Archive for December, 2008

Look what came in the mail!

In the past week or so, I have gotten a ton of beautiful Christmas cards from customers, friends and downline. I thought I would share just a few of my favorite ones. I would love to post all of them, but that would probably take me forever. Thanks to everyone that sent them though. They all brightened my day!!

This one is from one of my customers (and my adopted mom!) Carol Flach. I just thought this one was gorgeous!

This one is from one of my awesome customers, Terrie Kaluzny….I love how she crimped the edges to make a frame.

This one is from another very talented customer of mine, Chris Davis. I love the little ornament on the front.

This is from one of my very talented downline, Kristi Harley. It is hard to tell in the picture but it is a larger card that had a photo of the family inside. The glitter really makes this card exceptionally beautiful. I will post some more later….I have to go bake some Christmas cookies…..

Look at what my downline made!

One of my downline, Lisa Rapacki, made these adorable Christmas dog sweaters using the Big Shot! She got some fabric and punched out their names and all sorts of shapes to decorate them. I thought this was such a creative way to use our die cuts!

DCBD challenge #6

This week’s Diva Coffee Break Design challenge (it should say #106 in the photo) was to use these colors to make any card we wanted. I always have a hard time with the colors so I started looking through our Designer Paper and found the Holiday Treasure paper polka dot piece that matched perfectly. It says in the catalog that it is Baja, Chocolate chip, Ruby red and Old Olive but I held the old olive and kiwi next to it and it looked closer to kiwi to me. The ruby red and red riding hood are almost the same too so here is the card I came up with……

I used the Always set and the Holiday Treasures DSP plus chocolate chip, baja breeze and riding hood red cardstock. For the ink, I used Baja, chocolate chip and kiwi and then accented with the riding hood taffeta and the baja breeze ribbon. Super easy card! I hope you like it. Please leave a comment and let me know what you think. Then give this challenge a try yourself. Don’t forget to check out the other Diva Designers listed under the coffee cups in my sidebar.

Stamp camp projects

Hey everyone,

I thought I would share a couple of my stamp camp projects from this month. The first one is a dressed up cocoa packet. I got this idea from my friend Kimberly. I don’t know what I would do without her. She always comes up with the cutest ideas. It is hard to see the dazzling diamonds on the snowflake but it really shimmers in person. I used the Snow Swirled set to decorate the outside and then used the top note for the topper.

For the 2nd project, I used our scallop envelope die that goes in the Big Shot. I made this project a long time ago but just got around to doing a class with it. I made one of these boxes and gave it to Shelli at Founder’s Circle also. She loved it. For this one, I decorated it with the Bella Rose paper and the Bloomin’ Beautiful set. I put a cello bag filled with candy inside but it would be great for any small gift.

Cute Snowman soup project

Last night I had my downline Christmas party and potluck dinner and we had such a great time. We made several cute projects including this one created by one of my downline, Niccole Marshall. The camera flash makes it a little hard to read the middle part but I think you can probably figure it out. She printed those out on the computer. Inside the cello bag is a candy cane stick, marshamallows and a cocoa packet. I love this Holiday Lineup set. I hope it will stick around for the next winter catalog. I didn’t order it this year but I have seen so many cute projects made with it.

DCBD challenge #5

For this week’s Diva’s Coffee Break Design challenge, we had to make a card with this design. The smiley face threw me off at first because I was like "what is that for?" but it just means an image goes there.  I enjoy the design challenges much more than the color challenges. They take me about 10 minutes. The color challenges take me all day. So, here is what I came up with for this week………

I decided to do a semi Christmas card (because of the colors)  but it can also be used anytime. I used Riding Hood Red, Old Olive and the Bella Rose DSP. I stamped the background with the Bella Toile stamp and used the Bella’s Bloom for the flower. The saying is from one of the hostess sets…. I think it is called Best Yet. Super quick and easy card. Please leave me a comment and let me know what you think. Make sure you check out all of the other Divas in the group…..click on each one listed under the coffee cups in my sidebar.

WOW! Free shipping on orders over $70 and the retired sets are 10% off!!

WOW!  Several fabulous sales are going on! FREE Shipping on all orders over $70 until December 23rd.  It is also time to stock up on Retiring Stamp Sets which are 10% off (also until December 23rd). Click on the graphic (right) to view the list of retiring sets in a convenient PDF. Click HERE for a visual view of the retiring sets. Make sure you log in and it shows Lisa Freeman as your demonstrator at the top.

Cute Gift Idea

Here is a cute little gift idea that you can give to someone for Christmas. I am probably going to use them for hostess gifts or door prizes. We made a similar project as one of our make and takes at Founder’s Circle. I decided to use a bigger cello bag though and our 3×3 notecards. I took our medium flat cello bag and cut the Ski slope paper slightly smaller to fit inside. Stamp Merry Christmas on that and slip it in the cello bag and use the word window punch to punch through the bag and the paper. If your punch is not brand new (a little dull), put a piece of paper on either side of the cello bag to punch it more easily. The cello has a tendency to get stuck if your punch is well used. Then I took a couple of our 3 x 3 notecards and decorated them with the Winter Post set and more ski slope paper. I stamped the envelopes with the snowflakes. Plop them in the cello bags and tie with a ribbon. Super easy and the notecards make great gift tags.

Cute snowflake notepads

I was cleaning out some stuff in my stamp room and found all of these old note pads from last year (yes, that is soft sky cardstock on the front) so I thought I better go ahead and make them up. The soft sky really is a close match to the baja breeze. I stamped it in baja breeze and used the baja breeze dsp and you can hardly tell the difference. These took me about 10 minutes to make and I did about 20 of them and sold most of them at a craft show I did this morning. The good news is that I sold quite a bit in a short amount of time, the bad news is, I spent more than that with the other vendors there. I did get my husband and my daughter each a nice Christmas gift though (and one for me too!)

DCBD Challenge #4

Hey everyone! This is my weekly Wednesday challenge for the Diva’s  Coffee Break Design team. This week it was a color challenge and boy was it a tough one. For those of you that know me well, these are not my colors at all! I am more of a chocolate chip/pink pirouette or chocolate chip/ baja breeze girl. I had a very hard time coming up with something in these 4 colors, but I finally did. I don’t think I have used my garden green pad in about 5 years. It was totally dry when I opened it! I hope you like what I came up with. Please leave me a comment and let me know what you think of it.

For this card, I punched out a circle from a postit note and stuck it while I brayered Summer Sun across the paper, Then I took a sponge and sponged Pumpkin Pie all over. I removed the postit circle and lightly sponged a little bit in the circle. I then stamped the Garden Green grass from the Inspired by Nature set. Lastly I stamped the words in Riding Hood Red. I wanted the words over the sun a little more but I did that last and I wasn’t about to do the whole card over again. I hope you like it. Make sure you check out the rest of the diva designers…. the list is under the coffee cups in my sidebar.