Office Gifts and Mega Blog Candy Alert

So today ends the time when I think I am going to kill my DH. Again this year, I had to panic and make 24 of these snowman pictures for my DH`s staff. I was told since Sept. that he had their gift looked after...something he bought after Christmas last year so I didn`t prepare anything. But when all the gifts were found and we started to wrap gifts....there were not enough so....off to the stamping table I went.

Honestly, I enjoy making gifts for his staff because they are always so appreciative of them but the week before Christmas is just too close for comfort.

So what did I make...this.I used my favorite shadow box frame from the $ store. It comes with 2 mats that I used the bayer to cover. This time I used Rose Red ink and left quite a bit of white showing. For the image I used Wishing You Cheer from SU. I masked the snowman and the tree to put in the background snowman. I painted using Spica Pens and highlighted the snow with diamond dust the image really sparkles.

It was really hard to produce a photo that shows true colors and the sparkle but trust me it is very cute. I framed the image in scraps of red and black papers and put it on either silver or gold shimmer paper from The Paper Company. When I looked at the first photo it looks like the BG paper goes from silver to gold but it is actually silver. The magic of the camera strikes again.

So, I finished them last night and wrapped them all for him to give away tonight at their staff party....the one I can`t even go to. Imagine!

Well it is the last day of school for the boys and then Christmas break starts. My Oldest son works but he also managed to get his vacation over Christmas. I looked forward to spending time with them but I think they have plans to spend time with friends...sure hope they can fit me in for some quality time!

Almost forgot to say Get Yourself over to this blog for some Mega Blog Candy.
http://charmedcrafts.blogspot.com/2008/12/mega-mega-mega-christmas-blog-candy.html
Trust me it is fantastic. Good Luck to all.


Off to wake the crowd up for another day. Talk later.
Happy Holidays to all.
Heather

As Promised Christmas Decor Again

I promised I would show the village at night all lite up. Here is one of the village all ablaze.

Now isn`t that something! It is so gorgeous in real life. But now onto the Dining Room.

#1 The table all set. The chairs have covers on them ...snowman or Santa.

#2 My 90 year old Mom made the angels that hold the silver. She had them done just in time for the Open House.
#3 The theme for this room is snowman. The buffet under the window shows Snowland. Oops, I forgot to turn the lights on in the tree.

#4 The sideboard on the other corner of the room also is covered with Snowmen but I remember to turn on the tree.#5 A china case holding....guess what.....yes Snowmen.

So, what do you think of the dining room....snowman central? I must thank all who are commenting. It does make a person feel great. I plan on having something craft like to post tomorrow. We are in crisis in the house...someone took my craft scissors and I cannot make anything! I am about to phone the police because `no on`in this house has taken it!

Talk tomorrow.

Happy Holidays

Heather

Section 2 Acrylic Album/More Decorations

Well I finally have the album done. This is section 2 and the photos are our family...one section only. These are our boys and nieces and nephews. I have decided that my most hated part of blogging is taking photos involving acrylic! I want you to know that this looks so much better in real life...no flash reflection.
I wish you could see the shimmer/shine from this `family`acrylic piece. I should have ordered it in color but I choose clear and had to outline the letters with stickles...lots of sparkle now. The star is grungeboard painted with Twinkling H2Os.

Now onto the decor of our Christmas Home. These photos are from our Living Room.

#1 This is our 9.5 ft tree. It is so full of decorations and revolves. Couldn`t show this in the photo but it slowly turns so you can see the entire tree.
The treetop is a Black Angel...a baby gift for our second adopted son. Friends also made the Doll angel in the top right hand corner. She is made using a baby doll and a tomato stand. She is beautiful but this year the glue from a glue gun had turned yellow so had to be covered. We used snow from a can to try and hide some of the yellow. Guess I need to make a new dress for next year.

#2 is the fireplace scene. My father did the painting for us the year we were married...just before he passed. It had always hung in our living room at Christmas.

#3 Is the Water scene of our `small`village. Three years ago my husband`s mother passed and he decided to honor her at Christmas with a village. It started with 10 homes but now has many more. I think it has reached the `addiction`stage for DH. He takes all my Michael`s coupons and that is simply not correct.

#4 the circus of the village.#5 / #6 The Mountain Scene of the Village followed by the village service center.#7 This is the largest section and it is the town center.I will take a photo showing it altogether and lite hopefully later this week. My good lens for my camera had to be sent away to be fixed and they phoned today to say it was back. It will allow me to photo the entire village and show it all connected...hopefully.

So are you beginning to get the drift...we are addicted to Christmas in this home. My sons threaten us with a massive yard sale each year...but demand it all go up each year.

So off to wrap presents...not my favorite job. I always seem to be hunting...tape, scissors, tags, pen. When I finally find them all, the fun is gone. But I do love watching someone open their gift and choosing them/making them is great fun. So talk later.

Happy Holidays

Heather

Acrylic Album and More Christmas Decorations

Happy Holidays All. Things are really hoping around here. Last night we went to the most amazing presentation called the Nativity Story. A church had their whole gym set up to look like Bethlehem so that you could experience the world Jesus was born into. It was fantastic and so realistic. Once you walk through this area you went into the Church where a play was presented It was all Wonderful. Such a wonderful way to celebrate Christmas.

Now onto our home. I tried to take a photo to show you one corner of the Acrylic Puzzle I am making for my DH.

I am calling it the Story of Blake. This is the top left section and since it is clear I didn`t know how to attractively photo it...hence boring white. I am having a great time making this. Hope he enjoys it. Section 2 tomorrow.

I have some more photos of our Christmas Home. These are all from our Family Room/Stamping Room. Hope you enjoy them.

1. My wonderful fireplace. The angels on top were a present from DH this year. He bought them in July and gave them to me as a Wedding Anniversary.

#2
The angels hanging underneath are from my childhood. I have loved these since I was a young child. They are probably my most precious decoration.

#3 This is my absolutely favorite decoration. It was made to celebrate our two boys...one white and one black. The year we adopted our second child my SIL had this made for us and I love it. It hangs in the livingroom on the large tree...9.5ft.
#4 this is the tree in our Family Room/Stamping Room. All these ornaments are non breakable so the dogs do not cause a great deal of mess. They do love to roll ornaments around after they (actually just the puppy) get them off the tree.
#5 Tree decorated with only angels.#6 The tree and angels on my shelves behind my desk. I have to put away everything on this top shelf so that we can decorated the top. Blue material hangs infront to cover my shelves. I hate this material.

#7 This beautiful Nativity set was given to us and it is on the shelf above the family computer.

#8 My angel collection is found on the stand that was built to surround my DH`s very large TV.

Happy Holidays

Heather

I`m Back with Christmas Open House

I`m back after the busiest weekend of my life. We had the Christmas Open House Tour in our home on Saturday and had 88 people tour our place. On Sunday we had an Open House for family and friends and had 104 people visit. We had great fun but I was exhausted on Monday and Tuesday. Yesterday I planned on blogging but we lost our power for over 12 hours. I was so fed up.

I have one card post to share and then some photos of our Christmas Open House. I`ll do the card first and then you can either check out the decorations or move on to the next blog. So here is my last card I made for the Open House...#124 of Christmas cards.

I actually really liked this card. There are no stamps used on the front...I just cut trees from the paper and used dimensionals to attach them to an embossed panel. I love this paper. It is from the Glittered Christmas slab from DCWV and it is great. I used chiffon ribbon to tie it all together. I really like this card.

The following are a glimpse into our Christmas Decor. I will show the other rooms later this week. Hope you enjoy the virtual tour. All great get togethers involve lots of kitchen time and the first two photos are of my kitchen. My husband has on the Christmas hat.

Next we go to the main living room and show case the Christmas Village.

This is my great niece and nephew who are fantastic little people who keep me in love with kids.

We have an enclosed section of our deck that my DH went absolutely crazy with. Prepare yourself. This is my niece and her daughter and one of our dogs.

The next two photos are my children. The boys are mine and the girl is our `almost daughter`. This is at the end of the day and they are exhausted and hanging out in the Family Room aka my stamping place..Hope you got a kick out of the photos. Talk later.

Happy Holidays

Heather

Mass Production Santas

I have been following Sharon`s Stamp Simply Challenges celebrating Sharon`s over 1 million hits! Yesterday Tammy from Stamp Happy challenged us to make mass production cards so here is mine.

I made 7 of these cards and had fun doing it. I used a Santa from Magnolia stamps and colored it using Twinkling H2Os. I then used Dazzling Diamonds on the beard and mustache. The fur trim is done using a Snow Writer I picked up at Michaels. I used Whisper White from SU and them attached the image to red scraps that had been put through the Swiss Dot embossing folder and the CB. The joy was written with a white pen on a green scrap paper circle punched using the 1¼ punch from SU. I also used the ribbon punch from SU to slide the Michaels ribbon through. All this was attached to a white base. I used the white gel pen to dot the edges as well.

This was easy to do and fun as well.
Happy Holidays
Heather

Whiff of Joy Ladies

I really love this stamp. It demands glitter and I love glitter. Both of these cards are so full of glimmer and sparkle, photos do not due them justice.

If you can see this clearly and you imagine lots of glimmer then you would know that each of these stars was decorated first with a gold spica pen and then a dot of Stardust Stickles...gorgeous. I used Diamond Dazzle and spica pens on the fur trim and the wings are coated in Diamond Dazzle.
I used the oval scalloped nestibility run through the swirl cuttlebug to create the second layer. I used shimmer paper in green or blue to match their dresses.

The base layer was made using Kraft paper from SU and dressed it with snowflake stamps from Snow Burst. On the green dress card I used just the stamp and versamark but in the blue dress card I used Stardust embossing powder...More glitter!

Both of these cards were colored using Prismacolored Pencil and OMS. Love each card. Hope you do too.

Happy Holidays

Heather

Whiff of Joy Christmas

Just a quick post today. I`m exhausted from decorating. We spent hours this weekend decorating, up at 7am and decorating before 8am. I worked each day until 6pm and my DH kept going. There is not a part of me that is not wiped. This is the Whiff of Joy stamp that I won on PaperMonkey. Suzy made a fantastic card (see previous post) and I am rather proud of both of these.

I do love glitter and these cards have lots. I used spica pens, stickles and twinkling H2Os. Gotta run. Time to actually do some housekeeping.

Happy Holidays

Heather

Received a Gift

Today in the mail I received such a wonderful card from Suzy at PaperMonkey.

Isn`t this the most gorgeous card ever! I won her blog candy and she sent this wonderful card along with the stamp for the girl....Whiff of Joy Christmas stamp. I usually use stamps as soon as I get them but I would have to be crazy to post my example next to Suzy`s. This is just so beautiful. In real life it all sparkle...

from the beautiful glittered BG to the angel`s dress. I love the way she attached her ribbon so I plan on doing this trick really soon (like in the card following). Simply beautiful. Suzy has so much talent. Please go check out her blog if you are not already a follower. I sure am and I love it. She is found here:http://blog.papermonkey.org/

So....this is mine. I know there is no comparison but hey I try. I used another one of my new stamps from Magnolia. I just love this stamp line. Whiff of Joy and Magnolia each have so much detail and yet you can still be so creative. She just reminds me of myself when I was younger (though I do love opening presents still). I could hardly wait for the time to see what was inside all those presents. Now I love the build up to the day and always wish Christmas Eve would last just a bit longer. The anticipation is so wonderful. I love the expression children have and this stamp does a wonderful recreation of the look.I put her on top of one of the images Claudia sent me...the present. She is already to open this one as soon as the clock hits the correct time. All papers are from the Glittered Christmas from DCWV and I love them.

Well its time to decorate again. Only 6 days until our Saturday/Sunday Christmas Tours and we still have decorating to do. I will post some photos when we are finished and all the boxes are put away. It is lots of work but most of it is fun. Not much time to blog so until I get a few moments....Happy Holiday preparations.

Heather

Skaters from Magnolia and Blog Candy Sites

Still using the new stamps I received yesterday from Magnolia in the Winter and Christmas Bundle. I am so glad I ordered it. This first one is another favorite. Those two skaters are just so cute. In this first one I made ice using Diamond dust. The paper used is Shimmer Green. I love the sheen and the color.I used my Prismacolored Pencils and used the stamp I got yesterday in Michelle`s gift as the sentiment. The heart was cut using the heart nestibilities. I trimmed it with ribbon and pearls both from Michaels.

This second card uses the same image but this time I used Glitter paper to make the ice and trimmed it using the fancy corner punch from SU and glitter flowers from Michelle. That was such a lovely package she sent to me.While I as blogging I found these great sites. go check them out. Talk later.

* Here is a great site for new stamps and blog candy:

http://kadoodlestamps.wordpress.com/2008/11/24/stamp-of-the-week-blog-candy-weatherboard-cottage/#comment-695

*Another great blog to go to for more candy.

http://theluckyclucker.blogspot.com/2008/11/blog-candyfinally.html

*Lori has stamps and copics to give away here:

http://loricraig.blogs.splitcoaststampers.com/2008/11/26/cupcake-carols-copic-giveaway/#comment-10112

Heather