There is nothing I love more than Clean & Simple Christmas Cards. This is my favourite time of the year to make cards, and although I don’t have a lot of time for it these days I thought I would share a few cards I made in October. I taught a class that featured one of my very favourite Christmas stamp sets of the year, Technique Tuesday’s Ali Edwards stamps “Jingle All The Way”.

I love these sentiments so much, the mixture of fonts is perfection and the verses work for both the inside and outside of cards. Here are three of the seven cards I made for my class, plus a tag I made for a fun Paperie tutorial.

The first card was created simply with some patterned paper and three circle punches to create a snowman window.

The blue panel is popped up on the white card base, and a line of glitter was added to the shimmery white snowbank.

Julie Ebersole would call this card a 5MQ (five minute quickie). She can get away with saying that ‘cos she’s so darn cute. The branch is a die-cut from Impression Obsession, and the sentiment was stamped below and connected to the branch with a line. I even used a ruler.

I drew a “bulb topper” for the “O” to make it into an ornament and applied glossy accents for that dimensional look.

This red and white card features the Hero Arts Peace Ornament and the Technique Tuesday sentiment embossed in white on a red panel, which was mounted flat to a white panel. I overcame my obsession with dimensional foam tape for this quick two-layer card.

Here’s a tag I made for The Paperie Blog, inspired by an amazing faux chalkboard card tutorial by Betsy Veldman.

This tag features sentiments by Hero Arts & Technique Tuesday, the flourishes stamps are from Technique Tuesday’s “Joy to The World” stamp set. I used a white pencil to outline all the sentiments (embossed in white), and a sponge dauber with white chalk ink to create the look of an erased chalkboard.

That’s all for now, just wanted to check in and let everyone know I was still alive and crafting, even if it is sporadic.

I’ve been making lots of cards in the last little while, here are three that I blogged about over on The Paperie Blog..

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I have the weekend off so I’m planning to hunker down and actually play along with some challenges, as that’s always a good way to get the creative juices going. I think I’ll start with the Moxie Fab Tuesday Trigger and maybe then the Hero Arts monthly challenge and who knows what else. One of my resolutions this year is to spend more time crafting and less time watching tv. Failing that, as I watch TV now as I type. I have a weakness for Vampire Diaries, no thanks to my earlier obsession with Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Most of you are probably familiar with Cath from the Moxie Fab World Blog and Trends Editor for Paper Crafts Magazine (two of my favourite places to look for inspiration). Due to rotary cuff injury, Cath has been in a lot of pain lately and was unable to make her usual trek to CHA. To lift her spirits, bloggers Virginia and Lorena have organized a little blog hop of well wishes for Cath.

Here is my card, which was inpired by a card by Julie Ebersole, AND the Winter Blossoms Tuesday Trigger that Cath posted. I made this at the shop to go with The Paperie’s new feature “One little stamp” – this week we’re featuring the Hero Arts Dandelion and I’ve pinned some other awesome ideas on our Pinterest Board. (I spy my all-time favourite Virginia Lu card on that board).

SO much has happened since my last post that I don’t even know where to begin.

I had to put a hold on my Awareness card collection due to an amazing turn of events. In late September there was talk on Facebook about a possible fundraiser for my friend Tiffany, maybe a gig or a cabaret. A week went by and nothing had been organized, so I emailed a couple of local bands and asked if they would be willing to play a Benefit for Tiff.

Lizband was my first choice, as Tiffany and I have been fans since 1993. Of course Liz said yes, so my next email was to Jody Richardson, lead singer/guitarist of The Pathological Lovers (another local band). In my email, I told Jody what was going on and mentioned that I was still looking for a third band with a personal connection to Tiff. Jody replied and said “Lovers are all in. All proceeds go to the cause. Just wait on the third band for a sec will ya’?”

So the next morning Jody emails me and tells me “The third band is Fur Packed Action. We have all agreed. ALL money goes to the cause.” I cried from joy, I could hardly believe such a selfless act. You see, Fur Packed Action, aside from being my *favourite* local band of ALL time, have been broken up since 2001. TEN YEARS. They have played only ONE reunion show since that time, five years ago in 2006. There was always something so special about an FPA show.

I can’t even begin to tell you how many friendships I’ve forged through mutal love of this band. My best friend Jenni and I spent every other weekend at FPA shows. I met my other best friend Peggy at an FPA show. I instantly adored an old co-worker named Susy because she loved FPA – she is still my friend today. When I met my friend Heidi, we bonded over a mutual love of FPA. Deebs (Darryl) and I met at FPA shows and became fast friends, and he introduced me to other great pals who love FPA. Jody, the singer of FPA has become like a brother but better – he’s been there for me through every tough time in my adult life with just the right amount of perspective.

Anyhow. Needless to say, I love that band a lot. Jody asked another old fave, Persona, to play the show as well and they all agreed. We announced the Benefit on Facebook on a Wednesday, the tickets were available the following Friday at 5pm and they were *totally* sold out by Saturday evening. Over 250 tickets sold in 24 hours. It became apparent we’d need to announce a second show, so that’s what we did and it looks as though that show is almost sold out too (tickets available at Fred’s Records until they sell out!).

Talk about overwhelmed. I am so excited to see FPA again, but that excitement is matched by feelings of shock and joy, knowing that… I put this in motion. I didn’t ask FPA to play, I never would’ve been so presumptious, I just wanted to raise $1000 for a friend in need. As it happens, we have currently raised almost $10,000 for Tiffany so far. The bands are not just giving up their time for two nights, there will be countless hours of rehearsal for them all to relearn songs they haven’t played in 5 years. I just cannot begin to thank them enough.

In other news, I decided to book a trip to Toronto on a whim, so I spent a week on the mainland visiting some friends and see a Canadian band called C’MON play their last two shows. October was certainly a whirlwind, and November is shaping up to be even crazier. Exciting times!

To keep this post relevant to the usual content, here’s a few pictures of the Star Book I made after the last FPA reunion in 2006…

October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month, and right now nobody is more aware than my friend Tiffany.

Recently Tiffany found out that she has Breast Cancer, which came as a great shock to all of us because she’s only 33 years old. Her story could very easily be your story or mine, and there is no time like the present to remind everyone you know and love to check their breasts. You can read more about Tiffany’s journey and her fantastic outlook on life over on her blog:  http://tiffanyannemartin.wordpress.com

I have been trying to come up with meaningful ways to help out and spread the word, that Breast Cancer can affect any woman, of any age, at any time. I have decided to sell some handmade “Awareness” cards, I will let you know soon where they will be available to purchase.

Here’s an example…

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The cards will be very similar to this one, featuring a Pink awareness ribbon paired with a variety of words of encouragement. Special orders can be made for other coloured ribbons, and a portion of all proceeds will be going to a local breast cancer charity (which is yet to be named).

I know the profit from these cards won’t be huge, but it is one small way that I can help.

What can you do you shed some light on Breast Cancer Awareness this month? Talking about it is the first step.

Here is a picture of Tiffany and I at one of our favourite establishments, The Ship Inn…

I only have three pictures of us, and they are all taken at The Ship 🙂

June 9th, 2011:

As soon as I saw this card on Lisa Spangler’s blog, I knew I had to give it a whirl. When my friend emailed me asking me to make a card for her dad that incorporated the Walt Whitman quote “O Captain! My Captain!” I thought “captains… navigating… maps… okay, so he’s not a sailor but it might work.”

O Captain

Actually, at first I thought about saying no. I mean, it’s a bit intimidating making a card for an art collector who owns his own gallery, yes? But I’d like to think Ally’s dad won’t be critiquing my watercolour technique. Which consisted of carelessly scribbling watercolor pencil strokes all over the map stamp and adding water to blend. I copied Lisa with the Vintage Photo distress ink too – thanks for the inspiration, Lisa! 🙂

Map Stamp: Impression Obsession, Sentiment: computer generated

It has been a long time since I’ve felt this inspired, I had forgotten how much I loved the Hero Arts Flickr Group. What a talented bunch of women – I was inspired by Heather Maria to create this card below…

My first card was created simply by using white embossing powder to emboss these Hero Arts floral images on vellum. There is a little bit of glitter added to lines of the flower for extra interest with pearls for the centre. Because you can see most adhesives through vellum, I used glue dots beneath the pearls so they’d be covered up. LOVE the Envelopments Seashell cardstock, which is a pretty blend of shimmery pinkish gold – just like a real conch seashell.

After making my first card, I thought to myself “I wonder how vellum would look if I coloured the back of it” and this card was born…

These Hero Arts flowers were again embossed on vellum with white embossing powder and I colored the backs with Copic Markers. I love the watercolor effect, but too much blending can really make a mess so keep that in mind if you try this technique. The white panel was embossed with a notebook embossing folder from Sizzix.

Next, I saw another card in the Flickr Group that I thought had been masked, but upon closer inspection I noticed that the image was peeking through a window … so I thought – “I wonder how the masking would turn out”…

I started running out of steam then, but I needed one last card to teach my May Flowers Card Class (this past Wednesday) so I came up with this clean and simple design using Copic Markers to colour the image…

So as you can see, I’ve had a productive week – even though all of these cards were designed to teach a class, I had lots of fun making them. I even made a Scrapbook Page, which I’ll save for another post.

Hope you all have a great weekend 🙂