Broke my punch

I've been busy making Christmas cards for the Shepard Craft Fair. For one of them, I'm using up some paper I had left over from the Basic Grey Blitzen Collection. I cut the scraps I had into strips and used them on the card below. Then I embellished them with layered snowflakes made from my graduated sizes of McGill snowflake punches. I was using the small and medium sized punches and apparently punched so many times, I broke my medium size punch. I've been looking all over for one and couldn't find a replacement. So I had to get the QuicKutz snowflake die instead and figure out how to run it through my Big Shot. Worked fine after adding a few shims. Here is the result.

Reece Reindeer Christmas Card

I've been making a bunch of cards this week, first in anticipation of my Stamp a Stack yesterday and then because I'm hoping that I will be participating in one of our high school's annual craft shows. The show will be December 6th, and I should be hearing from them some time this week. So I have been and will be making up a bunch of cards, and will be posting some of them over the next few weeks.

The first one is this card I made for my Stamp a Stack yesterday. We used The Angel Company's Reece Soar With It paper collection and stamped the main image from their Christmas Season stamp set. The image is colored with watercolor pencils, which made it super quick and easy. I ran the edge of the red mat through one of the Cuttlebug border embossing folders and cut around the embossed edge. Then added a ribbon for a little more detail. All in all, this card is very quick to make, and you can get 9 of them from the patterned piece of Reece paper (12 if you make the patterned panel 1/2 an inch smaller).

Beagle Welcome Cupcake Challenge

My desk neighbor at work, Angela, is helping her local shelter by fostering two beagle puppies, starting this weekend. Unfortunately, the economy is hitting our area hard enough that people are giving up their pets because they are unable to feed them. Angela's friend works at the shelter and told her that pets are coming in so fast that they are running out of room to keep them, which means that if someone doesn't adopt them, or offer to foster them, they will be "destroyed" at a faster pace.

Destroyed....what a horrible word to use with respect to helpless animals that have lead their lives at the mercy of humans, and served them well with friendship and loyalty. Although I understand the position the shelter is in, and the position of those families that are forced to give up their pets because times are so tight, it's so sad to me that it has come to this. I would consider it myself, but we fostered one dog a few years ago, and ultimately had to give him up because of complaints from our neighbors that we were violating the condo association rules. That, and we don't currently have a work schedule that would allow us to give a dog the kind of attention it would need.

Since Angela is taking on a few extra puppies, which in her heart she knows will not be fostered and returned, but will ultimately become part of her household, I decided to make her this card to welcome them, and I used Taylor's Cupcake Challenge as the template. The inside of the card says "Acquiring a dog may be the only chance a human ever has to choose a relative". The beagle and sentiment stamps are by Stamping Sensations. The dog prints are a stamp that I've had for so long, I no longer know who made it, and the darker brown background is made from brown paper with a tan core, that I put paw prints on using a Fiskars texture template and then sanded so that the tan showed through. The friends ribbon came from Target's dollar section last month. The card will accompany a matching jar of puppy treats that isn't quite finished.

I'm sure Angela will be tickled, and I'm happy to do something nice for the puppies too.

Awesome Crop!

O.K., so I'm a little behind. We had our crop for a cause a week ago, and I'm just getting around to posting about it.

We had an AWESOME time! This crop was absolutely sooo much fun. 48 croppers attended to join in the festivities and have since responded with feedback that it was the best crop they'd ever been to. We had tables set up so that there were three people to a table, with extra chairs that could be used for friends to visit in, or to store stuff that you didn't want on the table with you.



We had awesome sponsors that provided products for goodie bags and prizes for the silent auctions.





I got a steal of a deal on the Fiskars Rock-Paper-Trimmer that has speakers and plays an mp3 player while you cut. I had my eye on it when it came in and bidded my little heart out to get it, since basically the only time I actually use my iPod is when I'm crafting.



I also picked up a good deal on some Copic markers and the Copic air brush system in our Swap Shop. Which made me a happy girl.

We also had games:



and contests:



We even had a massage therapist to give chair massages.

And in the end, we raised approximately $1,200 for Southwest Community Services. It was a great event, and I thank everyone that came out, supported it, and had a great time. I thank the sponsors that helped make it so that everyone when home with a prize. And I thank Pat and Dawnmarie for coming up with the idea and working their little butts off to make it happen. Dawnmarie was our comic MC and she did a great job entertaining the crowd.

We've been invited back to host another crop and are thinking some time in February sounds good. So if you missed this one, keep your ears peeled for the next. Hopefully we'll see you there!

Fall cards

A few months ago, the Poetic Artistry Blog posted a one sheet wonder, with some cards that I thought were classically simple. I stored them in the back of my mind for a while, and when I had a chance to play today, I went and looked the post up. These are cards that I made using the same one sheet wonder (although I ended up removing the .75" x .75" square on Card #2 when I changed the orientation due to the verse I picked). It's amazing how different the exact same template can look with different color choices.

Cheers Card

Heather Scott posted her Monday challenge today, and I had a little chance to play. The nicest thing about it was that I got a chance to use up some scraps in the process. Here's my card using The Angel Company's Amelia patterned paper and Cheery Christmas Stamp set. The teal block behind the sentiment is a Ralph Lauren Metallics paint chip.

It's Time to Party Like a Rock Star!

Aerosmith was the first band I ever went and saw live in concert. I've been following them ever since I was 16 and until a few years ago, I never missed a single show when they came to my area. So when Aerosmith came out with its own special edition of Guitar Hero, I knew I had to get it.

Tom went out on my birthday and picked up the game, and we've been planning a Guitar Hero party to have some of our friends come over and play (or watch as the case may be). This plan has been in the back of our minds since June. Now it's October, and we're finally getting around to doing something. Crazy huh?

Anyway, last weekend we picked a date. Since then, we've come up with all kinds of ideas for the invitations, food and decorations. I thought it would be fun to make little "tour cases" with laminated back stage passes in them, since we'll be handing our invitees their invitations. Then we took it a step further and made tour books with the story and party details inside. It's been a lot of fun, and we just finished getting all of this stuff together.

Here's a picture of all the stuff together:



And here's a close-up of the "tour case":



Here are the passes and tour booklets a little closer up:



We're even planning musically inspired food, but since some of the attendees read my blog, I don't want to spoil the fun.

So far this has been a lot of fun to plan. If you've had any parties that you've done with a theme, I'd love to hear about them.