24 Hour Blueprints ~ Take 2!

 

Hi friends!

Today's post is for the 24 Hour Blueprints ... Take #2!

You can read here how it all began

and what on earth it means! :)

The telegram version is a hostess comes up with a couple of sketches

and specs for cards ~ emails the other players

and we have 24 hours ONLY to look the sketches and make them!

It's haaaaaaaaaaaarder than it looks!

  Our hostess this month is Barb and here are her 3 sketches:

*sketches qre unkown source - if this is your sketch or you know who to credit, please drop me a comment!

These were provided to me to work with. 

 No ©  intended!

The instructions were use these sketches, a Christmas theme, 

and the colors red, green, purple and silver.

Now I have 3 holiday cards done and ready for Christmas 2021!

Thank you, Barb!

For all 3 of my cards, I decided to use the same stamp set,

as I did last round of the 24 Hour Blueprints.

The stamp set I chose is the Snow Bunnies from Lawn Fawn and

Simon Says Stamp collaboration <3

And I may have snuck in some pinkish-purply stripes -

 pretend you dont see it! :/~

 Card #1

Card #2

Card #3

And all 3 together .........

This is hard!

We are to get the card sketches and instructions at 7 am

the day before and we only get 24 hours to create and post.

You can see Barb's cards here and Jeanette's cards here.

It takes me forever in a month of Sundays to make ONE card,

let alone 3 AND get 'er done in 24 hours!

Yeeeeeeeesh.

But I did it, which is good considering I got these ladies into this!

LOL!

Thanks for stopping by today!

Blog Series Premiere: Christmas Cheer All Year!

Hi friends!

We made it through Monday!

  YAY! :)

You may remember from this post 

that I have several new creative adventures planned for my blog this year ~

Like this one! 

 Christmas Cheer All Year!

December was a month of merry chaos with so. much. going. on!

Since I missed getting holiday cards in the mail 

:::: insert crying face! ::::

 I thought it would be wonderful to create cards all year!

That way, I'll be ready!

At least that's the plan ♥

 This card was created by using a stamp by STAMPlorations 

called Caffeinated Zen.

It stamps so beautifully and crisp and I loved coloring 

the middle of the cup to look like a holiday cup from Starbucks!

The rest of the cup is paper-pieced ..

and the rest is paper and glue and a heat embossed sentiment

from MFT Stamps.

Thanks for stopping by today!
Big hugs, bigger blessings ♥

~Kelly

CCEE: Elf Antics!

Hello friends!

We love love LOVE our Elf on the Shelf!

He's a little bit sweet and a whole lot of fun and mischievious!

Buddy has been a great addition to our holidays through the years ~ 

and we all still enjoy his antics 

as we take turn doing funny stunts he hides each day!  *wink!*

Which is why I smiled HUGE when I saw the new challenge

 for this week's CCEE Stampers - 

Elf Antics!

 

I knew right away I was going to ink up Birdie Brown Santa's Elves

from MFT Stamps.

And just in time - my big box of Black Friday treasures arrived last week,

so some new goodies got to come out and play, too!

I used the Happy Christmas die-namic ~ a saying that warms my heart ♥

I'm a Merry Christmas girl but my mama said Happy Christmas a lot 

as we were growing up - to hear it makes me think of her.

And lastly, the FAB-U-LOUS plaid papers in perfectly 'Kelly' colors!

I love me some whimsical green and red and pinks together :)

I stamped/cut the image twice - once on cardstock and once on the dsp

and paper pieced his groovy little outfit. 

And yes!

I still decorate the inside of my cards ~

I usually don't show them to let the recipient be surprised.

This one is heading a friend of my daughter so no elfish antics going on today!

 

 And that's it from me today!

I hope you can stop by the CCEE Stampers blog

 and see all the wonderful Elf Antic cards,

as they are fantastic! 

Thanks for stopping by!

Big hugs, bigger blessings ♥

~Kelly 

I'll enter my card into:  Cute Card Thursday

Tuesday Throwdown - AG

Christmas bells are ringing!

Hi friends!

Christmas in August?  

Yes, please!

There is officially 133 more days until Christmas!

Just in case you didn't know :)

  

On Mondays, I have the joy of posting a card at The Project Bin's blog,

always filled with wonderful card inspiration ♥

Today's card is part of challenge ...

I looked at it, loved it, and said sure, why not!

While I can't say a lot about it until after August 15th, 

I can show you!

This technique is called finger smudging or finger "painting",

using oil pastels or pan pastels and just smooshing around.

In this case, since I used a warm palette,

I wanted to create a forest of trees ... without using trees!

With the warm colors of the setting sun as a backdrop,

twinkling snow in the forefront,

I decided to create a unique and non-traditional card ♥

In order to create the 'trees', I smooshed upwards :)

After using curvy dies to make the snow drifts,

I stamped a sentiment from Joyful Song right onto the paper. 

I must mention ...

 this. was. lots. of. FUN!!

If you'd like to give this a try,

you can find the tutorial I used here.

You can find this wonderful stamp set in TPB shop here,

or here's a quick view:

 If you like to try fun things and new techniques in your crafting,

this is highly entertaining and you achieve so many different results!

Thanks for stopping by today!
Big hugs, bigger blessings ♥

~Kelly

Blah Humbunny!

Hi friends!

It's time for another challenge with the CCEE Stampers,
but this will be our last challenge for 2017.
We're taking the rest of the year off to enjoy the time

with our family and friends over the Christmas Season.

 We will be back in January 2018 with more challenges, cards and inspiration!

Today's challenge is short and sweet:
Create a card based on your favorite Christmas stamp!

Oh. me. oh. my!

Favorite?
No way to pick a favorite, especially with a Christmas theme ~
I have so many!

I was so lucky to win a very generous gift certificate from Honey Bee Stamps
recently and bought several stamps sets on my wish list ♥
Thank you, Honey Bee Stamps!
I had already bought Blah Bunny during release week awhile back
and I was excited to see they have a Christmas version out now 
called Blah Humbunny.
It's such a riot and I knew I had to get him to go with my Blah Bunny ♥

The minute my package arrived,
I knew I was going to make a card for my brother with this set.
We have the same sense of humor and were two peas in a pod ~
and now he's so far away~ Bah humbug indeed!

 For my card, I made a simple card base with a spellbinder circle die,
and added some gold glitter paper behind it.
It's just as easy to add a circular one to the front
{originally this was going to be a shaker card!)
I stamped, colored and fussy cut Bah Humbunny and the santa hat and gift,
all from the same stamp set and popped those up on 3d foam.
The final addition was embossing the sentiment with ranger embossing powder
and versafine ink and some 3d foam.

The inside is very informal with one of the sentiments: Missing you
along with part of the image stamped again.

If you're wondering what the other design team's favorite Christmas stamps are, you can see them here on the CCEE blog.
It will take you to each of their cards and blogs.
And, if you'd like to play along, remember to use the keyword CCEE1750
in your post and link back so we can find you!

Big hugs, bigger blessings! 
~Kelly

Cardmaker Magazine and The Project Bin hop!

Good Morning friends

and Happy December!

Welcome to the CardMaker Magazine Christmas blog hop 

featuring stamps from The Project Bin.

This exciting hop is filled with Christmas cards, holiday inspiration

and more to get your creativity flowing for the holidays!

I have two cards that I'm showcasing for you today ~

one that is elegant and glittery and one that's colorful and whimsical ...

a little bit of everything that Christmas brings ♥  

 But first, you should have arrived at my blog from Diana's blog

and from here you will hop on over to see Nicole's blog.

(For a full hop list or to start at the beginning, scroll down to the bottom of this post.)

 

First up, I'm showcasing a card using Joyful Song ~ 

a stamp set filled with angelic inspired sentiments.

I've created a card using scraps of bold glitter papers in varied holiday colors

to compliment the choirs of angels stamp as a bold focal point. 
The heart is also glitter designer paper and cut from a die, 
popped up on 3D foam.

For my next card, I've used bright cheerful colors for a more whimsical look.

I've used Maybe Christmas to create this card,

adorned with buttons and enamel dots for a little dimension. 

Here are both together:

I hope you enjoyed my cards today :)
And in case you didn't know ~  CardMaker Magazine is hosting an awesome holiday giveaway with over $1,300 in prizes for one lucky winner! 
 Click here for more info and the opportunity to enter ..
how amazing of a gift this would be!

Be sure to continue hopping
and then head over to the store and take a peek at the 
wonderful stamps and dies available.

Thanks for stopping by today!
Big hugs, bigger blessings ♥
~Kelly


*Here is the entire hop order:
Jeanette Cloyd
Angela Bode
Diana Carr
Kelly McKown-Santi
Nicole Coursey
Stasia Sloma
Clare Prezzia
Andi Jacobsen
Tamie Jubinville-Camp
Savannah O’Gwynn
Jen Shults
Barb Deichl
Dawn Bennett
Gaylynn Martling
Nancy Nickel
Kelly Clark
Teresa Kline
Dawn Mercedes Barrett
The Project Bin

Mondays with TPB ~ Rustic Christmas ♥

Hi friends!

I hope your long weekend was filled with bliss

and wonderment!

We had a tremendous feast with family and friends,

then headed out for Black Friday shopping which was amazingly very light.

Stores weren't full at all, 

parking lots had empty spots

and we got every single thing on our lists!

And shhhhh ....

I even did a little shopping for me,

scooping up a lot of the online crafty deals.

My mailbox will be filled with deliveries this week ♥ 

Speaking of hustling and bustling,

I thought I'd show you something a little different with

The Project Bin stamps this week.

I call this my 5 minute Christmas card dash!

Christmas cards can be tedious to make,

especially if you have to make 50-75 cards.

One way to do that is to minimize your design,

and tailor it to the group of people that you'll be sending it to.

Now, I love - love - LOOOOOOVE the rustic look to Christmas!

The pine cones and garland,

red gingham bows, the fresh cut tree,

burlap and that very log-cabin-y look :)

For my brother and his family,

I wanted to incorporate exactly that.

I was going for that homespun feel to these cards. 

So here's what I did:

 Starting with Kraft cardstock, and in an assembly line fashion,

I stamped out the sentiments from Maybe Christmas using Altenew Crisp Black 

and the Tim Holtz Stamping Platform.

I used 3 of the sentiments in this wonderful set. 

I ran my snowflake die from a Recollections stamp/die set

through the cuttlebug in coordinating colors to the cards,

glued a button to each and set that aside to dry.

Meanwhile, I added strips of designer paper

 from Recollections North Pole Gazette pad,

tucking on colored cardstock for a little bit of edging.

I finished up the inside of the cards using a sentiment from Joyful Song. 

 Once they were completely dry,

I packed them up with envelopes and some baker's twine ...

ready to go!

Holiday cards don't have to be a big fuss :)

Start with beautiful stamps like those at The Project Bin,

then dash and create!

Thanks for your visit today :)

Big hugs, bigger blessings ♥

~Kelly

TPB Christmas in July - Day 2!

Welcome back to day 2 of The Project Bin’s Christmas in July 
 Blog Hop! 

After 2 full days of The Project Bin’s holiday hop, you’ll probably have so many ideas, you can already start your Christmas list!

If you are hopping along, you should have arrived here from Patricia's blog.  

 If you get lost along the way, or started somewhere in the middle,

 follow the candy cane trail back to The Project Bin inspiration blog.  

 You won’t want to miss the creativity along the way and remember:
  2 lucky winners have the chance of winning
 one of the 2 generous gift certificatesto shop at The Project Bin store! 

 Woohoo!

For today’s holiday inspiration, I’ve created for you

a snow shaker card using my 2nd favorite stamp set in the store!

I love this holiday sentiment set ♥

Living in South Florida, this is the only snow I will see! 

I used my die cuts and the Cuttlebug to make a simple circular and scallop edge,

filled it with faux snow ($1 store), sealed it with thin 3d foam tape,

and attached it to the card base.

I left the card base a little more simpler than I usually do as the fun sentiment 

and snow are the focal point of my card.

The stamp reads:

Maybe Christmas, he thought, doesn't come from a store.

 Maybe Christmas means a little bit more!'

You may recognize this wonderful quote from

the 1957 classic "How the Grinch Stole Christmas' by Dr. Suess.  

Here is the set in it's entirety:

 Be sure to leave a comment at each stop and the winners will be announced 

on The Project Bin blog this week.  

And today - I'm the last stop on the hop 

and we hope you enjoyed our Christmas in July blog hop.  

Big hugs, bigger blessings ♥

~Kelly