Getting ready to make merry

Our Combined Federal Campaign at work scheduled an arts and crafts silent auction on December 15, so i made two little zippered quilted bags and two embellished grapevine wreaths. Here are the bodies of the bags...they're tiny crazy quilts that i made with fabrics from my stash and some of the cool fancy stitches on my sewing machine.

And here are the two finished little bags. There was a "bidding war" over one of them which was very gratifying! (and sort of amusing, because there was only one bid on the other bag, and they look so similar, you'd think the bids would have been spread between the two bags)

Here's one of the wreaths...purchased grapevine wreath, with paper punched snowflakes, satin ribbon, chipboard letters, and a few rhinestone brads. I loved how they came out...yet neither of them was bid on. Oh well, will just have to give them to friends!

Here's the second annual card i made for the Red Truck Bakery, our local purveryor of everything delicious, from hearty Harvest Bread to sinfully delicious Double Chocolate Moonshine cakes. They have such delicious baked goods (all baked from scratch on the premises) and they are really nice folks...a great addition to Main Street.

My quilt group's annual holiday party was this past Tuesday. I've been working very full days at work, plus taking work home on evenings and weekends, so have fallen even farther behind than usual in holiday preparations. So i took annual leave on Monday and Tuesday and quilted like crazy. I made a miniature table runner for my Secret Santa, which i was so pleased to actually finish, i forgot to take a picture of it!

Each year we have a challenge block for the party, with the design chosen by the previous year's winner. (Each person who wants to, makes a block and then at the party we put our names into a basket, with one chance to win for each block that we've made. The winner gets all of the blocks!) This year the theme was "Christmas tree ornament" and the club provided an 8" square of fabric to use as the background, so all of the blocks that everyone makes will have that in common. I knew i wanted to make a ball-shaped ornament, and of course it had to have a cat on it. I found the perfect pattern in Quilting Arts Gifts magazine for actual ornaments made out of fabric. They didn't show them made up with cat fabrics, but the "cathedral window" construction was perfect to make a kitty peek out of. I made two and appliqued each one to a background block. I was so thrilled with how they came out, i made two just to be actual ornaments.



Chanukah was early this year!

Chanukah began during the first week of December this year...Thanksgiving was barely over and suddenly it was upon us! Our congregation's party was held on Sunday, December 5. Sometimes our services are poorly attended...but this year, more than 70 people came to the party, including several new families with young children. It was thrilling having such a big group of people together. Each family brought its own menorah and we lit them all together, so the room was ablaze with light and full of the sound of music and laughter.

I missed getting a picture of Louie sitting on the living room floor, looking up in apparent wonder at the menorah's flickering candles, but here he's sitting on the couch and you can sort of see the candlelight flickering in his eyes.

And here's an unfortunately dark photo of this year's Chanukah card, which i barely got made on time, and many of which i didn't mail on time (but at least i mailed a few them this year...last year i made a whole batch and never got a chance to address and mail them!)

Fall is Coming!

Louie says it's time to gather in your pumpkins...

This week's Saturday Sketch Challenge

The sketch was pretty straightforward...just what i needed for a baby naming card! So here it is:

(I see that my friend and upline Robin used the same baby stroller stamp...great minds and all that!) I wasn't able to go to the babynaming ceremony because i had to attend an event with my quilt group (more about that soon), but i am sending this card and a copy of Patricia Polacco's The Keeping Quilt, one of my all-time favorite books.

While i was in the "stamping studio" (my mother's old kitchen table and my workbench piled high with stamping supplies in my basement) i also made a sympathy card for dear friends whose baby died at birth. I was reminded of this stamp (and similar color combination) by the pretty little boxes on Takatou's site.There's really not much a person can say at a dreadful time like this but i thought the card would help tell them i'm holding them in my thoughts and prayers.

I also started a series of cards "just because." The new Stampin' Up! lattice die for the Big Shot really intrigues me. I cut out five lattices from different c0lors of card stock (5 of the 6 new In colors) and then mixed and matched the little pieces that are punched out, to make what are essentially paper quilts. This is the first one that i completed.

Some new cards

The first card follows a sketch (like a recipe, to be modified by the user) on the Stamping 411 site. Here's the sketch.


And here's my card. I used only Stampin' Up! tools and materials for all three cards shown here. For this card, i pretty much used the suggested layout, although the center is cut out with the new Bigz Lattice die in the Big Shot, layered over a piece of Bashful Blue cardstock that i ran through texturz plates on the Big Shot. The lattice, background, and belly band are all from the Tea Party Designer Series Papers. At the center is a square icy blue rhinestone brad. This is a get well card for my friend Violet, who tripped on her front steps and fractured her foot in two places this weekend!

Next i needed to make a congratulations card for my friend Janet, who is retiring on Friday. I had so much fun using the Bigz Lattice die for the previous card, i used it on this card as well, cutting the center from a piece of lilac Designer Series Paper. Different patterns of the same paper form the background and the oval that the sentiment is printed on. The sentiment is mounted on a scalloped oval of the same Tea Party Designer Series Paper as the layer under the lattice. That scalloped oval punch is one of my favorites! The ribbon is the brand new Crushed Curry polka dot grosgrain ribbon...yummy. This card also has a square rhinestone brad in the center, too...this one lilac rather than blue.

This third card i just made because i love how it looks...i saw this design or something very like it somewhere, but i don't remember where now...whether it was wandering on the internet or in a magazine. It uses all new "toys" from my most recent Stampin' Up! order...the card is on Crushed Curry card stock (gasp, so different than my traditional Whisper White card bases), the stamp is from the new Razzle Dazzle set. I stamped the whole design in Soft Suede, then cleaned the stamp off and colored in the flowers with Stampin' Write markers, stamped them on a scrap of Whisper White, cut them out, and mounted them with mini glue dots on top of the Soft Suede version. I double-matted the white layer on top of Rich Razzleberry and Melon Mambo cardstock. The ribbon is Rich Razzleberry polka dot grosgrain ribbon, the sentiment is stamped in Crushed Curry and mounted on Melon Mambo cut out with my pal, the scallop oval punch.

Card Challenge--"Getting Sentimental"

Flourishes makes extraordinary clear acrylic stamps. Their artwork is of the highest quality, and goes beautifully with all the Stampin' Up! products that i've got like paper, ink, and ribbon. They periodically have challenges and i mostly am uninspired or too much of a beginning stamper to be able to settle on a design in response.

This time, though, the challenge was "Simply make a card with a sentiment, word or quote as the focal point for your card!" Flourishes has a lovely quote from Monet that i immediately decided had to be the center, and it called out for a spring green (SU's kiwi kiss), which i found on a Stampin' Up! designer series paper from the Bella Rose collection, and then perfect flourishes to complement it in Flourishes autumn set that i stamped in chocolate chip ink, adhered to kiwi kiss cardstock. The ribbon is SU!'s luscious kiwi kiss double-sided ribbon. The sentiment is stamped in kiwi kiss ink on whisper white, sponged with kiwi kiss around the edges. The little blingy flower embellishments are Queen & Company's "sassy sequins" from Joggles.com, my favorite source of all sorts of embellishments.