Missionary Christmas Cards

Our church supports several missionaries in Africa, Middle East, China and Kazakhstan, and other countries as well as ministering to international students in colleges in the USA. Four of us stamping crazy sisters were asked to make cards for the missionaries. Then all our congregation will be asked to sign the cards and add messages if they wish. Here are pictures of the 3 cards I created.

The lighter green and red covers were cuttlebugged with the Holly and Snowflakes folders. The Hunter Green card was Versamarked with Pine Needles & Cones backgrounder from Cornish Heritage Farms.

The 3 singers image is an old Stampin' Up set Song In Your Heart. I used Baby Blue Stickles on the snow under the feet and Crystal Ice Stickles as snow on the people and gold background. There are holly leaves and berry brads at each corner of the center panel.

The center card is CHF Christmas at 19 Mushroom Lane image. It has shiny brads, star brad and Stickles all over it! The sentiment was stamped with red versamark and clear glittered. The sentiment is from SU A Merry Little Christmas.

The pine cones and needles is a stencil. I used clear embossing paste and glitter on the image. The designed was CASED from Linda Bullard's Sparkly Pinecones card.

I stamped various images on the inside pages and colored some of them. I didn't put any embellishments on the pages so people could write any place on the inside.

Both images on these pages are CHF. These are miscellaneous stamps I had.

The mice are CHF Tom Allen Friendly Critters O Christmas Cone.

The Santa and teddy are from SU's A Merry Little Christmas.

Both images here are SU. The curved one is from The World Over.

Snowmen are from The Angel Company. The smaller snowmen are an SU wheel.

This is CHF Thomas Kinkade Silent Night. The sentiment is SU.

The last page is from an old SU set Song in Your Heart.

The pages in each book were trimmed with a different pair of fancy edge scissors and inked to match the cover cardstock. Then I tied the cards together with ribbons from my stash.

Tomorrow these will go to church to be signed and then on to a missionary family to brighten their Christmas holiday!

Thank you for looking! Have a safe Labor Day weekend.

Blessings,

Friendship and Anniversary Cards

In the last two days, I have been blessed by 4 - yes 4 - very special handmade friendship and anniversary cards.


The card on the left is from special SBS22 sister, Cindy Vernon. She did a fabulous job on the layout and color matching! She has all my favorite things on that card - layers, scallops, layers, dimensionals and layers. The picture does not do this card justice. It is gorgeous!

The other card is from my sister in the Lord, Deby Scott. She is also our SU demo and pastor's wife. Across the top of the card it says "A friend is what the heart needs all the time". Deby is a very good friend in every sense of the word. She also has my favorite things on her card - layers, ribbon, layers, scallops, did I say layers?!

Both of these anniversary cards are from SBS22 sisters.

The white and silver is from Chrissie and her hubby. The panel across the center of the card has tiny embossed hearts on it. "Happy Anniversary" is heat embossed on glitter paper - very pretty!
Thank you so much, Chrissie.

The blue card is from Norma J. She put 3 clear jewels on the left edge of the tree panel, but they hardly show in the pic. On the front tree are Stickle dots, but they don't show at all. The white circles are cuttlebugged and layers and layers, a ribbon, dimensionals and layers!! Very nice card, Norma! And yes, I wonder where the years have gone!


Have a blessed week!

Blue Heron Visits

Just as we were sitting down to dinner the across-the-road neighbor came over and told me there as a large bird in my daughter's front yard. She was concerned because she knew no one was home there. So I grabbed my camera and we started up the road. We thought the worst when a car was stopped in road right near where the heron had been. It had crossed the road and was in a mowed field across from my daughter's house.

The bird let us get to within about 10 feet of it, then took a few steps, stopped, watched us and let us get a little closer. I got a couple great pics of it.

I have not seen one in the area at all. My DH has seen them a few times around the little stream across from our house. How exciting to see such a pretty bird up that close!

Blessings,

Martha Stewart Birds

When I was in Wal Mart the other day the craft and stamping aisle pulled my shopping cart right in as I tried desperately to keep it going straight. I really had no choice but to go down that aisle. I saw this wonderful set of bird stamps by Martha Stewart.

Now I am not particularly an MS fan, but these birds are really beautiful. So here is a picture of the note cards I made with them.

I colored them with Koh-i-Noor pencils from Gina K. and blended the colors with a Prismacolor Colorless Blender pencil. I am very pleased with the way they turned out.

That's all for now. Have a great evening and rest of the weekend.

Blessings,

Introducing the new SU In Colors

Tonight at our SU workshop we were introduced to the new 09 In Colors. They are very nice and really will coordinate well with the standard colors.

From top left they are:

Pacific Point, Pink Pirouette,
Riding Hood Red, Baja Breeze, Tangerine Tango, Kiwi Kiss


We made 2 cards using the new colors and two of the new stamp sets.

Window Dressing (hostess set) and Heard From the Heart. We also used the new scalloped punch on both cards. It was very easy to line up the paper to make the second punch on the edges.

At our next workshop we will be using Serene Spring hostess set.

Be sure to check out the SU website at http://www.stampinup.com/ . There is a 15% discount on selected sets of stamps for a limited time.

Our demo was cleaning her stamping area this past week and had lots of scraps to use up. So she had a contest for us. We each choose a grab bag sight unseen until we pulled it out of a shopping bag. We then had 10 minutes to make a bookmark from the contents of the bag we had choosen. Every bag had the same number of pieces and the same shapes.






Here is a picture of all the bookmarks that were made. And---all of us finished in the 10 minutes alotted.

What fun and they are all very different. Mine is the one on the far right!




Blessings,

Card for Kim's Challenge

My friend Kim has posted a sketch challenge on her blog. Here is my card for it.

The fireworks paper is from Paper Pizazz, the red, blue and white are Stampin' Up. The ovals were cut with Nestibilities dies. The eagle and "God Bless America" are popped up with dimensionals. The ribbon came from AC Moore, star brads ??? This card was really fun to make.
So now you all see I do make cards once in a while!! I hope you like this one.

The past few days my printer has been acting up - not grabbing the paper to print consistantly - sometimes it did and sometimes it did not. I got this one in December, 2003, so as printer-scanner-copiers go, I have certainly gotten my money's worth out of it. Last night it just plain quit feeding the paper at all. DRATS!?!?! So tomorrow is "get a new printer day". Now I should do some research to check prices and to see what's available out there.

Thanks for stopping by.

My Pets Who Think They are Children

We currently have 3 kitties and 1 dog. They were all strays who picked us out of the crowd!

This is Mee-Ow. She came to live with us in March, 2002. She was just a tiny little thing who had been living under our mobile home and getting into the garbage. My DH suggested that I start feeding her. She ate all the food, followed me up on the deck and has been here ever since. She lays on the ironing board beside me in the sewing room. If I don't pet her enough, she reaches over and taps me on the shoulder. She has one small white spot on her chest (does not show in pic) and the rest of her fur is charcoal gray.

Our dog, Daisy Too, came from the Dog Control pound. We got her in September, 2004, about a month after we had our first dog put down, who was also named Daisy. Daisy Too is an Australian Shepherd/Beagle mix. She has one blue eye and one brown eye - watched-eyed dog. The funny coloring is merle and is characteristic of Aussies. We say she's our "spare parts" dog - some black toenails, some white nails, white paws, brown paws, blue eye, brown eye - made from spare parts!!
The black thing under her chin is her remote training collar. When she goes too close to the road or into the neighbors' yards where she is not supposed to go, my DH has a hand controller he presses a button on and it gives her a tiny shock and she comes a-running home. It sure beats picking her up off the road with a shovel.

These are our 2 garage kitties. Slippers is on the left looking away from me. Sneakers is on the right. Sneakers came to us in January, 2003. He had been living under our mobile all winter. He had been hurt and was limping. So being the good animal Samaritans we are, we tried to catch him to have him vet checked. We had been feeding him since early November, 2002 in an effort to get him close enough to catch him. Finally a Have-A-Heart trap did the trick. He passed his vet check but had to be kept confined for a month until his "operation" had time to heal. My DH built a pen for him in the garage and hung a heat lamp to keep him warm. He had a box insulated on all sides and a fleece pillow to sleep on. A rug in front of the box became known as "the sun deck". What a spoiled kitty he became!!

Slippers had been hanging around the bus garage where DH worked. The other cats bullied her, wouldn't let her eat or sleep in the box at night. So he brought her home the end of November, 2005. She is just the nicest kitty! She loves to be held and petted.

It took Sneakers about 3 weeks to adjust to Slippers, but now they are just like an old married couple - one minute they are batting at or chasing each other; the next they are snuggled up in the chair! Ain't it great!?!?!

Blog Candy Up for Grabs

As I was reading another blog, I found links to 2 blogs giving away blog candy. Now I know that no one wants any freebies, but just in case here are the links:

http://cardgrotto.blogspot.com/

http://cardmakinggalore.blogspot.com/

Go get on the comments and maybe you will win!

Hostas in Bloom!

Time really goes by too quickly. In checking out other blogs, I realized that I was the only one who hasn't posted in the past 4 days. Shame on me.

While I was outside the other day, I realized how beautiful our hostas were when in full bloom (sounds like a good name for a stamp set!). There are 3 color combinations of the leaves - solid green, white along the leaf edges and varigated yellow/green leaves. They all have the same light lavendar flowers. Unfortunately the flowers don't show up very well in this picture. The plants are large enough they cover up the underside of the deck too.

I got a couple very exciting emails earlier this week. I have been accepted into Splitcoast Stampers RAK and Wish RAK forums!!!!!!!!!!! One of my stamping friends is also in it and has been encouraging me to join, so I did. Everytime I would be at her house she would show me some of the goodies she had received from people RAKing her! Secretly I was getting very jealous :( Are any of you SBS22 sistahs in SCS RAK forum?

I have made a little bit of progress organizing the "pile" in my stamping room. A friend asked about buying a dozen assorted cards. My cards were "assorted" into 4 shoe boxes and mixed in with unfinished cards and card kits. I really had to sort out the cards by type - birthday, get well, thank you, friendship, etc.and get them organized in 2 shoeboxes with large index cards separating the different the types. The large bluish box on top of the pile in my second post looks a little bit better now.

As long as I was sorting and re-arranging, I straightened up my card kits too. I cut all the pieces for a card and put them, a picture of the card and an index card with pertinent info on it in a sandwich bag and seal it up. Most of the kits were in the bags so that the zipper edge of the baggies was at the side and didn't fold down. I put all of them in so the zipper was at the top and it could be folded down behind the baggie.

Here is a picture of a card kit using the And
Everything Nice stamp set.

As I cut the papers, I write down the sizes and color of cardstock. Colors for ink pads, markers, chalks, colored pencils, etc. are also recorded on the index card. On the reverse side of the index card is a picture of the card and if not SU, the name of the magazine I found it in. All of this is so if someone asks for a card like ............ I can recreate the exact card.

When I want to stamp or color I already have about 2 dozen to choose from with everything ready to just get busy!!

Since I didn't know exactly what this friend would like, I will take several with me tomorrow and she can choose which ones she wants. Here are some pics of the cards I'm taking to her.

There is an assortment of everything!!

As I have to work tomorrow, I will say "Good Night. God Bless.