Cozy Christmas...

I'm back again here and on the Mama Elephant blog today, for a closer look at the new Cozy Christmas dies and what you can do using them.

I think this Santa is so cute, and it's extra nice not having to cut out those arms!  I stamped, colored and die-cut Santa and his extra arms, and wanted to have him perch over the sentiment banner (from the new Tags a Lot die set.)

but he was too short.

womp, womp.

Here's what I did: i cut him in half. Complicated, right? ha.

Having sliced Santa above his belt, I was able to take my scissors and cut around his beard a bit, so that when I put the card together, his beard could overhand onto the sentiment banner.

Once I had everything stamped out (including the sentiment from Believe in Magic,) I adhered the focal rectangle to a starry clear card base. I think this is my first-ever acetate card base. Pretty nifty.

A length of candy-cane twine and some pretty sequins finished it off. That was that!  I hope you like what I made for you today, Visit the Mama Elephant store to see what else is new this month - click!

In other news.

I will be back tomorrow, and the day after that, and the day after that, and for the next 6 days in a row - because today marks the beginning of Lawn Fawn's September inspiration week!

Check out their big giveaway post here.

And, did you see the exclusive set lawn fawn designed for Simon Says Stamp's big Stamptember event? You can see it here.

THEN. I just want to show you this sneak of what I worked on all day yesterday:

My niece is turning 4 at the end of October and wants a mermaid party. You recognize some of the stamps: lawn fawn's critters in the sea and the frame from sweater weather. But what's that on the left? Oh yeah. I drew myself a mermaid. And she fits right into the lawn fawn scene with an ease that blew my socks off. I can't wait to keep making more decorations for this party. 

The more I play around in Illustrator, the more excited I get to create new images. I cannot wait for you to see what I have in store in October! Stay tuned!

♥.

Mama Elephant first look: believe in magic dies

Hi! I'm here with a pair of projects to show off the new Mama Elephant dies for Believe in Magic. I have loved this set since it was released last year, and now I love it even more! The dies will be available for purchase as of September 15th.

My first card features a snowglobe-santa-baby. hee. I love that he's wearing Christmas pjs, and a Santa hat (borrowed from Santa himself, from the Cozy Christmas set.) I stamped the little boy, masked him, and swirled a light blue ink all around. Keeping the mask on, I used white embossing paste and a snowfall stencil to create the snowglobe blizzard.

Once the inside of the snowglobe was all set, I grabbed some candy-cane striped patterned paper and used the globe's die to create an opening through which to peek my santa-baby.  On the back of the patterned paper, I taped down some clear packaging (ok, really just a piece of a ziploc sandwich bag. i'm so fancy.) and propped it all up onto a white card base.

The base of the snowglobe was adhered to the front of the card, as was the cozy greeting.

My second project uses the Believe in Magic stamp set and die set in a more straightforward way:

I love everything about this tag.  The night sky, the dark reindeer (that requires no cutting, thank you new dies) and the twinkle of stars overhead.

I colored the sky with dark blue and black copic markers, and then used the colorless blender to remove dots of color. I also used a white gel pen to add brighter dots of stars.



I stamped the reindeer in black and colored the die-cut outline to match the sky.  I then used a wink of stella glitter pen to make him stand out a bit more.  Before placing the reindeer onto the globe, I brushed on a thin layer of glossy accents.  It shines in real life!

I hope you like both of my projects today, and thank for stopping by!

♥.

sweet baby {rock chalk baby blog hop}

Welcome to our "rock chalk baby blog hop" - whatever that means... I know it's something to do with college sports, right? ha.  (This clueless Canadian obviously had nothing to do with naming the hop or creating the badge, hee hee.)  

You should have hopped over from Debbie's blog, but if you want to see a full list of participants, click over to JJ's blog.

The Gallery Idol girls (2012 edition) are hopping for a virtual baby shower in Erin's honor.

My waddling friend, your days of struggling to shave your legs and breathing heavily when you pick something up off the floor are almost at an end.

Soon, you will be looking into your sweet baby's face and wondering at the life that you have already loved for the last 9 months.  I'll never forget the excitement within our group, when you shared your amazing pregnancy news with us.  We're so happy to be able to celebrate you and your sweet boy:

I exclusively have Christmas crafting on the brain, and I figured that there have already been some frosty mornings here, so a little teddy-in-a-snowglobe might not be such a weird thing *wink* For the record, there is no snow in the globe - it's all stars and a moon.  I saw something similar at Hallmark once and it stuck with me.

I hope you like it, Erin!  Sending you hugs and prayers for a safe delivery (full of epidural numbness, ha) and a beautiful, healthy baby boy.

The next stop on this baby hop is Heather.

♥.

snow-globe shaker tag & tutorial

Hi peeps!

I finally had time to break into my new "believe in magic" set by Mama Elephant.  

I thought I'd create a step-by-step photo tutorial to show how I made the tag.... enjoy!