I’ve seen these boxes a long time ago, liked them a lot, but I couldn’t find a tutorial how to make them. I DID find it last week so I had to make one right away :)  You can find it on the blog called Life As Lou. Then I filled it with some christmas candy and used it as a little present for my friend. They are quite easy to make once you start.

The papers are from Basic Grey and the lid is SU Riding Hood Red CS. The bow on the top is just a Christmas present leftover. Didn’t have time to create anything more fancy.

 Two practical things I learned making the first one. 1. If you want to fill it with something heavier - like chcolates and candy - make the outer shell from heavier CS than the boxes (mine was bending a bit). 2. Don’t use thicker paper for the lid - it gets more bulky and it’s hard to close. When making the inside boxes I used the tutorial for origami box that doesn’t require any cutting. You can find the the tutorial here. Oh, it’s quite hard to fold thick CS (like SU) - you can score it before if you want to make it easier.

 The second box is made with Urban Prairie papers (from Basic Gray), textured black CS. Used some prima flowers for the top.

I was looking through Holiday Chalenges on SCS and found one that really inspired me. It’s called Inspired by a bit of spring and it has these fragile looking pink butterflies siting on icy branches…just lovely…

Now this card I made doesn’t capture the icy-ness but I think it’s OK… I was inspired

The images are from Silhouettes set from Inque Boutique. They were stamped with Versamark and embossed with silver EP. Then I outlined made some very light pink shadows around them…

Finally I had time to do the first challenge. It’s a sketch challenge created by Linda.

She also suggested using Lovely as a Tree stamp set. SO I used it. It didn’t look as good as I wanted it to look as a rectangle so I made an oval panel.. I hope Linda will forgive me for not following her sketch faithfully

The only 2 colors I used were Chocolate chip and Baja Breeze. And Whisper White of course. The sentiment is from Inkadinkado. The tree is embossed with my favorite hollographic EP to add a bit of glitter. I used white flocking to create snow and a white gel pen for dots.

There was a reuse, recycle challenge on SCS about 2-3 weeks ago and that’s when I made these cards. They were for my daughter’s teachers.. they are still here cause the last day of school was cancelled because of the snow storm. Maybe you are wondering what’s reused/recycled on these cards - I didn’t have any glossy card stock so I used the card board pieces that comes with SU designer papers… it’s nice and glossy and great for sponging (you just have to make sure it wasn’t bent before - you’ll get a different color line on that place). And it cost nothing unlike glossy CS

I used the Snow swirled set from SU and the swirls are from Inque Boutique Nightingale set. Greeting is from Inkadinkado. The inks are pink passion (mixed up with blue to make purple as I don’t have any purple inkpad), baja blue and brilliant blue. The Christmas tree was cut out and poped up with dimensionals.

I didn’t do anything crafty for about a week now so at least I’ll upload the things I did before.

Here are some paper stars I made as a last minute christmas gift. They are very easy to make. I got the tutorial from this site: Paper Pleasing Ideas You just need some paper (double sided is the best), stapler, sticky strip and a piece of ribbon. I used Basic Grey Fruitcake paper, put some stickles on the edges and a punched star on the top.

We have a new family member - Jonesy.

We just brought him home yesterday from Humane Society shelter. He’s a 1 year old short haired cat and he’s really playfull.

Loves belly rubs and moving toys. Gets along well with the kids too. Our Christmas tree is his favorite hiding and climbing spot

I received these beautiful Wonderful Wings (SU) images from Sammysue1975 from SCS and had to do something with them. SO when I found one of the older cards by Michelle Zindorf I had to try it too

I staped the background swirls in Versamark and embossed with hollografic EP (clear EP with sparkles). I colored the butterfly with markers and aquapainter , went over it with Versamarker and again embossed. Then I sponged  the background with Pink Passion and Purely Pomegranate Inks. The small butterfly is from SU Flower Garden set. The edges on the base were sponged with purely pomegranate and stamped with a small curly stamp from Basic Grey (Bohemia).

I quite liked the results, but wanted to try to make it look more simple. So this butterly was done same way as the one before just used turquoise and teal markers for the butterfly and Riding Hood Red for the background… It even fits this week’s SCS color challenge (teal, red and baja breeze).

The cards are quite sparkly from all the hollographic EP - pictures don’t do them justice.

Sunday’s featured stamper was annascreations and you can find her beautiful gallery here. She has a lot of beautiful cards there so it was hard to choose which one to CASE but then I picked this one called Red Sunset?. 

And here is my card: I used the same Stampscapes image ( received in a swap ), the same layout, just added the sentiment and dots along 2 edges. It looks more like a moon to me -  what do you think?

The next card was inspired by annascreations too - she mentioned tutorials on Stampscapes website, so she inspired me to visit their site too and look through all the amazing lessons they have in there. I tried to create one of the easier ones (aurora borealis), but it still doesn’t look as good as I wanted it to look The stamp I used is called Seaside dwellings and I used different shades of blue to create the sky. The matting is Baja Breeze and black CS. The sentiments on both cards are from Small Script set from SU.

Yesterday’s challenge was to use the following colors: Taken with Teal, Baja Breeze, Riding Hood Red. It really was a challenge especially because I don’t have anything Teal - no Teal paper, ink, DP - nothing So I went through my paper pads I found one Daisy D paper that looked kind of teal-ish, but when compared with Baja Breeze, there was not a big difference.. but I like the combination so I made these 2 cards:

The images are from a Christmas swap so I don’t know the set (I think it’s a retired SU set). I colored them with inks and aquapainter. The snowflakes on the blue panels are from Snow Swirled SU set, stamped with Versamark and embossed with hollografic EP. The snowflakes are punched with Martha Stewart punch and some of them sponged with Riding Hood Red or Baja Breeze.

if you would like to win a supercute set of woodland elves stamps in original one-of-a kind packaging visit take a look at this website: Tales from Pollycraft

And a little sneak peak at the prize: