My holiday attire

Merry Christmas!

I bought this hat at a discount store a few years ago and get compliments on it every year. Best 99 cents I ever spent!

Winter blooms

I'm fortunate to live in a temperate climate, so I have blooms year-round. The bearded iris is named "frequent flyer" and blooms three or four times a year. I paid quite a bit for one rhizome several years ago (I don't remember how much, but I remember being reluctant to spend the $), but it has paid for itself many times over. As for the roses, I clipped the buds to bring them inside before I do my annual pruning.

Creative Palette giveaway

Here's your chance to win some goodies from one of my favorite designers, Nancy Thomas. I've been a fan of hers since the Lifetime Moments days. She started a blog after LM closed and I've been able to continue to enjoy her creations. Here's a link to the giveaway.

Card swap, month 2

Susan was the hostess for November's card swap. She told us she stuffed the packages and she wasn't kidding! As usual, I forgot to take a photo of the goodies before I dug in, but Susan has a photo on her blog. Here's just a partial list of what she included:

• All kinds of embellishments including pearl beads, ribbon, flowers, and brads
• Library pocket (I never know what to do with these)
• Chatterbox Scrapbook Nails (these are "vintage" scrapbook embellishments)
• Slide mounts (as are these)
• Flower lace (loved this, even though I ended up not using it)
• KI Softie (loved this too)
• Scenic Route alphabet stickers
• Card bases and envelopes
• And some of my favorite paper from KI (their Color Theory paper from 2006) and Luxe Designs

This first card is my favorite.

I love, love, love the red paper (Luxe?), both the A and B sides. It is rare that I like both sides of a double-sided paper. The pearls were a pain to glue on. Normally, I'd have used Stickles or a Viva pen, but since pearls were included in the kit, I decided to go for it. The only part of card that I added was the black satin ribbon.

Card 2 and Card 3 are similar designs. Try as I might, I am a simple cardmaker. Maybe I need Scrapfest (an online crop challenge that Lifetime Moments used to sponsor) to encourage me.

The only parts not from the kit are one of the card bases and the black brads. When I looked for brads to use, I discovered that I have FOUR kinds of black mini brads: Lasting Impressions matte, Bazzil matte, JoAnn's, and one no-name brad. Yes, they are visibly different and I had to try them all (I ended up using the no-name brads). On the third card, I just trimmed the paper slightly to fit the card front and the design left a perfect space for the flowers (or I could have put a sentiment there). Those Chatterbox nails made nice flower centers.

This final card uses the KI Theory that I mentioned earlier. How much do I like this paper? As the last LSS trash to treasures sale, I bought a few sheets of this paper to add to my stash (I don't have much of the paper; I didn't buy any when it first came out). I added the card base and stamped sentiment to this card.

Check out what the other ladies made:
Leslie's cards
Katie's cards
Susan's cards

Susan gave us sooo many goodies, I'm sure I could make a dozen more cards. Thanks Susan! I heard that Katie's kit is on its way to us. I can't wait!

Card swap, month 2, Leslie's cards

Leslie is part of our card swap, but doesn't have a blog so I've volunteered to post her cards for her here.

All of her cards have extra touches like lots of inking (which doesn't show up very well in the photos, unfortunately) or stamping.

This card has a fun surprise inside:

Here's a cute little "Hello" card:

And a romantic wedding card:

Susan, November's swap hostess, challenged us to do a layout with the leftovers, and Leslie rose to the challenge:

And you get a bonus! Leslie's daughter, J, wanted to get in on the action so Leslie sent along her creations:

Thanks for playing along Leslie and J!