Happy New Year!

I hope you all had a wonderful holiday and a great start to 2009 so far! I have a lot of things I want to change/do differently this year, and more regular stamping/posting to my blog is one of them. I haven't had many creative juices flowing lately, and I've momentarily considered selling
all of my stamping supplies, but I'm not ready to give up yet!

I do have something to share that is the first non-Christmas thing I've stamped in almost 2 months and I'm pretty happy with how it turned out, especially considering I made it around midnight a few nights ago! I started with a card base of Papertrey Ink's Ocean Tides cardstock. I LOVE this color - it might be my favorite one they've released so far! Then I stamped the base with PTI's Polka Dot Basics using Ocean Tides ink. I randomly dotted some of the polka dots with gels pens - some with white and some with silver. The sentiment is stamped with Ocean Tides on PTI white cardstock inside the card and I used SU's word window punch to allow the sentiment to show through. The opening is traced with a silver gel pen to make it pop a little.

The strip across the top is PTI's Ripe Avocado cardstock and I used the SU scallop border punch along the bottom. The patterned paper is from PTI's Polka Dot Parade collection. The card is finished off with a silver glittered snowflake. It's actually an ornament that I found in a pack of 10 at Michael's. I didn't realize they were ornaments when I bought them - my mind instantly went to using them as sparkly card embellishments! I cut the string off the ornament and used my Crop-o-dile to punch a hole through the center. A rhinestone brad from Making Memories finished it off and then I used Crystal Effects to adhere my embellishment to the card.

More cookies and cards

This weekend I baked almost 12 dozen cookies and I'm exhausted! I was really in the mood to bake this year and try out some new recipes. But I cannot possibly eat so many cookies on my own, so I decided to make up cookie bags for the people in my department at work. I ordered the small window coffee bags from Papertrey and used the Papertrey set Holiday Treats to decorate the bags with SU Night of Navy and Close to Cocoa ink. Each one has 4 butter toffee cookies, 4 peanut butter blossoms, 3 bon bon cookies, and 2 iced gingerbread people - one boy and one girl.

I've got two more Christmas cards to share - one that's more elegant and one that's just fun. They're both clean and simple designs, which seems to be the only style I can come up with lately! The first card uses PTI white as the base. The image is from A Muse and is colored with a silver sakura gel pen and SU markers. The sentiment is from the PTI set Take a Bough. I used Marvy punches for the circle and scallop circle and a white gel pen to dot the scallops. Clear gemstones act as headlights and the stitched ribbon "road" is PTI Pure Poppy.

On the second card I also used PTI white for the base and image piece, SU Brushed Silver for the strip, and PTI Pure Poppy for the border. The image is from a Basic Grey clear set I bought last year and is stamped in Encore silver ink. The berries on the wreath were dotted with a red sakura gel pen and I used a paper piercing tool to create a border for the image. The sentiment is from Lizzie Anne Designs and was stamped in PTI Pure Poppy.

This will likely be my last post until after Christmas as I spend the next few days finishing up holiday preparations and then spending time with family and friends. I hope you all have a safe, warm, and very Merry Christmas!

Believe

I love the Believe set from Papertrey Ink. I never scooped it up last year when it first came out, but this year I just couldn't resist and have really enjoyed playing with it! This Santa is especially fun, because you can paper piece it (kind of a pain to do, but really cute!) or color it as I did on the second card. And the set comes with all kinds of things for him to hold - the star and heart you see here, plus lots more!

Both of these cards use PTI white cardstock, Palette Noir ink, Encore gold ink, PTI gold ribbon, and liquid applique for the trim on Santa's outfit.

I used paper from last year's BasicGrey Figgy Pudding line for Santa's robe on the first card and SU's Real Red marker to color the second card. I used my R02 (Flesh) Copic for the faces and a gold paint pen to fill in the heart on card #2. I think that's it!

Cards and Some Cookies

I am typically not a gold person. I wear only silver jewelry, have different silvery tones (chrome, nickel) for lamps, curtain rods, hardware, etc. in my house. Even my car is silver! But there's something about Christmas that makes gold seem to work so well and I really love how both of these cards turned out.

For the first card, I used the ornament cuttlebug folder on SU's brushed gold cardstock and flipped it over so that the front of the card was debossed rather than embossed. That was mounted on PTI Pure Poppy cardstock, as was the sentiment panel. The sentiment is from Lizzie Anne Designs and is stamped in Pure Poppy ink. I used gold stickles to trace around the white sentiment panel, and finished off the card with Pure Poppy twill. Quick, easy, and I think pretty elegant.


For this 4.25" x 4.25" card, I used SU brushed gold as the base. I then created poinsettias (my favorite holiday motiff!) using white shimmery flowers from the bridal section of Michael's. I just pressed them onto my SU Real Red ink pad and, while they were laying on the ink pad, added a few drops of reinker to really saturate the flowers and get a deeper red. I put two flowers together with a gold brad in the center and adhered them with mini glue dots to the card base. The sentiment here is again from Lizzie Anne Designs, stamped with Palette Noir.

And finally I thought I'd show you the peanut butter blossoms for which I made the dough over the weekend. Try to look past my less than desirable photography skills, poor lighting, and reflective chrome plate! The Recipe Girl herself saw on my blog the other day that I was going to make these cookies and suggested that I roll them in red and green sugar rather than regular white granulated sugar for a more festive look. Duh! I don't know why I didn't think of that myself! But then I guess that's why she's called The Recipe Girl and I'm just The Girl Who Likes to Drool Over Her Recipes! The colored sugars do make for a more festive holiday cookie, and I swear they actually are red and green, not radioactive pink and green!

I still have so much to do in the next few days. I went from being totally relaxed because my family is not really exchanging much in the way of gifts this year to kicking myself for being so relaxed and leaving my homemade projects to the last minute. I have two scrapbooks that I need to finish that I'm making as gifts for friends of mine who went to Disney World with me in April (I've only had 8 months to work on them!!), some Christmas cards to finish and mail out, a mini scrapbook to make for another friend of mine, stocking stuffers for my mom, 4 more kinds of Christmas cookies, and gift packaging for all the cookies! And yet the motivation doesn't seem to be with me. Instead of being productive tonight, I sat on my couch, admired my Christmas tree, and ate peanut butter blossoms while I watched the new Muppet Christmas special. Then I watched the 2008 White House Christmas special. And now I'm sitting here typing about all I have to do instead of doing it! Will I never learn?!

Hope you're all being a lot more productive than I am!

Cupcakes...

...are not just for birthdays anymore!
Let me first apologize for these horrible pictures. I of course did not check the pictures before mailing the cards out, so I didn't realize how unclear they are, especially the first and third ones. And the sentiment on the first one is barely visible in the photo, but was stamped in Encore silver ink using the Lizzie Anne Designs sentiment "Have yourself a merry little Christmas".

All of the cards feature the cupcake tier from the Impression Obsession cupcake set as the main focal image. All ribbons are from Papertrey Ink and all cardstock is as well, except for the shimmery cardstock. That is SU's Shimmer White. The cupcakes were all colored with a combination of SU markers, spica glitter pens, and sakura glitter gel pens. Liquid pearls added finishing touches here and there.

It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas...

...or at least what Christmas would look like if it exploded in my kitchen! I make such a mess when I'm baking. This picture doesn't even show the half of it, or the flour all over my floor! It's so much fun though, except when I knock over an almost full bottle of vanilla and it spills all over my recipe...

I started off the night making peppermint bark using this recipe from http://www.recipegirl.com/. I didn't take a picture of my bark because, due to my impatience, I didn't wait until the second layer fully hardened. As a result, the minute I poured the warm melted white chocolate over the top, the middle layer began melting, so the top of my bark has a swirled effect that is much less pretty than it should be. But it still tastes phenomenal and really is so easy if you just wait the amount of time suggested for each layer. I'd even suggest putting the pan in the freezer rather than the fridge to make sure the layers really do harden up properly. A little side note: I had no idea how much 6 oz. of peppermint was in terms of candy canes. I crushed up 4 and it seems to have been the perfect amount.

Then I made a batch of gingerbread dough using this recipe on my friend Tammi's blog. I was going to make a double batch, but this is the first time I've made gingerbread cookie dough from scratch and in case I messed it up, I didn't want to have a ton of dough. It was super easy to make, so I can always whip up another batch later in the week. I shaped the dough into a log and put it in my freezer until I'm ready to make the cookies in the next few days.

I finished up this evening's endeavors with a double batch of dough for Peanut Butter Blossoms. My best friend's mom has made these for years and I finally got the recipe from her. I've tried other versions of this cookie, but hers is always the best! She said the dough freezes really well (and actually the baked cookies do as well) so I've got two logs of this dough in my freezer. Here's the recipe:

Peanut Butter Blossoms
1 stick unsalted butter
½ cup peanut butter
½ cup sugar
½ cup brown sugar
1 egg
½ tsp vanilla
1 ¼ cups flour
¾ tsp baking soda
½ tsp baking powder
3 Tbl more sugar
36 chocolate kisses, unwrapped

Put margarine, peanut butter, ½ cup sugar, brown sugar, vanilla, and egg into a large mixing bowl. Beat with electric mixer on medium until smooth and creamy.
Mix flour, baking soda, and baking powder together, and mix into creamed ingredients. Cover w/plastic wrap and chill for 1 hour or more.

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Grease cookie sheets or use parchment paper or silicone mats.
Put the 3 T of sugar in a plastic bag.
Shape the dough into balls the size of walnuts in the shell. Shake three balls at a time in the bag of sugar. Place the cookies 2 inches apart on the cookie sheet.
Bake 8 minutes. Put a chocolate kiss in the center of each cookie and press down gently. Continue baking 2-4 minutes, or until chocolate has melted down a little.
Remove cookies with a spatula and cool on a cooling rack. (I let the cookies cool on the cookie sheet a little before removing to a cooling rack, or they fall apart sometimes.)

I'm going to make half the cookies with Hershey Kisses and half with milk chocolate Dove Promises just to compare. Dove is my most favorite chocolate, so I have a feeling they'll be pretty darn good!

I've got a bunch of Christmas cards to share and will do that over the next few days, so check back! For now, my feet and legs are tired from my evening in the kitchen, and it's after 10pm and I haven't eaten dinner yet, so I think I'll go curl up on the couch with some food and watch the end of It's a Wonderful Life on TV. I love this time of year!!

Cheese Balls

Cheese balls are, to me, a very holidayish food. I've never made one before, but this past week I had a few occasions for which I needed to make an appetizer and a dessert. I experimented with both a savory and a sweet version and both turned out very well if I do say so myself! I didn't take pictures of either of them, but thought I'd share the recipes in case you happen to be in need of some new ideas this season.

Tammy's Tempting Cheese Ball
1 (1 ounce) package dry ranch salad dressing mix
1/2 cup mayonnaise
1/2 cup milk
8 ounces cream cheese, softened
12 ounces shredded Cheddar cheese
5 ounces roasted, salted almonds, chopped (I omitted)

If you want to see the actual directions, click on the link above. I didn't follow them. I am lazy, so I just threw everything into my food processor at once rather than mixing particular ingredients together and whatnot. It turned out nice and evenly mixed, so I'd recommend going that route if you have a food processor. This made quite a large batch, so I separated it into two balls and wrapped each in saran wrap. I made this the night before it was needed so the flavors had more time to blend and so the balls could set up properly. As noted, I did not roll the balls in chopped almonds. I do not like almonds, so I wasn't going to taint perfectly good cheese with some icky nuts. And I didn't miss them, nor did my friends who came over last night. We had the whole ball eaten in about 10 minutes flat. :-) I served these with Wheat Thins and Triscuits, but any cracker would do. Or even vegetable sticks I suppose, though I would never.

Chocolate Chip Cheese Ball
1 (8 ounce) package cream cheese, softened
1/2 cup butter, softened
3/4 cup confectioners' sugar
2 tablespoons brown sugar
1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract
3/4 cup miniature semisweet chocolate chips
3/4 cup finely chopped pecans (omitted)

Again, I just threw all the ingredients (except the chocolate chips) into my food processor to mix everything up. Then I just stirred the chocolate chips in by hand. As with the savory cheese ball, I spooned it onto plastic wrap, shaped it into a ball, and allowed to chill overnight. Mine was a little softer than I think it should have been, I think because when "softening" the butter in the microwave I got carried away and partially melted it. If I wasn't so lazy, I would have added a little more powdered sugar to firm it up, but I didn't care enough to bother. I did not roll my ball in pecans as the recipe suggests because, again, that would have ruined the recipe for me. I served this with those holiday cookies that Keebler comes out with this time of year - the gingerbread men and those Jingles cookies - but graham crackers, chocolate wafers, or whatever other kind of cookie you like would be just fine.

Happy Birthday Aunt Jane!

Just a quick card that I made for my aunt, whose birthday is on Saturday. It's actually a CASE of a card I made over the summer, but pretend you've never seen anything like it before. :-) I'm reinstating the rule that I have to use something new on every card I make (and by new I mean something I've been hoarding for ages and haven't used yet!). I'm hoping this will make me forget that I'm banned from buying new stuff for a while. And really, I do have sooo much stuff, more than I could ever use in a lifetime probably! The new thing used on this card is the ribbon, which I've probably had for close to a year but has seen no love. The bucket is colored with a silver Sakura gel pen and the centers of the flowers are dotted with a clear spica pen. The image is from Memory Box, the polka dots are from PTI's Polka Dot Basics, and sentiment is from PTI's Birthday Basics. Colors are PTI's Berry Sorbet and SU's Certainly Celery. Hardware is from SU.

LOSTie Christmas/Winter Kits

Over the last month, some of the LOSTies participated in a card kit swap - the theme was Christmas/winter and each participant had to send each of the other girls some stamped images as well as cardstock or patterned paper. Everyone then had to take those materials, add some of their own embellishments, and create their own card. It's really cool to see how many different takes there are using the same materials. I chose not to participate because with moving and all, I had to pack up my stamp supplies and didn't have time to put a kit together. I also wasn't sure when my stamping stuff would be unpacked and if I'd ever have a chance to put the kits together. But, those girls are too sweet for words and each made up an extra kit for me to play with when I got settled! Thank you!!!

This weekend I got a lot of playing time in and tonight was able to finish putting together all the kits. Let me tell you, it was not easy. This was the first swap of this kind that I'd done before and I think I took things too literally. I felt like I had to include every component included in the kit, so if there were 3 different designs of patterned paper, I thought I had to use them all. Well, until the last few kits when my creativity was too stretched and I just gave up! I also didn't realize we could add other things of our own, like additional cardstock, besides embellishments. So I'm really not happy with about half of the cards I made. I avoided looking at any of the cards the other girls had posted until I was done because I didn't want to be swayed by their ideas, but looking at them now, I realize they all did a much better job because they weren't bound by the rules and in a lot of cases, only used bits and pieces of the supplied papers or added some extras of their own. Regardless, I had fun with them and was definitely forced to stretch myself into using styles that I'm not used to!

And here they are:

This was Amanda's kit. I'd been wanting to try an acetate card for a long time and had just never gotten around to it, so this was a welcome challenge! I wish I had stamped something on the acetate to make it stand out more, but I guess I didn't realize that we could add stamps to the card beyond the stamped images we received in the kit and maybe a sentiment if needed. Again, I was taking this much too literally! The patterned paper is adhered on the inside and the image is on the outside so that the adhesive I used on the pieces was completely hidden. I did the same thing on the back panel - one piece adhered on the inside of the card and one on the outside.

This one was from Barb - more acetate! She had the globe from Lizzie Anne Designs' Build a Bauble set stamped on acetate, so I used it with the base piece to create a snowglobe of sorts. Only there's no snow, just merry Christmas wishes in a lot of languages! The three circles in the bottom corner were punched out of a scrap of the patterned paper I had left with a 1/4 in. punch. Other than that, I just added some SU grosgrain ribbon.

This kit was from Cindy. I decided to make it into a tent topper card using my Marvy oval punches. I used SU's word window punch on the red strip to allow the sentiment to show through. Added some stardust stickles to the snow and snowflakes on the Elzybell image and that's it!

Next up is Colleen's kit. This is the first card I've ever made with a MFT image because usually I'm adverse to headless people, but this stamp I like! I just used a bit of a random layout so as not to hide the cuttlebugged patterns on the white and aqua papers. I added a clear gemstone to the center of the snowflake embellishment and lots of stardust stickles to the snowy ground!

This kit is from Debbie. I love this paper and the cute snowman image and I just didn't do them justice. I couldn't figure out how to put this card together using all the components Debbie included (there was another piece of patterned paper and cardstock too), and I'm regretting my choice of red for a card base, but I didn't figure out until I'd adhered it all that brown really would have been better. But by that point the paper would have ripped if I'd tried to unstick it. The snowman is cut out and popped up with dimensionals and the snowflake is popped up as well and then embellished with a large clear gemstone.

This card kit was from Edie and I think it was my favorite because there was no coloring involved! You may have noticed that I very rarely post cards that involve coloring and if they do, it's just little detail work here and there. So a lot of the kit images were a real challenge for me. I am not good at watercoloring and do not have Copics, so it's really a struggle to get my stuff to look good. So, Edie's card was a welcome break! Plus, the ink is a gorgeous metallic and the light and dark teal cardstocks are shimmery! So pretty in real life! I kept this one pretty simple, just added A LOT of gemstones for even more sparkly bling!

This was from Jeannie's card kit. She included three different pieces of patterned paper and, again, thinking I needed to use them all, the only thing I could come up with was punching out a circle of each one and popping them up with dimensionals. My mojo was not with me for many of these cards, as you can tell! The pink background was stamped with Papertrey's Polka Dot Basics and I added SU grosgrain. That's it!

I cheated just a little bit with Justine's kit. She included a piece of Baja Breeze cardstock embossed with the cuttlebug snowflake folder and it was so pretty, but the paper is also very pretty (and glittered in real life) and I didn't want to cover it. So, I cut out two of the embossed snowflakes (NOT something I would ever do for mass producing) and put a dimensional between the two of them, added a gemstone on top, and created my own embellishment out of it. The moose is stamped on shimmery cardstock and I added some stardust stickles to the snow for extra sparkle.

This kit is from Kim. I LOVE this Wassail paper from Basic Grey but I am really trying to avoid buying it since I'm on a stamping spending ban for a while. So I'm glad I got to play with one piece of it at least! The owl is punched out with the mega Marvy circle punch and then the giga scallop circle is matted behind it. That whole thing is popped up with dimensionals. I dotted the scallops of the circle and on the scallop border with a white gel pen (the BEST white gel pen I've ever used btw - made by Inkssentials. I've tried so many different ones and this is only one that always works for me!) and added SU grosgrain ribbon across the kraft piece. I wish I'd cut that whole strip across the bottom a little more narrow, but again, didn't figure that out until it was already adhered.

Next up is the kit from Kris. The piece of vellum cuttlebugged with the snowflake embossing folder was included in the kit and I just put a white strip of cardstock behind it to make it pop more. Kris also included another strip of paper from the Basic Grey Figgy Pudding collection that I really wanted to use because it had presents on it and that goes perfectly with elves, but I just couldn't make it all work. This was one of the last kits I pulled out of the envelope, so by this point I was breaking rules and not using all the pieces. ;-) Overall, pretty straightforward, I just added some wedding bells dewdrops to the left corner.

This was Rachel's kit. I struggled with this one, wanting to showcase both the pretty paper and the cuttlebugged cardstock, so I ended up going with a very basic layout. I added stardust stickles to the snow and still thought the card looked too plain, so I added a clear gemstone to the center of each of the embossed snowflakes. Not sure if I like that look or not, but those babies are stuck on there!

This one was from Stacy. The trees are stamped on a really pretty shimmery vanilla paper and the paper is pre-glittered for extra sparkle. I just supplemented what Stacy provided with a few extra layers of cardstock and some SU grosgrain.

This kit was from Suzanne and I think this came together for me the fastest out of all of them. Well, except for the fact that my big dumb hands smeared red ink all over the first image I colored, so I had to color another one - thank goodness for extra images! This is a really simple card, I just sponged the edges of some of the layers with Old Olive ink, added stardust stickles to the snow, and added a sentiment from Lizzie Anne Designs that I think goes perfectly with that happy Santa!

And finally, this kit was from Tammi, the swap hostess. Tammi is one of the best colorers on the planet, so I knew right off the bat I could never do this image justice. But, I did my best! The background is three different pieces of patterned paper that I pieced together and I added two strips of SU stitched ribbon behind the image. To finish it off, I punched out two holly leaves with my Martha Stewart holly punch and used a glittered brad from Imaginesce as the "berry". This was stuck on the corner with a glue dot.

Whew, that was long! Thanks for sticking with me, if you did! And thanks Tammi for hosting this fun swap and for including me in it even though I didn't send any kits to you! And now, since this post took me over an hour to put together, it's time to find some dinner!

P.S. Please ignore the somewhat uneven layout of this post! It is not cooperating with me and I am too hungry to have the patience to try fixing it right now!

Blog Candy and a Card

Want to win some awesome blog candy?? Visit Passion for Crafts for a great sampler of Copics and some other fabulous goodies being given away! And while you're there, check out Debbie's talent - seriously cool stuff!

And while I'm here, I thought I'd share a card that I found on my camera today and haven't blogged about yet. It's already out of season, so I don't want to wait any longer to post it! I made this for my friend Cindy, a fellow candy corn lover, for her birthday, which was right before Halloween. I love how it turned out!

The image is from Impression Obsession's clear candy corn set and the sentiment is from Papertrey's Birthday Basics. The sentiment and the moon were both covered over with a glitter pen for some fun sparkle. All inks, cardstock, and ribbon are from Stampin' Up except the white, which is from Papertrey.