Where Has the Time Gone?

I guess that should be the name of my blog since I always feel like time slips away from me so easily! I have been so busy with my boys' school that I haven't had much time for crafting. I am helping out with the book fair for their school, going to meetings, trying to meet other moms since we are new to that school, setting up "playdates" (not sure what you call it when they're in 4th and 6th grade), and going to parent-teacher conferences. Whew! And when I do have time to hit the craft table, it's to make gifts for their teachers or for friends. I never remember to take those pics in the wee hours of the night when all I can think of is how tired I am and how hard it will be to get up in the morning... I hate feeling like I rush from one thing to the next but that is how my life seems to be right now. It's just a season and I know it will slow down again.

Here is a card that I made to play along with a couple of challenges. Over at Card Patterns they have a cute sketch that I used to make my tag. And the color scheme came from ColourQ challenge #108.

I wanted to try a distress stain resist element to my project. SweetSteph Card Creations has a tutorial here. I am loving the Tim Holtz distress stains and couldn't wait to try this out. Remember what I said about not having time to craft in the last two weeks? I had some of these distress stains that have been sitting there, unopened! so sad...

Anyway, I used a stamp set from Tim Holtz since I liked the grunge look these stamps had. I used versamark to stamp the starburst image on some manila paper. After heat setting some clear embossing powder, I got out my stains and started to apply them. I have to play with it some more because dabbing straight from the bottle is just too heavy for me. If you have any tips, I'm all ears.

Once I got that all set with my heatgun I looked through my scalloped dies and realized that it looked kinda like a shell. So that is the theme I went with. A beach/surf theme of sorts. I made the card to be a sort of encouragement card. A reminder to get up and try again.

Thanks for looking! I hope you have a fantastic weekend. My kids are on Fall break starting today so I'm not sure how much time I'll have to craft. I have some ideas of some projects I'd like to get started but we'll see. :D

Old Fashioned Christmas Carol

Blame it on the tea that I had this afternoon -- it's almost 1 am locally and I am still up! Which means that I had plenty of energy to work on my first Christmas card of the season. I really wanted to do something old fashioned and vintage looking while keep the card simple. And while I was at it I could play along with Card Patterns and get my submission in with a little time to spare. Oh, and I was able to try a new technique thanks to Papertrey's Make it Monday. So let me show you what I made while I was on my caffeine fix!

I had so much fun making this card and I really liked the way it turned out. I followed the sketch over at Card Patterns that you can see if you click here. It was a nice, clean and simple layout and I wanted to try something that had lots of pizzaz while still maintaining my less is more feel for the card. I made my own background for this card by using lots of Tim Holtz distress ink in various colors and several different stamps. I also inked up the edges of the layers underneath the background to keep the worn look consistent. The next thing that I did was to get my Papertrey inks and stamps out to make my own washi tape. This was the new technique that I was referring to earlier. I love watching the Make it Monday tutorials on their site and the one for this week is titled Make it Monday #35: Custom Stamped Washi Tape. I like the look of washi tape and I found it super simple to make my own thanks to their tut. I used some double sided tape (I don't have Scortape on hand but used something similar in Martha Stewart's line) and some tissue paper. I pulled out Simply Chartreuse ink (PTI) and a houndstooth background stamp (also PTI), stamped the image onto the tissue paper that I already adhered to the tape and voila! Washi tape! sooooo coool. ;O)
I dusted off my cricut and cut out those cute little ornaments using the Joy of Seasons cartridge. I stamped those with distress inks and used some background stamps on them to add some interest. To add a sentiment without taking away too much from the ornaments I stamped the phrase "Fa-la-la-la-la" in a light distress ink to the lower right hand corner.

So, there you have it! Now, I've got to get my hiney in bed so that I can get up at the crack of dawn. Ouch!!! oh, and Happy Friday.

Card details:
Inks- distress inks (TH), Close to Cocoa (SU), Simply Chartreuse (PTI)
Stamps - Background Basics: Text Style, Background Basics: Houndstooth, Bitty Backgrounds (PTI), small alphabet letters (Studio G), some random stamps that I have in my stash that are not labeled anymore
Cricut Cartridge - Joy of Seasons
Other - floss, hand stained lace, machine stitching