My favorite challenge is back!

Hehe! More tags from me today! Tracey's Tag You're It Challenge is back this month and I'm excited to participate! The theme is "Love is in the Air" and I made two tags using the Close To My Heart True Love stamp set.

This first tag is most appropriate for the theme since it includes balloons floating in the air. Nothing special here other than the stamps, kraft cardstock and Copic marker coloring of the image.

The second tag uses the little girl from the same stamp set and I also used some old-school chalk to color the background a bit. The Valentine's Day sentiment is from a different stamp set but it's been around for a long time and I'm not sure who made it any more!

Holiday Tags: Elegant Wreath

Here's another tag I made for Tracy McNeely's 25 Days of Tags. This one is based on Tracy Freeman's Day 9 Tag.

Instead using a diecut, I decided to use a stamp and curve it into a wreath shape then heat emboss the image. The branch shape is from Kerri Bradford's Deck the Halls stamp set. The pattern paper is from Carta Bella Rock-a-Bye Baby Boy collection. I also used Hero Arts white embossing powder.

Holiday Tags!

I'm back after years of ignoring my blog! The reason is that I've really been enjoying Tracy McNeely's 25 Days of Christmas Tags and decided to participate in the challenge. So, I've been focusing my craft time, which is severely limited these days, on making tags inspired by Tracy and her guest designers. This first tag is from Day 2, and is inspired by Svitlana Shayevich's tag.

The wreath stamp is a very old Studio G stamp and the sentiment is Lawn Fawn Tiny Tag Sayings. I used Prismacolor pencils to color the holly leaves and red rhinestone gems from a Target dollar spot pack.

Baby girl!

Thought I'd participate in this week's Unity Friends with Flair and share this adorable baby girl card I made! I used the Hello Little One kit and lots of old pink scraps of paper. I also took the opportunity to use my new Wink of Stella glitter pen. So fun to add a little bit of sparkle!

This is for a friend who just had a baby girl after having two boys. So excited for her to experience the world of little girls now too!

Six months later...

Apparently I'm just not going to post on here much! Checking in today to share the Christmas cards I made for my kids' teachers, and enter them into Unity's FWF.

This first one is simply made on a printed kraft cardstock using the adorable stamp from Unity's Magic of Christmas kit. The Christmas sentiments in this kit are so cute! The fun polka dot stripes at the top are from a really old Close to My Heart stamp that I adore! (Sorry about the shadow on the right...I should have reviewed my pics before sealing these cards into an envelope!)

I also made this fun little card using some 6ish year old CTMH patterned paper along with two of the stamps from the awesome Unity Tags, Glorious Tags kit that was sold around Christmas time last year. I love this kit! It has a lot of holiday stamps but some are also versatile to use all year round. 

Finally, I've got a super simple card combining paper from the CTMH set and the same Christmas stamp from the Unity Magic of Christmas kit. Simple but still a lovely card to give with a small gift for my son's teacher! 

Merry Christmas!

One Friday this summer

I'm  not much of a blogger apparently. I read lots of blogs. But preparing and writing posts myself...not much at all! This week I bumped into a new challenge blog as well as the fact that it's FWF at Unity and I've been sufficiently motivated to post a little something myself.  But it's been a busy day!

First we finished up a week of soccer camp:

Then we got our free slurpees at 7Eleven:

Now the kids are chilled out after a tiring week and I was able to finish my tag that was inspired by the inaugural Tag You're It challenge! Here's the inspiration photo.

And here is my tag! I mostly used the colors and tag shape.

 The tag base is from the latest Unity SMAK kit, All in the Numbers. The papers are old scraps - CTMH and MME I think. The little birdie is Colorbox and the sentiment is CTMH. 

It's a wonderful summer weekend now. Enjoy!

A little late...Happy Holidays card

You might have thought that you had seen the end of Christmas cards. Not if you are reading my blog! I actually ended up making this card for a teacher after the holidays were over because my kids had a snow day on the last day of school and so I had time to actually make cards to send in with their holiday gifts when school started back up!

I could say this card was inspired...but the truth is that it's pretty much a copy of the card that Kristina Werner made on Day 18 of her Holiday Card Series posts. I love the combination of bright Christmas red on the kraft card. It just sings to me. I used my very fun Unity Stamp Co. Tags, Glorious Tags holiday set for both the framed image and the sentiment. I also used some "twine" that I purchased from Pick your Plum and discovered that it's pretty much cotton string rather than baker's twine. Much thicker than the more high quality twine you can buy - but it works and I really like the final product!

On the inside of the card I added some candy cane striped washi tape to the top and bottom to give it a little pizazz, but I'm not including a picture of that because it's not really that interesting!

Ok. With any luck I will be moving onto Valentine's Day cards before the holiday actually arrives! Stay tuned for that post any day now...

Holiday Tags

I like making tags, but my very favorite are definitely Christmas tags! A month or so ago I bought a new Unity Stamp kit called "Tags, Glorious Tags!". Just perfect for me! Here are my first two tag creations with it...

I used the Tags set and also one Close to My Heart stamp that I already had in my stash. Papers are from an older DCWV holiday pack.

Thanks for taking a look...and an early Merry Christmas to you!

Birthday Tag!

We seem to have hit another rash of birthdays in our boys' classes and we've got parties to go to with presents to give! The one great thing I love about that is it gives me a valid reason to spend a little time creating with my stamps and paper! :)  Here's something I pulled together today. A little more complex than what I usually make for an 8 year old boy's gift, but it sure was fun making it!

Products used: Hero Arts - Zig Zag, Crate Paper - Party Day, Unity Stamp Co. - Sweet & Sour Soup, SMAK 4/13 Celebrate the Good Times and some very old My Minds Eye paper and a Creative Memories tag punch. 

Wishing you a fun fall weekend!

It's beginning to look a lot like Halloween!

Here's a fun card I made using Unity Stamp Co.'s Bones About Halloween. I had no idea the skeleton was going to be so huge when I ordered this stamp set! I still think the kids will have fun with it when I let them have a chance to stamp with it though. I'm using one of their favorite jokes for this time of the year...

The front

And the inside!

I also used one of my favorite alpha stamp sets from Close to My Heart and used my Silhouette cutter for the banner and frame on the inside. Happy Fall everyone!