper doing this. To be honest- I don't find alot of DSP that I like, and it's usually pretty expensive. I really like a lot of the SU! DSP- but for me to set some money aside to make an order takes a bit of self control- and I don't have much. I'd rather buy at a store and have it NOW! BUT I need to learn to be patient. With my new business, I really want to set some money aside cuz there are FAR too many cute Cuttlebug folders I don't have- as well as I found Pink Cat Studio and have decided to take the plunge and start stamping with images instead of just sentiments. But that will come in time- I've only been doing this card making thing for a few years now- and the first couple had a bunch of SUCK! lol- I am grateful to the crafting blogs of the world in which I glean a LOT of inspiration from!

So- being as it's been a while, I'll also show one of the (many) cards that have been keeping me busy. Another friend was going to a Hallowe'en wedding (I know- we're thinking of Christmas and I want to back track to Hallowe'en!) and I didn't know how to do a 'spooky' wedding card so I opted for something elegantly gothic.

I LOVE MY STORYBOOK CARTRIDGE!

If I haven't made that abundantly clear- I would like to do so now :) I made a tri-fold card and cut a 'window' out of each panel. Then I used my Storybook cartridge to cut the rectangle of leaves out. I sponged them with silver and then added some glittery black flowers from Prima. I stamped the four corners of the 'frame' (I forget the stamp maker :S Sorry) and embossed with silver. Then by finding a poem from one of the card sentiment sites printed on some vellum with a ribbon added the perfect finishing touch. She loved it and that's all that matters.

SO there's a couple of things to chew on. I have quite a few Christmas cards on the go for various friends- so I can show you them soon (and by soon- I mean quicker than a months time!)

Thanks for stopping by!

~Brandie~

Martha Stewart Inspiration

I love packaging. Sometimes, my favourite thing to do is go around gourment coffee shops or holiday gift shops, card shops, that sort of thing is check out the packaging so I can lift it into the paper crafting world. I bought myself some Martha Stewart border punches and the box they come in is so cute and I thought: why not manipulate it into becoming a gift box? With a few tweeks and twists I came up with this, using a broken down border punch box as a template:

Now I realized after the fact that it looks a lot like one of Lauren Meader's timeless templates. I did NOT get the template from Papertrey Ink- tho I do support their products. They are an amazing company and I think Lauren is completly talented- but what can I say- great minds think alike? lol- maybe I'm becoming a bit more like my mentor! YAY!

So I just wanted to share this little tid-bit. Try it yourself- find a cute box, tear it apart, measure the dimenssions and make your own cute packaging. With Christmas coming sooner than we would like to admit, finding creative inspiration whereever you can makes it easier. I don't know about you all- but I find it easier to make cute packages and fill them with homemade goodies over trying to shop for every single person on my list. It's more personal and usually cheaper too!

So thanks for stopping by.

~Brandie~

Oh Baby!

Babies babies everywhere! No kidding! I am having a baby- if I didn't let my blogger friends privey to the information- we are having another son, due early February (either the 7th or the 10th- depends on which ultrasound you go by- so I just say early Feb.) and we've decided on the name Mathias. We haven't agreed on a middle name yet, but I'm hoping for Mathias David Allan. My brother's name is David, and it's so soft and my dad's name is Allan and they worked well together. Other middle names floating around between DH and myself were Sebastian, Sebastian-Allan (I thought it was too much) and Alexander. So that's my baby news- comeing into my 3rd trimester soon. I thought Bella would have been my last- but lo-and-behold God saw fit to bless me again- tho this pregnancy has been easier than the others (I am NOT a fun pregnant lady!) I still can't wait for it to be done. I am not all that into the anticipation of things- I enjoy the actual event :P

Other baby news is simple, a friend of mine from church is also expecting and that's exciting and another friend just adopted a beautiful baby girl. I got to see her today for the first time and she is just BEYOND precious! The bonus? Mommy wanted ME to make her 50 Thank You cards. I have decided to QUIT procrastinating when she decided she wanted half of them by the 18th of this month and I waited a week before starting. So yea, I got all 50 done in three days- but I have a mountain of laundry and dishes waiting for me.

Now my camera's batteries are a bit (okay- a LOT) dead and they don't recharge worth poo- so I didn't take any pics of the cards I made- but she liked the baby Thank You cards that I made for another friend of mine that had some animals on it cut from my New Arrival cartridge. I altered the colours to purple to fit her taste and added more girly ribbon and glitter. She was happy and that's all that matters :)

Lastly- and for your viewing pleasure- lol- I have a baby set :)

I didn't do a boy's set because I was tired of waiting on myself to get around to it- so I put together this girly set and decided to start selling them for baby showers.

I got to use some more of my Bella Rose DSP (I am using it sparingly- I still have some left! and that's all from one package!) I tried the baby onesie card that I found on Lauren Meader's blog and she graciously gave me permission to use it. I did alter it abit by cutting off the 'diaper' part and then cutting another piece for 'panties'. I also tried my hand at the shoe template found on SCS. The large card is a 5x7 and I basically copied an idea that I used for my sister's baby shower a year and a half ago. The thank you card is a little 3x3 card to match- I figured the set works cohesivly and maybe people would want to get it as a set- I'm all about the matchy!

Here's the first onesie I made- I had fun and it was my original idea for my friend's thank you cards- she loved them, but she liked the animals more :) You can see the panty detail too :P I love the sentiment, instead of stamping, I used my New Arrival cartridge (my new fave!) to make the Thank You- very easy, they had the option that let you cut out 'thank you' in a circle and then I just used pop dots to prop it up on a scalloped circle. I think I am going to start using my dad's idea and using a white sheet on a chair for a mini 'studio' to take pics of my crafts on. They turn out WAY better- as you can tell. You can see the details more clearly.

Anways- that's it for me- need to get back at that mountain of laundry! Thanks for reading.

~Brandie~

A Peice of Cake!

cakecakecakecakecake! :D

I love cake :) We had my son's birthday party today- I get scared about inviting too many people, so I only let the kids invite 8-10 friends and then only a couple of them show up- it doesn't matter. Gabe had fun anyways. The little bugger wanted a Lightening McQueen cake. Now, I don't have a pic as my camera is dead- but it turned out... okay? I like cake decorating and find it fun, but I definatly need more practice! But it was for some 4/5/6 yr olds so I don't think they'd be near as picky as I am! My arm is KILLING me- first from playing hard on drums on Rock Band last night with some friends of ours, then from SQUEEEEEZING out black icing. I didn't that the other icing colours were easier to use because they were thinner. I needed to add black icing colour to brown (chocolate) icing for a nice black colour- but because the icing was homemade, the black was thicker than the rest and harder than anything to try to squeeze out. I'll need to remember to thin it with some corn syrup next time.

So that's cake part 1.

Cake part 2 is me trying for the first time, paper cakes :) OMGosh are they ever fun and easy! On a side note- I wanted to make a cake and some cake 'peices' for samples for my on-line Facebook store- so I found the tutorial/template on Splitcoast and made a 1 tier cake with some samples. About my store- I only had it up for 1 day and I already have over 50 'fans'- so that's pretty awesome! Lots of work and lots of revanue (hopefully!) I just need to be better at time managment and procrastinate less.

Anyways- back to cake- here's my take on the infamous paper cake (SO MUCH FUN!) very easy- but somewhat time consuming:

I used some cream coloured cardstock, flourished stamp set and some gold ink and embossing powder. The stamping was pretty tedious, and I have no idea how I'd close up the backs of the boxes while making them pretty- I don't want people to have to wreak the box to open it- any suggestions out there? The flowers are all from Prima and there are gold and crystal stickles and some Michaels ribbon. So this is the only full cake I made, I then made some sample 'slices' so I wouldn't have to make a bunch of full cakes- but I'd still show people a variety.

These were super easy and so much fun to make- so here are some photos of the different peices. The materials are pretty much the same: Stampin' Around Wheels, Clear stamps by Inkadinkado, ribbons from Michaels, flowers from Prima and Stickles. I also used my cricut on the monkey one. SO! (I needed to squeeze a 'so' in there!) that's it for now- thanks for stopping by- ~Brandie~

Birthday Express

Hey crafters :)

I realized not too long ago (like, minutes) that I enjoy appearing busy- but when faced with the mountain of work I've made for myself I clam up. I was just realizing that as I read last night's Facebook Status update. Maybe I should worry less about appearing busy- thus, appearing important, and focus on the projects at hand. Can I finish them? Do I have the materials or finances to get the materials? Will it stress me to the max? My health is more important that how I appear to others. So yea- a bit of insight :P
Tomorrow is my son's birthday party. He turned six last week and being as his b-day weekend lands on the Canadian Thanksgiving, I usually wait a week. The kids are fine waiting on their parties (my 8 yr olds birthday is on the 30th of December- RIGHT SMACK in the middle of Christmas vacation- so we usually party at the end of January to give kids enough time to recoup after Christmas and parents to not have to worry about buying yet ANOTHER gift right away). So the kids are okay waiting- mom and dad do a good job of making the actual day special for family- so they basically get two parties :)
For Gabe's party it's going to be a mixture of things. He really wants a Lightening McQueen cake (I've dabbled in cake decorating- REALLY want to take that Wilton course!) and I have already made train themed party things. I am pretty excited about this :)
Last Christmas I really wanted to make a choo choo train out of paper as a centerpiece for candies and such- well, procrastinator I am Christmas came and went with no train. I was bound and determined and made one for my son- each 'train car' will be a goody bag. Goody bags are going to be pretty basic- just some candy (really- that's all kids care about) because it's a mixed gender party. Figuring out toys and such for boys and girls is just not gunna work.
So for this set I created the train in two parts. I made a simple box at 2 inches wide 2 inches deep and 2.5 inches tall. I made another box at 2x2x4 and then adhered them together with sticky tape. I then made a 2.5x2.5 inch pizza box for the top. The nose of the train is just a square (2 inchs? I think) scored in half and folded, then scored on each side at .5 inch to adhere to the front of the train. I took another peice of paper 2x5? and folded it over the front peice of the train to curve the top. I smooshed the paper with alcohol ink to give it a pattern and then stuck some 1 inch circles with silver brads for wheels. Embellish and VOILA done. The train cars (that will have baggies of candy) can fit some other stuff too- they are 2 inches high, 2 inches deep and 3 inches wide. Simple box without a top. I placed the wheels higher than I originally had them- because I wanted them to look 'wheel' like before- I had them lower- but the weight of the candies bent the wheels so I had to glue them higher. I also peirced some ribbon and stuck a small brad in there and adhered to the front and the back for those hooks that hook the train cars together. Does anybody know what those hooks are called? lol- after watching Thomas the Train for so many years- one would think I'd know!
The invites were fun and simple- I kept the same color combo- and you can't see it here- but it's actually layered. I used my cuttlebug and the train engine and caboose, taping them into place, and then had this die cut window to put "You're Invited" behind it. The cards are 4x4 and were pretty simple other than that. Just some silver brads, alcohol ink and scalloped edges. Then I made one cupcake topper so I could set this up as a set and sell them on line. I think I may have been a bit more excited than my son about the train. All my kids thought it was a toy so I had to keep taking it away and then sticking the scallops back on. I am in the process of making a hallowe'en one too- very simple and fun- using 'coffins' for 'train cars'.
Well- I hope I inspired you all this wonderful Saturday morning! Thanks for reading.
~Brandie~

Busy Busy Busy

Getting into the final stretch of pregnancy- entering the sixth month where I am slooooooowly getting bigger and seem to be having more trouble moving around and less energy to move. BUT crafting away- getting orders in and I haven't even started my store yet- so that's great news!

We got some snow already up here in Northern Alberta and today it's warmer and the snow that was here for a week seems to be leaving. We usually have snow on Hallowe'en- except last year- and I am hoping for that again this year because it's SO NICE not to have to wear snowpants under a costume.

SO I do have some Hallowe'en stuff underway. But right now I've been busy with babies and birthdays. Today I am going to share some pics of my newest creation- Boxed Book Set- with a real simple tutorial to follow as soon as I have some time away from crafting for profit. It's really easy and quite fun :)

So- I got the idea from my daughters books. She is really into Geronimo Stilton books and I bought her some for last Christmas- they were all boxed up and it gave me an idea for a card set. You know when you order from scholastics? And you order a set of books in a box? WELL VOILA!So it's a box that carries four 'books' that holds four cards. A great idea and a break from the traditonal boxed sets of all occassion cards. The finished size is 4.5x5.5x2 inches, so it did require either 2 sheets of 8.5x11 cardstock or a 12x12 sheet. This is for standard cards- so if you wanted to shrink it to make smaller cards and a smaller box- it would work. The 'books' are 1/2 and inch wide and have a pocket in it to place the cards. This was the first thing I started making with my Stampin' Up goodies I bought back in May- so it has the Bella rose and Urban Garden DSP used- I miss them :(

So here are some photos of the books- I was trying different techniques, and here is a photo of a 'book' all opened up. Pretty simple really. I was starting this WAY back for Mother's day- needless to say, I can be pretty distracted at times!

Here are some cards I made to go with it- but if you don't make them too bulky you should be able to fit four per book. I had a lot of fun making this and figuring out the template (NOT fun trying to describe on my blog- hence me waiting until I have photos to help explain what I'm doing. I am SO not an explainer :P)

For right now, I have 50 Thank You cards to make and more pictures to post in the next couple of days of things I have finished- one of them something I have wanted to try since LAST Christmas.

Hope you guys enjoyed it and thanks for reading.

~Brandie~