Just Us Girls #117 - Wild Card Challenge

Happy New Year everyone!  It's hard to believe another year has gone by!  So much crafting!  I should do a year in review like I did here last year.  No time right now...maybe tomorrow or Monday.  It's always fun to look back and reminisce. 

Today I'm here with the last Just Us Girls challenge for 2011.  It just so happens that it's the 5th week of the month (which means Wild Card challenge) and that I'm the hostess!  So I've chosen to challenge everyone to use felt on their creations.  I love felt and this is the perfect time of year to use it, too!

I'm so done with Christmas cards, so on to the next holiday...Valentine's Day.  I was looking for a die to use and picked this one from My Favorite Things called Hearts a Plenty.   Never been used, so perfect choice!  I used PTI felt in red, pink, and white.  The paper is from a Bo Bunny pack from last year.  The sentiment is from Verve called Feeling Groovy.

Simple card using a FTL sketch that I just love to use!  I altered it a bit, as you can see.

Check out what the girls have done.  You can see their creations on the JUGs blog or at their personal blogs.

Dana

Elise

Kathryn

Lynn

Maria

Pam

Vicki

Thanks for stopping by!  I hope you have a fun and safe New Year's celebration!

Just Us Girls #116 - Technique Challenge

Merry Christmas Eve!  The Just Us Girls team has an easy challenge for you brought to us by our very talented Kathryn!  Thank you Kathryn for this easy-peasy challenge!  I did mine this morning in about 15 minutes!  I was too exhausted after cooking and wrapping all day long to do it last night!

The challenge is to make a pillar sleeve for a candle.  Such a great idea!  It makes for nice last minute gifts!

I wasn't sure I'd be able to play as I don't have many candles in my home.  I'm so afraid of burning the house down!  Our house was totally destroyed by fire about 10 years before we purchased it, so I'm a little gun shy when it comes to fires in the house!  But I did manage to find one (you can see it's never been lit!).  And it took me all of 15 minutes this morning to decorate it!  I used SU's Jolly Holiday paper, some velvet ribbon, silk poinsettias, a couple of gold glitter dots, some glue dots, and some Scor-Tape to pull this all together.  All the materials right at hand!  It's sitting on my china hutch in my dining room in all its glory right now! 

Just remember to be careful when burning your holiday candles this holiday season or at any time of the year!  We want you to all be safe!

Stop by the JUGs blog to see the lovely candles the girls created for this fun challenge!

I hope you have a Merry Christmas Eve!  Santa is getting ready to fly his sleigh and deliver all those packages for all you good little crafters!  Enjoy your time with your family and friends!

Some Final Christmas Cards!

Wow, it's been a long time since I've posted!  Lots has been going on...Christmas shopping, work, my husband retired!  Yippee!!  Life has been good indeed! 

I always leave my family's cards to the last.  Why is that?  I'm always scrambling to get them done!  The first one is for my mom and in-laws.  It follows the Pretty Palette colors (which I am a week late in posting!).  Here are the colors we came up with...pretty predictable for this time of year!

And this is the cutie I made. It uses the Made of Snow digital stamp set from My Time Made Easy and the sentiment is from the Season's Greetings Holiday Sentiment set from Paper Makeup Stamps. My mother-in-law loves these easel cards because she says my cards are always top heavy (she's right!) and fall over! So these cards stay up nicely. I used Always Artichoke and Cherry Cobbler as my base colors and the bird dp is from Memory Box. The others are scraps from packs I've been using all season. I saw this card by Korin Sutherland in SCS and was blown away by it's beauty, so I cased the layout. I wish I had that paper she used!

Next up are cards that I've made before, but turned them into easel cards as well.  These were made for my family that I just met this summer in Poland.  I hope they enjoy them!  The first one uses a stamp from JustRite Stampers.  I love how the center image looks like a fancy ornament.

This last one uses an image from Inkadinkadoo.  It's embossed with gold embossing powder and uses brushed gold paper from SU. 

I hope you have a wonderful holiday with those you love.  I may be back with some templates I'm (hopefully) making for gift cards for my nieces.  We'll see...it may be more like next week sometime!  Merry Christmas!

Pretty Palette #39

Hello friends!  I'm putting up my tree today.  Kevin, Lizzie (our Springer Spaniel), and I went to cut it down yesterday.  As we pulled up, we saw some new signs..."No Dogs beyond this point"!  Yikes!  Lizzie was already crying to get out of the car! (Warning:  Stop reading if you don't like dogs!)  We took her anyway and met another couple with their Springer!  Then as we were leaving, two other cars pulled up with their dogs!  It's just part of the tradition taking the dog to cut down your tree!  She had fun and so did we!

Well, today is another Pretty Palette challenge from My Time Made Easy.  I love these colors!

I chose to make another Christmas card.  I just can't seem to have enough of them.  I chose this gift package from the Well Rounded digital stamp set and paper pieced it with the 12 Days of Snow Flakes digital paper in pink.  The ribbon on the gift was colored with copic markers.  I added the satin ribbon and topped it off with a paper snowflake and pink crystal.  The sentiment is from Secret Santa stamp set.

I used this sketch from Stepping Stones.  I liked the simplicity of it.

For more inspiration, stop by the MTME blog.  The girls did a fabulous job with this color challenge!  Thanks for stopping by!

Charlene Cundy

Lynn Mangan

Pattie Goldman

Romaine Rancier 

 Hi friends!  Just Us Girls has a fantastic challenge for you this week!  It's our technique challenge week and our lovely Kathryn chose the Center Step technique.  What fun cards these are to create!

So here's what I did.  I saw a card in the Center Step card gallery on SCS (sorry couldn't find it again) that created a door for the focal image.  I thought it was a really cool idea and just had to create one as well1  I've had this die and Wreaths of Joy stamp set from Taylored Expressions for a while and it was screaming to be used.  I created the base of the card using Riding Hood Red cardstock.  The door was created using pieces of the cardstock which I ran through the woodgrain plate.  The woodgrain was accentuated with some distress inks.  The wreath was cut, stamped, and colored, then I added the ribbon.  It was attached to the door with dimensionals.  The dp is from SU's retired Holiday Treasures.  The sentiment is from a PTI set. 

Here's a side shot of the card so you can see the folds of this fun card.  I was pleasantly surprised at how easy this card was to create!

Stop by the JUGs blog for more inspiration from our fabulous JUGs design team.  Thanks for stopping by!

Paper Makeup Stamps December Blog Hop

Hi everyone!  Today is our monthly Paper Makeup Stamps blog hop.  We have a wintery theme going on here on the hop. You should have arrived from Janette's blog.  If not, go to the PMS blog! 

Before I continue, I wanted to let you know that PMS is discontinuing its rubber line of stamps and is going totally digital!  So there is a huge rubber sale going on at a discounted price.  You can read more about it in this post on the PMS blog. 

Back to the card.  I chose to use this Oo La La for Santa set (which has never seen ink!).  It's colored with copics, I added sparkle with silver and gold Spica pens, and liquid applique for the fur.  There are also some Kaiser pearls added on the side to balance it out.  The sentiment is part of the set and was punched out with an oval punch.  It's attached to the kraft taffeta ribbon with some baker's twine. 

 I used this sketch from this week's Card Patterns sketch.  I changed out the oval for a circle.

Your next stop is Dawn's blog.  I have the list of participants listed below in case you get lost on the hop.

Thanks for stopping by and enjoy the hop!

Tim Holtz's 12 Days of Christmas Tags - Day 2

Have you seen Tim Holtz's blog this week?  He's started his annual 12 days of Christmas tags.  I was very intrigued by Day 2's tag.  You can find it here.  He used his fabulous deer die on his tag.  I used the Deer Trio die from Memory Box.  I followed his steps but modified it a bit because I didn't have all the products he used.  I was very pleased with the outcome.  However, the back side is not so pretty!  I guess I have to cover that with more dp or something!

 Thanks for stopping in today! 

Pretty Palette #38

It's Sunday and time for another Pretty Palette color challenge from My Time Made Easy. 

These colors are warm and fuzzy colors to me, so I used the new Winter Knits digital stamp set and Warm Sentiments digital stamp set.  I printed it out the hat, colored it with copic markers, and cut it out.  Then I printed out the sentiment and cut it out with a circle Nestie.  The circle and hat were mounted on a piece of Cherry Cobbler that I ran through the snowflake embossing folder.  That was then mounted on a piece of Daffodil Delight cardstock.  For some bling, I added the green and red crystals and some Star Dust Stickles on the pom and fringes of the hat.

 The sketch is from this week's Clean and Simple Fall to Layout.