My Top Ten Cards (and Templates) of 2010

Hi everyone! I happened to see this Top Ten hop on Anita Hovey's blog, and checked out the link to Suzi's blog (who started this fun hop). So I went through my blog for 2010 and decided that I had to do a top 10 cards and a top 10 templates (since I LOVE my templates)! So here are my Top 10 Cards. This was done for a JustRite hop and I gave this to my mom for Christmas and made another for my in-laws. I think it's my favorite of the year! I went to a workshop at my LSS, Buffalo Stamps & Stuff, and learned a new technique from Wendy Vecchi (from Ranger Industries). I LOVE orange and it paired so nicely with the gray. The Paper Makeup Stamp was perfect for this technique. My friends Cheryl, Tracy, Debbie, and I entered the Paper Works Ultimate Summer Challenge and ultimately ended up winning! This is the card I entered for the team challenge. I used this Flourishes image to make this card for my MIL's birthday. I'm not a fan of purple, but I loved how this card took on a vintage feel. There was something about this card that I just loved. I think it's the colors...some of my favorites! I love the image from Paper Makeup Stamps called Rose. I remember seeing this layout from Taylored Expressions and loved it. I used this set from Paper Makeup Stamps to create this fun card. I love the raindrops! Oh, I love the colors in this one! PMS had an inspiration challenge using a picture of a room from Pottery Barn, I believe, that had an arched window in the picture. I used that as my inspiration along with those great colors! I love the layout, colors, and image (from PMS) in this fresh and fun card! I had fun layering the fruit in the image to get some great depth. My final Top 10 card is this one. I'm a teacher, so hello...this is right up my alley! I made it for a student who gave me a very nice gift at the end of the last school year. It screams school, doesn't it? Image and sentiment from PMS.

Well that's it for my Top 10 Cards. Now I just have to share my Top 10 Templates. I hope that's ok. If not, just ignore this section! This was my first project as a design team member for My Time Made Easy. The Shop Around template was a mega template with lots of design options. I love dogs, so I used a dog theme!And speaking of dogs, I made this dog house for my PMS DT member, Stephanie, as a gift for her new puppy, Butterball. It's a MTME template as well.I made this for a Just Us Girls template challenge. It's from Kelleigh Ratzlaff Designs. I love how that basket looks so real and the strawberries were so fun to make! I think this was for another JUGs template challenge using this fun and sexy set from Paper Makeup Stamps and a MTME template. Don't you just love the sentiment? This was done for an Artful Inkables challenge when I was on their Design Team. I love the color of the flowers! Love this MTME template, PMS sentiment and the dp. So how cute are these? From MTME for a JUGs template challenge. OK, so these are even cuter! Once again from MTME and JUGs template challenge (I think!). I love the little ghost pleading to be released from this MTME box and the other one peeking around the corner! The colors and dp are some of my favs! And this is probably my favorite template of the year! I love the stacked star boxes from MTME and the colors are so festive! The poinsettia is so pretty atop these boxes too!

Thanks for sticking with me to reminisce about my Top 10 Cards and Templates of 2010. What are yours?

Merry Christmas!

Hi everyone! I just wanted to stop in and say Merry Christmas

I look forward to sharing more inspiration for you from Paper Makeup Stamps, My Time Made Easy, and Just Us Girls in 2011! I am so grateful for the girls on these three design teams and am proud to call them my friends! And thank you to all of you who have left the nicest comments on my blog throughout the year! It meant so much to me!

Merry Christmas, my friends, and happiness always!

The Last Christmas Card!

Happy 5 days 'til Christmas! I was sending out my cards this weekend and had one last card to make for my neighbors. I used a layout I saw on my friend Diane's blog that made this card super easy to make.
My neighbor, Karen, has this pretty ice skates ornament that her husband and son tease her about. She loves the ornament and they think it's pretty lame! I think the ornament is so pretty, and these skates reminded me of it.

This card was super easy to pull together. The dp is from The Homemade Christmas Stack from DCWV. I matted it with real red cardstock and added the SU ribbon. The sentiment, skates (from On Ice stamp set), and die are from Papertrey Ink.

Thanks for stopping by! I may not be back here until after Christmas, but you never know! Enjoy these last crazy days!

Just Us Girls - Color Challenge

Just Us Girls has a great color challenge for you today! Andrea chose a refreshing color palette for us this week....a nice respite from the traditional red and green we've all been using a lot lately! Although I still used these colors to make a Christmas card! It was a super quick one, as I had to get my Christmas cards written and in the mail! The dp is SU's retired Wintergreen, and the ribbon is PTI's Aqua Mist. It doesn't look like it matches very well in the picture, but it really does look nice in person. I made a bow using the Bow Easy and added some jingle bells. The sentiment is from Inkadinkadoo's Ornate Christmas stamped in Memento Tuxedo black. See? Super simple! Kind of hard to mail with the bells, so maybe I'll give this to one of the secretaries at work so it doesn't have to go postal!

The JUGs DT have created some beautiful cards with these colors. Stop by the JUGs blog for more inspiration and hopefully play along with us this week! We are taking next week off seeing that it's Christmas Day, but we will be back on New Year's Day with a sketch challenge! Enjoy your weekend!

Secret Angel - Day 5

Hi everyone! Today is the last day of our Secret Angel gift exchange at school. I hope you've been enjoying how I presented the gifts I've been giving to my Secret Angel. Here's what I did today.I used a My Time Made Easy template called In Suspense to package some Bliss chocolate candies. I just love this template. It's made to hang on a door knob. I tried to hang this on Melissa's door, but she was hanging around her office too long and I didn't get a chance! I had to have the secretary do it! But it really looks fun hanging on someone's door! The dp is from Jillibean and is much prettier in person than it looks here. I just added the red felt snowflake and the white glittered one on top. The sentiment is from Secret Santa from MTME.

Thanks for stopping by! I hope you have a great weekend! I'll be spending mine getting ready for Christmas!

Secret Angel - Day 4

Happy Thursday! Two more days until the weekend! Today will be a looong day for me as we have evening conferences and I'll be at school until 7:30 tonight (after teaching antsy students all day)!

Today is also day four of our Secret Angel gift exchange! Yesterday I got some Lindor Truffles...yum! This is what I packaged up for my Secret Angel today.So you are probably wondering what this is. I should have taken a picture of the gift first! It's a picture holder. The base looks like a Christmas present and there are three holders for pictures. I used the one sticking out of the bag for my tag. The dp is from the same pack I used yesterday: The Homemade Christmas Stack from DCWV. The "ribbon" is printed on the dp, but the buttons are real. The bag is called Box in a Bag and the instructions for it are on Splitcoaststampers. Really a fun and easy bag to make. I tied it shut with a ribbon (I actually cut the ribbon tails shorter after I took the picture. They looked too long to me!

The tag was cut on my Cricut with the Secret Surprise Label cut file from My Time Made Easy. I printed the label at 85% and the red mat at 95% in SCAL. So nice to be able to adjust them like that! I used the Secret Santa stamp set from MTME also for the sentiment.. I just love that stamp set!

That's it for today! Have a great day and we'll see you tomorrow!