random reflections

Happy Birthday, Caleb & Hannah!

Caleb turned 11 today, and Hannah turned 6. Their birthday celebrations began as they usually do with scavenger hunts. Hannah's clue were photographs, and Caleb asked for "really hard" coded clues. They were, indeed, very hard and it took him awhile to find his gifts.

Looking for the next clue in the Christmas tree.

All in all, it was a fine day. Caleb received a fabulous Lego set with over 1200 pieces that he assembled before he went to bed, and lots of kitchen play items for Hannah--a mixer, a blender, a coffee pot and a Playdough kitchen set as well. Friends came over this afternoon for cake and ice cream. 

One of Caleb's gifts from us was another year of Grandma's Book Club. Each month he gives me a title or two and I send him the books. As I did with the three girls, I made him a gift card holder. I wasn't thinking when I chose the gift card as it's a Christmas theme rather than a birthday gift card, but he never noticed.

Both the nifty book dies and the sentiment are from Waffle Flower. The gift card holder is from Pinkfresh Studio.

Here are the cards I made for them this year.

This very fun stamp is from Jane's Doodles, and it's the first stamp I've owned from that company. I had a lot of fun coloring it with Copic markers, but had to fussy cut it as I don't have the dies. I used a full-card die from Reverse Confetti for the background as well as a couple of cloud dies from Papertrey ink. 

I added a bit of sparkle with a glitter pen as well as some white dots to some of the gifts on top of the car.

I've owned this stamp from Colorado Crafts for ages, and never used it. Like Hannah's, it was also colored with Copic markers. I wasn't quite sure what to do with the background, but decided on the star die from Simon Says which I backed with metallic silver paper. I added a few of the stars that were die cut to the card front as well.

We had no difficulty getting to Wisconsin. The NY Thruway was still closed, but we took a southern route and encountered no bad weather at all. Tomorrow we're off to Milwaukee for a musical presentation of Bluey, and then to neighbor's for a New Year's Eve celebration. 

I hope your year is ending on a high note! I'll be back with a new Color Hues Challenge on New Year's Day.

 

Merry Christmas!

Yesterday we celebrated Christmas with Matt and his family. I think the girls were genuinely pleased with their gifts—more so than any other year I remember. Here they are before our pizza and salad lunch and the opening of gifts. We’ll see them again this afternoon when they stop to say hello to all of Tracy’s family.

Skylar (11), Ella (8) and Maddy (6)

Our Christmas celebration with Tracy's family will be subdued this year. Two weeks ago, his mother fell and was in the hospital just a week before she died. She was in excruciating pain before the fall, and the family had been working with a palliative care doctor to try to increase her pain medication so she could more fully enjoy life. After the fall, it was clear she would not be able to go home again. The palliative care staff at the hospital were wonderful, but they also had difficulty managing the pain until finally, the decision to medicate through an IV was made. Just three days later she passed away peacefully. Ellie was 93 and beloved by her family. Her presence will always be missed, but it will be a gaping open hole this Christmas. 

Tomorrow we hope to head to Wisconsin to celebrate Christmas once more with Sarah and her family. The Thruway remains closed from here to the Pennsylvania border. We have an alternate route if it’s clear through Erie, but that’s uncertain at this point. If all goes as planned (we always have our eye on the weather) we’ll be there about ten days before returning home.

Finally, here is a Christmas wrapping project. I always have great intentions to use my papercrafting supplies to wrap gifts. This year I purchased a couple of products from The Greetery’s All Wrapped Up collection and felt compelled to put them to use. I love how the gifts turned out, but only had time to do three of them. On the other hand, yesterday was the first Christmas Eve Day when all of my wrapping was done! Hopefully next year I’ll get to this a bit earlier. 

Warm wishes from bitterly cold Rochester for a wonderful Christmas if you celebrate it and a Blessed New Year!

 

Fun Gift Card Holders

Three of my granddaughters requested Target gift cards. I made sure to pick our three distinct designs so there'd be no confusion about whose card was whose! It was also helpful when I set about making gift card holders. I used Pinkfresh Studio's Fillable Gift Card Holder for all three. These easily fit into an A2 envelope.

The oldest is eleven now, and I chose the snowflake design for her. The My Favorite Things Snowflake Window die was just perfect. It's impossible to photograph, but the snowflake was heavily misted with Glimmer spray and is lovely in person.

The middle granddaughter is eight, and pretty savvy, so I'm not sure if she believes in Santa or not. I decided she wasn't too old for snowmen, and all her gifts are wrapped in a cute snowman pattern. I stamped, colored, and die cut designs from My Favorite Things Present Time and MFT's Jingle All the Way to decorate her card. The snowflakes are from Papertrey Ink's Winter Hills set.

The youngest is six, and I'm pretty sure the older two have not ruined any ideas about Santa for her. The images on her card are also from MFT's Jingle All the Way and Papertrey's Winter Hills.

I'm sending these over to Just Add Ink Challenge where they're looking for anything except a card, to Christmas Kickstart where you can link up anything Christmasy, and to the Four Seasons Challenge: Anything Goes Winter.

 

Santa Tags

The Paper Players theme for the current challenge is: Santa. 

I have some Santa tags to share. I purchased some snow globe/music boxes for my grandchildren and found the cutest boxes to package them. I photographed only three of the five. 

I'd been waiting for an opportunity to use the Ornament Options stamp set and die by Simon Says, and it was just perfect for these boxes. These are the first tags I've made this season, but I have a lot more to create, and there are multiple options for the words around the circle. I opted to use my favorite Santa image from My Favorite Things Jingle All the Way to embellish them. I stamped them, colored them with Copics, and then die cut them before adding them to the tags with some dimensional tape.

All I had to do was tie them onto the box with some red and white twine. Probably the easiest wrapping I'll do this year!

Festive Ornament

There are still a few products I haven't used yet this holiday, and The Greetery's Jumbo Curiosity Round Ornament is one of them. The current TicTacToeChallenge has a row that's perfect for it, and it ends in an hour. I had a terrible time photographing this card this morning. It's dark and gray but the real problem is shadows. If this card had been finished a bit earlier, I might have had some other opportunities!

My card uses the bottom row across: Frame, Die Cut, Ornament.

In addition to the beautiful ornament, I used two Pinkfresh Studio products that arrived as part of the Connect and Create event in November: the Snowflake Coverplate, and the Art Deco Frame. They add a lot of detail, but being monochromatic aren't too busy.

After die cutting the middle section of the ornament, I die cut it again in metallic green and red and inlaid the pieces. The sentiment is from Reverse Confetti's Christmas Card Greetings. I added a bit of sparkle to the ornament with the Spectrum Noir Crystal Clear glitter pen. 

This also meets the requirements for the Color Throwdown Challenge of red, green, gold, and black.

Woodblock Wednesday

A year or so ago, I participated in a Woodblock Wednesday "challenge." I'm not sure if they were discontinued, but I lost track of them for sure. Last month a friend posted a card for  Woodblock Wednesday, and I investigated. The challenge to use your old wooden stamps is posted for just one day, so I missed the November link-up. Today is the December posting, and I had a fine time over the weekend making cards with three different woodblock Christmas stamps. I still have a small, but lovely, collection of woodblock stamps, including the sentiment stamp on three of the cards.

I'll start with the most traditional stamp, and the only card where I also used some newer products: the beautiful Tapestry embossing folder by Gina K Designs, and a sentiment strip stamped with a Reverse Confetti stamp.

The image is one from Magenta. I loved their detailed stamps and have saved several of them. After stamping it in a lovely green ink, all I did was to color the berries.

The embossing folder is so elegant, and the Waffle Flower Nesting Oval Frame sets off the main image. I'm entering this in the new Shop Your Stash Challenge: Holly & Ivy (any holiday greenery). This stamp has been in my stash for years!

Here are the cards I love the most. A much more modern feel, especially because the trees are stamped in non-tradidtional colors. I'll chose one of these to upload to the Woodblock Wednesday post. These are, of course, my favorite Clean and Simple card design.

These two use three stamps by Hero Arts: Small Holiday Trees. Lining these up is  so much more time consuming that I'm used to with acrylic stamps and the MISTI stamp positioner.

The only embellishment was some thin gold twine and a gold pearl for the second one. The sentiment was purchased years and years ago on my first trip to Seattle when I discovered Impress Stamps. My last trip to the store was in 2019 during our last visit to Seattle. Since then the retail store has closed, but there continues to be an online store. This stamp and the inside sentiment are both Impress brand stamps. I have three other inside stamps that coordinate with "wishing you . . ." for other occasions. It was so easy to line up straight I need to remember to use it more frequently.

This card uses very similar, but larger, trees: Three Trees by Hero Arts.

All of the tree cards were stamped with the same inside message. 

Hope your week is going well. Thanks for visiting!

Winter Globes - Part 2

When I purchased the Papertrey Ink Winter Globe set, I had several ideas for using it. And inspired by several challenges, I had time today to create a new card.

This card uses the globe and the birch trees from the Papertrey Ink set. The starry sky was die cut with a circle die and embossed with Spellbinder's Stargazer embossing folder. The Delighful Deer are from My Favorite Things and are no longer available. The sentiment is a new purchase from The Greetery. There's also a Pierced Frame from Papertrey, but it's almost impossible to see despite taking multiple photos. The Midnight cardstock from Concord & 9th is beautiful, but very dark.

I added some ink blending to the deer for some dimension, and added some sparkle to the stars with a Gelly Roll Clear Star pen.

I managed to get all three of the elements from the current Just Add Ink: Choose Two (deer, trees, sparkle) Challenge in the card. It also fits The Four Seasons Challenge which has switched to Winter, and Inspired By Challenge: Reindeer, and lastly the Time Out Challlenge: Winter Holiday. It's not often one card fits four challenges! 

 

 

Picture Plenty

Many years ago, I participated in a photography prompt class with Tracey Clark though the Big Picture Classes. I happened on an Instagram post by Tracey and signed up for Picture Plenty--a photo prompt a day for November as well as a class site to share and comment on others' photos. As the title of the class suggests, the prompts were oriented toward expressing gratitude and acknowledging abundance. Her prompts were thoughtful, and inspiring. I created a new, small gratitude journal for one of the prompts, and it's been good to be back writing down my daily expressions of gratitude. 

I thought I'd share a few of the photos with the prompt titles. 

Still Life

Table Scraps

Colors of the Season

Blanketed

Picture Lyrics (from a favorite song:  Judy Collins Both Sides Now)

Pocket of Sunshine

Obscure

Fill the Frame

Comparison

A lovely community developed on the site for the class, and the prompts were so interesting and thoughtful, Tracy started asking me about them every morning. Just as I was contemplating how to continue a photo-a-day through December, Tracey opened up at new class:  Picture the Holiday. I'm quite sure I took a much earlier ideation of that class, but I'm grateful to have another month where paying attention inspires both gratitude and appreciation for the little things. 

Color Hues #54

It's my turn to be the hostess at the Color Hues Challenge this month---and it is a month-long challenge. I chose Navy and Cream, knowing I'd need more holiday cards and that my Jewish friends would find Navy and Cream a good combination for Hanukkah cards as well. And, because the holidays will be over before the challenge ends, Navy and Cream will work for many occasions beyond the holidays.

As I did for our last challenge, I created a set of cards. This time I varied the sentiments. 

I began by die cutting a rectangle from Papertrey Ink's Dark Indigo paper, and then cutting an arch with Ellen Hustson's Essential Arches die. 

On the cream card base, I stamped the Bethlehem silhouette in Dark Indigo ink as well as the sentiment. I embossed a gold star and added a rhinestone for some sparkle before overlaying the navy arch.

The beautiful silhouette is from Spellbinder's Three Kings stamp set as is the first sentiment. The card below uses a different sentiment from Pinkfresh Studio's Our Home to Yours.

I hope you'll take advantage of the month-long challenge and join us at Color Hues. For some inspiration, head over to the blog to see what the Design Team and our guest designer have created.