Happy New Year!

Just realized I never shared my series of black and cream cards that I made months ago for an Odd Bird Planet project. I've seen this Crate cardstock, used on my card, on other's blogs for months and I finally purchased a package after it went on sale. I adore Crate paper but that batch has to be one of my favorites. Even though the entire pack is black and cream all the pages have a aged worn feel to them and they have such a rich look. Love them!! This card was created with the Crate paper and Odd Bird Planet images (flower and sentiment). The brads and plain black paper are from Stampin' Up! Ribbon is a random ribbon that I picked up from a scrapbook store ages ago. Wishing everyone a very blessed New Year!

Save Handmade

I'm not sure if anyone has heard of this issue yet, it just came to my attention about a week ago and I've just found a button to add to my blog to help raise awareness.

In a nutshell, the US government in an "effort" to protect children from dangerous chemicals in toys, such as lead, will begin over regulating all toy manufacturing in Feb. of 2009. (This is all under the guise of the Consumer Products Safety Improvement Act) This means that anyone who sells handmade toys will now have to pay up to $300 per item for the government to test their products to ensure that their already chemical-free products are actually chemical-free.

Most small toy manufacturers, think just about anyone who sells on Etsy.com, will have to close shop due to a lack of money to pay for the testing. This will also affect small toy manufacturers as they don't make enough money to afford the testing. Failure to submit ones products to this testing could result in fines or perhaps even jail time or a forced closing of one's business as one would be breaking the law. Follow the link on the right side of my blog to find out more info and how to get involved. It only takes a few minutes to send a letter or email to your local congress person and senator. I'm not against making sure the toys we give our kids are safe, however, hindering one's ability to sell homemade toys by introducing an endless slew of needless regulations is yet another stab at the personal freedoms of the American public.

Holiday Album

Merry Christmas all! I pray that everyone had a blessed Christmas! We had a wonderful day and enjoyed spending time with friends and family.

About a year ago we became friendly with a couple that lives near my grandmother and over the summer we had an opportunity to visit with them and their daughter, who is the same age as our oldest. Although we met a few years ago I have yet to be able to email photos to her of our children due to some odd issue with our email servers. Months ago while out to lunch with Julie, I picked up a hand full of drink coasters. (You can see what see did with her pile of coasters here.) They've been sitting unused in a pile of junk of my craft room, waiting to be turned into something. I realized that they would be perfect as a mini scrapbook album for our friends, displaying the photos they have yet to see...and miracles or miracles, I was able to finish it in time for the holidays. :-)

Photos of the inside pages and back cover below:

The majority of the materials used on the album are from Stampin' Up! The paper is part of a new series and I just love it! It was perfect to surround photos of a little girl. And I still can't help gushing over SU! rub ons. They glide on so easily you almost don't need to rub. They add such a lovely accent to handmade creations. Foam letters are from American Crafts and small velvet flowers on the first page are from Papertrey Ink. Hope you enjoy and have a delightful and very happy new year!!

Christmas Ornaments

Just a few more days until Christmas and I have just a few more Christmas goodies to share! In our neck of the woods we have been experiencing snow, snow, and more snow! We had about a foot yesterday, it stopped for a few hours, and we have about another foot today! It's crazy how much snow is outside and we're feeling a bit stir crazy as we've been "locked" in the house for the past two days and are still recovering from the ice storm last week with are friends still without power! However, we are grateful that God has provided us with a warm house, plenty of good food, warm clothes, and power in our home and we have been blessed to enjoy the company of our good friends during the holiday season! Today I wanted to share a really easy way to dress up plain glass ornaments. I purchased a package of 12 of these glass balls for $6.00 at my local Walmart. I then used Stampin' Up! rub ons to decorate the front of the ball. I know I've said this before but it's worth repeating...I love rub ons! LOL! I'll have another fun project to share next week using some dark brown ones. They're so much fun and so easy to use...just love them! OK, back to our regularly scheduled program...I then simply added some glittery "stuffing" to the inside of the ball and finished off my custom ornament with a pretty ribbon. This is such a great way to dress up plain ornaments, you could probably use the rub ons on colored glass ornaments as well. A great gift would be to customize an entire package of these for someone and then present them in a beautifully decorated box or bag. Not bad for a $6.00 gift!! Enjoy!

SALT Challenge - O Holy Night

Greetings all! We're finally back on line and have power restored after our big ice storm! (Julie has some great photos from the storm). We continue to wait for the lines to be fixed for our pastor and his family, who have been staying with our family for about a week now. We're actually having a great time!! The worse part is that I need to work during the day and can't spend my time just visiting! LOL! However, in the midst of all our activities I did manage to get something simple created for the SALT challenge this week, which is "O Holy Night" - perfect for the upcoming holiday! You can read the write up on our challenge and see what the design team has come up with - some beautiful stuff - by visiting the SALT blog. I haven't had as much time as usual to prepare comments for this challenge so my card and post are both on the simple side. :-) I am a big fan of Christmas! Love all of the details of the holiday, from decorating the tree to visiting with family to seeing the excitement on the kids faces in the morning. The holiday is also a time when many celebrate the birth of Jesus and it's definitely a time to reflect on His birth, although as Christians, each day, we can praise God for sending Christ to redeem His people. The gospel of Luke records the birth of Jesus in chapter 2; a portion of that chapter, the glorious news announced to the shepards that the Christ was born, is noted on my card. The birth of Jesus was not a surprise event as it had been anticipated for hundreds of years by those who trusted in God's promises. Isaiah 9:6, written almost 800 years before Jesus was born, records that promise:

"For unto us a Child is born, Unto us a Son is given; and the government will be upon His shoulder. And His name will be called Wonderful, Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Of the increase of His government and peace there will be no end, upon the throne of David and over His kingdom, to order it and establish it with judgement and justice. From that time forward, even forever, the zeal of the Lord of hosts will perform this."

The good news of the birth of Jesus is not only that He came into the world but He suffered and died so that our sins may be forgiven, that we may be free from our overwhelming burdens and that real, deep, and lasting joy can be found. I pray that you and your family may have a blessed Christmas and that Christ will find a home in your heart each and every day! Please visit the SALT blog and if you feel inspired to create something based on this week's theme, please leave a comment with a link back to your blog or gallery.

MIA

Due to a very bad ice storm in the Northeast I have very limited access to the Internet...yes, it's been two days with no Internet access and I'm starting to hyperventilate! LOL! Thankfully, we are safe and warm in our house and have been blessed to have a generator and the ability to house a number of friends who are still without heat or running water. We anticipate that a few of our friends will be here close to a week before all of the electrical lines have been fixed. It was quite a storm! I will be back to blog posting asap!!

K. Werner Color Challenge #34

I've wanted to participate in one of Kristina's color challenges for ages and this week, thanks to work coming to a screeching holiday halt, I had the time to create something using this week's color scheme.

One of the major challenges for me is working with five colors on one project! Whoa nelly - that's a whole lotta color! But in the end it worked out....phew...My submission, oh my another scrapbook page, is below. I've also included a few close up photos of some of the elements on the page, like the 3-D clown and tiny metal washer.

All of the stamps used on this page are from Stampin' Up!, with the exception of the circle image used on the Certainly Celery strip (kind of hard to see in the photo), that stamp is from Odd Bird Planet. The clown image is from a long ago retired SU! set but I love him and I can't bear to part with him, even if he doesn't see ink very often! He was the perfect companion for the first birthday photo of my little one. After coloring Mr. Clown with Copics, I used my VersaMark pen to color in his shoes, umbrella, nose, pompoms on his shirt, and dots on his hat, and then added some glassy glaze so that only those elements are shiny. This isn't the greatest photo but it's a good view of the hat.

I created my own patterned paper, using SU! background stamps, on the perfect plum and pale plum strips of cardstock. I also used pale plum ink, combined with a "sanded" background stamp to create a subtle background behind the clown. The two silver star brads are also from SU!. Foam numbers, which were white and I colored with a perfect plum marker to make them match, are from American Crafts. (I'd never even know about these fabulous foam numbers and letters if it wasn't for Kristina! She uses them on many projects and I adore them!) The happy birthday stamp is a portion of a new SU! set...just used my marker to color/stamp the area that would fit on the chipboard heart. My biggest challenge was working in the sage shadow...ummm...I never use sage shadow but managed to find one piece of cardstock stashed away in my "I never use these colors" bin. I should note that my entire page is backed by the bordering blue, which is a color I love! Back to sage shadow...I decided to cover the heart in the sage color...makes a nice color contrast to the rest of the page. I found these washers while searching for something else and thought it was a cute addition to the heart. I'm trying to have more fun with embellishments so this was a good start!

Lastly, the clown was added to the page with dimensional tape for some serious pop! I'm not much of a scrapbooker but I'm happy enough with this piece that I might even put it into a scrapbook! LOL! Enjoy!! Back tomorrow with more holiday goodies....oh...and some more blog candy! Forgot all about that!! Stay tuned...

Candle Gifts

Can someone please tell me where the past three days have gone?? Goodness, they passed by so quickly I barely realized so much time had passed! I guess it's part of the holiday rush...Today, I thought I'd share a gift that I made for my husband's aunt. Here I've used Stampin' Up! rub ons to dress up an ordinary glass candle holder. Can I just say that I *heart* rub ons! This little gift cost a total of $5.00! The little candle holders were sold separately and the dish was actually for holding larger candles but the three votive holders fit perfectly on the tray. I filled each holder with some tiny stones and put a candle on top. This would be a great hostess or house warming gift! This was such an easy project that I just may make a few of these for my house! I think you could actually use rub ons right on the candle as well...I'll have to try that... Enjoy and stay tuned for another blog candy drawing, coming up this week!

Altered Clipboard

I've wanted to try my hand at creating these cute clipboard message centers for awhile now and along the way I've ended up with about 10 of these mini clipboards that I purchased at Walmart for about a dollar a piece. Since I had these lying around the stamp room, I thought this would be a perfect project for a recent workshop that I held at our house.

The clipboard was covered in a beautiful holiday paper from Stampin' Up! I used Modge Podge to adhere the paper to the clipboard, which worked like a charm! To separate the two different papers and cover the crease, I wrapped some of the new SU!, and I must say fabulous, felt stitched ribbon around the entire piece, securing it in the back with glue dots. The big letter "S" is grundgeboard from Tim Holtz and has been covered in more of the SU! holiday paper and then adhered with dimensional tape. I then added a few button embellishments to finish the clipboard. The post-it note pad and piece of cork were added with glue dots. The paper clip was part of a pack also picked up at Walmart and the top was finished with two flower punches. The last piece was to create the pen. This was the first time I created one of these beaded pens and the affect is just wonderful! They're super easy to make, you can see a tutorial on how to create these pens here. You can click here to order the micro beads needed for the outside of the pens.

This was a quick and easy project, add a couple of strong magnets to the back and you've got yourself an adorable message center for the fridge. A great holiday gift for about $5.00!!

I'm off to get ready to buy our Christmas tree!! Can't wait for that pine smell floating through the house...one of my favorite parts of the holidays!

Enjoy!

Blog Candy Winner!

Nicole, aka Perky, is the winner of the jar of Prima flowers! Congrats Nicole! Please send your mailing address is ksdm@comcast.net and I'll get your gift out to you asap! Stay tuned for the next post coming on Sunday...

SALT Challenge - God is Good

It's time for another SALT challenge and this week it was brought to us by Kimberly; she chose God is good for our theme. You can read Kimberly's entire write up on the SALT blog. It's sometimes hard to fully comprehend how good God is to all of us. We look around our fallen world, full of hateful people doing hateful things to each other and we are tempted to doubt if there even is a God, forget about whether or not He could be good. However, evil in the world does not equate to no God, rather it equates to the reality of sin and it's affects not just on individuals but on the entire world. God has not turned His back on humanity, rather it has turned it's back on Him and yet, in spite of our coldness of heart and ungratefulness, He continues to bless us with more good than we deserve. If you're reading this, then you are alive and that is darn good news! God is giving you more time on this earth. More time to mend broken relationships, more time to spend with precious children and spouses, more time to help those in need, more time to seek His face while He can be found, more time to sing His praises to those who know Him not, more time to repent of the sins that separate us from Him, more time to learn, to change, and to grow. That is a demonstration of God's goodness, not only to those who call upon His name, but also to those who profess to not even believe that He exists. There is still time... I am exceedingly grateful for God's goodness in sending Christ to die, while I was still a sinner. The great and awesome goodness of God is summed up in that one act. And yet, He has also richly blessed my life with a loving and supportive husband and the most amazing gift of two children. I am daily overwhelmed that He would choose me, a person laden with so many faults, to be a Mom. I will be forever grateful for the blessing of my family... Please stop by the SALT blog to see the other creations made by the team, this week seems to be an exceptional week for us, everything is just beautiful! And feel free to join in on the challenge! Simply post a comment with a link back to your blog or gallery, we'd love to share!!

Design Team

We've added some amazing designers to the Odd Bird Planet design team! Check out my side bar for links and names!! I'm thrilled to be staying on for another term as a designer and the design team manager! What a blast!!

Quick and Easy Christmas Cards

I'll start out the month of December by sharing a few holiday stamping ideas. Can anyone believe that Christmas is literally just around the corner! I have purchased one gift...boy, am I going to be busy over the next few weeks! LOL! Today, I'd like to share a few quick Christmas card designs that would be perfect for mass producing. Not that I have ever made my own cards for the holidays! If I did they wouldn't make it into the mail until Easter! However, I have a number of stamping friends that create their own cards each year and for those folks I put together these designs to share during a recent workshop. (BTW - If anyone has an interest in purchasing card kits, complete with stamp set and pre-cut cardstock, feel free to contact me at ksdm@comcast.net for further details) All of these cards were created using the same Stampin' Up! set and coordinating colors. These were such easy designs that I was able to make all three is under a half hour...now that is a "Christmas miracle" as it usually takes me an hour to make one card! ;-) Enjoy and I'll be back this week with more holiday gift giving and decorating ideas!