It's that time of year....

Yep! September! The weather cools down, heats up, rain, mist, sprinkles, cold, hot, just right. You never know what you're going to get around here this time of year. Kind of like my Christmas cards.

This is the time I start trying to come up with an idea for a card that is great looking, but not too time consuming.

These are the first two that I've made an my family is divided.

I used my cricut with my Cri-Kit pens to draw the border and write the "merry christmas' phrase. The ornaments I cut with SCAL and then stamped the swirls with gold ink.

I love the paper on the second card, very shimmery christmas tree. All the cutting with was my cricut.

The pictures aren't that great but you get the general idea!

Card Sketches

I've been stuck in a rut lately.  Not much time to make cards or scrapbook and not feeling very creative when I do.

Today I discovered something that just may help me over the hump!!  I googled "card sketches" and then clicked on images.

Pages and pages of card sketches popped up!  Lot of new and fun things to try!  I'm going to work on it this weekend and maybe by Monday I'll have some fun new items to post!

Birthday Card

Here is the card I made for my dad. The card is actually white even though it shows up as a bluish grey.

The embossing is done with my Cuttlebug. The stamp, ribbon, and paper all came from Stampin Up!.

I love how it was so easy, just cut, stamp, emboss, and glue but the longer I look at it the more I think I might watercolor the image. We'll have to see.

Bleach Technique

Here's a card I made for my dad. I have a hard time making masculine looking cards but I loved this one so much I taught it at one of my classes.

After embossing the image in black I bleached out the parts I wanted to show up and then flicked bleach onto the rest to get the speckled look.

Then I roughed up the edges and tied linen thread around it.

Paint.NET (again!)

Whew!! What a crazy summer! It's almost over though so I've been thinking of getting back to scrapbooking and card making! Browsing the web for some new and inexpensive ways to enhance my favorite pastime, I came across a plug in for Paint.NET that I think is fantastic!

This plug in (download it here) renders your paint.NET image into a 3d work of art! I can't wait to scrapbook some of these. Here are some images that I quickly played with tonight. I started with the basic image, made it into a sphere, a cube, and a cylinder.

It was quick and easy and yet the controls are there to manipulate the image into just about any shape you want.

This one is a definite must have!!

My Squash Book

Here's a blast from the past.... a squash book!! I made this for my aunt a couple of years ago. Just looking at this makes me want to go and make another one. I love making these because they are really very easy and fun!

The hardest part is deciding where the pictures will go and getting pictures that actually look good when it's only a triangle.

Directions for this can be found at Splitcoaststampers.

Birthday "Hamburgers"

These are the cookies my daughter made my son for his birthday.

The "buns" are Nilla Wafers and the "patties" are fudge covered Oreos.

The french fries are actually ketchup flavored chips.

These turned out so awesome I just had to share!