Merry Christmas To All!

I hope you all have the most wonderful holiday. I wish you many blessings for the new year! I am so grateful for each and every one of you. Thank you so much for being such wonderful supporters of my work... I sincerely love you all!

Image source: The Graphics Fairy

Clear the Way...

Hello! I hope your holiday preparations are going well and that you all are feeling jolly and excited about Christmas! We are headed to the Nutcracker tonight to kick off our "official" Christmas activities which will include a trip to our zoo's light show, visiting cousins on Christmas Eve Day and Grandma & Grandpa's on Christmas Eve... then it will be home for Santa and Christmas morning and to Grandma & Grandpa's for Christmas dinner.  Whew! It wears me out just thinking about it, but I wouldn't trade it for anything in the world.

So in light of my "to get ready for" list, I'm going to quickly share a batch of elegant holiday cards that I made for Anna Griffin using her Foil Cardstock pack.

Thanks for stopping by today! 

Vintage image source: The Graphics Fairy

December Zva Blog Hop Winners Announced

 Zva Products Used: Bulk 3-D Sweet Rose and Mini Roses, 1.5" White Graceful Roses and Pearl Lovely Flourish

We'd like to congratulate the FIVE December Zva Blog Hop winners! Their names will be found on the following blogs:

Jolanda Meurs

Nicole Martel

Robin Shakoor

Carole Maurin

Lisa Gregory

One winner from each of the 5 blogs will receive a Zva prize package worth $30.00. Congrats winners!

Skipping Stones Design Sketch 107

Hello & happy Tuesday!

I'm back again with another sketch from Skipping Stones Design!

And here's my card...

Want to play along? Just hop on over to Skipping Stones Design for this weeks details. We'd love to see your take on the sketch:) Take care!

Cooking Up Cards Winner Announced

Random Integer picked comment #3...

Here are your random numbers:

3 

Timestamp: 2011-12-20 05:24:46 UTC

Congratulations to Ashley Harris for winning a spot in Big Picture Classes: Cooking Up Cards Class!

Zva Creative December DT Blog Hop!

Zva Creative and our talented Design Team welcomes you to join us for our December Design Team blog hop!

As you know, Zva offers many beautiful color groupings for pearls, flowers and crystals.  We want to make sure that they shine bright for you, so each designer was asked to share a creation using a specific color or color combination on their blog hop project.  If you like what you see you can find a list of stores and online retailers that sell Zva HERE.

The Blog Hop begins here at my blog.  Here is a complete list of all the other participating blogs in case there is a glitch along the way. 

Nicole Martel

Lisa Gregory

Susan Lui

Jolanda Meurs

Tara Orr

Lisa Somerville

Carole Maurin

Karen Shady

Andrea Ewen

Christin Grønnslett

Robin Shakoor

Yukiko Ochi

If you would like to play along, just follow along the blog path.  I am linking to one of the Zva designers and that designer is linking to the next and so on. Be prepared to be inspired along the way!

Hidden on FIVE of the blogs is a Zva Creative prize package! Winners will be randomly chosen after the hop is over, so it's important to leave a comment on as many blogs as you can along the way.

The Blog Hop starts today, December 19th and runs through midnight US Eastern Standard Time on Tuesday, December 20th.  

The 5 winners will be announced on Wednesday, December 21^st on each of the five winning blogs. The full list will be found here as well. We will do our best to notify each winner, but it's best if you can pop in to all of the blogs once again on Wednesday... plus, you never know what kind of inspirational creation that you may find there.

All you need to do is leave a comment on this Zva Blog Hop post... you do not need to leave a comment on each and every designer's blog post to qualify. However, the more times you comment along the blog hop path, the more chances you will have to win.

We also thought it would be more fun to add even more chances to win our blog hop prize!  To increase your chances of winning:

* Comment to let us know that you posted on your Facebook page about our hop (link to any of the blog hop posts)

* Comment to let us know that you "tweeted" about our hop (link to any of the blog hop posts)

* Comment to let us know that you asked your local store to carry Zva creative products.  If they already do, that's fantastic, maybe you can suggest other products that they don't carry.

So you have FOUR chances on each blog to win one of our FIVE prizes!  That's a lot of chances to win!

Zva Product used: CR-04CB Lovely Red Crystal Flourish

The blog hop begins here at my blog and your next stop is Nicole Martel's blog.

Thank you for joining us!

P.S. Mark your calendar to join us again on January 30^th for our next Zva blog hop!

Cooking Up Cards Class Give Away

Hi all! Did you see that there is going to be a fun card class offered at Big Picture Classes? My friends Kim Kesti, Allison Landry, Betsy Veldman, and Teri Anderson are teaching this self-paced class. Trust me, you can't go wrong when those gals are involved.

Here's a bit of information on the class...

Interested in card making, but don’t know where to begin? What if four experts in the field gave you their very own "recipes for success?" Our card chefs are ready to provide the dash of inspiration you’ve been waiting for, and we’re betting you already have all of the ingredients you need: some paper, a few embellishments and a pinch of glue.

In Cooking Up Cards! you will not only get a great introduction to card making, you’ll also meet expert chefs Allison Landy, Betsy Veldman, Kim Kesti and Teri Anderson. Each chef brings something different to the table, and will share with you their own unique Signature Dish, including step-by-step instructions. Then, watch the magic happen as they "swap recipes" and each creates three new cards. That’s a total of twelve additional cards to fill your plate with inspiration.

Sound fun? You can find a full class description here: http://www.bigpictureclasses.com/cookingupcards.php and its available for instant download for just $15.

--Contest Closed--

Here's the best part, they have very graciously provided me with a give away of a spot in the class for one of my blog readers. Yeah! So if you are interested, leave me a comment here by 11:00pm EST tomorrow night (Monday, December 19th). I'll announce the winner on Tuesday, December 20th.

Skipping Stones Design December Blog Hop

Welcome to Sketch Challenge #106 and a Blog Hop to feature many of the wonderful Texture Sets from Skipping Stones Designs!  If you just came from Kandi Phillips' blog, you are in the right place.  If you just happened along my blog today, start at the beginning of the hop at Skipping Stones Design.  The entire hop order is there and you can hop from blog to blog with ease.

Be sure to hop along and leave comments on all the fabulous designers’ blogs.  This month Skipping Stones Design is welcoming Tosha Leyendekker, Kendra Sand and myself to the team as Guest Designers! Jen Del Muro will be providing all the fabulous sketch inspiration this month including the sketch we're using in today's hop!

Here is my card using Jen's sketch (which I flipped upside down) and Skipping Stone's Timeless Textures set.

Want to see more? Head over to JoAnn Valderama's blog for some more Skipping Stones Design inspiration!

I hope you all are doing well:) Enjoy the hop!

3-D Paper Hearts Deck Out Holiday Cards

Happy December!

Here's an easy idea for a card that you can mass produce (because its quick and easy) and mailable (because it folds flat).

All patterned paper from GCD's Scandia Jul collection.

1) punch or die cut shapes

2)  score a line down middle of shape

3) adhere shapes together 

4) continue to join shapes until you reach the desired fullness and adhere to the face of your card

And if your in the gift making mood, you can take this idea and make ornaments that coordinate with your cards.

Products: Patterned paper (GCD Studios), ornament die (Spellbinders), stamp (Hero Arts), twine (Divine Twine), ribbon (Bazzill Basics), punch (Marvey).

Skipping Stones Design

Hello. I'm happy to share that I'll be hanging out over at Skipping Stones Design this month as I've been asked to be a guest designer for the month of December. So every Tuesday I'll be sharing a stampy creation based on a sketch by this month's guest Sketch Artist Jen Del Muro.

Here's today's sketch...

... and my card...

On the card I used Christmas Song to stamp the tree and sentiment tag and Timeless Textures to stamp the background directly under the tree and the red/cream rectangle that is in the upper left hand corner.

You can hop on over to Skipping Stones Design Blog for more fab card ideas using this sketch. 

Well... that's all I have to share today. I'll be back later in the week with a few holiday cards! Have a good one!

Card Creations: Get Inspired

Hi all! Card Creations: Get Inspired is Paper Crafts newest special issue and it is now available on newstands! If you don't want to battle the holiday crowds you can order it over at Scrap and Paper shop!

Here's what you are going to want to go out an look for...

... be sure to check it out! At only $5.99 you can go ahead and buy yourself an early holiday present;)

Paper Crafts Connection and Moxie Fab World are featuring it all week long so you can learn more about it before going out and getting one of your own. Or you can try to win a copy. That is... if you can wait.

Here's one of two cards that I had in the issue... it was one of the easiest card I've ever made... almost too easy! But hey... who says pretty cards have to be difficult?

Life's a Journey Card, pg. 58

Products: Kraft cardstock (Papertrey Ink), patterned paper (Roughin’It patterned paper & Postcards, Great Outdoors collection by GCD Studios), brown chalk ink & cream ribbon.