Where I've Been

I'm sorry that I haven't been posting. Of course life has been very busy with Christmas and all the events associated with that. But to add to the mix, We've been dumped with almost 3 feet (1 metre) of snow this week. Now the problem for us in Vancouver is that we normally get about 6 inches in snow the entire winter so the city is just not prepared for snow removal. We already got several inches of snow in mid-December, and then we got this dump over 4 days. My hubby put his back out the first time the driveway was shovelled, so I got to shovel it 5 more times. But here we are a week later with still tons of snow on the ground. My son's favourite way of helping me is to pull snow down on to the driveway and pat it down with his toy shovel. Below are a few pictures I took on Boxing Day.

Beautiful Cards for Christmas

These are a sampling of a few of the wonderful Chrsitmas cards we received this year. The first card is done by Ann Driscoll, my upline,upline's, upline... (get's confusing eh?) The next one is done by my upline Angela - She used a cuttlebug and last year's In Colours. The last two were done by my Sister-in-law Allie, and my friend Tina. They were both done with the 'I Wish' simply scrappin' kit.

gift tags, and gift tags, and...

I've been busy these last few days putting some last minute gifts together for the big day. I made 6 of these puppies. In this set are 6 large gift tags, cut out with my top note die, 4 small tags cut out with the small tag punch, and 6 christmas cards. These were made with a combination of the Season to Share accents and elements kit and the I Wish simply scrappin' kit. The cover of these folders are old christmas cards, cut out with the top note die.

Christmas Quilt

So I was surprised to note that I haven't posted since last Wednesday. I have been busy working on some Christmas projects. I'll post them soon, but they're not ready yet. Anyway it's snowing like crazy here in Vancouver and that means that the roads are treacherous. You see, although we live in Canada, we don't get snow very often, and so when it does snow, nobody is prepared. We often have years with no snow at all, just lots of rain. So I had to turn down a day snowboarding at Whistler today because the temperature was minus 18 (celsius) yesterday and I'm not willing to spend a heap of money to literally freeze my buns off. Although the snow is gorgeous and it would have been an awesome day.
So I digress. I've put up a picture of a beautiful quilt that my Mom, Elaine Anderson, made for me. She is an award winning quiltmaker who belongs to the Lions Gate Quilters Guild here in North Vancouver. She has entered quilts in shows all over including Seattle, WA. I absolutely love the detailing in this quilt and I'm inspired to copy some of it for a future Christmas card - we'll see.

Holiday Lineup Christmas

This card was designed by one of my customers, Trish. I absolutely love the way she coloured a portion of the stamp to highlight the important part. She used Ski Slope DSP and Real Red and Chocolate Chip cardstock. She also used the Holiday Lineup stampset.

Sparkly Snow Swirled

Have I said before that Snow Swirled is my absolute FAVOURITE stamp set? I love, love, LOVE this stampset. I also love the Ski Slope DSP. I was able to incorporate many things that are my favouite from Stampin' Up! in this card. Firstly the aforementioned paper and stamp set. I also really loved last year's In Colors so I used some of my Soft Sky and Blue Bayou cardstock and ran it through my favourite Sizzix die - Top Note. I also have a soft spot for sparkles so I added some to the tree for a little pizzaz. I also sponged the edges of the soft sky die cut to add some texture. The ribbon is from Michael's and it's really nice because it has wired edges which help the bow to hold it's shape.

Cuttlebug Christmas

These are a few of my Christmas cards made with paper from DCWV. I used my cuttlebug to emboss the snowman and snow scene cards. I used punches from SU. I would love to try these cards again with SU paper.

A Colour Challenge

So I decided to enter my first colour challenge today. I've been following Kristina Werner's blog and she always posts the most interesting colour combinations. I absolutetly fell in love with this combination and made the card below.

I was inspired by a card I saw on splitcoast, but I can't find it to give credit. If you know who made a similar card with ice cream cones, please let me know so I can give them credit. I like this idea so much I'm going to use it in the future for other cards.

I've been working for several days now on this Happy Holidays Banner. There have been several different versions posted on Splitcoast Stampers and I decided to try to make one to compliment my living room which has Eggplant as an accent colour. Have I said before that purple is, hands down, my absolute favourite colour!!!!! I used Elegant Eggplant as the base cardstock and then used some lavender cardstock in my Cricut Expressions to cut out the letters. I put the acordian shape together and then stamped it with snowflakes in Elegant Eggplant. The 2 stamp sets used were Snow Swirled and Scandinavian Season. glued the letters on some beautiful cream coloured DSP that I picked up from the local scrapbooking store and then I layered it onto some glitter cardstock from the DCWV stack. I had to use eyelets to attach to the glitter cardstock. Most of the images were stamped in Versa Mark and heat embossed with white embossing powder. I love the way they POP on the dark purple. The final touches were snowflake sequins for sparkle and a few filigree brads and rhinestone brads.

If you've been following my blog for some time now, you will have heard about my shadowboxes that I'm trying to update with seasonal decor. I have four of these 8 1/2 by 8 1/2 inch shadowboxes that I picked up for a steal last summer. And I'm trying to keep up to date with the season with them. For Christmas I decided to use the Ski Slope DSP as the base of my projects. I am scandinavian in heritage (Icelandic, Norwegian, and Danish) and the prints on this paper remind me of the ski sweaters that my family have. I used this as inspiration to design these 4 boxes. The first box was based on a gift card holder that I designed and I"ve posted below and on my splitcoast gallery. The stamp is from the Deer Friends stamp set and it's stamped in chocolate chip on Real Red cardstock and then punched out with various circle punches and the scallop circle.

This next box took the longest to make. And I'm not really happy with the fact that the 2 words aren't parallel. But It's too difficult to change as I used double sided sticky tape to adhere it. The letters are stickers from the dollar store. I used my 2 square punches to punch out the blue bayou and whisper white cardstock. The snowflakes are from Snow Swirled and stamped in Blue Bayou on Whisper white and punched out with the 1 3/8" circle punch. Next I added a rhinestone brad to the centre and adhered this to blue bayou cardstock punched out with the circle scallop punch. Finally I added a bit of glitter to balance out the glittery letters.

The next box is my absolute favourite of the group. I used the top note die and punched out shapes in Blue Bayou and Soft Sky. I cut the soft sky one on the perforation marks. Next I stamped the tree from Snow Swirled in Blue Bayou and added glitter. I also used the Christmas stamp from Punches Three (hostess set) and mounted in on whisper white and used my corner rounder punch on the corners. The ribbon is from Michael's.
The last box is also based on a gift card holder I made which is posted below and on splitcoast. Anyway, I made the stocking shape and added a loop for more detail. The I used the Season of Cheer rub ons and used my 2 way glue pen to add glitter to the sentiment.

Non-traditional Colours for Christmas

I have to say that I have been struggling a lot with the Christmas cards to send out from our family this year. I absolutely love purple and was trying to figure out how to incorporate that into our christmas cards. And then I stumbled upon this DSP. I CASE'd a card from Dawn's blog ( I love her blog) and played with it a bit to come up with these designs. I think the patchwork quilt is a better background. I think I might add some glitter to the snowflake. The stamps are from the current hostess set "Deer Friends" and the snowflake stamp was from last year's Sale-a-bration catalogue. The base of the card is Soft Sky and everything is individually mounted on Not Quite Navy.

Urban Garden Gifts!

..................................................... I abolutely love this DSP. My amazing upline, Angela (see her blog on my sidebar) came up with this great gift idea. Using the Urban Garden paper and Accents and Elements kit, she designed these 3 different card holders (second picture) which contain 6 different cards. ( first picture). The nice thing about these cards is that you could easily change the sentiments to whatever you would like. My kits contain mostly Birthday cards, but Ange's kit had a variety of sentiments. Some of my friends will be getting these for Christmas gifts. Aren't they cute???