A cookie for Santa

Here's another of Amy's original digi designs--Cookie Break Santa. Love that name! See the little cookie in his hand? Now that's my kind of Santa!

I love how quickly you can start using digis after you download them, and being able to resize them, too. Not having to clean your stamps, or wonder where you're going to store them is an added bonus.

It wasn't my original intention to make a brown Christmas card. But I liked how the reds and greens looked against the background and decided to leave it as is. You can find Cookie Break Santa along with more of Amy's digi fairies, angels, and elves at All That Scraps.

Supplies:

Cardstock: Stampin' Up

Ink: Memento, Ranger Distress Inks, Versamark

Stamps: Amy's digi, Hero Arts

Copic markers for coloring

Nestabilities, Cuttlebug embossing folder

Felt leaves & gemstones (Hero Arts), pop dots

White embossing powder

Meet Fidget Goblinspider

Super talented Amy has designed a number of stamps and showcased them on her blog. Not only are they awesome, but she's made a perfect card with each of them. They are now on sale in digi form at All That Scraps and they're going fast!

She designed several fairies and I bought Fidget Goblinspider because I fell in love with her skirt. It reminds me of a mushroom or toadstool, and I loved her hairdo. Loved it so much that I cut off a part that was too intricate for me to trim. Now Fidget has an unexpected new 'do and I apologized to Amy--and got some cutting tips and words of advice: Practice, practice, practice!

I used a card base that I made a while ago, added some glitter to the dots on Fidget's skirt, and Glossy Accents (again!) on her eyes. Isn't she a cutie? Check out Amy's blog to see more "November Sweets" and get them while you can at ATS.

Another Izzy

I think Izzy is one of my favorite images to color right now. I still want to try a darker skin tone like Kelly did, but that means placing another order at Oozak for darker brown Copics.

I'm entering Caardvarks' circle card challenge with this buttony Izzy card. The background was made using Jennifer McGuire's distressed background technique which I love, especially with the Peeled Paint distress ink. I applied Glossy Accents to Izzy's eyes again, a technique which was shared to me by Kelly.

I'm planning to send this to a friend's daughter who is recovering from a nasty flu. I'm sure she's on her way to recovery and hopefully back in school.

Sweet and Goth

Sugar Nellie is a Scottish based stamp company and I recently bought a few of their Gorjuss Girls to play with. Their designs are so "girly" and are just the right size to practice Copics coloring. And they're easy to trim out, too

--a big plus for me!

Amy shared this card on her blog using Goth Girl and I didn't know what was "Goth" about her. I just liked how she was sitting and I wanted to place her on a circular design.

She has a teeny skeleton barrette, so I did an "Amy" and used a baby wipe to wipe away the skeleton and drew in a little heart. Check out Amy's tutorial here and here to see how she alters images.

Now Goth Girl isn't Goth anymore! Thanks, Amy, for sharing your altering tips and giving me the confidence to change that barrette.

Meet Izzy

The Greeting Farm came out with a new line of stamps called Twinkle Tots and when I saw them during their sneak peek, I knew that I would love them.

The stamps arrived on Wednesday and I couldn't wait to ink them up and color them. They're a little different from the Anya designs--a little more realistic--and a lot of fun to color. This is Izzy and I added a little Glossy Accents on her eyes to make them shinier.

Here's a close up of Izzy's eyes. If you look at them long enough, they start to look a little scary--like real eyes!

Maybe I shouldn't have used the glossy stuff....

Thanks for visiting!

Hope you all have a great Aloha Friday!

Twin awards

I was doubly surprised when both Amy and Jane honored me with the same award two days apart. I'm supposed to share five things about myself and then pass this award on to five others. So here goes:

1. I'm sitting here at my new desk on my new swivel chair and my feet are dangling. I think I'm shrinking by the week.

2. Even though I bought a bunch of Copic markers in Japan, I just placed an order for about a dozen more from Oozak....because Rusty emailed me.

3. Some days I'll stay in my pajamas until noon. Or at least till 10am.

4. I'm getting excited about Thanksgiving, not because of turkey, but because of ham. I LOVE Costco's spiral cut ham so much that my last Mother's Day gift to myself was a 7lb. shank.

5. I do share the ham with my family.....

And now, to pass on the award to the lucky five who I'm hoping will accept it and pass it on:

Denise, Kiara, Deborah, Lysa, and her super creative sister, Maylee.

Thank you, Amy and Jane, for your friendship and the award. I honestly wish that I could pass it on to all my blogging friends because all of your blogs do put a smile on my face, always.

Hope you all have a great week--can you believe it's November?

Himawari Babies

I've seen Himawari Babies designs used on some blogs and was always wondering who sold those stamps and where could I find them? Blogging friend Denise graciously sent me some images to play with. It turns out that she's a designer for Himawari (him'-ah-wah-ree) which means "sunflower" in Japanese.

They're images printed on good quality cardstock, already colored, and ready to be used. You can punch them out with paper punches or Nesties and affix them to a card or tag or even a scrapbook layout. How wonderfully easy is that?

Jennifer McGuire made these cards a while back and they've always been a favorite of mine. I trimmed out some images and put these together really quickly with scallop circle punches and used some Cuttlebug folders for texture.

I can see how these would make quick cards because I made these in less than 30 minutes and tucked them into goodie bags for my neighbors. Thanks, Denise, for introducing me to Himawari Babies!

Trick or Treat!

I bought a set of kitty stamps from The Greeting Farm during their recent Farmer's Market sale. After I colored one of the cats, it looked a little too dark to be used on anything but a Halloween card.

When I saw the image of the little mouse, I knew exactly what I wanted to do! Light bulbs don't click on very often so I had to work fast! I even sketched a little witch's hat (inspired by Amy!) and colored and cut it out, along with the mouse. I Googled "candy corn" to check the order of the colors and here is the end result of a very quick card.

Hope you all have a safe and Happy Halloween!

Tall card challenge

Caardvarks is having a tall card challenge and I'm not sure if this qualifies--it feels like I'm cheating! I love Purple Onion Designs' noteblock stamps. I own about 6 of them and even ordered some wood to fit because all of their stamps are sold unmounted.

I used the noteblock on an earlier Halloween card and trimmed it to fit, so I'm glad that I could use it full size for this card. I also used the Nestabilities scalloped rectangle dies for the first time and the noteblock image fits almost perfectly in the middle of them. Added more little ghouls from The Greeting Farm and I'm happy with this tall card. There are a lot of awesome submissions--check them out here.

Paper tearing challenge

Last week's challenge at Hero Arts was to do some type of paper tearing on a card or scrapbook layout. I just received the Friendship Definition stamp in the mail and decided to make some scraplings since I have a ton of scraps to use. All four images--the butterfly, frog, flower, and deer were in my scrap bag, waiting for a home.

After stamping the text, I ink distressed in different colors and used a ruler to tear them into strips that would fit scrapling sized pieces of cardstock. And I love the little leaf sizzlit from Stampin Up so I used them on all four scraplings. Done!