Happy New Year and a little love

First off I want to wish you all a Happy New Year. I hope it is a happy and healthy one for all of you. Even though this has not been one of my best years I am still grateful for my family and that we all made it through it. I am still hoping next yr will be better though.
Now for a little love. I got the idea for this card from Debbie Olson's blog. She made a card a lot like this one for Christmas and I really liked it. After I tried it the first time I decided to change it up a little bit by adding some more color because I thought the first one I made looked to plain. I had a hard time deciding which one I liked best after that so I asked the TJ ladies and after an overwhelming response the one with the added pink was the winner. A couple of people suggested I take away the large pink mat and just leave the pink behind the tree. I think I might try that too and maybe offer all three as a set. If you have not seen these before which one do you like best? The tree stamp I used is called Tree of Peace and is from Lasting Impressions With Panache The Love stamp is from The Angel Company I used my cuttlebug and a square nestabilities die to cut and emboss the tree image and to emboss the frame around it. You can see a tutorial for how that is done here. I also just ordered some Papertrey Stampers Select White cardstock to see if there is a difference in how it embosses. I have heard a lot of good things about this paper so I am really eager to try it.
That is about it from here for now but I will leave you with this. One of my New Years resolutions is to be better about using the stamping stuff I buy instead of just buying it. What's yours?

But I Need It............

That could be my motto when it comes to stamps too but this is what Hanna has to say on the card I made with her yesterday. I originally bought these stamps a few months ago from Kristi Ferro who is the creator of Hanna Stamps but did not have time to use them until now. I started with Lauren Meaders Saturday Sketch and used the cuttlebug smoosh technique from the October/November Technique Junkie newsletter for the background. I used my copic sketch markers to color her in and my nestabilities to cut and emboss the scalloped edge and cut the circle. If you have not checked out Laurens blog it is great and very inspiring. Something cool I learned from her blog is to use the nestability dies face down when you cut with them instead of face up. I ended up using the A plate then a B plate, card stock, die face down and another B plate on top. Doing it that way made made it a lot easier to get it through the cuttlebug and there was a lot less cracking too. I am also hoping by doing it this way from now on it will save me from going through so many B plates too.
Well that is about it for now. For those of you that celebrate Christmas. I hope you have a great one.

Venting

When I started stamping the first stamps I used in my work were from Close To My Heart and I really loved them. Unfortunately right after my husband created Cards By Terri for me as a place to sell my cards from I found out that I could not sell the cards I made with CTMH stamps that way because they did not have an angel policy that allowed that. I ended up leaving Close To My Heart over this and made sure that any stamps I used in my work in the future came from true angel companies after that, so this is what brings me to my rant.
I have been seeing a lot of cards made with Stamping Bella stamps on people's blogs lately and finally decided that I needed to get some too. Before I ordered the Bella's I made sure to look over their angel policy and saw that they had some restrictions that would not allow me to sell my cards the way I wanted. Because of that I emailed Emily, the creator of Stamping Bella, asking her if it was okay to sell my cards made with her stamps on my website and Etsy. Unfortunately, I got an email back from her this morning saying that she was not comfortable with that. When I asked her why she said that she said it was because end users could not put a copyright on cards made with her images on websites. I wrote her back and told her that I was more than willing to do that and if I did would she change her mind about this. Unfortunately, I have not heard back from her about this yet but am hoping that is because she is just busy and has not gotten to the email. I have been very upset about this in the meantime though. I cannot believe I am going through this again and just do not understand how people can have angel policies like that. I am not trying to take anything away from these people, I just want to use their stamps in my work and be free to sell what I create. What is so wrong with that??? I am really hoping that she will change her mind about this so I can use them how I want. In the meantime I have been emailing other companies who's stamps I already have about their angel policy to make sure they are okay with me using their stamps how I want. So far, I have gotten a lot of good responses and have added them to my list of stamps I use in my work, so that makes me feel better knowing there are still a lot of good stamping companies out there with true angel policies. I am hoping Stamping Bella will be one of those companies too. Thanks for listening if you are still reading this. I would love to hear your opinion about this too. I will let you know what happens. I am off to stamp and relax now.

Colorful Happy Holidays

This is my Holiday Card this year. I got the inspiration for it from Dave Brethauers book Card Design. I am not use to making cards this simple but I am actually very happy with it. The tree stamp is from The Angel Company. I colored the trees with my prismacolor pencils and blended with gamsol then added some shimmer chalks as well but it is hard to see in the scan. I also sewed the border with my mini Janome. I had a really hard time getting a good scan of this card because of all the white in it so I had to take a picture of it in front of a black background. I hope you can see it okay. Now I am free to work with other images that are not holiday related now.
Things here are still kind of crazy though. We have had two incidents in the neighborhood that were kind of scary. The first one happened a week ago Sunday when someone came knocking on our door at 11:00pm looking for help jumping his car. We did not go and help him but still ended up calling the police on him after he came back a second time. I never saw the police show up but when I called to see what happened they told me they found him and it was all legit but the following morning the car was towed by the police though. On top of that my neighbor called me yesterday morning to inform us there were 10 police cars on our block about 2am flashing lights around our house. None of us had any idea that had happened. When I went to check things out I discovered that our side gate and shed were open. Thank goodness our dogs did not get out. Turns out that it was the police that were in our yard looking for a guy that ran from them after they did a traffic stop on him. I am still mad that we were not notified and they left our gate open though. I just hope there will not be anymore incidents.
On a positive note I found out that Big Brother is coming back for a winter season in February. I can't wait for that!
Well that is about it from here for now. Have a good night.

Thomas Kinkade Christmas

This is one of my favorite Thomas Kinkade Images that I thought would make a perfect holiday card. I got it from Cornish Heritage Farms. This card is going down to my In-Laws down in Texas. I hope they like it. First I stamped the image on Matte Coated Cover,Utopia from Appleton Papers, 80#white. Gerri Johnic told me about it and I think it is fantastic. It produces the cleanest image I have ever seen. I got it from Marco's Paper and I can't say enough good things about them. They even sent me samples of it before I bought it. I don't know many places that do that. After I stamped the image I colored it with my Copic sketch markers. I also used my textile embossing folder in my cuttlebug on Bazzill Juneberry cardstock. I got the idea to use that embossing folder with this card because I saw Pat use it in one of her holiday card samples that she shared on her blog. I also got more inspiration for this card from Debbie Olson. She has a card similar to it on her blog too. Thanks for the inspiration ladies. I am hoping to come up with a few more holiday card designs this weekend. Hopefully I will be able to share them with you then too.

Menorah

This is the last night of Hanukkah and as promised here is a picture of our menorah lit with all eight candles. My menorah is not a traditional one but I love it though because I am a big Winnie The Pooh fan.
Emilia is a huge fan of the American Girl dolls and Julie and Ivy were her Hanukkah presents this year. She is very happy to have them. The only American girl doll she is missing now is Kaya but I am pretty sure she will be joining us next year.
I am still working on my Christmas cards but hope to have something to show you soon.

Thank you

Last week my was not a good week around here. We ended up in the doggie ER at 4:30 Thursday morning and my husband hurt his knee and ended up going to the ER early Wednesday morning too. Since I don't drive anymore his office manager offered to take him. I am eternally grateful to her for doing that so I made this card and a batch of cookies for her to thank her. Unfortunately the scan does not do it justice but the technique I used is the dry embossed watercolors technique which is in the current Technique Junkies Newsletter. I thought adding a cat would be a nice touch too since I know she loves cats. Cat stamp is from The Angel Company and I colored it with my Copic sketch markers. I also used my spellbinders nestabilities square diecuts too. I am hoping this week will be a lot better than the last one was.I hope you have a good week too.

Happy Hanukkah

Tonight is the first night of Hanukkah. It is really early this year but Emilia is very excited. She loves lighting the candles and eating gelt, which is chocolate candy wrapped in gold foil to make it look like coins. She also enjoys playing dreidel too. I will post a picture on the eighth night of Hanukkah of the menorah when all the candles are lit for you to see but in the meantime I thought I would share some Hanukkah cards I made with you all in the meantime. These cards were made with the metallic alcohol roll technique from the Oct/Nov Technique Junkies newsletter. I used denim and mushroom alcohol inks and silver metallic mixatives. The images are a retired set from The Angel Company and were colored with my Copic sketch markers and Copic spica glitter pens to give them some sparkle. I also sewed the borders using the blanket stitch on my machine. This was the first time I sewed on a card. I was having a lot of problems getting the edges to match up but I think I finally got them to look okay. If anyone has any tips for sewing on cards let me know. Thanks for stopping by and have a great day!