Natural Brown Christmas Cards

Wrote this post at the airport two days ago! Forgot to hit "publish"...used that natural-feel brown paper with white or red! I love the look of the natural brown color with the white accenting it. Hope you've had lovely holidays...

Jeweled Beauty Tools

Stocking stuffers! These little cuties are for some of my favorites ladies....I bought the tweezers and the clippers at Dollar Tree, and used some of the jewels I had lying around. And of course, my trusty E6000 glue. I had bedazzled myself some tweezers a while back, and decided it would be a fun and easy gift idea this year. I bought the jewels HERE and they are really great. They are like 2.98 for a pack of 300, and the facets on these are just gorgeous. The pictures don't do them justice! I think they are every bit as beautiful as the swarovski ones at the craft stores, and much cheaper. This ebay seller has hotfix ones too. Anyway, enjoy!

Homemade Lip Balm

I am packing and getting ready to head to the east coast to spend Christmas with my family...and of course I am STILL making some last-minute gifts. We had a little get-together today with my fiance's family, and instead of a full meal, we decided to do a hot chocolate/coffee bar and cookies. I think I will have another post tomorrow (maybe written from the airport while I am waiting) with some of our favorite family recipes.

So for now I will post one of the few homemade gifts I was able to make!! I found a FABULOUS and easy recipe for homemade lip balm (via pinterest, of course!) on this wonderful blog HERE . I found all of the ingredients I need at Sprouts, and I bought THESE CONTAINERS on Amazon. The tops are pretty cheaply made, but I was able to get my prime qualifying shipping and 30 of them for about 10 bucks, so I wasn't too worried about it. The blog links to some other possible sites for nicer tins and things. The recipe called for orange essential oil, but I already had some lavender on hand, so that's what I subsituted. I printed and cut little mini labels just using microsoft word, and I hot glued the jewels on to the top. I only had a few of the big ones, so there is a mix of jewel sizes. They came out great, and I am really loving the lip balm itself! Big hit with everyone that has received one so far. Came out pretty cute! Excited to share with my family. Hope you're having a great weekend!

Little Bit of Holiday Bling Cards

Used up some more of those little paper scrap shopping bags...and who doesn't love a little bit of bling? Especially around the holidays...

Pointsettia Cards

Cut of the day was...poinsettias! 3 pieces, largest being 3 inches, then stepping down a little bit from there. Getting close to Christmas... Have you finished shopping? I haven't, yikes! Not even close...i'll just avoid it and stay in my craft room....

Jolly Holiday

Here are a couple more cards...the shopping bags were super easy! Paper scraps with bits of tissue and twine glued on the back. The coffee cup is actually from the Wall Decor and More cartridge (been meaning to some in our kitchen with vinyl!).

 

Love how the cactus ones came out! Since I am in AZ and my fam is on the east coast, the desert stuff always looks fun at the holidays.

These ones were just playing around with funkier versions of holiday colors. Don't look too close at the embossed snowflakes, didn't come out as clean as I hoped...also, I went back over the red glitter scarf later and filled in the white parts that were showing, they were bugging me!...   :)

Holiday Critters

I absolutely loooove the Create-A-Critter cartridge for the cricut. The animals are so adorable. I am sometimes intimidated by cuts that require a lot of layers, and it takes me a bit to get comfortable figuring out which papers to use for which layer. But this one, at least, is well worth it! I think the hippo card might be one of my favorites ever :) The cartridge shows using a different color paper for his muzzle area, but I used foam adhesive, and then Dusty Concord distress ink around the edges, so that I could just use the same paper, but it would still pop out. The hat is from a different cartridge, although I can't remember which one (sorry!), because I rented the holiday bundle from cricut for craft room, and now there are a BILLION holiday images in my arsenal! Hooray! I just LOVE that Cricut is doing these holiday rentals. What a fabulous idea. Anyways, the animals are all from the first Create-A-Critter cartridge, with the exception of the owl, which is from "Just Because" Cards. Enjoy!

Holiday Joy

Here are three quick cards... EnJOY (ha ha)


The lettering on the first one is from the cricut Fontopia cartridge...Although I only used two of the layers.

This one is hard to see...took the picture at night...It is gold and white, exactly the same lettering as the one above. The snowflakes are from a variety of winter stamp packs, and embossed with gold powder. The rectangle is cuttlebug-embossed. Looks much prettier in person! I will try to switch out the picture later...in all my spare time....

 

This lettering is from the craft room basics lettering, and I used Vintage Velvet distress ink around the edges.

Fan Fold Cards

I am SUPER EXCITED to share these cards with you! ALL of the credit goes to the blog from the Paper Zone...from what I understand it was a store in Washington, which has since closed :(  However, the blog still exists and is WONDERFUL! I am linking the tutorial, and if you have time, peruse the other posts. Some gorgeous ideas. Find the tutorial HERE (they call them "folded leaf cards")
I found as much double-sided holiday paper as possible! Most of them are single sheets from the racks at JoAnn, although some of the brighter colors are from a Martha Stewart holiday double-sided pack. These are made from one single strip of paper, no glueing, cutting (except for an initial slice to make the right size rectangle) or anything else. They are beautiful as-is, but I chose to add some little embellishments to the fan part. I am thinking they would be really cute to use for gift cards...If you wanted, you could seal up the edges and use it as an envelope... I promise you, after the first one, you will get the hang of it so quickly, and you can crank them out in a minute or two! SO EASY and fun! The occupational therapist and I even did it as an activity at school with some of the kiddos, using construction paper! (fine motor skills for OT, following instructions and re-tell for speech!)

'Tis The Season

Some more holiday cards...I am on a roll! I am excited about my next post too :) Stay tuned!

More Holiday Cards, and tag testers

I get so involved in my cricut cutting sometimes that I forget about a lot of the other great tools I have. Before I had a cricut, I did so much ink work! Alcohol inks, distress inks, etc. I have tried a few things out with a holiday theme, and attempted to put a few together.

This green and white card with twine is one of my favorites so far this year. The tag was a plain manilla tag, and then I used the Bundled Sage and Peeled Paint distress inks for the color. I stamped the sentiment in Peeled Paint, and then I used heat embossing for that shimmery swirl pattern. I accidentally bought "Translucent" embossing powder instead of opaque white one day, and basically put it to the side and forgot about it. I happened to try it out on a few of these tags, and I loooove the effect. You'll see it again in a minute on the snowflake tags.

 

These snowflake tags actually have a few layers. I first used the ranger color wash spray in Sailboat Blue, and watered it down and blotted it for a nice blue bottom coat. I used a sheet of snowflake stencils, and sprayed a layer of Denim color wash over it. If you have never used the color wash sprays, they are really fun to play around with. I think maybe I will do another post later about some cool techniques. YouTube "Ranger Color Wash" and there are some awesome tutorials! Anyways, then I used that translucent embossing powder, and then white opaque embossing powder. I used some snowflakes cut from glitter cardstock as the final layer. I haven't decided what to do with them yet! :)

 

 

This tag was the color wash in "Red Pepper" and distress ink in "Faded Brick". The sentiment was stamped in faded brick, and then I used that translucent powder for the swirly pattern.

 

 

 

Holiday Cards

Here are some more holiday cards! Bold, bright color papers on this one. I have way too many holiday paper packs at this point...instead of deciding to stop buying them, my solution is...buy another 3-drawer storage piece to keep them in. Anyone else have this problem?? :) Hope everyone is enjoying holiday crafting time! The banner card came out super cute...I originally had one layer of pennant scraps laid out, but it just didn't quite do it. Adding the second layer of smaller strips, and using the foam adhesive really made a difference.

December already....

Usually this is the time of year that I START thinking about making things for the holidays...in another week or two I would start buying supplies...and then December 23rd-ish I panic and pull all-nighters trying to get things done. Reminds me of high school. This is the first year that I have actually started ahead of time (in NOVEMBER, of all things). So here go the first few cards! I have made quite a few that I will post in the next few days. The snowflakes on the blue "Season's Greetings" card are vellum, heat embossed with white powder, and cut out, with a little jewel in the middle. The sentiment is cut from the cricut Winter Woodland cartridge. All of the ribbons are from JoAnn. The papers for the gray "Warmest Wishes" card is from the Paper Studio's "Boho Chic" pack, and the purply gold one is from the DCWV "Stardust Stack" (GORGEOUS pack). The snowflakes were cut from the cricut Winter Woodland cartridge, and heat embossed with white powder, although that doesn't show up well in the pictures. I really like those two for non-denominational holiday cards.