I hope everyone had a fabulous Christmas. It is so hard to believe that after weeks and months of preparation it is all over. I have a few project to share. I made these before Christmas but never got to posting them. I did some other cards (including one done with the new Valentine's Day bundle), but forgot to take photos before I packaged them up and gave them away.

I picked up this frosted glass candleholder at Dollarama and simply used a Stampin Up rubon. Voila - instant gift! Note - the candleholder is not as dark as this looks.




These are ornaments I picked up at Michael's (they were on sale for only $0.68 each). I embellished them with some of the chocolate brown rubons. I intended to use them as little gifts, but I was not able to part with them - maybe they will get tucked away for next year (or maybe not).

I saw these little chocolate boxes on a blog one night - marked down the address, but cannot remember where I put it. The little boxes are each made from two of the scalloped envelopes cut out with the exclusive stampin up die. The little boxes each hold 2 Ghiradellie chocolate squares - too cute! I cut them from Baha Breeze textured card stock and decorated them with a little bit of DSP from the Ski Slope pack, some of the Baha Breeze striped ribbon and some snow flurries.

If you have not seen these little reindeer, you must go to Angie Juda's site - click here to see her video and follow her directions. These are just adorable and only take a few minutes to put together.

I picked up some composition books and this is my first attempt at altering one. I used Soft Sky cardstock, DSP, ribbon and ink. It is pretty plain - I may have to do a little more, but right now can't think of what. I also put some matching DSP in the barrel of the pen. Not too bad for a first attempt!

Bye for now. Thanks for stopping by.

Marjorie

Can you believe that in just two short weeks it will be boxing day! Where has the time gone?

I still have a few gifts to buy and baking to do. I have not baked one single cookie, tart or tourtiere as of today. When I was working full time I always had all the shopping done and gifts wrapped long before this. The baking was always done by the end of November. Not sure what I am doing with my time (well stamping does take up a lot of my time).

I tried out the stained glass techinique to make this gift card holder. I stamped the image on vellum cardstock, embossed it and then coloured in the back with my SU markers. I used my nestabilities to cut out the circles and the white gel pen to make the dots. It is amazing that it only took a few minutes to complete.

Stamp Set - Cardinal Christmas

CS - Riding Hood Red, Basic, Black, Whisper White (placed behind vellum) and vellum.

I even stamped and coloured the envelope!

I tried stamping on mirror tiles this week as well (I had never done that before) and stamping on candles. I had done that before and given the candles away as gifts. Those candles sat on a tumbled tile that had been decorated to match.

This photo is not the greatest, but here it is anyway.

Stamp Set - Snow Swirled

Ink - Not Quite Navy (for the candle); white StazOn for the mirror tile

Again, it did not take very long, but they are beautiful. I am going to a dinner party on Wednesday, so one of these sets will make a perfect hostess gift!

I got the mirror tiles at Dollarama and the candles were in packages of 3 at Michael's.

That is it for today!

Marjorie

Not much has been happening - we finally got all our Christmas cards into their envelopes so they are addressed, stamped and ready to go to the post office. We are trying to get our Christmas shopping done and it is proving to be a little more difficult than I had imagined. On Christmas Day my parents are taking us out to brunch - we will be a total of 11. After brunch we are going to do a little gift exchange, but this year with a twist. Previously we each had to bring one gift each (so the girls would bring a gift appropriate for a lady and the guys would bring one appropriate for a man). We would then do a 'chinese auction'.


This year we are bringing an inexpensive gift for each person who will be there. So basically 10 gifts. Trying to find appropriate, nice gifts in the designated price range is driving me crazy. To further complicate it I volunteered to do the shopping for all the people in my immediate family (husband, two sons and one son's friend). Not sure I will do that again. I was able to do most of the gifts for the ladies while I was in Syracuse a couple of weeks ago. The gifts from me will be handmade, but I can't say what in case they check my blog. Yesterday I was able to get all the gifts for my dad and brother in law. Almost done!

We have a couple of birthdays this week - in fact today is my niece Roxanne's 13th birthday. My dad's birthday is on the 12th. Of course with all the cards and card fronts I have on hand, I was not able to choose one that I wanted to use, so I have spent the morning doing some cards.

I decided to try a popup card for Roxanne. It turned out not too bad - not sure this would be a project that I would do again.



Recipe:
Stamp Set: Crazy for Cupcakes
Paper: Pink Pirouette, Chocolate Chip, Whisper White, Pretty in Pink, Creamy Caramel and Sweet Always DSP
Ink: Chocolate Chip
Other: Ribbon (nonSU); Grommet

For my dad's card I decided to try the brayered sky technique that Michelle Zindorf does so beautifully. I ended up not using the brayer, but used my sponge daubers. I am quite pleased with my results and will definitely try this technique again.

Recipe:

Stamp Set: Lovely as a Tree (is this not the best set!); Upsy Daisy for the sentiment

Paper: Basic Black, Riding Hood Red, Glossy CS

Ink: More Mustard, Pumpkin Pie, Really Rust, Riding Hood Red, Basic Black

Thanks for stopping by

Marjorie

While shopping in Syracuse a few weeks ago, I picked up some Holiday M&M's. The candies are red, green and white and are mint flavoured. I knew I wanted to package them somehow to give as little friendship gifts to some of the people at my office and for my husband to give to some of the other volunteers at the Heart Institute. When I was at Michael's yesterday I was just browsing and I found a package of 20 clear boxes that are intended as wedding favours. They were on sale for $14.99 so I picked up a package (I am going to have to go back and get more!). I hope I can find some of the M&M's here in Ottawa because I am going to need more of those as well!

I filled each box with some of the candies, taped it closed and then decorated them with SU's Real Red grosgrain ribbon. To that I tied a little medallion with silver cording. The image on the medallion is from the Holiday Trinkets stamp set. It was stamped on Whisper White using Real Red ink. I punched that out with my 1 1/4 inch circle punch and mounted that onto a 1 3/8 circle punched from garden green. The whole was then adhered to a real red scalloped circle. I finished it by adding little dots in each scallop with my signo gel pen.