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!!!!