GUEST DESIGNING

This week's challenge is to make an easel card.  I've never done that before, but it was easy following the tutorial here - http://www.splitcoaststampers.com/resources/tutorials/easelcard/
I had gone to Michael's to find a die to cut an oval for last week's challenge.  I found it and the die to cut this cute snowman...I'll be making cards with him for years.
To be sure that the card front stands up, you neees to add an extra layer or an embellishment to the inside of the card.  I made a snowdrift of gathered white ribbon.

CSAYL #48

The challenge for this week is a sketch.  Mine is made rectangular instead of  square, so the proportions are a little different  Everything I used to make it is Stampin' Up, and for a change nothing is retired.  The stamps are Teeny Tiny Wishes and Season of Simple Grace.  The colors are Brilliant Blue, Bashful Blue and White (bad lighting makes it look like vanilla)

In case you haven't noticed, I have a new badge on the side of my blog.  I won the Gift Set Challenge #2 and I will be the Guest Designer for challenge #49...I'm so excited!

OKLAHOMA!

Do I dare tell you that I saw Oklahoma in the theater in the 50's...it wasn't first run, but it wasn't that old either.  It's been a long time since I've seen it in any form, but I've been singing the music from it since saturday.

After learning about the Dust Bowl in history classes, I spent a lot of my life thinking that Oklahoma was pretty barren, but I've since learned that I was wrong.  I haven't been there, but I've been told that it's beautiful.  Although the movie was filmed in Arizona,  I'm using the film's landscape as my inspiration.  The blue sky, distant hills and trees are from the movie, the sunflowers are from my imagination.  I didn't see any in the parts of the movie that I looked at this week, but I'm sure there must be some in Oklahoma, somewhere.

The trees look barren, but I used my water color crayons and aqua painters to fill them with leaves...they just don't show up in the photo.  The gingham bow looks like it belongs in one of the girls' hair.

I can't wait until Carousel shows up on Cinema Saturday.  It's another great Rodgers and Hammerstein musical starring Shirley Jones and Gordon McRae (that I also saw in the theater in the 50's).

DIE-CUT CHRISTMAS CARDS

This challenge turned out to be a lot of fun.  I knew that I had some scrapbooking kits from Stampin' Up that included adhesive die-cuts.  I was surpprised to find that I had parts of 3 Christmas Simply Scrappin' kits.  I could make lots and lots of cards with them.  For now, I just made this one, but you may see more in the future.

The circular design and sentiment are 2 die-cuts, and the designs across the bottom are 2 more.

LITTLE MONKEYS

My youngest grandchild will be having her 1st Birthday soon.  She's so cute and girly to look at, but she moves at an amazing pace and pulls herself up on any vertical surface there is.  I can't imagine where she'll get to when she starts walking.

The Birthday card I made for her is a combination of girly and crazy little animal.

This week's PPA challenge is a sketch challenge that is really a perfect guide for this card.  The little monkey is just like all my grandkids...all over the place!

PURPLE AND GOLD

This week CSAYL (#46) has a color challenge - purple, gold, white and ivory.  I love purple and gold, they're UW/Husky colors, where I went to school, but I've always had trouble putting white and ivory together.  The white always seems to make ivory look kind of dirty, but I didn't have too much trouble making this Christmas card:

The snowflakes and pearls (Can you see them?  They're on the band) are white, and the band is ivory.

FLOWERS

It's the last minute to add my entry for the CSCC #73.  I had a pretty good idea of what I was going to make, but I tend to postpone things, so I just got around to it.

What do you think of my colors?  It's not as subtle as my original plan, but it just happened.  I like it but I'm not sure that it suits the movie. 

I CASE'd the design...I first saw it on Maureen Plut's blog (http://buttonsandbling.blogspot.com/)  and she said that she had CASE'd it from Dawn McVey.  It's been a while, and this is not the first time I've used it; it really is versatile, changing the color and type of flower etc.
I hope you like it.

MAKING BOXES

Well, maybe I don't LOVE making boxes, but I'm not afraid of it anymore.  This week at Christmas Stamping All Year Long the challenge was to make a box with a snowflake theme.  I'm really not too keen on making 3-D items, but there was a very good tutorial by Maria Bell that I followed, and I think that it turned out fine.

Now I just need a good tutorial for taking pictures.

SPRING

Pals Paper Arts have a color challenge this week.

Last Wednesday I had an Easter Card class, and I used these colors and variations for all three of our cards.  after the class I made cards with the extra materials and put them in the mail.  Then I checked PPA's challenge and saw that if I had taken any pictures I wouldn't even have to make a project.  A lesson learned.

Well that's okay I need to make a card for a niece's Birthday anyway.

I used my Big Shot to cut the daisy and butterflies, the ribbon I tied became the stem and leaves, and an ivory button is the flower center.  This was pretty easy to make..the color combination is very easy to work with.

EMBOSSING - CHRISTMAS STAMPIN' ALL YEAR LONG #45

The requirement for CSAYL #45 is embossing.  I love embossing; it adds texture to paper.

Here is my card with dry embossing using texture plates in a Big Shot, and heat embossing with silver powder.

In real life, the green paper shows through the silver embossing much better than in this photo.

Thanks for checking out my Christmas card.

JULIE AND JULIA

That's the movie for CSCC this week.  I haven't seeen the movie yet, but I read the book and loved it.  I will see the movie soon.
I filled my card with food...kind of like Julie's life for one year.  Almost every day she made a new dish and blogged about it.

I really felt guilty that she worked full time, shopped, cooked something new and blogged about it often enough to get through all the recipes in Julia Child's first cookbook in one year.  I'm retired and my time is my own, but I have a hard time blogging more than once a week.

To make my card I used, Stampin' Up's "Voila" and "Voila To Go" stamp sets.

Have a nice dinner tonight...Bon Appetit!