A Froggy Christmas Gift

I made this tag for my Mother-In-Law as she loves frogs. Actually, she has a large collection of ceramic frogs and I will be adding 3 ceramic frogs to her collection. (The three frogs that I bought for her is part of her Christmas gift.) So, I thought that this tag would go just perfect with her gift.

The tag is part of a group of tags that I uploaded to the Hero Arts Flickr group for the holidaytag challenge that is going on this week. It has been fun creating the different tags and I was amazed at how I had no problem coming up with ideas for this challenge even though I did not make that many tags. Usually I struggle to find an idea that is my creation all by itself. Struggling to find ideas is probably why it takes me so long to get things done.

The "just for you tag" is a redo of a tag that I made back in March 2009. I made a few gift tags back then and put them away. Just the other day I dug them out and decided to redo one of the tags and try to improve it. I am pleased with the way the second tag turned out.

The Clock

This is the clock that I made the other day. I wanted to make something for my brother-in-law for Christmas and did not know what to make for him. I saw the design for making a clock at Inkadinkado. The orginal design comes from their April 2009 newsletter and I used it only as a guide. I did not use the same stamps as they used and I enlarged the clock slightly in width and height. It called to glue two pieces of cardstock together. (I tried that and it did not work for me.) Instead, I took a sturdy piece of chipboard and glued pattern paper on the front and on the back. I am pleased with the results and I am thinking of making a few more. It was not hard to make once I figured out what I was doing. This was my second attempt at making this clock. My first attempt went in the trash and I walked away from the project for a few hours. Then I got to thinking that I could use chipboard instead. The chipboard was a good idea (for me anyway) and I am glad that I took a second attempt to making this clock.

Would you like to win some blog candy? If you would, just go to Jenn Biederman's blog to see what she is giving away. To find out the details of this give a way, just go to her blog. And while you are there, stay awhile and look at her wonderful work.

Michelle's baby book

This is my daughter Michelle's baby book of her first year of her life. She is 33 years old and is finally going to get the baby book that I have promised her for a long time. I never put together a traditional baby book so to speak. I just had various scattered facts about her birth and actually never put pictures in an album for her. There are a lot of gaps when it comes to photos of Michelle's first year of life and looking back I feel bad that I did not take pictures of her on a regular basis. So, I am lucky to have the pictures that I do have of her when she was a baby. (These two pictures and the previous 10 pictures below consist of her baby album.)

Note: I wanted to keep the layout simple and the pages will go into a 9 x 9 album. Most of the dies that I used come from the Cricut cartridge "New Arrival".

Continuation of Michelle's baby book

Unexpected and Glitter Challenges

These cards are a few of the cards that I did for two challenges on the Hero Arts Flickr group. The two challenges that these cards appear are in the categories of Unexpected and Glitter. The Merry Christmas card with the tree, the circle card, and the ornament card comes from the unexpected category. The colors that I chose for this category are colors that I would not ordinarly choose. I usually go for the traditional colors of red and green. But, while using untraditional colors, I decided that I liked those colors for Christmas.

The challenge that I did last week was in the category of glitter. I think that the penguin card, silver circle card, and the hugs card were the ones that I liked the best. These three cards turned out to be quite the challenge. I found out why I usually do not work with glitter--it is extremely messy and gets all over everything and it doesn't like to stick to the object on the paper. I tried using a glue pad and heat setting the glitter, but that didn't work very well. I would stamp the object onto my paper using the glue and then pour the glitter over my stamped image. Once I shook off the excess glitter, most of the glitter that was suppose to stay on the image would come off and glitter would be every where but on my project. There was even a few times when I found glitter on my cat. I came up with a solution to avoid the mess of glitter. When I want to use glitter on a project I will just mix the glitter with a gel glue until it is about the thickness of Stickles and apply it with a very thin bristle brush. I did this with the flower (hugs) card that is pictured here. It was so much easier to paint it on and there was not any mess.

More Christmas Cards

These four Christmas cards are the last of the Accessorry Challenge from Hero Arts. After I finished making these cards I told my husband that I wasn't making any more Christmas cards. Well, I was wrong because last weeks challenge was the theme "simpleholiday". So, needless to say, I made ten more christmas cards. (The newest cards are not up on my blog yet, but will be soon.) I did enjoy making these cards and now I am going to have a hard time deciding which person will get what card. The red card with the white trees originally went in the trach when I finished stamping it. At first I did not like it, but when I got to thinking about what I could do to improve the card I decided to dig it out of the trash and do one more thing to it. The "one more thing" that I did to this card was to add ribbon and a tag. This card did not win, but I did get a lot of compliments on it.

The rate that I am going I will have enough Christmas cards to last for a few years and I won't need to make any for a few years. But, I probably will still make more cards because I love making cards and it is fun.