One of my Christmas cards for 2013

I decided that I'd try to make some of my Christmas cards this year. I had bought a Christmas ornament stamp earlier this year from Stamper's Best and decided to make a few cards using it.

I first stamped the stamp in black ink on white cardstock.

After that, I colored the stamps in in many stages using some watercolor pencils but mostly the Prismacolor metallic colored pencils I have. I varied the colors of the different areas so that every card wouldn't be exactly the same.

I then cut around the stamp, leaving a thin boarder of white, since there was no way I could trim all the white. I then mounted the trimmed stamp on cards made from half a sheet of 8 1/2 x 11 red, green, or blue cardstock. I wanted those colors because they always remind me of Christmas. The result is fairly simple but I think they're striking. I may either buy a Christmas saying stamp from Stamper's Best  or have my husband, who has much better handwriting than I do, write "Merry Christmas" along the bottom of the cards.

Mounting my stamps on the cling sheets from Stamper's Best

I took pictures of how many stamps I had to mount, how I put them on the cling sheets and a few as I made progress. I stopped working on the project since I had some work stuff taking up a lot of my time (mostly adjusting to a weird new schedule) but I am done except for cutting out the alphabet stamps I have. I just need to decide if I'm going to continue using the CD cases or if I want to buy some more binder sheets and organize my stamps that way. I like the feel of the cling sheets better than the bare rubber and Arlene's Tack it over and over I was using before. The cushion on the stamp really makes a difference when using my acrylic blocks with the cling sheet mounted rubber.

Starting to put the stamps on the cling sheets.

I discovered when I went to cut out the stamps that I had put them on the cling sheet too close together. You do have to leave enough space between the stamps to easily by able to move your scissors. It felt like wasting the sheets when I started, but it made a huge difference when I was cutting the stamps out. So that's my one piece of advice, leave yourself enough room between the stamps to cut everything out. : )

More of my stamps on the cling sheets.

Even more of my stamps on the cling sheets.

Some of my stamps cut out and on the binder organizer sheet, ready to put into the CD cases I use for organizing right now.

A few more of my stamps on the other side of the binder organizer sheet.

The basket full of stamps cut out from the larger cling sheets but needing to be trimmed closer to the rubber. Next to the basket are some of the CD cases I'm using to store my stamps right now.

Some of the thank you and sentiment stamps I own before putting them on the cling sheet to mount them.

Some of the stamps on the binder organizer sheet before putting them in the CD cases I use right now.

Almost done!

Christmas Cards

My husband and I were at a thrift store a few months before Christmas and they had card sets with Stampin' Up paper, envelopes, and stickers in them for 50 cents. I bought two of them. They also had Stampin' Up rub-ons that are about time for the same price, which I bought one of. There was a lady behind me that got the remaining sets (or at least most of them). I probably should have picked up a few more of the cards sets, but I think I then would have been overwhelmed. Here are the cards I made. I also used ribbon from my stash and some stamps. Some of the cards I used Stampin' Up stamping wheels on them. The sticker set came with a bird sticker, a sticker with a house on it that says "Tis the Season" and the oval one has trees on it and says "To You and Yours." I liked the way these turned out. I used the Versamark stamping pad for the wheels to make it a subtle background. The sticker set came with red and green cards, cream, red and green cardstock rectangles to put on the cards, and green and blue grosgrain ribbon. There was also blue gingham ribbon included. The border stickers around the patterned paper on the cards also came in the package. The card on the right in the first picture has a stamp that says "Wishing you sparkle, wishing you cheer, for a bright Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year" that is also Stampin' Up. I do love the ornament stamp on that card also. Our Christmas card list is longer than the cards I was able to make with these kits, so some people got homemade cards and some people got foil cards we bought at Target last year.

Another Fun Mail Day

I bought some other papercrafting related stuff the other day and it came today.

First was this paper holder. I bought a bunch of paper over the holidays when Joann's had their Die Cuts With A View paper stacks on sale. I now need to go through my old paper and decide what I'll actually use and what I should either sale or give away. I bought the paper holder because I have a feeling I'm still going to need room, regardless of getting rid of some stuff.

Next was this Provo Craft Cricut tool kit. I don't have a Cricut, but I do have a Craft Robo, which is close, except instead of cartridges, you can cut anything that you load into the Craft Robo program. This tool kit came with a bunch of stuff I'd been wanting to get for a while: a bone folder, a few tools to get stuff off the cutting pad that is sticky, a scraper to clean scraps off the cutting pad. I also like the scissors and the fact it comes in a cool little carrying kit. Makes it easier to keep track of. And Amazon had it for $10, which was nice. I also got some Cuttlebug embossing folders. I love both of the ones that have ornaments and both of the snowflake ones. The bird one and plaid one are pretty good too. The name of this set is "Winter Wonderland." When I was looking for the names of the folders I already had, the one with the hanging ornaments was one I really wanted to get. (a better picture at Joanns.com)

These are Cricut pads that will fit in my Craft Robo, since the cutting pad I have is pretty much hashed. I'm hoping that if I have new mats and the tools that I'll start using my Craft Robo again.

Lastly, I bought a 50 pack of page protectors for my 12 x 12 scrapbooks, since I'm out of them besides the few in different scrapbooks holding places.

All in all, a very fun papercraft mail day. I look forward to playing with all my new toys and not having my paper organized in stacks on my window seat.

My Stamper's Best Haul

I ordered some stamps and stamping accessories from Stamper's Best last week and got the shipment today. I'm impressed by how quickly they got everything out, especially considering that my order qualified for free shipping. Free shipping at some places takes forever. Here's a few pictures with my haul in them. : )

The main reason I ordered was to get 10 of these cling sheets. I've been using Arlene's Tack It Over and Over glue on the stamps I've unmounted wood blocks. While the glue works fine, it's sometimes hard to get a good, consistent image with just the rubber. It works better if you stamp on a mouse pad, but I don't always have a mouse pad with me. So I'm going to convert most, if not all, of my unmounted rubber stamps to the cling sheets.

Operation Write Home asks that we stamp the back of the cards with their symbol. If you don't have a stamp, they have to stamp the back of all the cards before sending them out. Stamper's Best gives you a free unmounted stamp with their symbol on it. So glad I can now stamp the backs of the cards I'm sending in instead of making more work for the people who box them up.

I ordered this bat because I thought it was cute. I also loved the spider web background stamp. Not sure why I like the spider one so much, but I do.

I loved this birthday small stamp set. Not sure why the love stamps went with it but I really liked them. For the slightly larger stamps, I paid 50 cents for them to be on the cling mount to begin with. I figured I paid $2.75 for each sheet of the cling, so if the stamps were 4 x 6 or larger, it'd make sense to pay the 50 cents instead of using 20% or more of the cling sheet. That was my thought at the time anyway. Not sure if it really was cheaper, but it definitely is easier.

I got the "Merry Christmas & a Happy New Year" stamp to put on the inside of any Christmas cards I do. I have very few saying stamps that I would put on the inside of cards and I thought this one was good. I loved this ornament stamp. It's so beautiful. I love the ornaments and the way it was put together.

Lastly is the free stuff that Stamper's Best sent. Their site says that they send a free gift with every order, so these ones are mine. I got a binder sheet to put the stamps on to organize them in a three ring binder. I'm trying to decide if I'm going to go to this method instead of the CD cases I have my stamps in right now. I'm glad they sent me a free one so I can see if I like them enough to invest the money into changing over to this set. The other free item I got was a Super 8 Movie Camera stamp. I like the look of it but am unsure what I'll use it for. I guess I'll have to play around and see. Nothing like a challenge. : )

This is my first order from Stamper's Best and all in all I'm impressed with the shipping time and the quality of the products. Thank you so much for your good service.

Winter cards

I've been very, very lax in doing anything paper craft related, let alone posting about it. Yesterday I made a bunch of cards, using embellishments I got from the Die Cuts With a View Christmas and Winter Rhinestock Stack (a picture) and the Die Cuts with a View box of Embossed cards that I got a few years ago. I also added some ribbon, since most of the embellishments are tags. I also broke out my shaped paper clips. The paper stack came with tags and embellishments, two pages of the same ones. I think the cards turned out alright. Not perfect, but pretty good.

This one has hearts embossed on the background, since the text says "Some bunny loves you." I used my watercolor pencils to color the background and then used water to make it watercolor like. There were two of each embellishment but I used the other one of this one on a pocket page with the 2012 Christmas cards we received.

This one has a tag that says "Stay Cool" on it, since you can't really read it with the glare. The embossed card has a lot of friendship sayings on it. I used my metallic Prismacolor pencils on this card. The ribbon on the card I've had a long time, so not positive where I got it from, though I think I got it from JoAnn's craft store.

This tag says "Thinking of you" and I mounted it on the friendship card. I used my watercolor pencils to color the background again. This cream ribbon with the gold snowflakes came in a ribbon set my husband bought me for Christmas from Target. We were looking at their Christmas wrapping paper and I saw this ribbon and loved it, so he got it for me. It came in a three pack with 2 other ribbons. We also got another 3 pack for me. The other one of these embellishments went on the 2012 Christmas cards pocket page in my scrapbook.

These ones have a tag with a penguin that says "Celebrate good things." The ribbon on the card I've had a long time, so not positive where I got it from, though I think I got it from JoAnn's craft store. I used the watercolor pencils on this one also. There is another card that's pretty much the same, but the picture of the two of them did not turn out well. The embossed background is squares.

These tags say "Happy winter" with penguins. The background is a bunch of stripes, which I colored with my Prismacolor metallic pencils. I don't know where I got the blue snowflake ribbon from but the cream is the ribbon from Target.

These polar bears are so cute. The tags say "Thank you beary much" and I mounted them on a background with dots on it. I used the blue Prismacolor metallic colored pencil to color it. I had to borrow my son's pencil sharpener for these cards, since I couldn't find any of mine.

I'm not sure if I'll use these cards or if I'll donate them to the Operation Write Home (see their information here). I'm not sure if they take square cards, but we'll see. I sent a bunch of the ones I made previously to them, since I wasn't using them.