Being Thankful

I've been a busy crafter the last 24 hours! Here are two thank-you cards I made last night with my Basic Grey Wassail paper pack. I'm sad to say that after five cards, I'm using up my paper.... Come to think of it, if I can mangage to make two or three more cards from that 6" pack, I will have 11 cards for well under $10! Cheaper than the dollar store and more special than Hallmark. ;-) (Of course, if you factor in the Cuttlebug, the stamps, the ink pad, the embellishments....hmmmm...)

Saying Thanks with Snowflakes

Sending thank-you notes is so much more fun now that I'm making my own cards. I love having the time to create a card specifically for someone. Sending a handmade card is a gift of time, creativity, and gratitude!
Supplies: DP- Basic Grey Wassail, stamp- CTMH For Every Occasion, snowflake- Spellbinders Snowflake Wonder, tag- Cuttlebug die

"Sew-long 2008!" Challenge

Gina K. over at A Day in the Life blog has issued a challenge to create a card that has stitching on it. Now I LOVE to sew and quilt, and the challenge brings together those interests with my newer passion for creating handmade cards, so I decided to play along. I dug out my Paper Quilts book, and settled on a simple block pattern.
The Wassail paper pad from Basic Grey was a natural choice, as the papers remind me so much of vintage fabrics. The stamp is from Close to My Heart's "For Every Occasion" set. The brad is a Wassail glazed brad, and the metal snowflake is from a Making Memories set I purchased several years ago. Now I'm thinking how cool it would be to use Amish colors with this pattern....

Birthday Greetings

My father-in-law's birthday is less than a week before Christmas. We always try to separate it from Christmas celebration, and so I made him a card that was definitely NOT a Christmas card. We also bought him a bar of gourmet Toffee Chocolate that I wrapped like a package. That and a signed copy of one of Elmer Kelton's books should make him feel remembered on his special day!
Supplies: CTMH DP and stamps, Nestibilities

Snowman Soup

Karen Ewert's blog Stamping Videos is one of my favorites; her videos are great and I always have success when I try one of the projects she features. My latest attempt is Snowman Soup. I had never heard of it before, but I fell in love with it immediately! The mug is really cute, too, but I'm saving it for another time. I found some cute bags whose white swirly decoration seemed to fit perfectly with a snowy theme. I decided to go all out with my soup project and ordered several boxes of Godiva hot cocoa as my soup base! Then, as I was checking out at Albertson's last week, I spied a display of yummy Bob's candy canes, larger than those in the multi-packs. I opted to split the poem into two parts and make sort of a tag card. Now I'm thinking that a batch of shortbread cookies would be the perfect complement to this special hot coocoa treat!

Organizing My Virtual World

My messy virtual world is stressing me out these days. I have pieces of myself on various wikis, blogs, and my personal website, as well as a newbie Second Life avatar who has been loitering on Orientation Island for too long... One solution I've come up with is to use this blog to connect these fragmented parts of my digital footprint. I think one of my resolutions for the upcoming year will be to spend more time creating content on the spaces I already have rather than creating new ones to try out different tools and sites.