Lily and Billy Luv Bug - Texas Style! A Card for Madelynn's Sketch Challenge, and our Pink Cat Group on PCP Challenge #3

Howdy Partner!!!!

It's Time for some Luv

Lily and Billy Style!!!

Did I say I was going to get 2 cards done today????

Well I did get 1 done, but not until the Kiddo's were all in bed for the night! I just ended up playing with them all day and doing some House Work as well!!! Today was my last day with them during Christmas break, because tomorrow I am taking them to Salina Ks so Aunt Karla can take them to Beloit Kansas to meet Grandma Schlatter and pick up their cousins Karla's boys. They will then go home with Grandma to the farm, so they can stay with her for a few days before Christmas Break is over!

Break has gone by so fast because we started out with sick kids and then we had Christmas, and then we went to the Farm to Celebrate with Marvin's family, and now they will be gone until Sunday and Monday back to school!!! I am kind of sad because it has been nice having them all home to play with, and it has been nice not having to get up before 7 every morning to get Piper ready to head off to 1st grade!!!

So I wanted to play along in Madelynn's Twinkling Tuesday Sketch Challenge again this week. I know I know I only got last weeks sketch done yesterday, but I did not find the challenge until yesterday!!! You can head over to the Whimsical Butterfly Blog to check out Madelynn's Sketch and her Mommy's very talented creations as well!

Here is Madelynn's Sketch for this week:

Oh I had to add this very cute graphic on Jessica's blog so you could see Madelynn's Twinkling DT, No I am not a member as the graphic says I just wanted you to see the cute graphic and check out Madelynn's Amazing Team of Stampers she has chosen!!! 3 of them are blogs that I already follow as often as I can mostly daily!!! Jami and Janna are friends, and Danni started the Flutter By Wednesday Featured Stamper Team I get to be part of starting next week!!! Yea!!!!

I also wanted to get the current Challenge over at the Pink Cat Studio (PCP group I started a couple of months ago) done. Carolyn Bounds issued this super cute Challenge before Christmas to make a Valentine/Love themed Pink Cat Studio project for her challenge. I have not been able to play along yet, but today I really wanted to get it done, so I combined both of these challenges into one! It was fun to do!

I love the Sentiment on this stamp and I added by hand the I Heart U part of the Sentiment. I die cut the Pink Scalloped square using the smallest scallop square from the Nesties set. I used the Scallop Square Nesties and my Big shot to cut and emboss it. I matted it onto the same blue of the card back, and then distressed the edges with a Kitchen Knife! (I gotta get me one of those Cutter/Distressed kits from SU next time I order, but the Kitchen Knife does work O.K.!) I stuck with the Brown Pink and Blue theme of the card for the Sentiment. You know me and Brown so it was hard to use that for this card!!!! LOL!!!

Here is the full Card. I used the Cowboy Billy from Billy Plate #1 Stamp Set. I stamped and colored Cowboy Billy twice. I colored him in blue and brown on the first image and then Pink and brown the second image. I then cut the hat off his head, and his head off the rest of his body. I then stamped Lily's Head cut it off her body colored it, cut the pony tails off her head, and then glued her head on top of Billy's Pink and Brown body and then added the Pink Hat on her head, and then added the Pony Tails I had cut off her head back on the bottom or her hat instead of having them invisible under her hat where they would normally be.

I have seen several people change Cowboy Billy into Cow Girl Lilly and I have been dying to give it a try too!!!! So I can not take total credit for this idea I cased it!!! I have seen Janna Hull add braids to Billy to make him a girl, another color Billy's head and add the Pony tails to Billy's head, and another use Lily's head and add the pony tails like I chose to do. They are all cute idea's!!!! I think Janna was the first to try it though!!! One detail I was disappointed did not show up in the pictures was I took two different blue copics and criss crossed them to make the blue rope on Billy's Lasso it took a lot of criss crossing and that detail is not visible!!!! :-(

Here are Lily and Billy as Cow folk together. For some reason my flash kind of washed out Billy's Skin Coloring some. He is really about the same complexion as Lily is.

I used these Copics to Color the Images:

B00, B02, B05, for Billys Blue's

Rv00, RV02, RV08 for Lily's Pink's

E 00, E51, E 91, and R02 for the Skin Colors that is Milky White, Pinkish White, Skin White, and Flesh Pink.

Y00, Y02, Y04, and Y08 for Lily's Hair

and Sand Sepia and E04 for the Browns.

Lastly I colored the Belt Buckles and the Boot Spur's using C7

Here you can see the Sentiment, the Hemp Twine, and the Button Embellies I added to fit the Sketch. I know the Sentiment part was not in the Sketch, but this particular card did not look right without a Sentiment, I did not think.

I am disappointed you can not see it, but I cuttle bug embossed the entire Denim DSP with the Paisley Cuttle Bug Folder. It looks really Westerny (not a real word LOL) with the embossing on it!

Here is a Close Up of Cow Girl Lily is she not the cutest???? I love her. I added some Pink Checkered DSP die cut and embossed using my Big Shot and the 2nd largest Scallop Square Nestie. I thought the Pink DSP went with the Western Theme, and added to the Luv Bug theme of the Card!

Here is Billy all Duded Up!!!! I have never stamped this image before, but I love it now!!!! My girls play with my childhood stick horse all the time, so they love this stamp!!!! I used a patterned Brown Checked DSP and again cut with the big shot and scallop square nestie like I did with Lily. I thought they looked best diagonal on the square it seemed more Luv Buggy to me!!!!

Here is a final view of the card. If you look really close to the lower right of the Sentiment you can make out some of the Paisley pattern from the Cuttle Bug embossing folder. Also above the buttons to the upper left you can see some paisley again.

I hope you enjoy this Card it was so much fun to make and I think it works well for both Challenges!!!! Head on over to the Whimsical Butterfly Blog to see what all the Twinkling Tuesdays DT did with Madelynn's cute Sketch, and check out our Pink Cat Studio Group as well! If you like the Kitty you should join our group we have had lots of fun getting to know everyone, and it is fun doing the Bi - Monthly Challenges, and in a few days there will be a fun surprise for the new challenge issued by Melissa Owner and Designer of Pink Cat Studio!!!

I may or may not get any stamping time tomorrow with all the trips and needing to head up to work to do those in service hours and such!!! I hope you have a Wonderful New Years Eve!!!

Let me know if you like the Card!!!!

Heather

In the Land of Fairytales and Dreams - A New Years Card

May Your Dreams Come True, and Your Dragons be Few!!!

Good Morning!

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I got two cards made yesterday can you believe it??? My goal is to get two done today too, but I have got to get working on it, because tonight after Hubby gets home I have to head up to the Hospital I kind of sorta work at!

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Well I am a call in or PRN RN on Labor and Delivery there, but with no baby sitter I do not work much anymore, let me rephrase that I work hard everyday just not outside the home much anymore!! I just do not feel like going in at 7pm after Marvin gets home, when I have been home with the kiddo's all day I love being home with my Kiddo's, and would not give it up for the world, but by 7pm I feel like I have put in a long day's work already!!! So after we no longer had a baby sitter in June I pretty much have been unable to work much well work outside the home that is!. Anyway I have to get some computer in service hours done if I want to keep my job and they have to be done by tomorrow so I am going to get them done even though I am unsure if I will be keeping the "job" or not. I am only a call in, and I have to take at least 6 four hour on call shifts each 6 weeks, but I have not been called in at all lately!

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So I made this card last night. I thought the sentiment lended well to a New Year's Card!!! I actually made this one for my DD 4 year old Willow. I simply had to make her a card since I made Piper one yesterday! With two DD 6 and 4 they are always wanting to stamp with Mommy and wanting Mommy to make them cards!!! Tucker is just now 1 and 1/2, so he does not really require me to make him cards yet. Which is a good thing since if I did make him one it would most likely be destroyed within minutes of giving it to him

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Well I have really been neglecting my 200 plus SU Sets (remember I am an SU Demo so most of those sets I bought with my SU earnings!!!! LOL)

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I received this set last month remember that Garage Sale that the SU Demo was selling hundreds of sets and accessories et... et... Well when the Garage Sale was over she brought me all the rest of her stuff to get rid of for her. Well, in the box she brought that she forgot to take to the Garage Sale was this set Dragons and Dreams. I had been wanting this set forever as it was an Anniversary Set SU put out about 10 years ago, but it is hard to find, and very expensive when you do find it. She had it in the box marked for $15 and I snapped it right up with total excitement and very glad she forgot to bring that box to the Garage Sale!!!

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So I created this Castle and Fairytale Scene with the Stamps I only used part of them that set has a lot of stamps! I thought it turned out pretty cute when I was done. You'll have to let me know what you think!!!

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I colored the Stamps in using my Copics, then I cut them all out with my SU Scissors and I Cuttled the Card Back with an embossing folder I have to look at which one it is later. I started adding the scene to a piece of Cool Caribbean SU Card Stock that I cut and embossed with the Scalloped Rectangle Nestibilitie. I popped out the Castle, Dragon, Horse, and one set of Clouds using excess rubber from my stamps that have been cut out. I just glued the Princess and the Knight right onto the CS with Liquid Glue. I took this picture from the side view so you can see all the popped out parts of the Scene.

I colored Images in using these Copics:

Dragon and Trees - G14, G17, G03, C2, C7

Castle - C1, C2, C5, C7, BV00, BV02, BV08, RV00, RV04, Y00, Y02, Y08, YR02

Horse - C2, Y00, Yo6, RV04, G14, BV08

Princess - BV00, BV02, BV03

Knight - B00, B02, B05, C1, C7, Black 100

Clouds - B00

Skin, E00, E09, R00

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For the Sentiment I stamped in black Memento Ink, and then cut out with the smallest of the scalloped rectangle nesties, and then matted twice with the two other CS colors. Passion Pink, and Pretty in Pink. All the stamps were stamped and colored on SU Whisper White CS. All Stamps and CS are SU Markers are Copics, and I used a Cuttle Bug Embossing Folder and Scallop Rectangle Nesties all cut and embossed with my SU Big Shot.

Here is a picture of just the Fairytale Scene. I love that Dragon and Castle!!!

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Well I better go get working on Madelynn's Twinkling Tuesday Sketch!!! I promised the girls they could stamp too!!!

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I hope you enjoy this Fairytale Card, and I hope you are having a Stampendous Day!!!

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Heather

Some Swap's from our Annual Stampin Up Stampers Club Swap, and Some RAK's to share

Hello how are you today???,

I had a good day got to do some Stamping which was much needed after not getting to stamp much lately, I got to play with my new Copic Markers, and I got some cleaning and Laundry (uggghhh) done too.

I have received my very first RAK's (Random Acts of Kindness) this last week, and I wanted to share a few of the Homemade Christmas Cards that we got, along with some of the Swap Projects we did at Stamper's Club in December too. So I have quite a few samples to share with you today!!!!

First for the Swap Projects:

Here is the Project DeAnna Marshall made for Stampers Club Swap. I just love the colors she picked and that stamp is one of those teeny tiny stamps that comes like 20 little square stamps in a set at Hobby Lobby, then we just re-colored, and re-stamped it in each of the colors. Lastly we drew in the Christmas Lights string and then stamped the Celebrate Sentiment witch is from SU Wonderful Words set.

Next is one of the Projects Dana Brooks brought for us to do, but I can not find the other really cute chocolate piece holder she had us make also. This Card has Embossing on the bottom of the card back with a swirls wheel, and clear embossing powder so it is really shinny. I love the yummy ribbon she used and that is some of the ribbon we got in our ribbon swap we also do that time of year. We used her Creative Memories Circle cutter to cut the circle of the Tree stamp.

Last is the Card DeAnna's Mom made. Joyce has had a couple of strokes but she loves to stamp and create and she makes the cutest things for us!!! She has no use of her left hand so her creations are that much more special to me!!!! This card is a spinner card the snowflake spins in circles across the card. It was very cute in person!

I love Joyce's Card and the fact that she loves to stamp with only the use of one Arm just totally tickles me pink!!! She is the most fun lady to be around, and I totally enjoy her company!!! There were 2 more swap Projects Dana's Chocolate Holder, and Tasha's Decorative Sour Cream Pouch, but I can not find Dana's to photograph, and I was unable to do Tasha's because I was completing 2 of each project as Joyce had a bad tooth infection, and could not come, we wanted her to still get her projects!

Here are some Beautiful Homemade Christmas Cards and RAK's I received so far.

The first one is from my good friend and Down line Emily. She made over 50 of these in one setting! Can you believe that? I wish I could get that many cards done that quickly!!!

This one is from my good Friend Wendy who I do not get to talk to enough anymore!!! Wendy moved away to Indiana when I was pregnant with Willow and I miss her dearly!!!! I got to go to Chicago a couple of years ago to go to her Bachelorette Party with another good friend of ours Rita, and then I went back a couple of weeks later with my Hubby to be a bridesmaid in the wedding. Wendy had her first baby at the end of August (he was not due until October!!!) This picture is of her son Mathew. Wendy is the person that got me into Stamping and Scrap booking close to 10 years ago now! She drug me along to classes in Wichita about an hour away and I quickly fell in love!!!!

Next is a Christmas Card I got from my Friend Jami Bova over at Stamp Happy Blog. I love Jami's work and I told her I will be keeping this card to show people some day when she is Mega Famous and I can say see I have a Jami Bova Original from her first year of stamping!!!! There are so many cute elements in this card!!!! I love the distressed edges on the circle which would not be easy to do on a circle, and I love the way she layered without really layering to much it is soooooo cute!!!!

I love the way Jami uses this Corner decorative Punch I need to find out where to get this punch she uses it alot and I love it every time!!!

Janna Hull from Stamp's Paper, and Glitter Oh My Blog, gave me this next one it is just way to cute!!! I can not believe the talent this girl has, and I love her paper piecing she did this awesome paper piecing it is like reverse paper piecing and I am not sure I can even explain it very well, but she cut out the layer with the skirt and actually put it on top of the layer where the legs were stamped and colored it looks Mega Cute in person!!!! I was hoping when I saw this card on her blog that I would get to have this beautiful card. (she said she was mailing it out to a blogging friend and I hoped it was me!!!!

Danni from Danni's Dreams blog sent me this Beautiful Card Yesterday it was the card that won the Etsy Challenge over at Hearts and Hugs last week so I have a prize winning card in my possession and I love it!!! I love the stickles she used on the Rose! This card is very stunning in person!!!

I got this Thank You from my other SU Downline/good friend/Next Door Neighbor/Dazzling Fellow Dazzling Diamonds Design Team Member, Tasha. It looks like she cut out all of the flowers from different Paper's, but it is actually a very Clever DSP believe it or not! It is a very cute card and I love what she wrote inside!!!

I recieved this card from my SU Up Line Dianna Pederson. She makes the Simply Scrappin 60's kits and holds workshops every year for them where you get 1 pack of Simply Scrappin 60's and 1 pack of SU Whisper White CS (this year she replaced the WW CS with Kraft CS) and it makes between 60 and 80 cards depending on how you use the paper! This is one of her Christmas Designs for this year. She did a very good job on it!!!

We got this Christmas Card from Marvin's Parents. I shared it on here once before when I helped her design them at the beggining of December. I think she did a great job on them, and I have already recieved several compliments from others on her card!!!! I love how it showcases all the grand children!!!! The 8 cousins sure had fun playing together this weekend at Grandma and Poppy's house for Christmas!!!! with 8 kids 6 and under and 7 of them 4 and under it is quite the loud house while they are all playing!!!

Above is the Picture Book Mark part of the Card in it's Pocket, and Below is the Picture Book Mark part of the Card beside the pocket. She put a Lable on the back with who is who and where in the picture.

This Christmas Card we got from Marvin's Cousin. She always sends us the cutest SU Stampations and creations for Christmas Cards. Inside it opens like a book with their Christmas letter written in book form with pictures of their kiddo's it is super cute!!!!

Above is the Front, and Below is the inside showing how they make their Christmas Letters into book form to fit into their Cards. This is this Years card. Next I have pictures of last years card as well.

I had to add her card from last year too! I think I am going to have to case her idea of making the letter into a book inside of the card next year!!! I love this idea!!!

Above is the Front of Last Year's Card and below is the inside of last years card.

Last, but not least we received this cute card from a wife of one of Marvin's old friends. We got married 3 weeks apart and we each were at the other's wedding. She sends homemade cards every year at Christmas time. The picture is of their 3 boys Proffit, Frank, and Sam.

Well those are all my Samples to share tonight. I really am so blessed to be the recipient of such lovely works of art!!!!! Thank you to all who sent them, and especially thank you to Jami, Danni, and Janna I really treasure having met you and your friendships mean the world to me!!!! Janna I am so blessed to have gotten the pleasure of getting to know you on a non blogging level and I really enjoyed it!!!! Jami I love all your comments you leave me even though I do not have a 10th of your talent, and Danni I am so excited to get to be part of your Flutter By Wednesdays Featured Stamping Team!!!!

I hope everyone had a Wonderful Monday and hope you also have a Stampendous Tuesday too!!!

Heather

A Card for my 6 year old DD the Artist - A Sara Kay Stampation

"For My Sweet Little Artist Piper Girl"

Hello Everyone!!!!,

Well the Christmas Hustle and Bustle is finally over and I had some time to stamp. I actually made this card to go with my Dear Daughter Piper's Christmas gift. Piper so badly wanted some Piper Stamps since Willow was getting Whiff of Joy Willow stamps for Christmas. I searched, but never found any, so I bought some very cute Sara Kay Margoux images and under the title Sara Kay I added in pretty writing Piper the Artist, Piper helping Little Sister, and Piper playing with her Dolly to the stamps. Piper is still young enough at 6 she did not know that these were not really Piper stamps so she was totally thrilled to get her first "Piper" stamps!!!!! She is sooooo excited to use them, and I stamped some up today for her to color.!

Above you can see the full Card. I just had to use this wonderful new Sketch I have found from reading 3 of my favorite blogs Jami from Stamp Happy, Janna from Stamps Paper and Glitter Oh My!, and Danni from Danni's Dreams, who all happen to be on the Design Team for this new Sketch Challenge. The Challenge is Madelynn's Twinkling Tuesdays Sketch Challenge. Madelynn is a little girl believe it our not!!! Her very talented Mommy is the Whimsical Butterfly Blogger who I just recently found. Anyway, since this card is for my "Little Artist Piper" it seemed only fitting to honor another little Artist in the process as well!!! I know Piper will be thrilled when I show her Madelynn's Sketch Challenge!!! So here is the Sketch Madelynn created for us all to get creative with!!!

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Madelynn's Sketch

For a young girl she does some pretty awesome sketches don't you think??? This Sketch was so pretty and involved it made me immediately think of Purple for some reason. Which was funny because before I even went to Madelynn's Mommies blog to see the sketches all the DT girls came up with I choose Purple, then after making my card and going to the blog I see one of the DT girls used all Purple too!!! How Fun!!!

Here is a close up view of Piper's new stamp "Piper the Artist" from Sara Kay. I colored in the image using my Copic Markers. I just got my very first order of Copics for Christmas, in the mail yesterday and today so this is my first Copic Creation!!! Yea!!!!

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I used these Copics for Coloring:

Jeans - B00, B02, B05

Hair - Y00, Yo2, Y06, Y08

Cap and Paint Shirt - BV00, BV 02, BV 08

Skin - E00, R00, E95

Easel - E31, E35, E37

Paint Jars - R39, YR07, G17, Bo5

Bear Drawing - RVoo, RV04, RV09

I also used C1, C3, C5 and Black 100 in various parts of the coloring.

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For the Sentiment I had wrote what I wanted with my Elegant Egg Plant SU Marker, then I punched it out with the Small Oval, and Lg. Oval SU Punches.

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Here is a close up of the stamped image. I also added some cute Butterfly eyelets to the edges of the larger Label #1 nestibilities die cut, I added a bright metallic Butterfly eyelet to two corners and another flat purple color butterfly eyelet to the other two corners. I then got into my Embellishment tins and found these cute white and purple flowers to add to the smaller Label #1 nestie layer.

I got into my Textured CS Papers and picked out 3 different shades of Mono Chromatic Purples and then picked out a Purple Polka Dot DSP to go along with it. I die cut the Polka Dot DSP with the largest Scallop Rectangle Nestie Die, and my Big Shot. The other 2 dies are using the Label #1 largest and next largest nestie dies.

For the Cris Cross part I choose a really pretty lavender wired edge Sheer shimmery Organza Ribbon. For the middle line across the Cris Cross image I choose a dark purple gross grain ribbon with Polka Dots in it to go along with the Polka dotted shirt on the image, and the Polka Dotted DSP.

I put it all together and I used glue dots to put the ribbon on, then I popped up the Polka Dot layer with excess rubber from my stamps, I then glued on the first Label #1 layer with liquid glue, then I popped ou the 2nd Label #1 layer with excess rubber again, and lastly I popped up the artist image with SU Stampin Dimensionals. I also painted Royal Purple and Lilac Lace shimmerz on the purple parts of the image so they are really shimmery and shiny looking, but you do not really see that in these images.

Piper loved this card and asked me to make 2 more one for her little sister Willow and one for her best friend Grace next door. Well I will have to think about that one!!!!! LOL.

I hope you get a chance to check out Madelynn's Sketch Challenge, and I hope you enjoyed my Card for Piper, and my take on Madelynn's Sketch as well!!!! I just love that these little girls are falling in love with Stamping just like their Mommy's are!!!! It is a major plus because it gives us things to work on together and get to spend creative time together as well!!!!

Well here is a different view of the whole card, and now I must be going to go start laundry and clean up from the Christmas traveling we just got back from last night!!!! I just had to take a few minutes to play with my Copics for the first time though!!!! LOL!

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Have a Stampendous Day!!!

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Heather

Christmas Pictures - Our Kids - About our Day and Traditions we got to do!!!!

Well this post is not working out for me at all, and I do not have a lot of time, so the pictures are all wacko, and have no writing after them, so I am trying to add all the captions to what the pictures are showing you here. Below the pictures I have the first part of the e-mail I wrote about our Christmas Day, and other info. Sorry about this mess!!! I have got to go, and do not have time to proof read this so I hope it all make lots of sense to you!! I hope you all had great Christmas's!!!

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I have not gotten the Birthday Cake Pictures edited or the ones from the kids Christmas Programs done, so I will have to add those when I get back in town!!!

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In the Pictures you will see the kids opening their Santa gifts, and some of our gifts, Tucker carrying around his ever needed totally attached to (not something we tried to foster he just fell in love with it, and will not be without it, if I leave it in his crib he will go get it, and he looks all over for it when he can not see it in a room!!!!) He is pretty cute with it, but he did not get attached to it until he was over a year old. It is a huge comfort for him and he just totally adores it!!!!

Piper and Willow opening the presents they got from Grandma Paula snow boots and snow pants. Our snow is gone now, but for a long time they have wanted snow gear to play in the snow with. For this sake I hope we get another good snow soon, but for the rest of our sakes I would be fine with no more snow!!!!

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The girls making their own Lip Balm and the containers. I did not get any pictures of them playing with that doll you feed, and it potty's and poops, they played for hours with her today!!! They love changing her diapers, and putting her on the potty chair!!! We told them for weeks we have a real baby that poops and pees (Tucker) but he was just not good enough!!!! ha ha)

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The pictures where Willow is so super excited were the pictures of her getting her Fish Tank!!!

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One of our Christmas Traditions is to give the kids 3 gifts signifying the 3 gifts Baby Jesus got, Gold Frankincense and Me er from the Wise Men. (Sorry I know those are spelled wrong, and spell check is not correcting them!) They also get 1 gift from Santa. This morning the kids all picked their Santa gift to open first.

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Piper- All she kept asking for was a baby that can pee yes as in potty! We found this one, you can feed it, take care of it, it talks to you and says lots of different things, it has a Potty chair and tells you when it needs to go Potty and if you do not take it, it has an accident. So that is what Santa brought her.

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Piper's 3 gifts from us were A book of supplies to make very fashionable paper doll fashions and accessories for Paper Dolls. Piper stamps, well they are Actually Sarah Kaye -Marqo (little girl with Holly Hobby type clothes doing little girl things. We go her painting on an Easel, Feeding her dolly in a high chair, and helping her little sister put her bonnet on). Any way I took the stamps and added below the Sarah Kaye sentiment - Piper helping Little Sister, Piper feeding Doll, and Piper the Artist. Piper wanted Piper stamps sooooooo bad, and I could not find any so we made our own Piper stamps and she is still young enough she does not know any better and was soooo excited to get them!!! Her last gift was a kit to make their own Lip Balm and decorate the tins after they made it.

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Willow - All Willow has talked about for months is wanting Fish. Our neighbors have fish both in their pond in their yard, and in a large aquarium inside the house, and her Granny Paula has a huge gold fish she feeds a green bean every day to, and our girls just love that. Now let me say we have 3 cats, a dog who is as big as a House, and 3 kids so another animal seemed like a lot, but that is the only thing Willow wanted, and she has talked about it for months. She even stayed up one night until 3 am crying because Santa can not make fish!!! We told he could catch them though, and the next day I took her to my friend Jami Bova's blog to see a card she had made with Santa catching a ton of fish!!! This made her feel way better!

So Santa brought her a fish tank, and left Money for her to go shopping for some fish of her own so she could pick them out herself!!! She was so excited as you will see in the pictures!

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Willow's 3 presents from us where, Jeans, Willow stamps from Whiff of Joy (Mommy will be thrilled to use these too!), and A large about 12" set of Paper dolls that can stand up and you make all your own clothes for them to wear from Patterned Paper and stencils, and glitter and glue, and embellishments.

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Tucker, well he is not quite 1 and 1/2 and so he really does not know it is Christmas, so Santa brought him some blocks. Those sets with lots of big wooden (natural wood colored) blocks you see in Churches and at schools.

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Tucker's 3 presents from us were some learning instruments to play (lots of fun for Mommy to Liston to later I am sure!!!), An old fashioned Telephone to pull around like Marvin and I had when we were kids, and one of those toys you push around and the air pops bright colored balls in the air??? We had these two when we were little!!

Here Piper is starting to Open her Santa gift.

Tucker just loves phones. Here he is saying Hi. Whenever the phone rings at home he always puts his hand to his ear and says Hi, or bye bye.

Below you will see the beginning of Willow starting to open her fish tank. She was sooooooooo excited. I do not think I will ever forget that moment!!!

The 3 kids playing.

Merry Christmas!,

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Even though there is only 1 more hour in the day! We had the best Christmas! We got to stay in our own home for the whole day and did not have to travel anywhere!!! This was my first year since 1992 - 16 years that I have had the chance to be in my own home for Christmas!

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Marvin and I have travled all 9 Christmas's of our marriage so far, and Piper has never spent a Christmas Day at home she is 6 1/2 and this is her 7th Christmas, so it was so much fun for us!!!! Marvin and I realized this is the first Christmas Dinner we have ever cooked! A couple of years we have been home Christmas morning and then turned right around by 10am and headed out for a long trip, not just a day trip, but to stay for awhile.

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So this year the kids got to play with their toys and make crafts and we made our Happy Birthday Jesus Cake and sang Happy Birthday to Baby Jesus, and we listoned to Christmas Music, and were just plain jolly, we danced around and had a marching band with Tucker's new instruments, and we played the freeze game, we made Paper Doll outfits, and our own lip balm, and we all took naps at the same time (the whole family is just getting over the stomach flu right now). It was a wonderful Christmas and I am so glad we got to stay home!!! Piper said it was the best Christmas she has ever had!!! It is the first year that we fully got to put our own traditions into play and not needed to change things to fit where we were at, so it really was a first for us in many ways!!!! It was soooo much fun!!!!

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We did not put a big tree up this year just a two small ones, and 3 Nativity sceens, Tucker is into every thing every moment, and I just did not want to have to fight him to leave the tree alone, and worry about broken ornaments in the process so we put two table top trees up, and the kids had fun with that!

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Well I know this post just does not say everything or look how I would want it too, but I have got to go finish packing so we can leave tomorrow for the Farm to celebrate Christmas with Marvin's parents and brothers and their families!

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I hope you had a very Merry Christmas, and I will be back in 2 or 3 days!!! Can not wait to see what is new in Blog land then after the hustle and bustle slows down!!!

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Heather

An Announcement - Featured Stamper Team - Coming in January

Hi Everybody,

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Well I know Stamping Blog World is pretty dead right now as it should be with all the Chrismas Activities with Family and Friends in the next few days, but anyway I wanted to post this announcement since it is Wednesday.

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Danni - Over at Danni's Dreams is starting Flutter By Wednesday's with a Featured Stamper Team starting on January 7th. This team will be for at least January, maybe longer depending on what happens.

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What we will be doing, is each Wednesday we will make a card with a Butterfly or Flutter By in it, then link to Danni's blog and you will be able to see all of the Featured Stampers and Danni's Flutter By Cards as well.

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Danni and her friend created this cute Graphic for us to add to our Blogs along with the Team Girls and their blogs I have added it to my side bar, but here it is in a Post.

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Flutter By Wednesday's Featured Stampers Team

Tina - from Wooded Views Blog

Michelle - from Michelle's Creative Journey Blog

Me - Heather

Kimmie - from Crafting for Sanity Blog

Danni - from Danni's Dreams Blog

Cathy - from My Creative Space Blog

Ashley - from Heart Hugs Designs Blog

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I think this will be lots of fun, and I am super excited to get started on this Featured Stamper Team! I hope you all join us in creating a Flutter By Card on Wednesdays!!!!

Have a Stampendous Christmas Eve Everyone!

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Heather

Another Our Daily Bread Designs Stampation - I will Sing! 2nd Post today.

I Will Sing

Hello,

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I made this card partially last night and partially today. I used my new Set from Our Daily Bread Designs. Sing to the Lord. .......

I colored the Bird and Flowers first with:

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SU Markers Brocade Blue, Ballet Blue, Night of Navy, More Mustard, Pumpkin Pie, Rose Red, Regal Rose, Old Olive, Always Artichoke, Creamy Caramel, and Close to Co Co.

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I cut out the Bird image and mounted it onto a piece of Brocade Blue Card Stock I had already cuttled with the Birds and Swirls CB embossing folder, I had also distressed the edges with a Kitchen Knife as well.

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I cut out a Top Note with my Big Shot and glued the Mounted Matted Bird Image onto the Old Olive Top Note.

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I Cuttled a Piece of Rose Red using the same CB folder and glued the Top Note onto that, and then onto the Regal Rose Card back.

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I took some Old Olive colored Sheer Organza wired Ribbon and put it around the Card. Sorry for some reason this picture below is blurry even though I sharpened it in Photo Shop twice before posting it.

I then stamped the Sentiment in Versa Mark onto the Regal Rose Card Back, and embossed it with Silver Embossing powder, and instead of wiping off the excess powder I went ahead and embossed it because I liked the way it framed the Sentiment. ....... I then colored and stamped the Flower image onto the Regal Rose Card Back as well.

Here is a Close up of the Bird on the Top Note. I loved how rich and elegant the colors I choose worked together!

A Final view of the card. I was pretty excited on how it all went together and relatively fast too!!!

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I hope you enjoy it!!! Have a Stampendous Day!!!

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Heather

Angels We Have Heard on High - Rejoice - An Our Daily Bread Designs Stampation

Angels We Have Heard On High

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Well Good Morning All!

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Last night after the Kids went to bed and after putting away some Laundry, I was able to work on a couple of Cards. One I finished completely and the other still needs some assembling.

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This card was made with one of the December Release Sets from Our Daily Bread Designs. Worship the Lord.

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Here is the Full Card.

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I chose to use the Country Church Stamp, and the Title Rejoice!

I also used one of the Pieces of DSP I got when I got the sets. I have never done this before, but I actually wanted the middle part of the 12 x 12 DSP. So I ended up cutting right into and out of the middle of the paper to get the piece I wanted for this card!!! Gasp, Gasp, - The Horrors!!!

I then took my Angel Wings Shimmerz and actually painted it all over the DSP, this gave the DSP a more golden glow with the sepia type writing, and it gave it that wrinkled, bended, rolled up antique look to it too. It turned out so pretty and so sparkly!! I then took my Onare Piercing Template and pierced all these holes. I took My Old Olive Marker and put it into each hole to define the hole more, and then I drew the boarder of the bottom of the template under the piercing.

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I then Stamped the Sentiment in Versa Mark, and Embossed it with Glittered Gold Embossing Powder.

Here you can see the reason I wanted the Middle of the Paper. I thought the title to that song would be perfect for my card. For the Stamped image I colored in the Church with:

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SU Markers - Basic Gray , Yo Yo Yellow, Real Red, Tempting Turquoise, Elegant Egg Plant, Glorious Green, Creamy Caramel, Old Olive, Always Artichoke, and a White Gel Pen. I colored the trees with Certainly Celery, and Old Olive, and I accented the snow with Bashful Blue. The Fence is Creamy Caramel, and Close to Co Co.

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I used White Puffy Paint for the raised snow and then heat set it. After I heat set it, and it puffed up I painted some Angel Wings shimmerz on the snow and the church roof.

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I used Glue dots to put the DSP part onto the Old Olive CS because I wanted to let the edges curl up, and if I had glued it they would not have. Then I put some Old Olive colored Sheer Organza Ribbon behind the Matted piece and put it all on the Basic Gray SU CS back.

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So Here is the Final Product. It was fun to make, and I just love this stamp set! The Onare Piercing template will also be in more of my creations!!!

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I Hope you Enjoy the Card. Let me know what you think!!!

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Have a Stampendous Day, and I actually should be back with at least one more Post today!!!

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Heather

I Love You this Moose!! A Card for my Husband. Some Stories, My Copic's and More!!!

I Love You DH!!! Thank You for ALL that you do!!!!

Hello! Happy Saturday almost Sunday!

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Well, I just had to make this card for my Hubby tonight (DH = Dear Hubby). I received my first Riley stamps from Hannah Stamps today. I had ordered two of the Riley's Riley on Tractor, and Riley with Laundry. I had to get the Riley with Laundry Stamp after Janna Hull posted a card last week using Riley and Laundry, and said it was her New Year's Resolution to never do Laundry again!!!

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Wouldn't that be wonderful??? My friend Emily's (good friend/SU downline/fellow Dazzling Diamonds Design Team Member) - husband is better at Laundry that she is, so he does all their laundry, now I really do not think I would want Marvin to do laundry because he does not separate anything. Darks, lights, jeans, underwear, and socks all go in one load for him. However if there is anyone out there that just loves doing laundry, or actually just hanging it and putting it away I would be happy to hire you!!!

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I do not mind doing dishes and other chores I actually enjoy vacuming, but I really do not like doing Laundry! I do not mind doing it, I just hate constantly having Laundry to do!!! It is never all caught up because once I finish the last load we have slept in more bedding, have more clothes from that day, took more showers et.. et... et.... With 5 of us there is just always laundry to do!!! I can not imagine all those with 5, 6, or more kids!!!

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So anyway I got Riley on Tractor because My Hubby grew up on a farm and I thought it would be a fun stamp to make him, cards with. The Farm my husband grew up on they do not have any kind of Green Equipment ALL Red Tractors and equipment so I of course have to color the Tractor Red!!! I thought it would be cool some day to use this stamp with the Pictures I have of My Husbands Dad's tractor we had it for a short time, it is over 50 years old, and my Hubby wanted to get it restored to original state. After it was restored my FIL wanted it back, and that was fine with my DH so they have it now. Which really works best because after you pay that much to have a Tractor restored you really do not want to keep it in your Front Yard in the elements!!! LOL. We have a 1 acre lot, but not really big enough to need a huge Red Tractor on!! So anyway I have pictures of the Tractor before, and after restoration, and they are pretty cool. I also have pictures of DH giving all the neighborhood kids rides around our block on the Tractor.

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Anyway I wanted to make my DH this card just to say I love You, and let him know I appreciate him!! He helps a lot with the kids, and house when I need him to, or even when I do not need him to with the kids. We got to go to Wichita Yesterday to go Christmas Shopping and although we did take our 1 year old with us, it was like having some real time to ourselves which we have not had since early October. After some time by yourselves without the kiddo's you really realize how hard the kids, and the house, and the work, and the daily grind can be on a Marriage if you do not have, or take the time to connect with each other!!! We need to do that more often, it just is not really very easy for us to do with the kiddo's.

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So here is the Card.

Card Recipe:

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I colored Riley in with my SU Markers in Real Red, Yo Yo Yellow, More Mustard, Creamy Caramel, Close to Co Co, Chocolate Chip, Basic Black, Glorious Green, and a Silver Gel Pen. I stamped him in Black Staz On first onto Whisper White CS.

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I cut the scalloped square with my Big Shot and Nestibilities on Yo Yo Yellow, and then embossed it, Then I cut the largest scallop Circle on Basic Black SU CS then embossed it. I had done one more square bigger than the yellow on Real Red to go behind the Yo Yo Yellow, but then I realized it covered up the Black Circle, which I wanted because it reminded me of the black tires on the tractor. I cuttled a piece of Real Red CS with the Hounds Tooth Folder, and matted it behind the two Nestie shapes onto the More Mustard Card Back. Lastly I took my Basic Black Marker and distressed the edges of the MM card back.

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I traced around the embossed edges of the square with my Real Red Marker, and around the Basic Black Circle with my Silver Gel Pen. I looks kind of white here, but it is silver as is the inside of the wheels, and the drivers steering wheel too.

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I really liked how it turned out, except I can not wait to get my Copic's!!! My Husband said I could order a set of the Alcohol based Markers for Christmas from him, and using my Grandpa's Christmas Money, and I was planning on ordering a set of Prisma Color Markers, because they are so much more affordable then a set of Copics. I had talked to my good friend Jami Bova about which Markers she liked (she is one of the queens of coloring) she likes Prisma Colors and Chart Packs because she has over 100 of them from design school. I also looked into buying the Tria Markers they are a newer set, and around Copic Prices, but they are on sale right now for 56% off at Carpe Diem Store on the Internet. By the way I did a lot of research on Markers and I found Carpe Diem to be the best prices. Every week either the Prisma Colors, Copics, or Tria's are on sale, and they are always way discounted even when they are not on an extra sale!!

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Last night I got the huge pleasure of talking to one of my good friends in blog land and the Mega Talented Janna Hull! Yep we actually got on the phone and talked! It was kind of weird at first when I knew she was going to call because you get to make these blog friends and you get close to them on the computer, but you have never talked or met in real life!!! Well I had told her I was getting ready to order my Markers and was torn which ones to order!!! She immediately e-mailed me she wanted to call me, and we talked for over 3 hours I think!!!!

I just love this girl, she was soooooo easy to talk to, and she is brilliant with coloring. She has taken some classes at her local Scrap Book store (they have an Archiver's!!! Major jealousy here!!!) Anyway she gave me all these tips on Markers and how to use them, and what colors to get, and what to blend them with and what ink is bad for them, and all sorts of things!!!

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She saved me some major cash though because she said not to get a whole set of 72, because she blends them all the time with the SU Markers, and Prismacolor pencils which I have both of. So with all those colors I do not need a set of 72, and with the sets you do not really get the 3 or 4 shades of each color you need to do the blending you want, and the colors you need to create new colors. So I learned soooo much from her!!! I ended up with around 45 markers some Copic Sketch Markers, and some Copic Ciao Markers. I got my Ciao's from the Eclectic Paperie they are $3.45 each there, and I got my Sketch Markers from Carpe Diem, they are $3.90 there. I also got the Marker case for 72 Copics at Carpe Diem for about $9.

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I can not wait to get them so I can color better, and not have as much porous images, or streaks as my SU markers have! Do not get me wrong I love my SU Markers, and I have 2 full sets one for my Customer's, and 1 for me, because my Customer set was getting pretty beat up, and I could not use them as much for what I wanted them for!!!

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So I better go do some you guessed it Laundry, but I wanted to share this before going off to bed. We have to teach in the 4 year old class tomorrow at church so that means getting there earlier than normal. Have a great Night, and I have another post started for tomorrow I have received 3 Wonderful Blog awards in the last few weeks and days and I really want to pass them on to some of my wonderfully talented fellow stampers. Two of the awards I got this weekend, and I had never seen them before. I get to choose 5 bloggers a piece for each of them, and then I get to choose 10 bloggers for the Butterfly award!!! I am sooo honored that Tanya, Kristin, and Heather (Hev) choose me to pass these awards onto!! I will proudly display them! I also have to

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Have a Great Night All!!! I hope you like the card let me know what you think of it!!!

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Heather

Teacher Appreciation Gifts - A Card and Box Gift Set!

Hi Everyone!

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I know everyone is going through it right now, but do you just hate not being able to create and post anything??? I am sooo behind on everything, and I have been doing some creating, but it mostly has been for other people not really for myself or blog stuff!!!

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Well it is Teacher Appreciation time, and I laugh because many of my favorite blogs have had the same titles on them this week with Teacher gifts!!! LOL!

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I got this uber cute Gingerbread House Set at a Garage Sale last month. If you were reading my blog at the time, you will know it was a garage sale of an SU Demo that was getting rid of all and I mean all of her stamping supplies, loads and loads of Card Stock, probably around 300 stamp sets or more, tons of Ink Pads, re-inkers, ink cartridges, stamping wheels, embossing powders tool kits and much more. She had most of her stamp sets from $1 to $9 I found a set that has been going on the Internet for around $50 for $15 and that was the most expensive set I think!!!

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So anyway so many of you have cute Gingerbread House sets you use, and there is a retired SU set I loved, but when I saw this set I had to have it. The House is larger than the other sets I have seen. The Sentiment says Christmas Greetings from Our House to Yours, It has a round Peppermint, a Heart shaped Candy Cane stamp, a sentiment, a Gingerbread Man, and the House.

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Above is a picture of some of the houses Half finished. How did I color them??? Well several ways. The white parts of the Candy Canes, and Peppermints are painted with Angle Wings Shimmerz. The Gum Drops, and the candies are painted with Beeswax, Orange Sherbet, Bubble Gum, Celery, Lilac Lace, and Royal Red Shimmerz paints so if you know shimmerz you know this house is very sparkly, and pretty.

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The red parts of all the Candy Canes and Peppermints are colored with the Real Red SU Marker. The black on the roof is painted with Coal shimmerz, the bow on the sucker is Garden Green SU Marker, and the actual Brown part of the Gingerbread House is Water Colored with my Aqua Painters and my Creamy Caramel SU Pad.

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The roof is done in White Puffy Paint, with some glitter on top for the Frosting melting down the edges, and it really does look like Frosting melting down the edges.

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I made the Card off of Lauren Meaders Saturday Sketch from this week. I have missed this challenge so much, and am ready to get back to doing it every week like I promised myself I would!!!

Above you can see the Card off of the sketch, and the Box I put the home made Chocolates in.

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Here is the Box. I used the A2 box off of Beate's tutorial under Resources on Split Coast Stampers. I stamped the Gingerbread Man all over the top of the box on Craft SU Card stock, and then the bottom of the box is Real Red CS. The Ribbon is wired Red sheer organza ribbon from Hobby Lobby. I wish you could see all the shimmerz on the house it really does shine and sparkle!!!

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The Card is off of this Sketch from Lauren Meader's Saturday Sketch last Saturday. The Sentiment is inside, and says Christmas Greetings From Our House to Yours. I had Willow and Piper sign the insides of the cards, and then I wrote a short message thanking them for all they do, and signed the rest of our names after their names.

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I did get one comment from Willow's sweet teacher when she tried one of her Cherries, and said Oh My Gosh Willow absolutely every part of this gift is Home Made!!! That means so much to us teachers!!! Melted my heart! Yea!!!! She noticed!

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Here is the Box and the Card together standing up. It looked pretty cute together as a set I though???

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I made 4 of these sets for Piper's Teacher and Aide, and then for Willow's Pre-School Teacher and Aide.

I made smaller CS Bag sets for the Music Teacher, Bus Driver, another Aide, and Piper's Teacher and Aide from Kindergarten last year. We really loved them. She had the best Kindergarten Teacher and Aide in the world!!!! We miss them dearly!!!!

Here are the Chocolates in the Box. My Mom made these Chocolate Covered Cherries when I was little, and it became a family tradition. They are like 5 million times better than any store bought Chocolate Covered Cherry!!! My next door neighbor and I started making them together about 3 years ago. Last year with the Power outage and being homeless for over a week we did not get them made, but this year they got made again. It is a very big task so it works best to do it with 2 people instead of one, especially if you have little kids around!!!!

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We also made Peppermint Patties, and Orange Cream Patties to go in the gifts too!!!! This year in our business we only got about 5 dozen Cherries a piece, but in our best year we got about 12 dozen a piece!!! We gave Cherries to everyone that year, Teachers, coaches, Sunday School Teacher, all our friends and family, and we had some left over to keep in the freezer. I like mine best right out of the freezer. I think the flavor's are the most apparent if they come right out of the freezer, but Tasha likes hers room temp.

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Well that is it for now. I have got to go finish some last minute details before heading off to bed!!! I will add a picture of the gift bag that the other teachers and the other aides got. They have the Gingerbread Houses, but not the Cards too!

This is an example of how plans change!!! LOL. I ended up making my own size of boxes, instead of the bags off SCS I planned on for the rest of the teachers, and Aides! Long Story......

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I hope you like them and they give you some inspiration!!!! Let me know what you think!!!

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Have a Stampendous Day!

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Heather

Tag Your It! Some Kids in Need, and 5 things I love, and 2 things I really do not love!!!! My Day, and some thoughts too.

Hi All,

I do not have a card to share with you today, actually it is already tomorrow now. I just got done spending some time talking to my Hubby after his Christmas Party tonight.

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I did not end up going. There were a few different times when I maybe could have gone, but then that changed.

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I called my "Adoptive Mom" at work last night and asked her to watch the kids. We only ask her to watch them 1 or 2 times a year not very often, but Marvin was going to be in the Murder Mystery and I did think it would be fun to see that. She did not know at first that is when I posted last night I could not go.

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Then after I posted she called and said she could, but she would come to my house instead of me bringing the kids out since we would be back late. That was a very nice idea!!!

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So Then My good friend/neighbor/SU down line/fellow Dazzling Diamonds Design Team member called me and said her event had been canceled and she could watch the kids. I felt bad about that from the start because she has been so busy and she is already offering to watch the kids after school on Friday so we can go Christmas shopping. No I am not done barley started and if I buy for no one else I need to buy for my kids at least!!!!! LOL

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It snowed a lot last night and the temperature is around 20 maybe, maybe less we do not have a temp gage anymore, I know I am freezing all the time though!! Anyway the kids wanted to play in the snow this afternoon and they came in frozen solid and needed a warm shower and I was having a hard time getting ready, and then My "Adoptive Mom" called and said she had just gained "Custody" of her 2 middle Grand kids I wont go on and on about it there are some drugs involved and it is a really long long story.

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So trying to make a really long story short. She had gained custody of them 6 years ago when Piper was just 6 months old. Then eventually Mom and Dad got their act together and got clean and things seemed to be back on track, but now they are horribly off track again and I really think these kids need to leave that environment for the rest of their "kid" lives!!! They need to be where the feel safe and secure, and someone tells them they love them, and they have meals and security, and a bed to sleep in and no drugs around them!!! Those poor kids have been thru hell and back again their entire lives!!!! It is very sad!!!! She said she would still come over while her younger son came and stayed with those kids. I said it was fine she needed to deal with them and get them settled. They did not even have Under ware, and the little girl had been given a house coat to wear as a coat to school. It just breaks your heart!!!

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By this point I could see I really needed to be home because I knew that by my kids going to Tasha's it would end up interrupting 6 kids bed times on a school night and with everything going on with Paula and the kids I kind of felt I needed to be available to help if needed.

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So I choose to stay home this time. Tasha ended up going thru all her clothes she keeps in the basement of all the sizes the kids are under or in between right now. She found a bunch of clothes for Darian and Harley and I called Paula to come get these clothes before she headed out to the store to get them clothes to wear.

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Tasha had some brand new underwear for Paula, and lots of clothes, shoes, a coat, a Christmas Dress and lots of other stuff for the kids so I hope they can wear them!

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Paula came over I think just because she needed to get away for a few minutes and talk, we were there a lot when they had the kids the first time so we remember it all very well. Tooo Well!

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Marvin and I will be doing some extra Christmas shopping for Darian and Harley this weekend so they can have a Merry Christmas too!!!!

Now Paula has to go about trying to figure out how to transfer them to a new school, and get their medical concerns under control, and just plain give them some normalcy and some love. They need that very much right now!!!!

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So any way I did work on cutting and coloring my first Christmas Willow Stamp today. Willow my 4 year old and I worked on them together. It never got any further than coloring though with everything else that went on. I just spent a lot of time playing with my kiddo's today. We had a lot of fun, and I was going to make a card tonight, but then Marvin was jazzed to tell me all about his night so we did that too.

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Now for the Tag:

I have been tagged by Paula's Place (my "Adoptive Mom") this is a different tag then I have played in before. You list 5 things you are "Addicted to" then list 5 blogs you love and tag them. Then you go to the blogs and let them know they have been tagged and link them in your post. So here goes 5 Things I am addicted to. 1. Piper - Piper is my 6 year old. She is very creative, she loves to write and sing songs at home all the time, she is always making little plays up and performing, the funny thing is after all of this performing at home she really does not get very active in the performances at church and school. (By the way I am going to share pictures tomorrow of the Kids Christmas Programs!!! Willow made the cutest Angel in the Pre-School Nativity scene in her program!!!

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I love Piper she down deep is a very sensitive, but very loving and kind little girl. When she is at school she befriends all of the kids who may need a little help and the kids who all the other kids may make fun of. Piper says she feels bad for them and her teacher says she loves everyone and everyone gets along with her which I am proud of!!! More on being Sensitive later on.....

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2. I am addicted to Willow. Willow is the funniest, happiest, most easy going kid. She always has been from day 1 and so is her baby brother. I have truly been blessed by these two being so easy to take care of. My kids are not picky eaters in anyway. They pretty much do what they are told to do when they are told to do it. They go to bed when they are supposed to, with usually just a good night hug, kiss, and tuck in then we shut the door and usually do not hear another word. Willow is very very wise beyond her years. She gets concepts that are just years past what she should get, and she can read and write pretty good for a 4 year old too. She loves to just sit and write and write. She would do this all day!!! She plays very well by herself, but all my kids have done this, she plays very well with her sister and her brother too. She is just the most fun kid to raise!!! Everyone knows Willow, and everyone loves Willow! She is lucky!! When we are at church, and we go to a relatively big church, like around 700 people we will be walking down the hall and everyone is like "Hi Willow" oh there is Willow, "Hey Willow how are you today"..... on and on. I mean we do not even know these people and they all know our 4 year old and talk to her like they have known her forever!!!! It is amazing some times.

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3. I am addicted to Tucker! I love my little baby boy. I can still call him that for a little while even though he is 17 months old right now!!!! He is my baby! At his age Willow knew all her Colors, talked in paragraphs, I do not think there was any word she could not say by 17 months old. He says Ball, Sissy, Ma Ma, Daddy, has some word for one of our cats and the dog. Bye, bye.. and I think that is about it!!!! He is a Ma Ma, and Daddy's boy too. He loves his Blanky none of my kids have every sucked on a pacifier, but he sucks on his ring and middle fingers together on his right hand. Mostly when he is tired, hurt, scared. Not all the time. Tucker is also the easiest, baby/kiddo to take care of. He loves to go to bed. Anytime anywhere you can say do you want to go Night Night and he will want to go!!! He would sleep all the time if I would let him, but he also is very active when he is awake he just could go to his room if you let him. I think he really really loves his crib!!!! He also loves to play off on his own a lot too which can be nice sometimes, and some times he needs me all the time! It just depends. Tucker is still learning to eat stuff, but so far he is not picky either mostly because we just do not really let them be picky they pretty much eat what they are given cause we do not really let them know there is any choice in the matter we do not give them anything different than all the rest of us have. It is sooo nice at meal times. My kids love clam strips, and spinach, and broccoli especially, and onions, and all sorts of things most kids would not touch, but I love it!!!! It makes my job much easier and meal time much more pleasant that is for sure!!!!

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4. I am addicted to stamping of course were you wondering when that was coming??? I love to stamp create, design, what have you I love it all. I love all the area's of stamping. I am a Gift Maker, a Card Maker, a Scrap booker, and Altered Item girl, you name it I will try it!!! I also love the wonderful kind caring world of Stamping Bloggers and SCS'ers, and PCP'ers (Split Coast Stampers, and Paper Craft Planeter's lol not a word!!!!)

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5. I am addicted to Photography, I also have to have crisp clear photo's with good lighting and colors. It bugs me when I can not see a photo clearly, so I mess around with them in Photo Shop to get them just the way I want them crisp, clear, and clean!!!! I love taking pictures, and editingthem, and learning all about Photography. I have taken several classes, and would love to take more, like in my 8th day each week!!!! I love my Professional Camera, Printer, and Scanner, but my Printer is broken right now and it is about killing me. I did not need it for the longest time, and now I need to print stuff several times a day. I have not been able to do our Yearly Christmas Letter, or Christmas Photo Collage either. It is going to have to be a New Year's letter this year!!!!

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So those are the things I love!!!!

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Now I am adding something fun to the Tag. Tell me 2 things you really really do not like!!!

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1. I really really have an aversion to brown!!! I really really have a hard time liking anything with brown in it!!! The color just seems so ugly to me!!! That might be why I have never needed Chocolate until after I got pregnant with my 3rd baby!!!! I have a hard time using the color brown if I can avoid it!!!! I will if I have to, but I really really just do not like it!!! I can however see brown in another stampers creation and like what they have done, but if I can do something without brown I will!!!

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2. I really really do not like Bullies!!!!! It finally got fixed last week, but we were having a real problem with one, and finally by talking to the parent it has been so much better! It breaks your heart to have your child come home and tell you that no one will play with them anymore because another child has told all the kids on the playground to hate them, and they are gross, and they are stupid, and they are a retard, and on and on. I really did not want to talk to the parent as I also really do not like confrontation, and so I tried everything I could think of to keep the situation under control. I did not know how much of what I was hearing was really happening, and how much was dramatized. Until the teacher let us know.

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I did not know what to do, Piper is a sensitive girl, and though some people do not get that I do!!!! I was a sensitive girl too, and though with sensitivity comes having your heart broken a Million times it also comes with the capacity to trust easily, forgive easily, accept others easily, and feel things very deeply and understand things much easier than others might. So there is a trade off. Sensitivity hurts, yet it enriches your life in so many ways too!!! The funny thing about Sensitive people is because they are sensitive they would never say or do the things to others that those who are not sensitive would. I think that is because when you are a sensitive person you think about how things would affect you, and you do not want those things to hurt others too. My friend Emily and I were talking about this just the other day. Non Sensitive people do not seem to understand those who are sensitive, and they can be pretty harsh or hard on one who is Sensitive.

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Not that I do not admire those whose feelings do not get hurt very easily, I do. I always wished I could be more like them, and they could also understand things on my side too. I have learned as an adult how not to take things as personally, or to heart as much as I did when I was younger, but that sensitive side sure pops up sometimes too! It breaks your heart when you child is going thru this though, and it is really hard to teach them to be tougher!!!

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Finally one of the teachers realized what was going on, and once she felt it had gone to far I finally called the Mom and we had a long talk about it and the next day it was over completely!!! It has been sooooooo nice!!!! It was an awful 2 months though!!!! The hardest part was that with everything that was going on at school Piper was so frustrated, that she was starting to get mean back. How do you teach a kid to stand up for themselves and not get mean about it???? That is a tough one I learned. I also learned little girls can be very very mean to each other, and 3 girls at that age is never a very good combination!!!! It seems 2 of them are always ganging up on the other one!!!! That is not to say Piper did not play a part in that as well.

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Now when I say bullying, I do not mean just the every day mean things kids do to each other I mean down right underhanded things were going on by several kids started by two siblings so it just got so bad, and I felt so bad for her!!! I hated sending her off to school every day! I tried to toughen her up, and give her ideas about how to handle it, but when the teacher told me some of the things that were being done and said I had, had enough I was at my last straw on the subject!!!!

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My kid is not perfect and she needs to work on several things that is for sure, but no kids should ever feel it is O.K. to say and do the things that were being done, and get away with it!!! I can see how teenagers end up committing suicide after cyber or vocal bullying!! I learned a lot from this situation, and I learned there can be sooooo much drama already in the 1st grade!!! Oh my what will the next 11 years bring????

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O.K. off that Soap Box now!!! Sorry I rambled on so much!!!

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Here are my 5 people!!! I am choosing 3 new blogging buddies, and 2 of my first blogging buddies to tag.

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1. Regina over at The Creative Corner Blog 2. Tanya over at Tanya's StampsNThings 3. Danni at Danni's Dreams Blog 4. Carolyn - At PMS ect... (Paper, Markers, and Stamps ect...) 5. Janna - At Stamps Paper, and Glitter Oh My

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These ladies all have such different styles, yet I love each of their blogs!!

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Have a Stampendous Day!!!

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Heather

Shades of Purple Starburst Card

After many weeks of not being able to do a Split Coast Stampers Challenge I took the time today to do the Monday's Technique Lovers Challenge.

The Challenge was to make a Star Burst Card. If you have the SU large and small tag punches then you can make this card!!!!

You punch out 8 small tags from any card stock you want for a 1 layered star burst, or 16 small tag punches from any cards stock you want if you want a 2 layered Star Burst.

I wanted to do a two color 2 layer Star Burst Card. I first choose my Metallic Silver, and Metallic Gold Papers to punch the tags out of. So you punch out the small tags.

Then you take your large tag punch and go back to the page you punched your small tags out of. Put the large tag over the hole you left in the paper by punching out the small tag. You will have about a 1/8" boarder around the small tag hole. Punch the boarder out with the large tag and you will have the frames of the color you see above in gold and silver.

Then put four together end to end in a cross type shape and glue them down. You will glue them onto a Vellum, or Tissue paper some lighter weight paper. I used spray adhesive. Take the other four and glue them over the other four rotated in a cross diagonally see below for example.

Here is the Silver frames glued on the Dark Paper and the Gold frames on the light Vellum. I took this picture so you can see what it looks like cut out, and before you cut it out.

Now you will cut off the ends of the tags to make the 8 point star shape.

This is what it will look like after you have cut the ends off.

I then took some Shimmerz and painted it on the inside of the framed star and made it really pretty and shimmerized. I did the dark purple with Royal Purple Shimmerz and the lighter Purple with lovely lilac shimmerz. Above you can see the dark purple and silver star shimmerized. I turned it in the light so you can see the sparkle, it is hard to she shimmerz in a photograph straight on.

Here is the lavender and gold star shimmerized above.

Here are both stars. They are very sparkly and shiny from the Metallic Paper and the shimmerz!

Well it is time for me to get up stairs and get the baby ready for bed, so I will leave you with this tonight!!!! I had fun finally doing a challenge card again.

Tomorrow is Marvin's Christmas Party at work, but it is looking like I will be staying home with the kiddo's. They are doing a Murder Mystery Dinner theater, and now Marvin has to be in the Play because one of the male actors could not make it. He has not been in a play since he was in 4th grade so that should be funny!

We never have an easy time finding a baby sitter, and My Good friend/SU down line/fellow design team member/next door neighbor (check out her cool birthday kit for a little girl). Neighbor has a Pack meeting with boy scouts for her middle child Ivan, and my other good friend/SU down line/fellow design team member Emily is helping her MIL after a 3rd back surgery. So it will probably be just Marvin going to the Dinner theater!!!!

Oh well I am getting used to never going anywhere! Good thing I can handle being at home most of the time!!!! LOL!

Have a Stampendous Night!!!

Heather

One of our custom orders - Many Stampin Up Hot Chocolate Holders

Cold Outside??? Need to get warm?? Grab a custom Hot Chocolate Pack Holder!!!

So remember back in November when Tasha - good friend/fellow design team member/SU down line/ next door neighbor. Had the crazy idea to go to a craft fair that was in 36 hours, and we had nothing ready to go there???? Two days later and only 13 hours of sleep between the two of us in 2 nights we had quite a lot of projects done and ready for the Craft Fair!

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Well, unexpectedly these cute Hot Chocolate Holders were our biggest seller! Not sure why, but they were. At the time the only design we had done was the Snow Flake one you will see below.

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Well anyway the other day I received a call from a Teacher a few towns away that wanted us to make 35 of these cuties! She wanted 20 for her young students, and 15 for her fellow teachers. Her only stipulations were that she wanted them to be like an ornament that could be re-used if possible, and she wanted all the kids ones to be Christmassy and say 2008 on them.

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I guess this teacher had been in the Salon with another girl who had been at the craft fair, and had purchased 7 of these cute holders. She told this gal about them, and site unseen she called and orderd 35 of them. She was a very sweet lady even on the phone you could tell she was very nice!!! So we came up with the designs below for them.

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So I have this cute SU set that has a sweet Santa, Reindeer, and Elf in it. Tasha had a cute Gingerbread Man, and then we decided to use a Wreath, and the Snowflake so the teachers would have 3 designs to choose from, and the lady who ordered them would have 4 designs to pick from to give her students. (She had mentioned it would be fun to have a few different designs to let the Teachers choose their own.

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So here are the pictures of what we came up with!

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A box full of 35 Hot Chocolate Holders/Christmas Ornaments????

Here is the Wreath one. We choose to go with SU Purely Pomegranate and Garden Green CS, then we added the Shimmery Silver to matte the wreath. We used thin white organza retired SU ribbon, and aged brads also. We stamped the background of the actual holder with branches from Peaceful Wishes to go along with the Wreath. I embossed the wreaths in silver, and then stamped the Christmas Greeting hanging from the top in Silver as well. We used Silver stretchy Twine as the Ornament tie. (silver and gold twine available in the current SU Mini Catalog right now.)

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Here is the cute Elf design. I stamped and embossed him in black, then I colored him in with my SU Markers, and then I shimmerized hit hat, and I put puffy liquid applique and some shimmer on the tassel of his hat.

He is on Real Red SU CS and the main holder is on Glorious Green. We used some wide Real Red Organza ribbon and antique brads too. We did the background with retired Christmas Bulbs standard wheel.

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The Santa was also Stamped embossed in black, colored in with SU markers, then added some really shimmery Butter Cream shimmerz. This particular color of shimmerz seems to be thicker than the others and it really popped up off the paper. I used it on all white parts of Santa's outfit. We used the SU sheer thin white organza ribbon, and some antique brads. Background in versa mark with the Christmas Bulbs wheel.

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The original design by Tasha, Papers in Mellow Moss, and Sage Shadow. Snowflake from Country living kit, with Dazzling Diamonds glitter on top of the stamped image. We added some thin Certainly Celery ribbon and shiny silver brads. Also Riding Hood Red paper to mount on. Back ground with SU jumbo wheel swirls and stars.

Gingerbread Man. I drew the red in the white decorations of the Ginger Bread man, and then painted Angel Wings shimmerz all over him. He really shines pretty!!! The background is in the standard gingerbread man wheel. Wide (retired) SU organza ribbon in Real Red. Used Gold Twine from the Mini catalog, and shiny gold brads as well..

The Reindeer pattern. I stamped the Reindeer and embossed it in black the colored in with SU markers and then I shimmerized his Antlers, hoofs, and nose. I also did some shimmering on the Christmas lights of the background

Below is a close up of the box with all of them done. It seemed to take forever to make these. We figured out over 10 hours with little bits and pieces here and there.

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Have you ever made one or two of something and gotten excited thinking it was easy and we could recreate it very easily???? Nope Mass Producing is Hard for anything!!!!

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You have to stamp, emboss, color and cut the little images,

then glue onto bigger piece,

then put stampin dimensionals behind it.

Tie the ribbon around it,

punch two holes for your brads to go in to bring the two pieces together,

and then two holes for the Christmas Hanger silver and gold twine.

Stamp the sentiment,

then punch the sentiment out with the lg Oval punch,

and then run through and tie the ornament hanger on.

Then we added a Stampin Up Stamp Art stamp on back to comply with the SU Angel Policy.

Then we added a sticker with our new Dazzling Diamonds Designs info,

and then I personally wrote out my blog address, (that gets very long and time consuming, because my blog address is not a a short one!!! (in the future we will have the address on a link to the page, but since we just came up with adding the info to my blog we did not have any labels ready with the blog address on them too!

So there you have it 35 very cute Ornaments. We sold them for $2.00 a piece. I think they turned out pretty cute, but you have to let me know what you think!!

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Now here is something funny! Today I noticed when going to Feed blitz to view what areas of the country/world have been coming to my blog that one person came this morning by searching for get this Stampin Up Hot Chocolate Holders!!!! I thought to bad they did not come a few hours later, because they would have seen all of these cuties!!!!

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Well I have got to get to bed because I have my Monthly Stampers Club tomorrow and every December we get together and have a Swap month where each person coming brings a project in a shoe box for all of us to do. So you leave with the amount of projects as you have people participating. We always have so much fun this month of club, and then since it is December I always give them a month off of ordering and we go one month longer in the summer instead. We also all bring a snack or refreshment, and we all do a ribbon/fiber swap where each person brings 1 yard for every person participating, and then we all leave with that many different ribbons or fibers then we had before!!

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Have a Great Stampendous Day!!!

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Heather

About That!

Hi Everyone!

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If you are wondering what the next post is about??? Well with all of our special orders going out we wanted a place for our Customers to come see what all we offer! :-)

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Since Blogger does not have additional pages we created a link on our blog that will take you to this post, once it is further back in the blog this is the post that the link will go to! Smiles!!!

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So nope we are not quite certifiably crazy!!!! Well, yet anyway!! :-)

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Hope you are having a Super Saturday!!

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Heather

Welcome to Our Dazzling Diamonds Design Team Services!

Dazzling Diamonds Design Team offers a wide array of Stamping and Crafting and Consulting Services!!!

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We offer you 3 very Unique Personal Styles that give you a unsurpassable aray of designs, and ideas to choose from.

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Our Team includes the very talented and creative:

Tasha Hickert

1-620-662-8130

http://tashasdesignworld.blogspot.com

Emily Hauschild

1-620-664-1102

http://emily-buzzyblogger.blogspot.com

and

Heather Schlatter

1-620-669-9218

http://heathersheavinlystampations.blogspot.com

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Our team can help you with almost any crafting need you might have!!!

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Planning a Fun, Classy, or Beautiful Party or Luncheon?

Give us a call and we can design everything from your invitations right up to the table decorations, floral arrangements, and party favors for you and your guests! Our Team can even offer you Professional Photography and Photo Editing Services to meet your needs as well. With such special and unique parties your guests will love it whether they are 4 years old or 40 years old we have the designs for your needs!!!

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Need that special gift for a Birthday, Teacher Appreciation, or Thank You?

Give us a call or e-mail us we can help make that gift extra special and personalized to your recipients needs. All of our hand made gifts are designed especially for the person receiving it!!! No more hassle for you, or the fear of giving that unwanted gift. Our team can create a perfect idea for anyone! You want or need it???? We can design it! If you want to make it yourself we can help you get going! Let us take the worry out of Party or Gift preparation!!! We'll take the stress away from you so you can ENJOY your function or event while we make it a wonderful time to remember, now and forever!!!!

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Are you Needing or Missing time to get away and be Creative??

Give us a call our team offers several types of monthly get together's, stamping and crafting clubs, Card of the Month Clubs, and much much more!!!! Give us a call or e-mail to get info on all our clubs there is something from the youngest 3 yr old all the way up to the active Sr Adult!!!

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Wanting to learn more about how to stamp and all the wonderful techniques out there???

We have a wide array of classes we can teach. If you want to learn how to do something fun in the crafting world we can help teach you and your friends how to make Beautiful Scrap booking Pages/ Home Decor'/Wonderful Handmade Cards and 3-D items/Unique and Classy to Fun and Spunky Gifts or trinkets!

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Dazzling Diamonds Design Team has Experience in:

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Over 24 combined years of experience in Stamping, Scrap Booking, Homemade Gifts/ Home

De core Items, and much more. We are all also Stampin Up Demonstrators so we can help you with any needs in that area as well!!!

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Over 15 years experience in Floral and Decorative Designs.

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Over 10 years experience in Professional Photography, Photo Editing, and creating wonderful Photo creations and collages.

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Oh Yeah we also have over 15 years combined experience in Nursing, and 15 years experience in Land Scape Design, but we can not sell you that!!! LOL!

Dazzling Diamonds Design Team is ready to help you with any question you might have!!

Give us a Call or Drop us a line and we will be more than happy to help you in any way possible!!

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Have a Stampendous Day and Week!!!!

Heather, Tasha, and Emily

Some News - and Scrap Book Pages - Lily as Snow White Cinderella, and Tinker Bell Too!

Good Morning Stampers and Blogging World!

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Have you all been to the Pink Cat Studio Blog??? Melissa announced her new DT team yesterday. She had said it would be in January, but she did it early so that was cool to see the new team early!!!

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She choose an amazing group of stampers to take the DT journey with her this next year, and here they are:

New Design Team

Thank you to everyone who applied for the design team. I was very happy to have received so many wonderful applications but it was so hard to narrow it down to just 8 new members.Please join me in welcoming the 2009 PCS Design Team:

Becky Carafa http://www.lakeshorestamper.com/

Janna Hull http://www.stampspaperglitterohmy.blogspot.com/

Jodi Ann Lee http://www.inkedinspirations.blogspot.com/

Lauren Meader http://laurenm.blogs.splitcoaststampers.com/

Lise Roy http://liseroy.blogspot.com/

Maria Bell http://stampininspirations.blogspot.com/

Mariska van der Veer http://www.sendingyoualittlesmile.blogspot.com/

Nikki Fairbairn http://www.bunny-zoes.blogspot.com//

Sarah Anderson http://scrampinmama.blogspot.com/

Vicki Garret http://www.summerthymestudio.blogspot.com/

I'm very excited to see the fun cards that the team will make with the Kiki Kitty and Lily & Billy Sweethearts stamps that will be released in January!

I've also asked the following bunch of fabulous card designers to join us next year as guest designers.

Suzanne Dean - release #2

Sparkle Bliaout - release #3

Tori Wild - release #4

Cyndi Bundy - release #5

Kim Rhead - release #6

Tina Hale - release #7

Heather Schlatter - release #8

Mackenzie Bruckler - release #9

Tracey Cuccia - release #10

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Have you guys seen the DT girls work??? It is totally amazing! I was already familiar with many of the girls Wonderful Creations, and Janna and I have been getting to be friends she is such a sweety and incredibly talented! So do not hesitate to hop on over to all the ladies blogs and give them some Huge Congrats!!!!

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So no I did not make it onto the DT I had my heart set on, but I did get the Honor of being asked to be a Guest Designer, and with this group of amazing stampers both on the DT list, and the Guest Designer list that is quite an Honor in itself!!!!

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One of my very special friends Jami reminded me yesterday God has a plan for everything, and a time and place for everything, and this was not my time for a DT, but I get to enjoy all their wonderful work and I get to play with them for Release #8 which is still pretty cool, and I am excited!!!!

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Well I have to get back to some special orders for Stamping Christmas gifts due today. We had a teacher recently call us and ask us to maker her some gifts for all her Students and Fellow Teachers. I will take pictures later today and share them! We are making 35 of them and have 6 different designs. I think you will like them they are pretty cute!!!

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I leave you with 2 scrapbook pages I made this week. They are not as involved as I normally would do, but All the pictures on the page were ones I wanted to use so These pages were more about the pictures and Piper and Willow then they were about my Creativity. There are some items I think are also pretty creative though!

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Here is Lily as Tinker Bell, Snow White, and Cinderella.

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I have been wanting ever since I got my first Dress Up Lily Set from Pink Cat Studio back in April to create a Scrap Book page with her dressed up as Snow White Cinderella, and Tinker Bell I have lots of pictures of my girls dressed up as these characters, and I thought Lily would be perfect for these scrap book pages!!!!

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To get these images I used A paint Brush and Staz On Black Ink, and I painted it on the parts of Lily I wanted to stamp. I then stamped her and dipped my Black Marker into Staz On and added on the lines to create these outfits, and their Hair Do's to match the pictures of Snow White, Cinderella, and Tinker Bell! I thought they turned out Pretty Cute!

I shimmerized the Characters and this Photo shows Cinderella in all her Shimmerz!!!

Lily as Snow White and Cinderella shimmerd up and ready to go!!!

Her is the title to my Layout of Piper's 5th Birthday Party. It was a Princess Party. We had two little girls that showed up dressed as Snow White and two that were dressed as Cinderella too.

Thus my inspiration for these images.

Here is the 2 Page layout. You can see my Cake I made her in the upper middle part of the layout. I made Cinderella's Chrystal Ball with a Stage Coach Seat (made out of Black Card Stock, and added the White Horses and Cinderella Polly Pocket to it too.

This Tinker Bell Lily is almost the Size of a 4 x 6 Picture as you can see with Willow beside her. I inlarged the Tinks on my computer then printed them out to make them bigger since I wanted to show case Lily as Tink, and my pictures but knew there was not much else going on the page I wanted to make Lily bigger to accessorize the page.

Here is the 2 Page Layout. I love these pictures of Willow she was having so much fun that day!!!

Lily as Tinker Bell

The Medium Lily and the Largest Lily and Willow's Wings!

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I hope you enjoy the Scrap Book Pages. My girls loved them!! Let me know what you think!!!

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I'll Be back later and Have a Stampendous Day!

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Heather

They are All Precious in His Site!! Lily and Billy as Children from Around the world Card.

"All the Children of the World"

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Hi Everyone!,

Well I think I feel safe enough to share my DT (Design Team) Application Pieces now. There is only 3 hours left in the DT Call and I do not think anyone has time to try to use any of my designs now.

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Not that I really think anyone would do that, but you never know! This idea was running around in my head for about 3 weeks before I ever got the chance to put it to paper! I worked really hard on this idea and don't you just love it when an idea comes to life on paper???

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Whether or not I get chosen for this DT, I truly think this card will always be one of my very favorites!!!

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Well this idea popped into my head when I read in the DT Call post about needing to show case coloring! I for some reason I immediately thought of the children's Bible Song "Jesus loves the little Children, All the Children of the World" .... Red, and Yellow, Black, and White they're all Precious in His Site.

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My Husband who unfortunately is not into stamping and does not really spend more than a few seconds looking at my creations (though I wish I could get him interested in my work!!!) asked me who I would give this card to. I said well I think it would be a great card for a family adopting a blended family!

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So Here is the Card.

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Are you excited yet????

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I am excited to show it to you!!!!!

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Here it is......

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All the Children of the World....... Red, and Yellow, Black, and White They are all Precious in His Site.

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And one of the Best Parts of this card is that it is a spinner card!!! Yep watch it go!...... Spinning, and Spinning,

and

Spinning,

and

Spinning around the World!

Here is the Earth.

For the Earth: I had a black and white picture of an earth one of my girls had from a picture she did at church. I free handed the land pieces on blue paper then cut them all out and traced them on green paper then glued them on another blue paper. If I had been thinking clearly I could have skipped a step by free handing them on green and cutting them out and gluing them on blue. LOL!!

Here is a close up of the Bottom Sentiment I wrote out, and the Color Words I free handed Bubble words and then colored them in. I had to free hand the bubble words by dipping my black Marker in Staz On refill ink, because I could not find my permanent black Markers, and I needed to color them in, so it was like the colonial times where they kept dipping their pens in ink!!!!

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Now before I show the close up's of the Children of the world know this when I cropped them and edited them they actually look a little bit off the original color they are and it seems some flaw's show up that are not really there if you look above!!!

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For the Indian: I colored his skin in a Red tint, and then made his Shirt and Pants by using Billy's jeans and t-shirt. I made them look tattered and added some brown flock to them for a soft texture of buffalo skin! I made his moccasins by stamping only part of the Fireman boots.

Lily's coloring seems to be off in this picture some you can see her better in the card above!

For the Asian Lily: I took the Fireman Coat and by not stamping the stripes on the sleeves and the bottom, and then by extending the jacket out into a dress I made a Floor length Kimono for her to wear. I colored it in a bright Blue glitter pen, turquoise glitter pen, and a silver gel pen. I made the fan using one of the stamps in Dress up Lilly a long purse and stamped it 5 times colored it like the Kimono and there she had her own fan! I added some glitter to her face because when the Asians perform they have glitter on their intricate make-up for the performance. It is beautiful to see!

For the Fireman: I just colored his skin in a "black", or "brown" tint. I then used the Fireman Gear for him. For the Lily: She is Caucasian, and I colored her dress using the fabulous Shimmerz paints. They make any project very shinny and shimmery!

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Well I think that is about it for this card! It was so much fun to make, and I loved the idea's as they popped into my head, it was fun to put it to paper!

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That is what I love about the Pink Cat Studio Lily and Billy's because you can make them into anything you want to!!! As you will see in my next post especially!

Melissa keeps giving us so many new things to use these stamps with and for!!!

O.K. if you like this card you have to leave a comment even if you normally do not!!! :-) It is not hard to do, I have it set to where you do not have to have a blogger account to leave a message, and after Jami Bova's advice I even got rid of the jumbled words you had to type before leaving a comment! I have had this for weeks now and never have recieved any spam comments or any unwanted comments!!! Come on I dare ya too! Smiles and Hugs :-)!!!!!

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I hope you have a Stampendous Night!!!

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Heather

I leave you with this card I posted back in October it was one of my other DT Call pieces. Here is the link to the post about this card if you want to read all the details in how and why I made it. It was for Piper to show her she could become anything she wants in life if she keeps up the great work in school!!!

"Lily Stages of Life Card"

I used several of the different Lily and Billy Dress Up Sets to create these images. On some of them I left out certain parts of the stamp and on some of them I added just a bit to get what I needed. I just love Melissa's Stamps!

Here is the Link to this post.

SU Sale on Retiring Sets!!! Yep you heard right the retirement list is actually on SALE!!!

Sale.... Sale....Sale....!!!!!!

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Good news! The retiring list is always a much anticipated event for those of us who love SU stamps. And this time we are getting a double bonus. If you find a must-have set (or 2 or 3) on the list they will be 10% off from Dec. 9- Dec. 23! Plus, are you ready for this?... free shipping on orders $70 or more place Dec. 9-Dec. 23.So head on over to see what you must have from the retiring list and then contact me so we can get that ordered. Or you can do it directly at my business website link over in my sidebar with the picture of the SU Catalog.

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I have just viewed the new hostess sets and the Spring and Summer Catty Preview, and the Sale-a-Bration sets and WoWZa I am going to go broke!!!!

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Tasha, Emily, and I already talked today about starting to plan our big SU workshops we always do during SAB! Usually cards and scrapbooks too!

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Heather

Another Blog Award to give away.

Hi Everyone!

Regina from Germany and The Creative Corner Blog: graced me with this wonderful award about a week ago and I had not had the time to give the award away to others yet so now I am doing that!

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I had admired this award on other blogs so I was very honored to receive it from Regina!!!

I want to give this lovely award away to These creative, and special stamping blogs!

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This blog invests and believes the PROXIMITY- nearness in space, time and relationships. These blogs are exceedingly charming. These kind bloggers aim to find and be friends. They are not interested in prizes or self-aggrandizement . Our hope is that when the ribbons of these prizes are cut, even more friendships are propagated. Please give more attention to these writers. Deliver this award to 8 bloggers who may then pass it on.

Jami Bova over at Stamp Happy Blog:

Jami has kept me going some times with her sweet comments and her overall encouragement! Jami is a wonderful caring kind person, and I am very happy to call her my friend!!!! Jami is also just the most creative person! She just got asked to design her own stamp line, which I had been telling her for awhile would be coming! She can draw soooooo wonderfully! Thanks Jami for being who you are!!!

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Janna Hull over at Stamps, Paper, and Glitter Oh My Blog:

Janna is also a very sweet girl. I am enjoying getting to know her. She posts 3 or 4 cards a day and I am so jealous of her ability to do that!!! She is super creative, and she comes up with some great idea's! Janna used to be a Kindergarten teacher and now she stays home with her little girl, and just started stamping about 6 months ago! I can not believe that because her work is simply wonderful!!!!

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Tasha Hickert over at Tasha's Design World Blog:

Tasha is my next door neighbor, good friend, and Stampin Up down line, and "business partner in crime" we both get each other into some crazy situations ie..... the craft fair we knew about 36 hours before we had to be there!!! Tasha has some very creative idea's not only in stamping, but she is a land scape designer (when she works outside the home) mostly a stay at home mommy. I tell Tasha she is the next Martha Stewart if she liked public speaking which she really really does not!!!! :-)

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Emily Hauschild over at Buzzy Blogger Blog:

Emily is a dear friend, and also a Stampin Up down line. I would not have met Emily if not for stamping, and I treasure our friendship!!! Emily and I have totally different styles, but we appreciate each others work, and love to stamp together when we get time too... Emily is the most positive up beat person I think I know! Emily does not get to post as much as I want to read her blog because she works very hard as a Newly Certified Oncology nurse at the Hutchinson Clinic, yep another thing we have in common we are both RN's!

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Ashley over at Heart Hugs Blog:

Ashley has the Etsy Shop Challenge every week, and I really enjoy reading her blog! She is pregnant with their second little one, and a busy mom to Brady too. Ashley has some very creative and fun projects on her blog, and she is a woman after my own passions with her Photography, and her Photo Collages! Her work reminds me of my own so many times with her photo's!!! Ashley also has a heart for children, and I love that!!!!

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Heather over at Vannilla Hev'n Blog:

I really enjoy reading Heathers blog and we both are Heathers with an off spelling of Heaven in our blog titles! I met Heather not to long ago, and am just getting to know her work and her blog, but I really enjoy it! Heather is from Australia!!!

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Juliana over at Juliana's Obsessions Blog:

Juliana comes up with some wonderful creations, I love seeing her stuff, and reading her blog, and she is also a Stampin Up Demo in Australia too! I have gotten so many ideas from Julianna! I never tire of looking at her creations, and I have even taught a few of them in Stamper's Club!!!

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I also have to give this award to one non stamping blog!

The Award goes to Paula - My "Adoptive" Mom. Paula is my ex-boyfriend of 8 years Mom, he and I broke up, but she and I did not!!!!! :-) Paula and I have been friend for 17 years now, and my kids call her Granny Paula and know no difference. They got the cutest puzzles in the mail from her today and they loved them!!!! Paula started her blog not long after I started mine and she does these things called Meme's have you heard of them??? Anyway they answer a lot of questions about life and them self's every day and you can learn some interesting facts about the people doing them!!!!! Paula is in my monthly Stampers Club, but she does not stamp much! I know I know I am trying to get her going, and she would be great at it if she would! I keep hoping she will come over once a month and stamp with me! I always enjoy our time together!!!!

So the last award goes to Paula over at Paula's Place Blog:

Well that is my 8 People for this blog award! I could list out a ton more, but I still have 1 more award I have been given that I get to pick 10 creative Stampers for!!!!! I got to get to bed as tomorrow Willow has Pre-School, I have cleaning to do in the house and of course more laundry does it ever end???? Marvin leaves for his annual hunting trip this weekend. He always has fun with his High School, and College friends out hunting by his parents, aunts, and families farms!!! This is the 15th Annual Country Boy Can Survive Hunting Trip!!!! One of the Hunters girl friends even designed them shirts for this year!

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I hope you are Having a Stampendous Week so far!!!!

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Heather

Willow Christmas Cookies, and a Tree

Christmas Cookies Anyone???

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Hello again!

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Now how long has it been since I have been able to post 2 times in one day????

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So I bought these Whiff of Joy Willow stamps for my Willow for Christmas, and today I had some time to play with them! I am so loving them!!! I also got the Whiff of Joy Christmas tree which is also designed by the same artist the Willows are, and I love it too!

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I was totally thrilled today when I found out that this card meets the Whiff of Joy Challenge for this week, as I have been stalking the wonderful Whiff of Joy Blog and the gorgeous designs of the DT girls for a long time now, but could never play before because I did not have any stamps yet!!! Now I have 6 so Yea!!!!!

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I made this card as my first Whiff of Joy Card. I love that Sentimet from SU Welcome Christmas into your Heart!!!! I wish the papers had shown up better it is Perfect Plum which is sooooo pretty, but it looks more like Lovely Lilac!!! I was excited how the card turned out you have to let me know what you think!!!

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For the Inks and Coloring things I used:

I got out my Shimmerz (you gotta get some if you do not have any!!!!!) They are the best things since sliced bread!!!! They make anything just sooo sparkly and pretty!

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I used Rustic Red, Burgundy, Aqua Marine, Beeswax, and Angle Wings Shimmerz paints on the Tree, on the Apples, star ornaments, Ribbon, Candles, and Angel.

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I used Angel Wings Shimmerz on Willows main part of her Apron, and hair bow, and Beeswax on the darker sections of her blond hair.

You can kind of see the pretty shimmerz in her hair and on her bow, but you can not see how gorgous the Shimmerz makes her Apron, and how much it adds to the whole card!!! I wish you could see it! If you have used Shimmerz you know what I mean!!!

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For Willow I used the SU markers Perfect Plum, Pale Plum, Brocade Blue, Summer Sun, Yo Yo Yellow, Sage Shadow, Blush Blossom, Apricot Appeal, Chocolate Chip, Close to Co Co, Always Artichoke, Bashful Blue, Regal Rose, and Black Staz on. I also used a Silver Gel Pen on the seems on her jeans and the flourishes too.

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For the tree I colored all the parts with my Markers, Silver Gel Pen, and Shimmerz, and then I colored the green part of the tree with my SU Chalks.

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Papers are:

Perfect Plum, and Garden Green, and Whisper White SU Card Stock.

Accessories are:

Martha Stewart Lace Punch, SU Organdy wide Whisper White ribbon, and double round ribbon punch, Glue Dots, and Liquid Glue.

Here you can see that pretty ribbon, and the wonderful Martha Stewart Punch!! I have looked for it many times at our Wal-Mart, but they never had it in stock, then when we went to Pueblo I looked there, and they had like 15 in stock!!!! I snapped it right up!!! I love how it looks!!!

Stamps are:

Whiff of Joy Willow with Cookies, and Christmas Tree, and SU set Heard from the Heart for the Sentiment which I stamped in craft Whisper White and embossed in Silver.

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While I made this Card Willow colored the same stamps and when Piper got home from School she colored both stamps twice!!!! I should scan in their creations and add them to this post tomorrow! My girls love stamping and coloring too! I wonder why????

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Well I hope you enjoy this card I really like these stamps now!!!! Willow does not know they are part of her Christmas yet, but she will be super excited, and I am going to take all 3 of the Willow's I got and make a framed Project for her Wall that I will wrap and give her with these stamps!!!

The Shimmerz are just so gorgeous, but I do not think you can see them very well!!!! I also love how cute and antique Willow's outfit looks!!!! For some reason she reminds me off Holly Hobby from when I was little!!! :-)

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Have a great night and a Stampendous day tomorrow!!!

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Oh Yes a few of you asked what my surprise was that I have not shared yet. Well it may not be anything big, or it could end up being something I have wanted for a long time too!!!! I finished a few projects for a Design Team I am applying for. I poured my Heart and Soul into them, so I hope they are good enough!!! I was going to post them today, but then I decided I better wait until after the DT Call is all over which is the 10th. That way even though my Application is already in no one can see my Projects and try to do anything off of them.

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I will give you a Hint. Red, and Yellow, Black, and White, They're all Precious in His Site. Also Snow White, Cinderella, and Tinker Bell, a party and a princess day! So on the 10th I will post them, and I hope you are all as excited about them as I was!!!! Wish me luck I will not know until January!!!! Ugggghhhhhh I am not sure I can wait that long!!!!! The DT application is for my very favorite Stamp company other than Stampin Up! I would love to get to Design for them!!!!

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Love to All!!!! I will be back tomorrow to share something else I have been working on with Tasha!

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Heather

Super Cute Punched Holiday Tags

Punched gift Tags - Punchations to Love, Year after Year!!!!

Hi All!

Happy Monday! I have a huge weight lifted off my shoulders today. As of yesterday all the major Holiday activities are done, Christmas Workshops all done, Craft Fair all done, Kids school and Church Programs all done, Helping everyone with their Christmas Cards (all most done), Christmas Parties under control, DT applications all done, company all gone, House and Laundry back under control, Kids being sick (hopefully all done!!!), most of the Holiday long trips to visit family and friends far away all done, and things can slow down and I can enjoy the rest of the season, plus the big bonus is I get to stamp again!!!! Can we hear a big Wooooooo Hoooooo!!!!

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I have missed it so much, and I am really ready to get back to daily projects!!!! Today I have been working on my first Whiff of Joy Card. Since I have a daughter named Willow I had to get me some Whiff of Joy Willow stamps. I got Christmas Willow, Cookie Willow, Umbrella Willow, Lizzie and Muff because it reminds me of my Willow, and the Whiff of Joy Christmas Tree. Loving it!!!!!

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I will have to post that project later tonight because it is not quite done yet.

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I do have these Super Cute Holiday Tags that Tasha taught a class on the other night. It was just Tasha, Becky, and I there, but they were fun!!!

Reindeer, Santa, Snowman, and Penguin Tags all made with SU punches!

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I can not take credit for the designs they were on the Stampin Up Demonstrator web site, and Tasha found them and had all the pieces for us to make them. I love all the Punches you can use with them!!!!

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So Here they Are:

Santa Tag:

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Colors Used:

Garden Green, Whisper White, Real Red, Basic Black.

Punches Used:

3 Flowers, Word Window, (the hat is supposed to be Scallop Square, but a friend was borrowing it), 1/2" Circle, Crop-a-Dile.

Stamps Used:

I have not had the time to stamp them yet, and I did not realize that until I already had taken and edited the pictures, but I would use my Don't Open Until Christmas stamp here, and I think Santa's nose should have been sponged on the edges to give it some dimension.

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Snowman Tag:

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Colors Used:

Real Red, Whisper White, Basic Black, Old Olive, and Only Orange.

Punches Used:

1 1/4" Circle or 1 3/8" Circle, 1 1/4" Square, Crop-a-Dile, Word Window, 1/4" Square.

Stamps Used:

You could stamp To and From on this one, For You, Happy Holiday's, or Merry Christmas

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Reindeer Tag:

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Colors Used:

Mellow Moss, Basic Black, Real Red, Whisper White, Chocolate Chip, and Close to Co Co

Punches Used:

Lg Oval, Wide Oval, 3/4" Circle, 1/4" Circle, 5 Petal Flower, Boho Flowers, Crop-a-Dile

Stamps Used:

I would probably use the Do Not Open until Christmas stamp here, or To and From Stamp. The Reindeer's face was sponged with Chocolate Chip to add dimension here.

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Penguin Tag:

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Colors Used:

Tangerine Tango, Basic Black, Whisper White, Baja Breeze, (a little bit of DSP for the scarf)

Punches Used:

1 1/4 Circle, 1 3/8" Circle, Lg. Oval, Scallop Circle, Crop-a-Dile, 1/4" Circle, 1/4" Square.

Stamps Used:

For You, or To and From. Sponge some Baja Breeze on the top of the torn snow to give it some dimension, you can add some dazzling diamonds glitter to the snow too!

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Reindeer, and Penguin Tag Punchations!

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Santa and Snowman Punchation Tags! Gold Twine thru to hang it from present.

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One of the girls who was making them said she would be sure to add a note that it could be used as an ornament or a book mark afterwards since so much work went into it she did not want them to get thrown away after the present was opened!!!! These were not hard to make when you did all the punching for 5 or 6 at a time and each person worked on putting together the other peoples tags at each station!!! It was fun to do!!!

I hope you are all have a Stampendous Start to your week!!!!

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Heather

The First of 3 Awards to give away!!!

Hi All!!!!

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I hope you all are having a good day! I stamped all day today, I wish I could share with you what I did, because there was no time to make anything else to share, but in a couple of days when I can share with you what I have been up to I do not think you will be disappointed!!!!

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I worked on two great projects I am sooo proud of!!!!! It is like almost killing me not to be able to share them with anyone, but I just have to wait a couple of more days!!!!

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So anyway here is the first Award I want to give away. I have been given 3 special awards in the last couple of weeks and I have just not had the chance to get them on here!

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I am going to start with the first one I got the Kreative Blogger Award. I recieved this award from Jami Bova over at Stamp Happy. Jami is such a sweet friend! I was so excited the day I saw it on her blog, and I am sooo glad I met Jami and made a great new friend!!!!

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For this award you are supposed to pick 6 blogs you find very Kreative and give them the award! It was hard to pick because several I love already had the award, and there are so many I do like that I had to just pick 6, however I have two more awards to give away this week, and one goes to 10 people, and the other to 8 more so you are probably getting one later in the week!!! :-)

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I choose to give this award to 6 blogs I love to read, and 3 have been at it for a while, and 3 are pretty new at it like I am! I have not even been blogging for 3 months yet! Can you believe that?????

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1st Award goes to my good Blogging Friend in Germany Regina at My Creative Corner Blog

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2nd Award goes to Liz a new blogging friend (she leaves me the sweetest comments I love to read them!!! over at Getting Crafty Blog.

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3rd Award goes to Tanya over at Tanya's Stamps N Things. She has so many great cards and scrap book pages and I love hearing about her cute kids too!!!

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4th Award goes to MacKenzie at Midnight Scramper. MacKenzie is one of the first blogs I started reading and though she is quite an accomplished blogger and might not need any more awards I have to give it to her!! Some of the things she comes up with are just sooooo creative like the Christmas Stalking she turned up side down and added a Tree as antlers and made it a Reindeer! Genius!!!!

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5th Award goes to my friend Kristin over at Mindless Creations. Kristin was the first blog I found other than MacKenzie and Lauren Meader and she was just starting out then like I was. Kristin has some great creations and I love reading her posts!!!

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6th and Final Award for the Kreative Blogger Award goes to Nikki during my blog candy she left me some sweet comments and I love love love this Hello Kitty she created the other day especially since my girls are Hello Kitty lovers (as was I as a kid too!!!!) Nikki's Blog is

Oh Nikki

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Last night I got to go over to Tasha's and Stamp some. Well actually I mostly worked on one of the Projects I also worked on today that I can not quite yet share with you, but we made these Totally ULTRA cute Christmas tags made using all sorts of Punches! The are amazingly cute and I am going to post them tomorrow!!! You will Loooooooooovvvvvveeee them I promise!!!!

Tasha and I have to get together again on Monday because we actually have some Private Orders we have received for our creations one order was for a Ladies Luncheon, one for a Church Dinner, one for a Christmas stalking gift, and one for all the students and the teacher co-workers Christmas gifts. We are starting to enjoy the private stampation orders!!!!

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Have a Stampendous Night!!!

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Heather

A Pink Cat Studio - Paper Craft Planet - Challenge. Issued by Me :-)

A Perrrfect Kitty Birthday!!!

Well this week over at Paper Craft Planet in our Pink Cat Studio Group it was my turn to issue the bi-monthly challenge.

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I had previously seen a challenge a while back that really had some stunning cards in it, and I wanted our group to give it a try. I changed a few things about it and issued this challenge.

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A 3 times 3, 6 by 6, and 1 of 3 Challenge.

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3 Part Challenge:

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1. ) Make a Card or 3-D project that is 6" x 6" in size

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2.) Uses 3 of 3 different items - ie... 3 Embellishments, and 3 Patterned Papers, and 3 stamps

You can choose whatever items you want as long as there are 3 different categories with 3 of those items used in each. So you will end up with 9 items in 3 different categories.

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3.) You can pick 1 of the following 3 Color Schemes:

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1.) Tempting Turquoise, Pixie or Passion Pinks, and Silver. (Gray can be substituted for Silver) and Kraft can be added as an optional color.

2.) Lavender Lace, Elegant Eggplant or Perfect Plum, and Gray (Silver can be substituted for Gray)

3.) Ruby Red, Night of Navy, and Old Olive.

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Other colors can also be used on your project, but at least the colors listed in that scheme must be on the project as well.

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I chose those color schemes because I have seen so many wonderful Christmas Cards this year in mostly non traditional Christmas colors and I picked three of the color schemes I have been seeing used for the challenge.

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Well it took me a few days with everything going on this week to complete my own challenge, but here is my take on my Challenge!!! LOL

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I needed to make a Birthday Card for a dear friend that had her Birthday while my MIL was here, and I did not have time to make the card so today I got it made.

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This is my Perfect Kitty Birthday Card. I am really disappointed in how the colors look on this card. I took the pictures both in natural light and under lights both with flash and without and that Turquoise will just not show up as bright and pretty as it is!!! It is looking much more muted and blue than the bright Turquoise color it really is. I changed it in Photo shop, but it still looks wrong. So just imagine it to be bright Turquoise! :-)

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I used Tempting Turquoise, Pink Passion, Metallic Silver Card Stocks all from SU, I used my Pink Cat Studio Kitty plate #1 stamps and choose the Fashionable Kitty Stamp as my main image. I also used the two paws in different sizes, and Words from different sentiments in the set to make my own Sentiment. I used Basic Black, Staz On Black, Tempting Turquoise, Pink Passion, Pretty in Pink, and Silver Gel Pen for the Inks.

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I cuttled some of the layers with the Swirls Cuttle Bug Folder and my Big Shot.

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I used 3 different Antique Buttons (yesterday I found this large 8 oz Bag of Antique Buttons at Hobby Lobby. I love so many of the buttons in it, so I chose 3 of the same button in different sizes two are the same size.

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I used 3 different Ribbons, The light Turquoise and Silver wide ribbon, the SU Tempting Turquoise Gross Grain Ribbon in the bow, and a Silver metallic Bridal Ribbon from HL.

Here is the Sentiment I made using parts of 3 different sentiments.

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I used 3 Silver Brads in the top corner, of the bottom right square.

Here you can see the shiny metallic of the silver ribbon and the silver card back. Not as pretty as in person, but you can get the idea!

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Now for my not so funny mistake!!!! I should have done all my stamping in Black staz on, but for the solid black Kitty I just used my Basic Black Marker to color the stamp. I had the ribbon all adhesed on the paper edges and the Kitty stamped and I some how smudged the black ink. So I took everything off and turned it over and did it again, and then my 4 year old got black finger prints on it again. I did not have time to re-do it again so there are black finger prints on the card. You might not even notice them, but to me they are a big glaring black mistake!!! LOL!

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I hope you enjoy my Challenge Card it was a fun one to design and make!!

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Have a Stampendous Day!! I have 3 awards I have been given that I have been carefully choosing who to pass them on to. My plan is to get that done later tonight after a Stamping Ladies getaway at my neighbors so check back tomorrow for the awards!!!

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Heather

A New Christmas Card Design

8 Blessings to Shine Bright for Christmas!!!

Hi Everyone,

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Well I am finally back if you are still reading???? LOL.

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The last few weeks have just been so busy! 3 Stampin Up workshops, a Craft Fair, Two Thanksgiving Trips a total of 24 hours of driving, A baby with Ear infections, Dr.'s Appointments, Pre-School, Helping in Piper's Class, About a Million Loads of laundry, cleaning, helping a friend out with watching her son (Willow loved that!!!!), Taking care of the 3 kids, Piper's 1st Grade Christmas program, practices for the kids church program, trying to get some DT application projects done........ et... et....

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I have been in major stamping withdrawals too!!!! I am serious while I was stamping everyday before it actually helped me to feel more grounded and keep up with everything better, but the last few weeks have just been crazy busy!

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My Mother in Law was able to be here visiting the last couple of days and she helped me with Laundry and I helped her with designing her Christmas Cards. She is making about 75 of them, and here is the Design we came up with. I thought it would be cool to design a Keepsake "Book Mark" Card the kind where you pull out a card inside a pocket card. So anyway she already had purchased the Ruby Red Card Stock and the Christmas Patterned Paper, and then we added some baja breeze, and old olive to the other colors (these colors were already in the patterned paper).

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Here are both pieces of the Card put together. The Pocket part of the card is Ruby Red SU card stock with a Baja Breeze curly label SU punch behind a large star SU Punch in the Pat. Paper. The front flap of the Pocket is folded down 1 1/2" then scalloped with the scallop edge punch. Then we took an old Fiskers punch of mine that looks like an 8 point shining star punched them in Old Olive parts of the patterned paper. We stamped the saying which we felt both went well with the stars, and with the grandchildren being blessings as well! Any way saying stamped in Whisper White and then embossed with glittery silver embossing powder. Here is the Christmas Picture this year. Left to right is Willow, Jim holding Tucker, Ben in back, Piper up front, Nathan up front, Erik in back, Marianne holding Jonathan, Abigail up front. Marianne had made the girls dresses and then we just dressed all the boys in red, white, black and khaki. Marianne and I noticed that all the blonds are on the left and all the dark heads are on the right. Which is funny because Marianne is full blooded Dutch so she should be with all the blonds, and Jim is Swedish so he should be with the dark heads!!!! The kids ages are:

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Piper 6, Willow 4, Abby 4 (six weeks younger than Willow), Ben 3, Nathan 3, Erik 2, Tucker 1, and Jonathan 10 months.

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We sat them so siblings would be together. Ben and Erik on the Back hay bale, Piper Willow and Tucker in the left triangle, and Abi, Nathan, and Jonathan in the right triangle.

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We were talking today about how all of the 5 boys were all born in exactly 3 years time. Ben and Jonathan share the same Birthday and Nathan, Erik, Tucker, are between those two. Ben and Nathan are about 9 months apart, Nathan and Erik are about 9 months apart, Erik and Tucker are 11 months apart, and Tucker and Jonathan are just under 7 months apart.

The pocket part of the card the saying is really pretty with the shiny glittery embossing.

The two parts of the card next to each other. The Dimensions are Pocket 5 1/2" x 4 3/4", and Book Mark part 6 1/2" by 4 1/4". The Baja Breeze circle punch is the 3/4" circle, and we used the crop-a-dile to punch the whole in it. She is using pretty white and silver striped organza ribbon thru the punched hole.

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Well I have two more posts to try to get posted tonight so that is all for this post. I hope you enjoy the Christmas Card!!!!

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Heather

And the Blog Candy Winner is.........? Willow's Big Blog Candy Surprise!

303 Entrees into my Mega Blog Candy 2 Week Challenge!

Hello Everyone!

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So I have some musings on Blog Candy.

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Things I have learned about a Blog Candy Give Away:

1. You will meet sooooo many wonderful stampers and bloggers during a 2 week Blog Candy give away you would never have met any other way!

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2. You can make some neat friends from doing a Blog Candy give away!

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3. When doing a 2 week Blog Candy give away you need to keep up with the daily comments and amount of entrees you get for the Blog Candy........

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It took me almost 3 hours today to go through all the comments and make slips of paper for each person and the amount of entrees they got into the Blog Candy.

It was so worth it though because it gave me a chance to remember each comment and the person who left it and gave me a chance to re-visit some of their wonderful Blogs again!

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4. Your 4 year old Daughter and you can have an afternoon of fun making the Blog Candy Draw Pile! Willow came up with so many cute idea's and she said so many cute things I wish I could share them all with you!!! She melted my heart and I am glad I got the chance to spend this time with her!!!!! She was so excited as you will see in the pictures below!!!

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5. I learned not to do a Blog Candy Challenge during a Holiday period again. But.... in my defense it was to celebrate 5,000 hits in 7 weeks of blogging, and it fell during a Holiday period so how could I have done it differently????? LOL!!!!!

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Blog Candy Yummies:

1. I read each and every one of your comments daily and I enjoyed them so much! Thank you to everyone who participated and I hope I will still get to see you around my blog even though the candy is over! I hope you enjoyed my Stampations while you were here!!!!

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2. I was introduced to so many wonderful blogs and bloggers, stamping projects and stamps I would never had the chance to see without having the Blog Candy Challenge!

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3. I had my eyes opened to new techniques, idea's, and stamping things from all over the world!!!!

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4. I did this Blog Candy to celebrate 5,000 hits, but I am sure I received more than all of you did just through your kindness during the challenge!!!

So with no further Adu here are the pictures of our Drawing!

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I separated all the names into piles of 20 to see how many there were. 253!

Willow and I pushed all the little Piles together to start mixing them up!

Willow getting ready to do her jumble the names (as she called it)

Willow throwing names into the air over and over! She had so much fun doing this!!!! For those of you that notice the black mouth, no here teeth are not all black she was eating an Oreo Cookie!

After her Jumble the Names all up she picked them all up and put them into a bowl.

Then she jumbled them again and began to draw the name.

Now for our Surprise. Willow decided that with this many names there could not be just 1 winner! So she picked 4 (four because she is 4 years old!)

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1 Winner gets the Mega Blog Candy Pile, and 3 others get a Stamping Up stamp set. I will get the pictures of the other Stamp sets up later today!

The Winner is.....

Mega Candy Pile: Cheri Howard!

Stamp set #1: Katrina from Sweden!

Stamp set #2: Regina from Germany!

Stamp set #3: Janna Hull from America!

Ladies please get me your contact and mailing addresses and I will get these Blog Candy Prizes off to you!

Congratulations to those who won!!! Thank You to everyone who played along with me!!!! Please come back again!

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Love to All!

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Heather