Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas to everyone who is celebrating today!  I hope whether or not you celebrate Christmas, you have a great day and week! 

Just for fun, today I've got a picture of the Christmas tree that I put up in my craft room.   :)

Silhouette Challenges CH#8 "3D"

There's still plenty of time to enter this month's 

Challenge here at

A blog dedicated to the Silhouette Cutting Machines.
You MUST use a Silhouette somehow in your project.

Ch# 6 3D

Begins: Sunday, December 1
Ends: Saturday, December 31

Sponsors this month are:

My Scrap Chick
Prize: $10.00 GC


My Crafting Channel
Prize: $15.00 Amazon GC


Little Scraps of Heaven Designs
$15..00 GC

For my project, I made a little gift box.  I can't tell you who it's for because it might give away what will be inside it, so you'll have to image a tag shaped like a poinsetta which will be attached to it's left antler.  ;)

I cut this reindeer box from SVG Cutting Files using my Cameo.  I used some brown striped patterned paper for the box, and some scraps of cardstock for the rest of the cuts.

Cutting 3D things from my Cameo is so fun and rewarding.  I hope you'll all give it a try and link up with us at Silhouette Challenges!

Santa mug hot chocolate gift

Around this time of year, do you ever feel like you need a gift that you can mass produce easily and quickly?  I think I've found my solution to this.  I found this Santa mug in the Silhouette store during their recent sale.  It's sized perfectly to slip a pack of hot chocolate into.  It's just a few easy cuts, and you can jazz it up with some embellishment (I did some stickles on Santa's belt buckle) or you could leave it totally plain.  I really like that you could leave the layers off of this and it could be a mug for any occasion- different paper would make it totally different, and you could even use different packets like chicken soup mix or something.  The sky's the limit! 

When I give these for real, I'll find some fancier packs of hot chocolate than just ones that I had in my cupboard, but I slipped one in anyway so you could see that it fits. 

This project is being entered into the following challenges:
Cameo Creations- Santa Claus is coming to town

Snowflake gift bag

Today's project is...not a card!  Can you believe it?  I've been doing less cards lately, since I have a huge stash, and have been spending more time catching up on scrapbook pages (which often don't end up here).  That's the reason I haven't been around blogland much lately.

But today's not-a-card project was too cute to not share!  I recently had to go through our "gift bags" bin and reorganize to make everything fit.  I realized how many beautiful bags we had that would work well to add my own decoration to and was totally inspired!

This blue shiny bag was one of the ones in my bin.  I cut out the snowflake from SVG Cutting Files.  It's totally cute, and it's one of their freebies!  Bonus!  I made the shadow with my Silhouette studio software.  I put some Waterfall stickles on the outside part of the snowflake, then put some pink and black cardstock behind the face and popped it up on foam squares.  I used two little pink jewels for the cheeks.  

The sentiment on the bottom is on a banner I just cut by hand from a scrap of paper.  I stamped the sentiment from Jaded Blossom's Christmas Wishes stamp set.

This project is being entered into the following challenges:
Simon Says Stamp- Wednesday Challenge, Bling it on
Die Cuttin Divas- Happy Holidays
Craftin Desert Divas- Christmas!
SVG Cutting Files- Christmas/Winter 

Let it snow!

Hello!  Is it beginning to look a lot like Christmas where you are?  It sure is here.  There are huge flakes falling as I write this, in fact. 

Today's card was one that I had a lot of fun making.  I started off with the idea of using this tree die cut from the Cricut cartridge Jolly Holidays.  Instead of using the ornaments that came with the cut, I used some little jems for ornaments.  I also covered the snow in Frosted Lace stickles.  I love that color for snow, because it's less glittery and more about giving texture.  I used foam dots to raise the bottom snow pile up, although you can't really see that from the picture.

I used a piece of background paper from a DCWV pack I picked up at Michaels.  It has gold foil accents- I tried to get a picture that showed the foil, and I thinkn the best way to tell is by looking at the tree in the top middle.  I ran two strings of ribbon around the card and then put a scrap piece of paper over it with the die cut on top. 

Next, I stamped a sentiment from Jaded Blossom's Christmas Wishes stamp set onto a tag from a die cut pack I also got at Michaels.  I used a pearl to mimic the look of having it attached with something other than just monoadhesive.  Then I added three more pearls in the top corner to balance it out.

This project is being entered into the following challenges:
Jaded Blossom- Anything Christmas
Paper Playtime- Winter Fun
Craftin Desert Divas- Christmas
Bitten by the Bug 2- Winter is on the Way
Fantabulous Cricut- Holiday Cards
Simon Says Stamp- Wednesday Challenge, Let it Snow

Happy Birthday card

Happy Friday!  It's been a hectic week here for me, but I still managed to carve out a little time to spend in my craft room.  I wasn't really feeling in the Christmas card making spirit (don't worry, all of our official cards are already made!) because I'd been working on my Silhouette advent calendar and was all Christmassed out, so I bypassed all of the many Christmas challenges that are around this week and instead decided to give the Make Your Own Background (aka no patterned paper allowed) challenge at Simon Says Stamp's Wednesday Challenge blog.

It was really fun for me trying to get creative and decide how to make my background.  First I tried embossing, but wasn't feeling it, then I tried ink splatters and really wasn't feeling it (especially after I splattered green ink on my white chair) and finally settled on Distress Inks.  For the background paper on this card I used Broken China, Peacock Feathers, Old Paper, and Vintage Photo.  I really liked the look of it when I got done- too bad I covered most of it up!  I ran a strip of washi tape across the card and then put on a square of the same color kraft paper that the card base was made of.

I cut the present from Doodlecharms- an oldy but a goodie- and then embossed the bottom part with the Swiss Dots embossing folder.  I put some ribbon on the top and used a gem to hold it together, then I put some Aqua Stickles on the top of the present.  I finished it off with three smaller gems along the bottom and a sentiment by Jaded Blossom (from the Picture This set) on the top.

Glitter Ornaments

With all of the hustle and bustle of Thanksgiving last week, I didn't have much time for crafting.  I thought I'd share a project I actually made a couple of weeks ago in preparation for decorating for Christmas!  I've been wanting to make some glittery ornaments for our tree, and started reading some tutorials online to figure out how.  There are tutorials all over the place if you want to see it in action.  I specifically watched Joy's video here.

First, I collected my supplies.  I couldn't find the blue lid Pledge that I seemed to find in all of the tutorials.  Either they changed their packaging or my store has a bad selection.  I tested this one out on a plastic container first with some other glitter and it seemed to work, so I went to work.

To glitter up the ornaments, you basically fill the ornament with the floor wax, shake it all around so that the entire inside of the ornament is covered, dump it out, fill it with some glitter, and shake it around to completely cover the inside of the ornament.  Beware: my extra glitter got all stuck down in my sink.  Luckily 1) the sink in the bathroom next to my craft room is going to get torn out soon anyway so I don't really care and 2) Windex really does clean anything.

Anyway, I didn't take pictures of that because my hands were all sticky with floor wax, but here are my bulbs all covered with glitter and dried.  Another word of warning- the white glitter did not cover as well as the other colors.  It took almost an entire bottle of glitter and it still isn't really covered all the way in some spots.  They will be on the back of the ornament, so it wasn't worth it to me to go buy the supplies to try again.

Next, I adhered the paper decoration to the ornaments.  If I was doing it again, I would have used vinyl.  I don't have any vinyl yet (can you say Christmas list?) but I had some problems getting the paper to adhere and I think vinyl would have been more flexible.  All of these were designed in the Silhouette studio by me.  Well, the gingerbread man's icing was from a picture of a gingerbread man I found online and traced and then altered in the Silhouette studio, but the rest of the basic shapes I drew.  I Mod Podged the paper all onto the ornaments.

Here are my finished pieces:

A snowman belly, a gingerbread belly, an elf belly, and a santa belly.

Tis the Season Blog Hop- Day 2

Welcome to our

We are on Day 2!

There are only a few stops on this hop each day, and you are going to love the projects you see.

I am the ninth stop today.

Here is the entire list of stops for day 2:

Nana @ My Crafting Channel

Pam @ Scrap N Sew Granny
Lisa @ The Paper Princess
Debbie @ Deb's Paper Palooza
Kim @ Kim's Card Corner
Millie @ Crafting With Creative M
Jessica @ Craftin and Stampin
Karen @ Karen 2005 Craftily Yours
Becky @ Becky's Craft Place
Jennifer @ Creative Cricut Designs & More
Julie @ Muddy Paws & Inky Fingers

In case you missed Day 1, here is the lineup.

Nana @ My Crafting Channel

Pam @ Scrap N Sew Granny
Lisa @ The Paper Princess
Debbie @ Deb's Paper Palooza
Kim @ Kim's Card Corner
Millie @ Crafting With Creative M
Karon @ Karon's Krafty Korner
Kathy @ 3 Spoiled Dogs and a Cricut
Colleen @ Creations By Colleen
Theresa @ Scrappers Anonymous

Today I've got a festive little friend to share with you.  :)

At the holidays, in addition to our Christmas cards that go out in the mail, I always end up needing to make extras so that we can give them to people who we give gift cards to as presents.  This is one of those.  It is on an A2 red base.  I cut a white piece of cardstock to mat on it, and then a piece of green patterned paper out of my "Christmas" drawer to put on top of that.  The ribbon along the bottom is from American Crafts, I believe.

Isn't my yeti cute?  He's from SVG Cuts' Christmas Cuties cutting set.  I outlined his little muscles in Versapen so you could see them better.  Next, I cut him a Santa hat from the Cricut Cartridge Jolly Holidays.  It's hard to tell on this picture, but the hat is cut from glittery paper that I found at Michaels.

I thought he needed to be a little more festive, so I hand-cut some banners and stamped the word NOEL on them using Lawn Fawn's new Milo's ABCs stamp set.  I love the size and font of that alphabet.  It's so perfect.  I strung the banner on some Holly Berry Trendy Twine and tied little bows on the end.

Now hop on over and see what the others have for your enjoyment.

Some of them are offering candy as well. 

Be sure to read their requirements to be eligible.

Thank you for hopping with us!!!!

Smashing birthday

Happy Monday!  Tomorrow is my husband's birthday, and since I know he doesn't read my blog I feel like it's safe to post his birthday card here today.  :)  We both really like comic book movies, so I thought this year I'd make him a mean, green, birthday card.  I bought the Superheroes set from Pretty Paper, Pretty Ribbons back as soon as I got my Cameo, but haven't had the opportunity to use it as much as I would like. Until now.

I cut our hero from cardstock and pieced him together- it was really pretty easy which is always a plus for me.  I used some 6x6 papers for my background papers and one of the chipboard buttons I've had on my desk as a top corner accent.

For the sentiment, I mixed together two stamp sets.  The "wishing you a" part comes from Joy's Life Everyday Occasions, and the "SMASHING birthday" is from Lawn Fawn's Jessie's ABCs. 

I'll be entering this in Pretty Paper, Pretty Ribbons' challenge for this month, which just so happens to be superhero themed!

Silhouette Challenges CH#7 Anything Holiday

There's still plenty of time to enter this month's challenge at:

A blog dedicated to the Silhouette Cutting Machines.
You MUST use a Silhouette somehow in your project.

Ch# 7 Anything Holiday
Begins: Friday, November 1
Ends: Saturday, November 30

Sponsors this month are:

My Scrap Chick
Prize: $10.00 GC


My Crafting Channel
Prize: $15.00 Amazon GC


Little Scraps of Heaven Designs
$15..00 GC

Hello!  For my project this month, I used a file from "Kate's Holiday Silhouettes" by SVG Cuts.  I couldn't resist all of the holiday silhouettes in this file, and I especially loved this one of the woman walking her scottie dog.  To give it some holiday sparkle, I added Stickles to her earmuffs, skirt, and the dog's sweater.

I used a sentiment from Jaded Blossom's "Christmas Wishes" stamp set and then put a piece of festive ribbon around the side to balance it out.

I'm sure you're all in the midst of your holiday crafting, why not pull out your Silhouette machine and use it to play along with us?

Puppy Love

Hi crafty friends!  Today's card is inspired by two challenges- to use a sketch and to use an animal cut with the Cricut.  First, I decided to use a grey card base and all scraps of blue papers from my scraps bin to create the sketch background.  Then I looked through my Cricut handbooks for just the right animal.  A few months ago I bought the digital copy of Cricut Alphabet, and I love this cute dog, so I decided he was perfect.

I cut the shadow, the main image, and two copies of the shift image.  One of the shift image was cut in the same yellow as the dog so that I could layer the ears and add some yellow stickles.  The shift image was also cut on a piece of blue polka-dot paper for the collar.

The sentiment is from the Create a Valentine stamp set by My Craft Spot.  I recently won this stamp set and was so excited to try it out!  My Craft Spot stamps always stamp really well and I love the font of this stamp, which is one that is in a lot of the stamps I have from them.  I stamped it in a dark blue color.  I added the little wood veneer at the bottom for a finishing touch.

This card is being entered into the following challenges:
Fantabulous Cricut- Animal Crackers
Simon Says Stamp- Wednesday Challenge, Heather's Sketch

Die storage

Hi friends!  I've got a pretty busy week this week, so since I won't have a ton of time for creating, I thought it would be a fun time to share some organization from my new craft room!

Today’s storage idea is one that I brewed on for quite awhile.  I generally use electronic die cutters for most of my crafts.  But there were some things that I just really wanted manual dies for, and I already had a Cuttlebug, so I just went and bought a set of the long plates and I use them for my dies.  But, how to store all these random dies?  There was such a variety  of sizes, that I couldn’t find a good way to keep them.   
 
I spent a lot of time on Pinterest looking through different ideas.  In the end, I bought a cheap 12x16 frame from Michaels and used a 50% off coupon- so it came out to $5.  On Amazon, they sell rolls of magnet in various sizes- I bought a 12x24 sheet.  I had to smash it under a heavy box for a few days, but it unrolled pretty well.  Then I adhered the magnet to the cardboard backer from the frame.  I had to cut off the excess magnet, which I’m sure I’ll end up using for some crafty thing down the road.  

I took the glass out of the frame, and just put the cardboard backing with the magnet back in.  That’s it!  Now my dies stick to the magnet, and since I don’t plan on getting too many more manual dies this is a great storage solution for me.  If you have a ton of dies this wouldn’t be as good of a solution.  For example, some day I would love to buy more Lawn Fawn stamps, and many of them have matching dies now.  If I did that, I think I would keep those dies on magnet sheets in with my stamps or something, because there would be too many for my board.  But for now, even my stamp-coordinating dies are on the board (I have a set of Paper Smooches dies that go with my clipboard stamps) because of the low quantity.

Thankful for you

What says Thanksgiving more than pumpkin pie, am I right?  Today's card features a piece of pumpkin pie cut on my Cameo from Lettering Delights.  I put some Stickles on its cheeks and some white glitter glue all over its whipped cream for a little sparkle.

All of my background paper is still from my scraps.  Unfortunately, I found another whole box of scraps as I continued to organize my scrapbook room, so all of my hard work using up my scraps has been undone.  I'll keep plugging along though!  I also used some ribbon from my stash.

The stamp is from my very favorite Thanksgiving time stamp set by Jaded Blossom, Thanksgiving Wishes.  I use it a lot.  :)

I'm entering this card into the following challenges:
Red Carpet Studio Challenges- A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving
Paper Playtime- Sparkle
Craftin' Desert Divas- Happy Thanksgiving
Simon Says Stamp- Wednesday Challenge, Thanks/Thanskgiving

CAS card

Today's card is a clean and simple card I made with a new stamp I just bought and wanted to try out.  The stamp was only 50 cents at Joann's in one of the bins they always have by the checkout.  I really liked the sentiment so I said "why not?"

I got my inspiration for my color scheme from a pack of MME enamel dots that I had on my table.  I used a blue sharpie to color in the word "here" and the star at the top of the page.  The other three stars were colored with BIC Mark-its.  The stars are wood veneers by Studio Calico.  Yep, I finally hopped on the wood veneer bandwagon.

And that's it!  I mean, other than the multitude of times I stamped it on scrap paper, trying different colors schemes for the coloring, or the piles of enamel dots, sequins, and wood veneer that ended up on my table when I was trying to decide which type of embellishment I wanted to use on the card. CAS isn't always as easy as it appears to be by the end product.  :)

I'm entering this card into the following challenges:
Simon Says Stamp Challenges - Wednesday Challenge, Keep it Clean and Simple

Keep calm and Gobble on

Today I've got a fall/Thanksgiving card to share with you!  When I moved here into my new craft room, I noticed that I had a TON of scraps of patterned paper building up, so I put them all into a bin and have been keeping them on my table and going through them before I make any project.  All four of the patterned papers on this page are from that scraps bin!  It's been really fun to see how the different patterns might go together in ways I hadn't expected. 

I cut my turkey from SVG Cuts' "Thanksgiving Cuties" using my Cameo. The head is popped up on foam squares for some dimension.  I used some Paprika Stickles on the feathers for the sparkle.  For decoration I used some of the sequins I've been accumulating for my scrapbook pages.  The yellow and woodgrain are Studio Calico, I think, and the gold are from the dollar bin at Michaels. They have huge rolls of sequins strung together, so when I start to run low I just cut off some of them and put them in my sequin jar.  :)

The stamp I used says "Keep Calm and Gobble on."  It's from Jaded Blossom's "Thanksgiving Wishes" stamp set. 

This card is being entered into the following challenges:
2 Creative Chicks- Thanksgiving
Cut it Up Challenges- Thanksgiving
Cameo Creations Challenges- Fall
Jaded Blossom- Anything Thanksgiving

Reindeer treat tube

Hello!  It's kind of weird to be posting a Christmas project on Halloween, but I got tired of Halloween projects early this year.  :) 

For this project, I made a candy holder tube.  It's supposed to have red and green kisses, but surprisingly the stores have waited to put the Christmas candy out until after Halloween this year I guess, so I threw in some red and green Jolly Ranchers from my craft room candy dish just to give you the general feel for it until I can get my hands on some kisses.  The bottom of the tube was really easy to decorate, I just used a piece of paper from my scraps and some red ribbon and wrapped it around.

The super cute reindeer face is from KaDoodlebug Designs.  I used some more scraps from my scraps bin for the antlers and holly, and I think that worked out quite well.  The holly berries have some glitter glue on them for a little sparkle.  I used googly eyes instead of the eyes that came with the cut file, and there was no mouth with the cut file so I stamped one on.  What stamp did I use?  Well, I happen to have Pink by Design's "Orange you Awesome: and I used an eyebrow from one of the faces, upside down.  :)  I just colored it in with my versapen and stamped it right down.

Finally, I added a tag from my really old stash of tags that had been packed away for the whole year that we were trying to sell our house plus the six months we were at the apartment.  When I found them once we moved in here, I was like "I need to use these up!"  The back was white, so I thought it would work well.  I inked the edges with red ink and then stamped a sentiment from Jaded Blossom's "Christmas wishes" stamp set.

This project is being entered into the following challenges:
Simon Says Stamp- Wednesday Challenge, Anything Goes
Die Cuttin' Divas- Anything Goes
Craftin' Desert Divas- Anything Goes
Paper Playtime- Googly Eyes

Halloween dress up card

I just couldn't resist getting one last Halloween card in before the big day approaches.  This is my first Halloween living in a neighborhood since I was a teenager, so I'm pretty excited.  I've already bought three bags of candy to hand out to trick-or-treaters and I pulled Sophie's bumblebee costume out of storage so she'll be ready to greet the kids at the door.  :)

This card started with my idea that I wanted to color some of the kids from Pink by Design's Guess Who? stamp set.  I stamped them all and then colored them one day with colored pencils.  After that, I got out my 1 inch circle punch and punched some of them out.  I realized that I had a really colorful crew, so I decided then to make a little mosaic with 9 circles.  The two sentiment circles are also from the Guess Who? stamp set.  I had to mask the "got candy?" to stamp it in two lines instead of one to get it to fit. 

I layered it onto some spiderweb paper because I wanted the card background to be all black so it didn't interfere with any of the kids' costumes.  Then I put that onto a black square card base.

I'm entering this card into the Simon Says Stamp Wednesday Challenge- Halloween. 

Fall treat bag

Today I've got a fun and delicious treat bag to share!  I made this treat bag using a file from Pretty Paper, Pretty Ribbons called "Oval Window Treat Bag."  I cut the bag out of some paper from a KI Memories stack, and then decided to cut the oval with blue as a contrast to the tree.  I totally cheated on the clear part of the oval, since the kisses were wrapped anyway, and used a piece of the packaging from a collection stack I had gotten in the mail that morning and hadn't thrown away.  It worked!

I also cut the super cute tree from Pretty Paper, Pretty Ribbons- this file was called "Autumn Tree." It was super easy to piece together, but it looks really complicated once it's all together.  After I was all finished and was cleaning up, I found out I'd missed one of the layers that had slid under another piece of paper, but you totally wouldn't be able to tell if I hadn't just confessed, right?  I love that.

I spent a really long time trying to get a picture that showed it was a gift bag, and also where I wasn't blocking all of the light.  It's been really dreary here lately (Except today, of course, after I'd already eaten *all* of the pumpkin spice kisses. That will teach me to enjoy my crafting props before loading the pictures to the computer.  I just couldn't help myself, they're really good!) so I've been without natural sunlight mostly.

I'm entering this treat bag into the Autumn Harvest challenge at Pretty Paper, Pretty Ribbons.

Silhouette Challenges CH#6 "Critter"

It's time for another Challenge here at

A blog dedicated to the Silhouette Cutting Machines.
You MUST use a Silhouette somehow in your project.

Ch# 6 Critters

Begins: Tuesday, October 1
Ends: Thursday, October 31

Sponsors this month are:

My Scrap Chick
Prize: $10.00 GC


My Crafting Channel
Prize: $15.00 Amazon GC


Little Scraps of Heaven Designs
$15.00 GC

For my card, I couldn't resist this cute ninja critter from the Jonathan's Bears set from SVG Cuts.  Their files are quickly becoming some of my most used.  After cutting and assembling the bear and his outfit, I added a few finishing touches.  I used glossy accents on his blade to make it extra shiny.  I also used an ink pad on his belt to give it a better texture.  Both the background paper and the blue strip are from Amy Tangerine 6x6 pads, and the sentiment is from a stamp set from Paper Studio.  The bears in this set only come with noses, so I made his eyes with a handheld whole punch and his mouth is a lower case "l" from an alphabet stamp set.

Isn't he a cutie?  I liked the "surprise" sentiment because I thought a ninja would surprise you!  If you love critters as much as I do, make sure you play along and enter our challenge before the end of the month!

Christmas bunny

Hello!  If you remember from a few days ago, I talked about how I had made a couple of cards using the same basic pattern and two different die cuts in between my wallpaper removal (why does the crafting always have to work around the real world stuff?)  Here is my second card from that day:

This Christmas card uses a die cut from Lettering Delights.  I love this set, which is by the same artist who made the Create a Critter series for the cricut.  It's such a cute little snow bunny!  I used some stickles on his scarf, and I think the glitter glue on his hat was off-brand glitter glue I got at Hobby Lobby.

Once again, the background paper is from Recollections. The ribbon is from American Crafts I think, and the button is from a Halloween button pack that also had a few that were just polka dots or stars.  I used some embroidery floss to tie into the button.

My stamp is from Pink by Design's Old Time Christmas stamp set.

This card is being entered into the following challenges:
Paper Playtime- Ribbon and Buttons
Simon Says Stamp- Wednesday Challenge, Christmas/Happy Holidays

Halloween Turtle

This week I have been taking wallpaper down in our main floor bathroom, which means that after taking the top layer off, I spray a small section of the adhesive layer, wait 5-10 minutes for it to soak in, and then scrape it off and start over on a different section.  Because of this, I decided that the cards I made this week would be kind of "batch" card making, in that I cut the die cuts before starting the bathroom, and then went up to my craft room during my 5-10 minute breaks to do the glitter, background paper, embellishing, stamping, etc.  It was really kind of fun to see the two different cards that came out of the batch.  I'll post the second card later this week.

Today I'm sharing a Halloweeny card using the Create a Critter 2 cartridge.  I made the witchy turtle and also her broomstick.  I used some Stickles on her hat and stomach to make her a fancy Halloween turtle.

The background paper is from Recollections.  I used a Halloween button from my stash and also some ribbon from my stash.  The stamp is from a Pink by Design stamp set called Artisan Tags 2.

This card is being entered into the following challenges:
Craftin Desert Divas- Halloween
All That Stickles- Halloween
Paper Playtime- Ribbon and Buttons

Thankful for you

Hi friends!  I don't know about you, but I am super ready for the weekend!  I've been designated as the "drywall destroyer" in our basement this week, but I managed to sneak a little time in to craft too. 

I made this card with fall in mind, obviously.  The leaves are starting to turn here, I love it!  I started out with a brown card base and a piece of orange patterned paper from Recollections.  Then I layered some brown paper from DCWV over that (after wrapping some ribbon around it).

The leaf I chose was from Stretch your Imagination.  I went through a ton of cartridges looking at fall leaves.  It was kind of like Goldilocks- "this one's too plain, that one's too fancy" and then I found the one that was juuuuust right. It's the regular leaf, not the stretched one.

The sentiment is from Jaded Blossom's Thanksgiving Wishes stamp set.  I went through a ton of the brown paper scraps deciding between using my new gold embossing powder or my new gold ink.  I decided that for this card I liked the more dainty look of the ink rather than the embossing.  I'm still getting the hang of the heat embossing, and sometimes words are coming out looking kind of...chunky.

This card is being entered into the following challenges:
Bitten by the Bug 2- Fall leaves are falling (I don't have Art Philosophy)
Die Cuttin Divas- Use Brown
Simon Says Stamp- Wednesday Challenge, use a rubber or clear stamp

Spooky tag

Is it really time already for Halloween crafting?  I guess it is.  I kind of missed September completely this year, what with fixing up the house and two straight weeks of constant vet visits with Sophie when she caught some sort of nasty stomach bug.

To kick off the Halloween season, I started with a tag.  I found a super cute Halloween 6x6 paper pad by DCWV at Joanns a few weeks ago and used it for this tag.  If you can't see, each diamond has a little skull and crossbones in it.  I cut the tag from a file from the Silhouette store- I think it was one that came with my Cameo, if I'm not mistaken.  Then I tied three pieces of Trendy Twin on the top and wrapped another piece around the tag three times.

I cut this poison bottle on my Cameo from Miss Kate Cuttables.  There were three bottles in the cutting set, plus a few words, but on tags I like to go super simple and to the point so I just picked the one that also had a skull and crossbones on it.  Can you see how crazy intricate my Cameo cut it out?  There's a little tiny nose on the skull!  I popped the bottle up on some foam squares over the twine, and really liked it like that. 

I'm entering this tag into the following challenges:

Trendy Twine- Spooky tags and twine

 2 Creative Chicks- Spooktacular Linky Party    

2 Creative Chicks- Halloween
Cameo Creations- A Haunting we will go

A peek into my craft room

Now that I've got my craft room up and functional, I thought I'd give you all a peek into my creative space.  There are still a few things that need to get done, which I'll explain as I go along, but it's working for me for the time being, and that's all that matters.  I really like organizing (I'm a bit compulsive like that) so I think I'll probably go into more detail on some things in later posts.

The first picture was taken from the hallway.  Two main things are left to be done in this picture- I still haven't touched the windows/window treatments (yeah, that rolling blind left behind by the old owner definitely fell on my head on Thursday night) and the table that is currently functioning as my cutting station along the back wall will be replaced by white cabinets.  That's why there's just stuff piled up under the table- those are the things that I had planned to put in the cabinet. 

The second picture was taken from the door of the laundry room, which is right off of the craft room.  The closet doors are closed because I only have shelves in one half.  We're still looking for white shelves that are the right size for the other half, so it's just full of stacked up boxes.  

And, the last picture is from the current closet area, where you can see the door to the laundry room. Sophie's bed is over there under a window.  She's pretty much claimed the craft room as her own.  Any time I can't find her, I just go look there and she's snoozing away.

So there it is!  Even though there are many things I want to work on in there, it's still a space that I'm really happy in.  Also, it smells better than any room in the house because I always keep an air freshener with some sort of fall type of scent plugged in. 

Cupcake stand

Hello friends!  I'm back at you, live with the first project I created in my new craft room!  I have one more corkboard to get hung on the wall, and then I'll take a few pictures and show you where I'm creating.  I'm still experimenting with where the best light for taking pictures will be here.  We get a lot of sunlight throughout the day, which is  nice.

Anyhoo, here's my card.  I used a white card base with some pink polka dot paper from Simple Stories.  I layered a strip of bright blue over that for some contrast, and then put the cupcake stand, which is from the Silhouette Store, on.  I stamped the sentiment with Jaded Blossom's "Hey Cupcake" set.  The cupcakes are glittery from some Stickles.  As you can tell from the shadows, I used some foam adhesive to put the cupcakes on the stand.  I thought about adding something else so it wasn't so plain, but nothing else that I tried looked right, so I decided to call it a day.  It's time to start beefing my birthday stash back up a little, because soon it will be Christmas card season and directly after that is a rush of family birthdays for about 4 months straight. 

This card is being entered into the following challenges:

Simon Says Stamp Wednesday Challenge- We’re going dotty!

Craftin Desert Divas- Anything with a Sentiment

Red Carpet Studio Challenges- Pretty in Pink

Yet more Sophie scrapbook pages

Here are two more pages I made about Sophie!  Hopefully soon I'll have everything organized and can get back to actually creating!

 The first page is actually on cream cardstock, even though in the picture came out white. I put a piece of orange chevron paper from Reminisce's "It's a Dog's Life" line along the side of the page.  I cut the picture down and put it behind a polaroid frame by Recollections.  The journaling block is cut from paper by Imaginisce's "Good Dog" line and the green tag is from Deja Views Dog Days stack.

The line to the right of the chevron paper is the branding strip from the same piece of paper, and the blue border sticker to the right of that is from Echo Park's "Woof."  The orange Dog sticker and the sticker that I put on the polaroid frame are from It's a Dog's Life sticker sheets.  

The title was cut from my Cricut.  The words "Bad" and "Bone" were cut from George and the words "to" and "the" were cut from Plantin Schoolbook.   

My dark green page was really fun and came together kind of quickly.  The white grid paper is from It's a Dog's Life.  The ribbon on the bottom right is something I picked up for $1 at Joann's.  The big star, which is on foam squares on two sides, is cut from the Snap 6x6 pad.  (Funny story about why it's a star: We were using a star die and the Big Shot in a class I took at Archivers that used the Snap pad, and I accidentally cut the brown instead of the grey that I needed.  Once I realized it, I was left with an extra brown star.  I told my friend Kim I'd find a place for it on one of Sophie's pages, and I did!)

The blue polka dotted paper and all three word strips are from "Woof" by Echo Park, as is the paw that's inside a circle.  The other paw, which is on foam squares, is from an embellishment set I had in my stash.