Celebrate the Season

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I hope your Thanksgiving holiday was a great one. Here in Alabama, the Iron Bowl is a big football game played right after Thanksgiving. Let me congratulate all the Alabama fans on a big win this year, Roll Tide. For all my Auburn friends...well, there's always next year, War Eagle! Not to pour salt in the wound, but even our dog, Paco, was "dressed" for the Iron Bowl on Saturday. He's got his own Alabama jersey.

Okay. So enough about all the football celebrating, let's get to the real season at hand, Christmas. I was a little short on inspiration when I sat down to work on this card. When I have those "scrapper's blocks," I normally go to a sketch or CASE a card or layout from one of my favorite designers. I visit the Verve blog regularly to check out their card sketches and this was my jumping off point for my card. Here is the sketch...

For my paper and embellishment choice, that was really easy. I used a new pack of paper from Close To My Heart, Wonderland, that was sitting on my desk. I hadn't had a chance to play with it much. I also had some CTMH rhinestone brads in the pack too. I had packed it for a crop recently and just didn't have time to play. The doily is misted with Sassy Shimmer Spritz in Marshmallow. {You can also use Smooch, Glimmer Mist, or make your own like I did.} The stickpin is a new thing I've been experimenting with. I made this one a few weeks ago not knowing what I was going to use it for. I had gotten some beads at a flea market really cheap. The "Celebrate the Season" sentiment is from a stamp set by Flourishes, A Season of Celebrations. I stamped it in Versamark and then embossed it with AC Zing embossing powder in silver. The die I used for the circle is from Spellbinders. I touched up the smaller circles on the diecut with Liquid Pearls in silver.

The sketch is so straightforward, it took no time at all to throw this card together. If you'd like some more sketch inspiration, give these blogs/sites a visit.

Pagemaps, Got Sketch, Card Patterns, and Mojo Monday.

Thanks for stopping by! Until next time, Scrap Sassy!

What I'm Thankful For...

I just wanted to tell everyone "Happy Thanksgiving" before the day was over. It's been a fun and somewhat hectic day of cooking and eating, cleaning and eating, watching football and eating...well, you can see what my family does best;)

But all kidding aside, I'm thankful for those I love, my faith, my home, my country, my friends. What else can I say but "THANKS BE TO GOD" when I have everything I need and can spend every single day surrounded by those you love.

Have a blessed holiday!

On Donner and Blitzen, MasterCard and Visa!

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The theme this week on the Card A Day Blog is shopping. And with Black Friday and Cyber Monday fast approaching, we're being assaulted by sale ads. Although my "teenage self" would never believe it, I really don't like to shop. I used to be a "mall rat" even up into my mid-twenties. I seem to have lost the gusto. Last year, my Christmas shopping was accomplished in about 90 minutes online. It would've taken me that long to get a parking spot at Wal-mart.

For my shopping themed project, I thought I'd give you a few ideas for packaging, so I've created a pillowbox and a gift card holder. The pillowbox is great to use with a sweet treat for a co-worker, a small bottle of a friend's fave perfume or lovely piece of jewelry. If you have someone like me to buy for, who loves vintage or antique baubles, those items are mostly found on eBay, Etsy, and in flea markets and usually don't come in a pristine box. This is a great way to show someone how much you care by making packaging with them in mind.

I chose some Scenic Route paper that's been in my stash for years. The red gingham ribbon was in my ribbon bits jar and I kept seeing it and thinking to myself, you know, I really want to use that piece on something. I also found some little pendants at Wal-mart a few years ago after Christmas, so I added a Santa pendant and a poinsettia with Glimmer Mist in Burnt Red and a bit of bling in the middle. The pillow box I cut out with my new Zing. I modified a cut file from Bird's Cards. It's a free download and available in many formats. My modification was the "window" on front. I just cut an oval (but you can use any shape) out of the front and added a piece of transparency on the inside of the box held in place by ScorTape.


Now on to the gift card holder. Everyone gives or gets gift cards every year. {My hubby looks forward to an iTunes card in his stocking every year.} It's great to be able to give that person who has everything something they don't have, it's always the right size, plus they get to pick it out;) However, gift cards can seem a bit impersonal. Fix that by creating a gift card holder just for them. If "Auntie Jean" loves to quilt, a gift card to her favorite fabric store snuggled inside a Christmas "quilt" of its own may be the perfect, thoughtful gift.

My gift card holder is sweet and feminine. I love the pinks and teal greens. It's not the usual Christmas color scheme and that's what I like about it. I used a retired CTMH collection named Jingle. The pleated ribbon is from Hobby Lobby. The chipboard snowflake was inked with CTMH Juniper ink with a coating of Tim Holtz's Rock Candy on top. I used a Juniper button from CTMH and piece of pale pink embroidery floss from my stash. The "Just For You" is from the CTMH December 25th stamp set and was stamped in Juniper ink. I used the Stampin Up word window punch to cut it out.

I learned how to make this unique gift card holder by watching Becca Feeken's video on the Our Daily Bread Designs blog. She is an amazing artist and makes some of the most beautiful cards and projects.

Thanks for stopping by! Until next time, Scrap Sassy!

Zing Is In Da House!!!

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It's an exciting day here. The wait is finally over and my new baby, BaZINGa, has arrived. She's sleek, slim, & silver and cuts so fast it'll make your head spin.

Our Fed Ex guy was really great. He pretended to be as excited as we were. We took his picture as he dropped the box off at the front door. He must have thought we were nuts, certainly.

And yep that's me in the icky purple t-shirt giggling like a fool. My mom is standing in the rain taking the picture.

Here is BaZINGa in her box getting ready to go upstairs to the scraproom.

And here is BaZINGa on the cutting table in her new home. I was really thinking it would take a while to get acclimated, but once I played around with the settings in Make The Cut and got used to the new interface, I was cutting in less than 30 minutes. Most of that time was spent trying trying to get the itty, bitty but very sharp blade into the housing;)

I was able to cut out 34 2.5-inch gingerbread men in less than 3 three minutes. It took me longer to put the paper in the machine than it did to cut. I was totally blown away. With my Cricut Expression, I used to start a project like that cutting and work on something else for 30 to 40 minutes until it finished chugging. Not with my BaZINGa. Some other reasons why I chose the Zing over so many others, Make The Cut software for one, it has a 15-inch wide cutting area and 750g of pressure, which means it cuts through chipboard, decorator fabric, felt, thin metal sheeting, stencil material...and the list goes on. There are also some other accessories like embossing and engraving tips too. I can't wait to explore everything this machine can do. I'll have some sample cuts and some projects up soon.

Thanks for stopping by and sharing in my excitement! I doubt I'll sleep tonight!

Card Patterns Sketch #140

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I was feeling a little crafty the other day and decided to try a new product on one of my watercolor projects. I've gotten into the whole watercoloring stamped images thing. I've been sitting across from my mom, Joanie's Classy Card Corner, watching her playing with her Copic markers and having a ball creating all these colorful images. I've never been really good with the marker thing. In school, most of my marker artwork looked really streaky and yucky. I thought I would try watercolor pencils and crayons and see what would happen.

I still haven't gotten the whole shading thing yet, but I'm learning slowly but surely. I've had this poppy outline stamp that I've been dying to use for ages, but didn't know what to do with it, so I decided to give it a watercolor treatment. When I finished, I used Ranger's Clear Rock Candy Distress Paint by Tim Holtz. It's clear crackle paint and gives a slightly satin but crackled finish to paper. My friend Joy, Purtty Paperz, used it on some wicked awesome vintage Halloween tags and cards and I just had to try it.




So at this point, I have a watercolored and crackled poppy and nothing to put it on. Kind of like being all dressed up with nowhere to go. I know it's hard to see in the picture, but trust me, it's crackled;) To solve that dilemma, I hopped over to one of my favorite inspiration sites, Card Patterns. I checked out the sketch, found some paper I liked and a few other elements and made this cute card in minutes. I'm going to send it to a friend who needs a little cheering up.


And I must give a quick shout-out to my very smart BFF, Julia, who has a 4.0 average and is tops at her school in reading! She's way above her 4th grade classmates and we're all very proud of her. Oh, and Julia, your box of scrap goodies will be delivered on Monday by a big brown truck, so keep an eye out for it;)

Hope you enjoyed your visit. Until next time, Scrap Sassy!

Mojo Monday Sketch #213

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I'm recovering nicely from my bout with pneumonia. Thankfully, we caught it early, so no hospital stay, just a bunch of antibiotics, both shots & pills, and some disgusting yellow cough syrup that tastes like sweaty feet. Well, I don't really know what sweaty feet taste like, but if I did, it would taste like this cough syrup. I appreciate you listening to my whining, but on to the fun stuff...




I got a little inspired today and decided to play with the Mojo Monday Sketch #213 and create a vintage-y Christmas card. It took me about 3 hours to pick out paper. Let's just say the icky cough medicine makes me a little loopy too. And of all the paper in my stash, I was intrigued by a few pieces of scraps I found in the purge bag. I'm still stuck on ornaments, so this card is a sort of a variation on a theme.


My card is 5.5x5.5. I used SU Chocolate Chip, cut at 5.25x5.25. The Daisy D's red patterned paper is cut at 5x5. The circles are Spellbinders circle dies. The green cardstock was scraps too. I don't know the color, but I did buy it at Hobby Lobby. SU Real Red was used on the tag and ornament along with CTMH Colonial White. The top layer of the ornament is gold from DCWV. I did a little inking around the edges of everything with SU Chocolate Chip. For my extra touches, I used Glimmer Mist on the poinsettia and leaves (Making Memories), a bit of bling (Want 2 Scrap) , added a seam binding bow, and a "string of pearls" to hang the ornament. The sentiment is Stampin Up.

Hope you enjoyed your visit. Until next time, Scrap Sassy!