Mini Santa Gnome

While hanging out at my friends house I made a few of these little cards to send out for Christmas. I like how the little Santa looks like a gnome, very cute. Oh and this is the last cards I've made before I started my little project. Those cards are soon to come.


What I used on this card:

• Paper: Kraft (Generic), Lines & Holly (My Mind's Eye), Whisper White (SU)
• Stamps: Santa Gnome (Imaginisce-Cottage Christmas), Sentiment ( Scrappy Cat)
• Ink: Walnut Stain, Frayed Burlap, Antique Linen, Tattered Rose (Distress Ink TH)
• Markers: Certainly Celery (SU), Blender Pen (SU)

Thanks for swinging by,

A Personal Challenge

So today I decided I would start a personal challenge, one that would push my creativity as well as free up highly valuable property in my craft space. Here are some pictures that I am sure many of you can relate to, maybe you have less or maybe you have large pile but I'm sure any Card Maker/Scrapper can relate to these two piles.

This is a little case that holds all of my small bits of scraps.

This is a 12x12 case that holds all of my larger pieces of paper, I'd say its about 3/4 full  roughly.
So here is my personal challenge, if this was Dec. 31st I'd consider it a New Years resolution but since its not  I'll just say I'm starting my resolution now. So here it is, I want that green 12x12 empty and I want that smaller one to be at no more then 1/4 full, ideally I'd like that one empty too but I don't know if that is possible. The only exception will be for White & Kraft cardstock that I use for my card bases.

So with all these different types of paper I will try to do cards for OWH as well as maybe some cool home decor pieces (psst I'm workin' on some cool shadow boxes that will be posted soon) and maybe, just maybe a scrapbook page but I wont hold my breath on that last one.

I'm also thinking as a mini side project to this that I'll want to try to create one of those mini books filled with card sketches.

So what do you think? Have you attempted something like this before?

Thanks for stoppin' in,

My First Sketch Challenge

This is the first card I am making for a sketch challenge so I'm pretty excited.

I made this for the OWH S&S Sketch Challenge #46. 

What I used on this Card:

• Paper: Kraft (generic), Whisper White (SU), Blues (Recollections)
• Stamps: Music Background (Rubber Stampede), Friends 24-7(SU), Baroque Motifs (SU)
• Ink: Early Espresso (SU), Blue (Chalk Cat's Eye).
• Paint: Distress Crackle Paint (Tarnished Brass)
• Boarder Punch(SU)

Thanks for looking,

Birdie & Bling

My Mom's birthday is coming up so I thought this would be the perfect time to use my black jewels. Her bathroom has a candelabra that reminds me of this bling so I have a feeling she will like this. I also got to play with my new stamp sets too so double bonus.

What I used on this card:

• Stamps: Friends 24-7 (SU) 
• Paper: Kraft Cardstock (Generic), Whisper White (SU), Red (Recollections)
• Bling (Prima)
• Flowers (Prima)
• Inks: Real Red (SU), Early Espresso (SU), Crumb Cake (SU), Walnut Stain (THDI)

Thanks for Lookin'

O Tannenbaum! A Tutorial.

I created this adorable Christmas Tree from a obsolete book I had lying around. Now I'm sure some will want to argue and say no book is obsolete but this one was, it was an old Photoshop book from their seventh release back in 02....pretty old considering the rate of growth with technology. So anyways, I got the idea to make this book tree from a tutorial I had seen done on Cheeky Magpie when I first saw this a few months ago I made a pumpkin, loved it but wanted to do more with extra old books I had lying around...enter the Christmas Tree.

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A little warning, this project is not for someone with A.D.D. or any type of hand/wrist problem as this is a time consuming project that feels like it will never end! But seriously it is a lot of cutting with a Xacto knife so if you do have a hand problem and still want to give this a shot, give yourself plenty of time to get it done.

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Now on with the show!

To get started you'll want to have:

• A thick book, if it has a firm cover save one to make your template
• "Snail" Adhesive
• Xacto Knife
• Pencil
• Hot Glue Gun
• Distress Ink in Bundled Sage
• Tattered Angels Glimmer Mist in Old Olive and Old Lace
• Your personal choice of decor for your tree. I used pealized beads, butterfly and a Origami Flower.

I first cut my book in half to make trimming the tree easier. 

Next I created a Tree template using the cover of the book. I used "Snail" adhesive to attach the template to the top page to act as my guide. 

Its also important to note that I left the top of my tree flat because I figured I was going to put something big up there and it would be easier with a flat top then with the traditional point.

Here I started cutting away at the book, I started with the bottom half first and then went back to the top half. I would go down roughly 20 pages before I'd stop and switch sides.

Here I have one of my completed trees, I'll be using the Distress Ink to stain the edges of the pages to add color depth to my tree.

I used the pad directly onto the tree to darken the

 edges as much as I could. I found that bending and fanning the pages made it easier to get the color in deeper.

Next I grabbed a felt pad so I could get the color into the areas the ink pad could not reach.

Now you'll want to bend and crack the spine of the book, this will help to loosen up up the pages to allow for a beautiful spreading of the pages to make the tree.

After a bit of manipulation I found that this book had a lot of glue binding the pages together so I took my xacto knife and started to shave away some of that glue. After I shaved away the glue I lightly scored small "X" marks all over the spine, this made it much easier to loosen up the pages to fully fan out.

I used a hot glue to glue at the intersections of the spines but I was careful not to glue the pages together. By gluing the book in this fashion it allows all the pages to fan without 2 sections of page clumping.

Here it is fully glued and you can see there isn't much space where I glued the spines together.

I sprayed Old Olive first over the entire tree before giving it a few sprites of Old lace just to add a light touching of brown for further depth.

Let this dry for 10 minutes, you can clean your space or start getting the decorations ready.

There you go, one pretty little tree that I accented with golden ribbon, a butterfly, pearlized beads and a big distressed origami flower on top!

Happy Holidays!