Cards in Envy - favorite holiday

The current challenge at Cards in Envy is to make a card celebrating your favorite holiday.  Well, even though I love Halloween, Christmas is by far my favorite holiday!   Here's my Christmas card:

Sentiment stamp: My Favorite Things - Pine cone stamps:  Stampers Anonymous

I stamped the sentiment with red ink and then embossed with clear embossing powder.  The images were stamped in black ink, then colored with Tombow markers.  The edges were embossed with gold embossing enamel.  This was the first time I had used that product, and I ended up with some embossing speckles in the top right corner.  It actually added to the rustic look of the card, so I just added a few sprinkles of copper mist to make the speckles look more intentional, LOL!  The stamped card front was adhered to a brown shimmery card, which blends nicely with the pine bough stamps.

Muse Christmas Visions Challenge #111

Here is the new inspiration piece @ Muse Christmas Visions:

I took inspiration from the design of the card and the three Christmas trees:

The trees were diecut with my Cricut from green glitter cardstock.  I dry embossed the top portion of the cardfront and then adhered the trees.  The sentiment was stamped in green and heat embossed with green glitter embossing powder.  It's very sparkly in real life!  

Silver snowflakes

The new color challenge at 52 Christmas Card Throwdown is to use silver on your card.  I used Gina K's wreath builder template and a couple of her stamp sets for this snowflake wreath.  Everything was stamped in silver on navy cardstock and then heat embossed with silver.  

Only about 10 more weeks til Christmas now, so time to get serious about those Christmas cards!  

October Card Sketch from Stick It Down

Here is the October card sketch from Stick It Down:

Here's my card from the sketch:

The image is from Mama Elephant, colored with Copics and then the background was inked with Distress Inks.  The sentiment is from Inky Antics.  I liked the split triangle background; it's different from anything I would try on my own.  

Please check out Stick It Down for their October layout sketches, also.

My perfect day card!

This would be my idea of a perfect day - a stack of books to read and maybe a catnap, LOL!  I bought a few stamp sets over the last couple of months, and they've been sitting on my desk waiting to be used.

The background stamp is from My Favorite Things, the images are from Mama Elephant, and the sentiment is from an older A.Jillian Vance set.  I have a couple of family members who like books as much as I do, so this will probably go to one of them, along with a bookstore gift card.  

I'm entering this in the following challenges:

My Time to Craft (use kraft cardstock)

Colour Crazy Challenges (anything goes but must have coloring)

Daring Cardmakers (show pets on your card)

Simon Says Stamp Monday challenge - Tag it!

This week's challenge at the Simon Says Stamp Monday challenge blog is to create a tag, with the optional twist of using Tim Holtz products.

For my tag, I used the Christmas tree stencil that was part of the Tim Holtz Stamptember set, inking with two colors of Distress Oxide ink on the tag.  These shifter stencils make it easy to align the designs when you want to use two colors of ink.

I cut the tree and trunk from cardstock and stamped with the Stampers Anonymous Doodle Greetings set (tree) and Birch & Pine set (trunk) and then added a TH word sticker and some ribbons from my stash.  Not sure if I'll use this on a gift or card, or maybe add it to the mantle with other Christmas decorations.  

Watercolor Christmas card

I ordered the Tim Holtz/Simon Says Stamp Stamptember set a couple of weeks ago and had a chance to play with it a little bit over the weekend.  For this card, I stamped the holly image three times in the upper left corner and once in the lower right corner, letting part of the image stamp off the card front.  I used Distress Oxide inks to watercolor the holly images and apply a light wash of blue over the rest of the card front.

Sentiment: Right at Home stamps, Ranger watercolor paper, Ranger super fine detail gold embossing powder

The sentiment was stamped in gold ink, then again in Versamark and embossed in gold.  I added a little bit of gold embossing to the edges, also.  Watercolor isn't something I'm good at, but I think the holly images lent themselves to that medium.

I'm entering this in these challenges:

Crafyt Hazelnuts Christmas Challenge - anything goes if it/s Christmas

Winter Wonderland - anything goes if it's Christmas

52 Christmas Card Throwdown - coloring challenge