Thankful

With today being Veteran's Day, I thought the topic of being thankful is a good one. Along with with being thankful for all the brave veterans who have defended our country, and those who still are, there are many things to be thankful for in life! Of course family, friends, health & happiness would top my list, but I am also thankful for all the creative fun I have because of Stampin' Up! On Friday night I enjoyed the evening visiting and sharing my November projects with my hostess club group. Our November hostess treated us to some scrumptious snacks...fondue with both chocolate & cheese and a beautiful tray filled with goodies to dip plus a nice bottle of wine. Thank you Cheri!

We did this Thanksgiving scrapbook page with a cute paper pieced turkey and pumpkin made from the Pick a Petal set and different punches. I have been wanting to use the spiral punch to create a film strip mat for a series of small photos since I got this punch months ago...I finally remembered to use it on this page. This works great for scraps of cropped photos like the oak leaves and bowls of food I used on my strip. All I did was punch them out with my 1-3/8" square punch and they were ready to adhere to the mat.

We used a strip of the Creepy Crawly designer paper to create the border along the bottom and photo corners on the title. Since there are white stripes on this paper and I was using Vanilla card stock for the rest of the project it looked kind of out of place. I easily fixed that by distressing the paper with my favorite jumbo wheel: Rough Around the Edges. I inked it up in Creamy Caramel and went right over the printed paper to give it some texture. I also used it on the journal block and title after I was done stamping those. But I didn't stop there...I also used the wheel inked in Old Olive to texturize all the Old Olive card stock. I can't say enough about that wheel...love it!!! All the edges of the card stock and paper were then "aged" by using the direct to paper technique with the Earth Elements chalk ink pads (retired) or a Chocolate Chip craft spot. For me it's a lot easier handling either of those smaller inks to distress than it is a full sized pad.

Stamps: Pick a Petal, Trimtastic, Lovely as a Tree, Letterpress & Typeset alphabets, Rough Around the Edges jumbo wheel

Ink: Old Olive, Really Rust, More Mustard & Pumpkin Pie

Card stock: Old Olive, Really Rust, Very Vanilla, Creepy Crawly

Accessories: LOTS of punches! Artichoke grosgrain, Vintage brads, markers: Old Olive, More Mustard & Pumpkin Pie for journaling

The other project everyone did was a Christmas card using Lovely As A Tree. I was inspired by this beautiful card from a blog I visit regularly called Paper Pleasing Ideas. Julie is so talented and does beautiful work!

To created this card a reverse masking technique was used. First, a mask was cut out of a piece of scrap paper using the coluzzle and the oval template. After I cut the oval out of the center of my scrap paper, I used a bit of 2-way glue on the corners to hold it in place on my white card stock. Then I sponged inside the edges of the oval with Soft Sky ink leaving the center mostly white. Keeping the mask in place, I added the 3 trees inside the oval with Versamark. Then I used the poppin' pastels technique to make them soft and appear in the background. After I was done with this I removed my mask and stamped the last tree image and the sentiment (with the help of my stamp-a-ma-jig). This card just has a simple, elegant feel to it...I love it!
Stamps: Lovely as a Tree, Holidays & Wishes
Ink: Soft Sky, Versamark, Blue Bayou, Handsome Hunter
Card stock: Soft Sky, Blue Bayou, Whisper White
I need to run and getting busy on some Christmas cards for a class I'm doing. I need to get busy and make my own cards too! Enjoy your day!