Sandy’s Craft Bag

When I first saw the Colorado Craft Co. Big & Bold Holiday Ornament stamp , I knew I had found my 2020 Christmas card! I am loving their whole Big & Bold line, the designs are awesome.  I wasn’t sure what I was going to do, except to emboss it in gold, then I saw a video on Scrapbook.com by Libby of Hero Arts, about their glimmer inks. They would be perfect to color it in! An ornament needs to hang from a tree so, after some searching, I found this Pine Bough Background stamp by Taylored Expressions. I wanted to use dark green cardstock and found a reasonable Timber Green cardstock with matching envelopes at  Cardstock Warehouse .  With a dark green card base and main mat, I decided to use a shimmer gold cardstock in-between to coordinate with the gold embossed ornament. I used  LUXPaper gold metallic 80 lb. text . I was making 5”x7” cards (A7) so I cut the gold paper to 4.75”x6.75” and the Timber Green to 4.5”x6.5”.   I  needed a way to make ...

There was still some time, so I decided to try making a few more Christmas tags for the “ 25 Days of Christmas Tags 2020 ”. I made 3 more. 1. This tag was inspired by 2 from Day 17: the buffalo plaid tags w/ bears by Lindsey Larsen and the black & white checked tag with snowflakes by Karen Reategui. 2. The next one was inspired by Sara Sherlock’s tag, also on Day 17. Her coloring was so delicate & fine! I’m afraid mine is a poor imitation. I’ll be looking for some good tutorials on using watercolor pencils. 3. This last one was inspired by Tracey McNeely on Day 26. Her light bulbs were so cute and I loved the background. I didn’t have the same pattern/die as she did and I couldn’t hope to do the background right now, so I added some pine sprigs for interest instead. Thanks for stopping by! Sandy

The colors for the  SugarPea Designs Clear Stamps - Mix It Up Challenge #73 were all shades of brown & I had a leaf graphic that would look really nice using them, and some new Copic markers to try out, so I did some coloring. After coloring, I cut it with a stitched rectangle die. Next I cut a piece of bronze glitter cardstock and attached them both to a Kraft card base. I already had the sentiment strips & glued them on. Thanks for stopping by. Sandy

For the  MFT Color Challenge 154 , I wanted something seasonal, but the colors chosen weren’t traditional Christmas colors. However, Christmas ornaments come in all kinds of colors and I had found some beautiful layered ornament patterns on Etsy . So here it is: The ornament pattern had 5 layers, I used the 4 colors from the challenge and dark green. I cut them and the Merry Christmas on my Cricut. I glued all the ornament layers together and heat embossed the Merry Christmas in 2 layers of gold.  I had a leftover piece of watercolor cardstock that I had colored with green and brown Brushos. I ran it through my Cuttlebug with a Reverse Confetti Stitched Burst Cover Panel and trimmed it to size. I also cut dark green cardstock with a Papertrey Ink Fir Branches frame die.  I assembled everything on a green card base & added a red bow. Thanks for stopping by!

There were several challenges I was working on with this card: the  Creative Confetti: Let there be peace challenge, the Creative Confetti - Let it Snow! challenge, the MFT Stamps Wednesday Sketch Challenge - Sketch 517 , and the The House That Stamps Built - Anything Goes Challenge ~ N2520 . Personally, I’ve always found snow days peaceful - everything is shut down and the falling snow is quiet & pretty. The design I had for the Let It Snow logo also met the criteria of the MFT sketch as well. Here is the card I came up with: First, on some watercolor cardstock, I blended on a layer of Catherine Pooler Hot Tub. Next I sprayed it with a silver mica solution and added some Turquoise Brushos crystals. After swirling it around and mixing it all together, I left it to dry overnight and finished drying it with my heat gun. After using the embossing buddy, I stamped it with my Hero Arts Snowflakes Big Bold stamp using Versamark ink and embossed it using a mixture of white embossing...

For the  Simon Says: Food and/or Drink challenge , one of the examples had a candy cane , so I thought I’d use some too. I just got a pine tree frame die & it would be perfect for that. I could make it look like a tree with candy canes & an ornament. Here’s how it turned out: I used my Cricut to cut the candy canes, ornament, some extra pine sprigs, & the Merry Christmas. The frame was die cut, and I used a scrap of green print cardstock for the backing. I embossed the Merry Christmas in black, then put everything together on a green card base. Thanks for stopping by! Sandy

I typically make extras when I use Print Then Cut or cut odd pieces on my Cricut Maker, so I have them to use on future projects. So, when I saw the Creative Confetti: Just Color! challenge I went to my stash to find something to color. Next I saw the  MFT Color Challenge 153 and realized that they would be awesome colors to use in a bold floral design. There was one I had printed out a while back, so I grabbed it and my markers, and came up with this. After coloring it with alcohol markers,  I used some metallic color markers to add some accents. Next I attached it to a Kraft card base and glued on the Happy Birthday I had left from some die cutting I did last week. Lastly I added a few sequins to finish it off. Easy peasy! Thanks for stopping by! Sandy