Wednesday, December 28, 2016

As 2016 comes to an end!


It always gives us a chance to reflect, remember and look forward to a new year.

When I take the time to reflect and remember, I have to hope that I had done “better” this last year. Better with my own family and health, faith, finances, friends, work, and of course, with my stamping “business”.  

I know each year I say I am going to focus more on my blog, but this is an area that always seems to cause me anguish. I’m not going to spend a great deal of time pondering over it. In fact with this post, I will have posted one more post than I did in 2015…..so I did “better” and that makes me happy.

Now, back to my cards and this post….the cards below were from my November group. With just using two stamp sets from the Holiday Catalog; Mountain Adventure and Christmas Magic, we made three cards.



Snowman For this card, I used the trees and snowman from the Christmas Magic set and the sentiment is from Mountain Adventure. I thought it was appropriate because the snowman has mittens on his branch arms. The colors used were Marina Mist, white and black and yes the ribbon is retired but it was just the right touch.


Bells A simple card to make, but packs a punch. Both the bells and sentiment are from the Christmas Magic set. The bells were hand colored and “fussy cut” Then I used Wink of Stella to give them a bit of sparkle (hard to see in the photo). I used the Decorative Label punch for the sentiment and colored the rhinestones with cherry cobbler markers. The DSP is This Christmas Specialty found in the Annual Catalog and was carried over from the 2015 Holiday Catalog. The next layer is Cherry Cobbler card stock cut out by using an old favorite of mine Top Note. Again a retired die, but I still love it.



Mountain Scene This set is so fun and brings back memories of days when I too hit the slopes....many, many moons ago. I am thankful that I live in Northern California where I don’t have to live in the snow, but it is only an hour and half away. I used the technique noted in the catalog of placing the skis and snowboard on the same clear block to stamp the side image of the card. For the main area of the card, I used the various stamps to make a mountain scene. The mountains have more Wink of Stella added to them again hard to see in the picture. This set is fun because you can add more to your own outdoor scene with the stamps. 


Additional cards and projects
Below are some from my last swap and other cards I have recently done. I won’t go into great detail for them but thought I would share.  


Here are cards from my annual trip to Oregon, aka Girlfriend Weekend. I thought it was fun that many of us chose to do Christmas cards this year. I love this weekend.



 Over the Top 
This group is run by Janice Rosenthal-Rock of Bella Cosa Vintage. So I cannot take credit for the cards, but love the ladies in this group and the cards that we create or recreate.

https://www.facebook.com/vintagebellacosa/ or http://bellacosavintage.com/blog/


Note and Calendar pads I made these note/calendar pads for my office peers. You can’t see the calendars, but they are under the image flap. These were fun to make and were appreciated by all at the office.


So, let me wrap up this year with this last bit of information. The year 2016 is coming to an end. Take some time to reflect, remember and most of all look forward to 2017. I would like to think that we won’t have any pain or sorrow, but that probably won’t be. We can, however, overcome and grow from them and look forward to all the good times that are ahead for us. Please be safe and joyful in the next year and of course come back and check my posts.



Happy New Year!