Ingenious Inkling

More Snow Globe Fun

I needed a few more holiday cards to hold some gift cards, so I broke out my snow globe tags again.  They are perfect for quick and easy cards, since they have a fun glittery snow globe and a sentiment contained in a single element.  

The first one uses this week's Sweet Stop Sketch with Cosmo Cricket Delovely papers for The Corrosive Challenge Blog's Non-Traditional Christmas Color Challenge.  I just love these Vibrant happy colors for winter.  I added a very thin black mat to each layer to help ground the busy designs in the paper.

I had two little sticker border scraps, which worked perfect for the sketch.  I finished with some green adhesive gems and several glittery punched snowflakes.  I think the Nordic Snowflake Punch is perfect for layering.

The next one uses this week's Sweet Sunday Sketch and the cute little snowman snow globe with some DCWV glittery cards.  This card is also for the Simon Says Anything Goes Challenge.

Again the layered Nordic Snowflake and a double-punched bracketed border finish this quick & easy design ... love this unexpected holiday color combination too.

Thursday Link Love

Another fun week exploring blogland ... looks like I must of been hungry when I was surfing, because there are a bit more food links than usually ... then again, there are always so many more holiday food indulgences around us this time of year:

• My mom always makes the best peanut butter fudge for the holidays ... so this year I tried this recipe ... so easy & my husband gave it two thumbs up.
• I saved this recipe for Baked Peanut Butter Oatmeal to try next month ... I'm always on the lookout for breakfast ideas that can be made ahead.
• Some free gift tags (if you're still wrapping) and a cool tutorial for printing directly onto paper sacks.
• I always find myself needing just a bit of ironing, so I put a towel on top of the dryer, rather than pull out the ironing board ... I'm going to have to see if my mother-in-law could make me one of these ironing mats.
• And I adore this Mistletoe Headband Tutorial (picture shown) ... too fun.
• I love to indulge in luxurious bath products ... here's a tutorial for making your own sugar scrubs ... so great for dry, itchy skin during the winter months.
• This Crispy Chocolate Peanut Butter French Toast makes my mouth water just looking at it ... we always ate peanut butter on our French Toast and pancakes growing-up ... and still do ... and the addition of a cornflake crunch & drizzled chocolate sounds like nirvana to me.
• Gingerbread Diamonds ... a wonderful combination of gingerbread flavors in a pretty bar cookie.
• And if you're looking for a bit healthier indulgence, there are these No-Bake Fudgy Snow Balls made with dates and almonds.
• This recipe for jazzing up some sugar cookie mix with almonds, poppy seeds & lemon sounds yummy to me.
• One of my favorite vegetables, the Sweet Potato, has been named a hot food trend for 2011 ... ♥ it.
• These adorable elf tags make me smile.
• Love love love this Christmas Tree made of books ... my kind of holiday decoration.

Scandinavian Valentine

The inspiration at The Shabby Tea Room this week is a Scandinavian Christmas.  For me those pretty little hearts and the red & ivory color palette screamed Valentine.

I used this week's Unscripted Sketch, together with the Piggy Back Challenge to use no patterned paper in your design.  

Those fun little inchies from Inkadinkado's Heart Full of Love are stamped in Pure Poppy Ink on Ivory cardstock and clear embossed.  I added scraps of red ribbon between the squares.  The sentiment is from SRM Stickers.

Glittery Season's Greetings

I mentioned when I made my Polar Penguin Festive Fun card, that there were 11 more gift tags in the package.  

When I saw this week's Moxie Fab Sweet Christmas Cupcake photo from Glorious Treats (click through to see lots more gorgeous photos from this winter-themed table design), I knew this cute little reindeer tag was the perfect starting point for my design.

I wanted to pull in the darker blue from the big glittery snowflake in the bouquet together pinks and light blue.  I used this week's Friday Sketchers Sketch for my layout.  

I also like how the round shape of the snow globe in my design brings in the circular shapes of the cupcakes.  Additionally, I incorporated glittery snowflakes into my design.

I love these colors for a festive holiday design.

Origami Christmas Box

I needed to wrap a small gift, so I revisited my origami box tutorial.  

For the top, I used Bo Bunny's Holiday Magic Wish paper, which has a wonderful shimmer.  The bottom (which really doesn't show until it's opened, is a piece of texty paper that says Merry Christmas.  This craft is the reason I buy up thinner 12" holiday papers on sale after the holiday.  Thinner papers work better for this technique than thicker cardstock.

The wonderful Vintage Santa & sentiment from Artistic Outpost's Snowy Woods make a perfect gift box tag.  This works for the Stamp Something Challenge to make something with a tag or pocket.

Wintertime Peace on Earth

Because yet again, at a time when my holiday cards should have long-ago been in the mail, I'm still making them, here are a few featuring Echo Park's Wintertime Collection.  

I always have the best of intentions in January to make holiday cards throughout the year, but some time around February, those intentions seem to fall by the wayside.  Well, for 2011 I have a holiday card-making plan in the works that is going to help me (and hopefully you) Take Back December (sneak peak here).

The first one I made today is a wintry tag for the Happy Christmas Tag Challenge at Something Completely Different.  

Sentiment is from CatsLife Press.  To get the snowmen all to face the right direction on the ribbon, I fed two pieces of wired ribbon through the opening and cut the other tails short in the back.  

The tiny snowflakes are made by trimming off the longer ends of a Martha Stewart punched snowflake (actually, every time I tried to use the punch on glitter paper, a few of those ends kept falling off, so I developed a solution).  I did the corner punched elements before deciding on the glittery snowflakes ... in hindsight, I probably should have decorated the corners differently.

The next one features stickers from the set with this week's CPS Sketch.

I added a gold punched star to the top of one of the trees and some adhesive pearls to finish the design.

Off to try to get a few more done.

Top 3 at Unscripted Sketches

Excited to see my Polar Penguin Festive Fun card made the Top 3 at Unscripted Sketches ... have you made your Polar Animal card yet?

Etsy Inspired Challenge ~ LingGlass

I have had such an awesome time designing for the Etsy Inspired Challenge the last six months ... I am stepping down after this term to pursue some very exciting new adventures in 2011 (stay tuned for upcoming news).  

My final challenge as part of the design team comes from the gorgeous glass creations of LingGlass.  I chose this lovely yellow stained glass pendant to inspire my card.

I also used this week's Corrosive Challenge Blog Sketch together with Queen Bee papers from Pink Paislee and a Sympathy Sentiment from JustRite Designs.  I also added a Queen Bee clear borderlines sticker along the bottom & a few twinkle gems to the flower centers.

 

Our sponsor this week is Wilson Designs Stamps, which are high quality photopolymer clear stamps made in the USA.  Kim is offering $2.50 shipping if you mention you came from my blog in your purchase description.  She will refund the extra after you check out. 

It's another two prize week ... one luck winner will win the Snowy Wishes stamp set from Wilson Designs & another will get a $10 gift certificate for LingGlass.

Make sure you stop by the other Design Team members and see their wonderful LingGlass inspired creations & use keyword EIC119 if you upload to any galleries.

Ashley

De

Emily B

Emily N

Joy

Kerry

Savannah

Virginia

Laurel (December Guest Designer)

Knock One Out of the Park

This week's SCS Inspiration Challenge was suggested by Jo (Reddyisco).  She was sitting at home on a Saturday night with her laptop on her lap browsing the galleries, while her husband was watching Hockey Night in Canada.  She was watching TV out of the corner of her eye, when Coach's Corner with Don Cherry came on.  She looked at his jacket and thought ... that would make a pretty card.

You know we've all done that ... I've even been known to snap covert pictures of outfits I see for later inspiration.  So Jo does what any inquisitive creative soul would do ... she goes surfing to see if there's a website featuring Mr. Cherry's fabulous attire, and sure enough there is ... and an Inspiration Challenge was born.

I chose this fabulous baseball tie and black jacket Cherry wore in recognition of the Canada-USA game at the World Baseball Classic.  While I've been known to enjoy an occasional local Roughriders hockey game, baseball is king at our house ... particularly the St. Louis Cardinals.

I picked up this baseball pennant on one of my travels, and decided to use the tie's design to create a baseball-themed background on which to feature it.  Turns out I have three different sizes of baseball stamps in my collection (if you don't count the middle size that I apparently liked so much, I bought it twice). I stamped them multiple times in Pure Poppy ink on white cardstock and clear embossed.  Then I sat down, turned on Pandora, and used my detail scissors to start cutting out some baseballs.

I arranged the baseballs on a navy background with a red card base and adhered my Cardinals pennant.  I finished with a sentiment from The Kitchen Sink's 3 Step Baseball.

I hope you find inspiration.

Queen Bee Sympathy

Tonight I made a sympathy card inspired by this week's Play Date Cafe Challenge, which was a Color Splash of Yellow.  

Once again, Pink Paislee's Queen Bee papers come through for me.  I combined the greys and a splash of yellow with a sketch from Just Add Ink.

I used the EK Success Fleur de Lis border punch along the edge and two of the punched out Fleur de Lis (topped with tiny A Muse twinkle gems) to frame my sentiment.