Wednesday, December 23, 2015

Mondo Poinsettia Christmas Card

I did some shopping at the Ellen Hutson 40% off holiday items sale last week. I was happy to get the Ellen Hutson Essentials Mondo Poinsettia Stamp and Die set. I stamped the Poinsettias with Tuxedo Black Memento Ink, then colored them  with Copic Markers.  I read through this tutorial by Sharon Harnist to get ideas for what colors to use.


I layered several of the Poinsettias on top of each other with foam tape and added three of the leaves from the set. I inked the edges of my Neenah Classic Crest Card stock with Fossilized Amber Distress Ink and lined the edges lightly with Antique Olive Distress Ink. The sentiment is from Clearly Besotted stamp set called Joyeux Noel.

Thanks for stopping by and I hope you are enjoying the holiday season.


Monday, December 14, 2015

Fun Friday Crafts Sponsored by DecoArt



Last Friday I made crafts with the students at the school where I teach, Chapin Middle School. We used DecoArt DecoPage and Americana Enamel Gloss to decorate glass jars and recycled cardboard ornaments. The students used the DecoPage to adhere patterned papers and die cut snowflakes, trees, and stars to the jars and ornaments. Some also used DecoArt Enamel Paints to paint their glass jars. A huge thanks to DecoArt who generously donated DecoPage for us to use at this event.

The students had fun decorating the glass jars using die cut shapes and DecoPage



Some of the students used DecoArt Americana Gloss Enamel Paints
to paint their glass jars before adding their die cuts. 







 They also created some beautiful ornaments made from recycled cereal boxes, 
patterned papers, and die cuts. 






These were a couple of fun and easy projects that used recycled materials and allowed the students to use their creativity. They are perfect projects for kids to work on over the holidays. If you are inspired to try projects like these, please let me know. I would love to see what you make.

Happy Holidays!!

Sunday, December 13, 2015

Christmas Card Challenges Week 2

It's time for this week's challenge over at Christmas Card Challenges. This week our Challenge theme is a Color Challenge.  They are really fun Christmas colors. It's time to get those Christmas cards made and come join us this week. Thanks for stopping by! 

NOTE: We're going to take a couple weeks off to enjoy this busy time of year. We'll be back the first week in January with another fun Christmas Card Challenge!







For my card I used a new Hero Arts Stamp set called Color Layering Dimensional Bird. I used different Ranger Archival Inks to stamp each piece of the bird. Then I cute out the pieces and pieced the bird back together. This was a really fun card to make, I can't wait use this set more in the future. 


5 for 5 Prize Winner

Thanks for all your support of our 5 for 5 Blog Event. Here is a link to our Pinterest Board where you can see all our projects in one place. The winner of my Tim Holtz Christmas stamps is Janis. Congratulations Janice. Please e-mail me at corgidusty at yahoo dot com with your address.

Friday, December 11, 2015

5 for 5 Christmas Inspiration Day 5 - Tree

Welcome to Day 5 of our 5 for 5 Christmas Blog Event. I can't believe it's our last day,  the time has flown by! Today our theme is "Tree". We are all sharing a Christmas Tree themed project. Each day our 5 Designers will post a Christmas Inspired Project based on a theme. Some of us are offering prizes, so be sure to visit all the links below and leave comments. My prize is shown at the end of this post, check it out!!

This project started back in September when I took a Powertex class with Cheryl Boglioli in Boiling Springs, NC at a fabulous LSS called Dorothy's Stamps and Scraps. In the class, they were making female sculptures using Powertex. But, I had another idea. I wanted to try to make a Christmas tree. So, while everyone else made beautiful figures, I worked on my tree.

Cheryl was great. If you ever get a chance to take one of her classes, I highly recommend her. I also took a class on Gelli Printing that was tons of fun!!



First we shaped our sculptures with wire, then covered them with tin foil. I had to really fill the inside with the foil. Then we covered them with masking tape. It might not look like much, but getting the tree shape and especially the star took quite a lot of work. 


 Then we covered them with strips of cloth coated in the Powertex. 


Since the class was only using brown and gray colors, I brought my tree home and created a green color with my  DecoArt Americana paints. 


Then I painted the tree with several coats. 



I decided I wanted to glitter it up, so I proceeded to paint it with several different colors of DecoArt Twinkles Glitter paints. 


Then it was time to paint the star. I start out with my Americana paint that I thought was a little to orangey so I went over it with my DecoArt Acrylic Primary Yellow. Then I covered it with yellow
and gold glitter Twinkles.



I'm still considering whether or not I want to add ornaments and trim to it. 
But, for now I like the super glittery look. 


My prize for this event is two Tim Holtz Blueprints Wood Christmas Stamps - Stocking and Candy Cane. Just follow my blog and leave a comment for a chance to win. I will announce the winner on my blog Saturday, December 12. Thanks for stopping by!



Donna Bowman (me)
Rachel Kleinman
Lynn Kopas
Karen Crossen
Kris Lancaster

Thursday, December 10, 2015

5 for 5 Christmas Day 4 - Tag

Welcome to Day 4 of our 5 for 5 Christmas Blog Event. Today our theme is "Tag". We are all sharing a Christmas Tag. Each day our 5 Designers will post a Christmas Inspired Project based on a theme. Some of us are offering prizes, so be sure to visit all the links below and leave comments. My prize is shown at the end of this post, check it out!!

For my tag I stamped some PaperArtsy Snowflakes on a manilla tag with Versamark Watermark Ink. 


Then I covered the tag with a light blue Pan Pastel followed by a pink Pan Pastel and got this pretty background. 

I had this Tim Holtz Snowman in my stash. He was covered in Distress Glitter and ink. I die cut the word JOY on the snowman. I added a little scarf to his neck and a sparkly snowflake in the upper top corner. I created the bow with white twine, silver tinsel, and White ribbon. 




My prize for this event is two Tim Holtz Blueprints Wood Christmas Stamps - Stocking and Candy Cane. Just follow my blog and leave a comment for a chance to win. I will announce the winner on my blog Saturday, December 12. Thanks for stopping by!



Donna Bowman (me)
Rachel Kleinman
Lynn Kopas
Karen Crossen
Kris Lancaster

Wednesday, December 9, 2015

5 for 5 Christmas Day 3 - One Layer

Welcome to Day 3 of our 5 for 5 Christmas Blog Event. Today our theme is "One Layer". We are all sharing a one layer project. Each day our 5 Designers will post a Christmas Inspired Project based on a theme. Some of us are offering prizes, so be sure to visit all the links below and leave comments. My prize is shown at the end of this post, check it out!!

For my card today, I painted the background using Dina Wakley paints in Sky Blue and made a frame for the card with Sterling. Then I stamped the images with Wendy Vecchi Archival Ink in Watering Can. I colored the bird with more Dina paints most mixed with white.  It's a fun way to make a quick mixed media one layer card. 


My prize for this event is two Tim Holtz Blueprints Wood Christmas Stamps - Stocking and Candy Cane. Just follow my blog and leave a comment for a chance to win. I will announce the winner on my blog Saturday, December 12. Thanks for stopping by!



Donna Bowman (me)
Rachel Kleinman
Lynn Kopas
Karen Crossen
Kris Lancaster

Tuesday, December 8, 2015

5 for 5 Christmas Day 2

Welcome to Day 2 of our 5 for 5 Christmas Blog Event. Today our theme is "Religiou". We are all sharing a project where with a Religious theme. Each day our 5 Designers will post a Christmas Inspired Project based on a theme. Some of us are offering prizes, so be sure to visit all the links below and leave comments. My prize is shown at the end of this post, check it out!!

For my card today, I used a brand new Hero Arts Stamp. It looks like a stained glass window. I colored it with Copic Markers in lots of different colors. It was really fun to color. For the background I used a new We-r-Memory Keepers Embossing Folder on white card stock. I used an ink blending tool to rub some London Fog Memento Ink over the embossed panel. I thought it might look like an old stone church with a stained glass window in it. The sentiment is from a Papertrey Ink Stamp set. 

My prize for this event is two Tim Holtz Blueprints Wood Christmas Stamps - Stocking and Candy Cane. Just follow my blog and leave a comment for a chance to win. I will announce the winner on my blog Saturday, December 12. Thanks for stopping by!



Donna Bowman (me)
Rachel Kleinman
Lynn Kopas
Karen Crossen
Kris Lancaster

Monday, December 7, 2015

5 for 5 Christmas 2015 Day 1 - Glitter

Welcome to Day 1 of our 5 for 5 Christmas Blog Event. Today our theme is "Glitter". We are all sharing a project where we used glitter. Each day our 5 Designers will post a Christmas Inspired Project based on a theme. Some of us are offering prizes, so be sure to visit all the links below and leave comments. My prize is shown at the end of this post, check it out!!

For my project today I painted some wood blocks green and added some white glitter letters. After I looked at the white letters, I thought they would be nice in red so I used an ink blender and rubbed in some Festive Berries Distress ink over the letters to make them a red. 



After the red distress ink was added. I think they look more Christmassy!!



If you saw my 5 for 5 Halloween projects, these letters are the backsides of the BOO letters I made for Halloween. So this is a 2 for 1 project.




My prize for this event is two Tim Holtz Blueprints Wood Christmas Stamps - Stocking and Candy Cane. Just follow my blog and leave a comment for a chance to win. I will announce the winner on my blog Saturday, December 12. Thanks for stopping by!



Donna Bowman (me)
Rachel Kleinman
Lynn Kopas
Karen Crossen
Kris Lancaster

Sunday, December 6, 2015

Christmas Card Challenges Week 1 - Photo Challenge

It's time for this week's challenge over at Christmas Card Challenges. We are starting a new cycle and we have some new designers joining us this week. Check out  the blog to see who they are and stop by and say HI. This week our Challenge theme is a Photo Inspiration Challenge - Santa's Nails. I was inspired by the colors.  It's time to get those Christmas cards made and come join us this week. Thanks for stopping by!




For my card I used a paper pad from DCWV called Candy Cane Lane.  I love to piece together papers from a related set and make cards.  For this card is used 4 different papers. I added some red Stickles to the star. You might not be able to tell but, but the red paper on the bottom is glitter paper. It's fun and easy to use papers from he same stack and helps to use up your papers if you're like me and don't make 12x12 Scrapbook pages. 


Tuesday, December 1, 2015

Mixed Media Monthly Challenge #19 - Silver and Gold

It's time for a new challenge over at the Mixed Media Monthly Challenge. This month our theme is "Silver and Gold." Just make a project using gold and/or silver.



Our sponsor once again this month is the very generous online craft retailer IndigoBlu. They have given us a FAB prize package to give our random winner. Trust me, this is the month you want to play!! IndigoBlu was also kind enough to send the members of our design team an amazing box of goodies to play with. I have used many of them on my project today.

 
I made a wintery card today.  I used a background stamp called Bare Forest. I stamped it with IndigoBlu FlitterGlu and then used IndigoBlu MegaFlakes in Winter Dawn which is a beautiful mix of silver and gold. Then I stamped the deer which is from a set called "Looks Like Rain Deer." I heat embossed the deer in a dark gold color


When you order the FlitterGlu Kit with Flake, you get everything you need to use the beautiful Megaflakes. Our random monthly winner will get the FlitterGlu kit and much more!
 I used my beautiful flakes on white cardstock and I felt they didn't show up enough. So, I added some different colors of blue Distress Inks to the white panel and it went beautifully over the gilded area - it didn't cover the flake at all. I think this blue Distress Ink background made the flake show up beautifully. I put it on a dark blue card stock - Not Quite Navy from Stampin' Up. I love how it turned out and it was so much fun using the gorgeous flakes.

I hope you will join us this month and I can't wait to see all the sparkly creations everyone makes.