Bare Trees Christmas Card

The current weekly challenge over at Card Swaps on the CardMakers site is being hosted by Ana and she asked that we add glitter to our creations.

I am also entering this into this week's challenge over at Paper Sundaes Challenge Blog. The challenge is Winter Wonderland.

I was inspired to dig out my brass stencils and rediscover them when I made my card in my last post for the Autumn Blessings blog hop. So for this challenge I pulled out one of my all time favorite brass stencils by Dreamweavers designed by Lynelle Harlow. Her brass stencils are my favorite. This one is called Bare Trees.

I started by dry embossing the image then I stenciled it using Colorbox pigment inks. I then added glitter to the snow part of my image which succeeded in me getting glitter everywhere....my face, hands and clothing. It was even in my hair! The cardinal is a clip art image I found online and printed out.

Stores have their decorations up and the sales have begun. Many people have put up their Christmas trees this weekend. My son commutes to the city (Chicago) for school and he came home the other day and told me that Michigan Ave, was all lit up and looking festive. He said as he walked down the street to the train , the song Silver Bells was playing and people were ice skating at Millennium Park. The magic of the season has begun!

Now to get all my Christmas cards made...addressed and mailed!

Autumn Blessings Blog Hop

Welcome!

You are on the Autumn Blessings Blog Hop. You should have reached here from Angelina's blog. If not you will want to go back and start at the beginning with Lora's blog. You won't want to miss any of the creations that all the talented hosts of each stop has created for the blog hop. The hop goes along with the Autumn Blessings Crop over at CardSwaps. The crop is from November 16 - 19th. You have until November 22 to post your creations to the challenge threads and be entered into the drawings for prizes. Continue along the hop and at the end you will find a link to the crop at CardSwaps where I hope you will join us for fun, inspiration and prizes!

The theme for our blog hop is, "I have been blessed". While I have been blessed with many things in my life, I wanted to focus this post on certain family members in my life. Which is also the theme for my card. I have many family members who have served in the military. Great grandfathers, grandfather, my father, uncles, cousins, stepchildren and step grand children. All who have sacrificed to honor and protect our country. I have one particular cousin whom I am very close to that has made the military his life long career. In doing so he has had to make some sacrifices which include leaving his family every time he is deployed. Just recently he was deployed to Iraq shortly after the birth of his daughter resulting in him missing her first year of life and her first birthday. He is home this year for Thanksgiving and will be spending it with his family for which I am grateful.

I wanted to make a card to send to my cousin to let him know how grateful I am for all he does for our country and to let him know how blessed I am to have him in my family. So my project for this hop is a thank you card I made for him. I kept it clean and simple keeping in mind that it is going to a guy....so no flowers, pearls and other girlie embellishments. I knew I wanted an eagle on my card but alas I had no rubber stamp of an eagle. I started to search online for a digi image when I thought of something even better! An original piece of art drawn by my stepson. I was so pleased to use his drawing for my card. He also served in the military for 6 years. I then took two different brass stencils to stencil the stars around the eagle and to dry emboss on the card base. The ink I used is by Colorbox and I used a Krylon Gold Leafing pen for the fine thin line of gold. My sentiment on the inside of the card is computer generated. Using some of the same paper I used on the inside of the card I lined my envelope to coordinate with my card.

I feel blessed to live in this country. I am very grateful to all the men and women in our military who protect, serve and defend our country. Thank you to each and everyone of them.

Your next stop along the hop is Tina. You won't want to miss her post or the rest of the hop! So hop along and should you get lost, here is a list of the entire hop in order. When you are through hoping be sure to join us for the online crop over at CardSwaps on the CardMaker site!

Lora
Meredith
Judy L
Golda
Ana
Tracie
Angelina
SusieQ (you are here)
Tina
Teresa
Ivanka
Jane

Moos!

Hello my crafty friends! It's been a couple of weeks since I posted last. Also behind on posting my weekly recipe pages :( With the holidays fast approaching it may be awhile before I get caught up and back to posting on a regular basis.

Today though I would like to share some "Moos" with you. What's a moo you ask? A moo is a piece of art that measures 1 1/8" x 2 3/4"...half the size of a business card. Just like the ATCs, they were made popular by artists who would create small pieces of art and then supply their contact info on the back to give out to people. I'm currently hosting a swap for moos over on the Card Swaps forum on the CardMakers Magazine site. The first one above is a clothesline with clothing folded origami style. Below are balloons I punched out and then added glitter to them.This next one is a Christmas ornament. I used metallic cardstock in green and red for this one but it was very hard to get a good picture without a glare.





Next up is a moo made from clear acetate. Also very hard to get a good picture of. This one is reversible with the same design on front and back.

The last one is a flower that I colored with markers directly to the rubber stamp then stamped and did some distressing.


Want to try making your own moos? Check out this fun blog for inspiration HERE. It was once an active challenge blog for moos but no longer is active. The site is still up for you to view the moos and get tons of inspiration.

I'll be back on Wednesday with a post as one of the stops on the Autumn Blessings Blog Hop for Card Swaps / CardMaker Magazine site. The online crop also starts that day. Hope you will join in for fun and inspiration. You can check out the details HERE.

Thanks for stopping by!