Card for Santa’s Friend and Christmas Projects from Whimsy Retreat!🎅

Hello there friends!  I hope that you enjoyed Thanksgiving Day for those of you that celebrate.  It’s difficult not being able to celebrate the holiday in the usual way with sitting at the table with family and I really miss them all so much and look forward to being able to hug them tightly in the future.  I did have a nice dinner with hubby and we stuffed ourselves, also enjoyed spending time with each other.

After Thanksgiving comes the “Black Friday” shopping which I don’t go out and do in the department stores anyway let alone during this time, but I do enjoy taking advantage of deals online!  Did you shop any sales or plan to this weekend?

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Today I have a Christmas card that I’ve made for a very special individual with Down Syndrome.  He has a very weakened immune system and is unable to go out and visit Santa like he usually does (6 times at least each year)!  Santa is his friend and he doesn’t understand why he can’t see him and thinks he’s been “bad” this year.😥  Although he is an adult in age, he doesn’t understand with his mental handicap and his mother has asked if people would help in sending a Christmas card to him.  Of course THIS is the reason I love making cards!  CLICK HERE to read about the article in the newspaper if you’d like to send one to him too.  Here’s the card I made for Danny:

**Edited to add Danny’s mailing address as I’ve been contacted about some not being able to access the link to the newspaper article:

  • Danny Moreland
  • 2701 N. Prospect Road
  • Peoria, IL  61603
  • USA

I was trying to go through all of my stamps that had a Santa and the first one that came to my mind was this older Stampin’ Up! stamp set called “Jolly Old Saint Nick” and it’s one of my favorite images for a Santa!  I love how he’s got that “wink” going!

I colored him up with Copic markers and cut it out with a stitched round rectangle die and then layered it over a piece of red mirror cardstock that was cut with a rounder punch.  For the design of this card, I’ve used a current sketch challenge (see below this post).  I found some festive papers in my stash and cut the strips that I rounded the corners on with the punch as well.  For the middle strip, I used some more of the red mirror cardstock and ran it through a brick embossing folder before attaching it to the other pieces.  I layered them over a white A2 sized side folding card base that I also rounded the corners on as well.

For the sentiment, which also came from the same stamp set, I heat embossed it with Brutus Monroe Christmas Eve EP over a piece of white cardstock and cut it out with a banner die and cut off the edge of the card.

Here’s a closer look at Santa and how I’ve colored him in.  I couldn’t resist giving him white highlights on his cheeks with a gel pen.  You can see the beautiful mirror effect with that embossed middle strip as well as the pretty sparkle in the sentiment from that EP I mentioned above.

And of course I wanted to make the outside envelope that it’s getting mailed in just as fun!  I took a diagonal striped stencil and inked it up with red ink along the bottom on both sides.  I also had a fun “Postal Christmas” stamp set (unknown) and stamped a few of those all over the envelope in red and green inks.  I sure hope that he enjoys this card and helps to bring a smile to let him know that Santa KNOWS he’s been good!😉

I had also told you in a previous post that I was still working on projects from the Whimsy Stamps Virtual Workshop that I participated in during October…well I’ve just been slowly enjoying completing them as I go and I saved the Christmas projects for last for this reason! LOL!  I’m getting closer to finishing up all of those projects!  (Only 3-4 left to do I think!)  For now…here’s some Christmas projects from the retreat:

This was for kit 8. What’s fun about this card is that there is an action wobbler behind the pile of treats she’s holding! I had fun coloring her up and I couldn’t stop playing with the wobbler! LOL! PS: This is a good reminder for the {Cupcake Inspirations} challenge too!😋😉
This was for kit 13. I slightly changed up the card, but not much. I actually made a shaker with the jar and put some acetate behind it and then I also added a tag and silver ribbon at the top of the jar. I paper pieced the fairy’s gift box instead of coloring the strips too. I love the colors in this one!
This slimline card was for kit 17. All of the dies were actually really fun to color and arrange to create a scene with. I didn’t change things up too much with this one other than covering the bottom snow with glitter and then adding a sentiment onto the bottom of the frame. I splattered the sky with white paint instead of using a white gel pen.
And this fun bookmark was for kit 18. The ink blended colors were similar to the above card, but I colored in the letters with a white pencil and then used a gel pen to trace around the letters. I white heat embossed some snowflakes and added doodles with gel pens as well as pearl drops. I also added some tinsel ribbon to go along with the twine given. I might use this as a tag…not sure yet.

That was a rather long post!  I’m a bit behind and trying to catch up with my projects, posting right now.  I hope that you’ve enjoyed my projects today and have been inspired to get some festive projects going!  I’ll be back very soon with another project and challenge reminder soon!

Challenges for Santa card only:

  1.  Try Stampin’ On Tuesday – Sketch
  2. Creative Moments – Anything Goes
  3. Pammie’s Inky Pinkies – PIP2047 Anything Goes
  4. Always Fun – #190 Inspired On a Movie (“The Santa Clause” starring Tim Allen)
  5. Sweet Stampers – #50 Christmas
  6. The House That Stamps Built – N2520 Anything Goes
  7. Sweet Stampin’ – Spots or Stripes
  8. Christmas 24 – #22 Santa Claus 

*Vicki* from Stamped Smiles33 Comments

Gnome Better Holiday!

Hello friends!  Have you noticed the craze over the gnomes this season?!  Well I guess I jumped right on board with it and got a little love crazy with them myself! LOL!  This particular one really grabbed my heart though…

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Check out this guy!! LOL!  This image is called, of course, Santa Gnome from Digi Doodle Studios!  And…if you like the gnomes too, then you need to be sure to go check out the entire collection of the gnomes over there!  CLICK HERE to see them all!  They’re all so fun and cute!!

Again, with this being a Christmas card for mailing, I wanted to keep it somewhat simple and flat, so I used the entire image panel for my card and trimmed it down to layer over an A2 sized black card base.

I thought it would be fun to pair this image with a couple of strips of the digital paper from the Digi Doodle Studios Buffalo Flannels Collection, so I added a strip to the top and bottom.  I also used a scallop die cut border to cut out a piece with black cardstock along the edges as well as a strip of gold cardstock under those strips for a border.

Before attaching the bottom buffalo check strip, I wrapped some gold twine with a snowflake button and bow over it.  I took the sentiment and a couple of snowflake stamps from the SSS Gnome for the Holidays stamp set and stamped them on the image panel with black ink.

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Here’s a closer view of the image and how I’ve got him all colored up with Copics.  I used a red gel pen to color in the “hollies” on his hat and a gold gel pen to color in his belt buckle.  I then took a glue pen and covered his outfit trim with glitter.

You will also notice a bit of dimension on his face.  I printed out this image twice and one of them I only colored up his nose and moustache, fussy cut it out and then used some foam tape to pop it up over my colored up image panel.  Just thought it would be cute!

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Really had so much fun making up this card and this cutie really has me feeling festive for the Holidays now!  So what do you think?

P.S.  Crafty Gals Corner Challenge Blog is having a special blog hop with prizes and Digi Doodle Studios is sponsoring…so be sure to stop by and play along for your chance to win a fabulous prize!!

Thank you for stopping by today!  I sure enjoy hearing your thoughts as they make me smile!

Challenges:

  1.  Sunday Stamps– SSC220 Keep it Open SketchSSC220
  2. The Sisterhood of Crafters – Anything Christmas
  3. Penny’s Paper-Crafty– Anything Goes
  4. Use Your Stuff – It’s Christmas Time!
  5. Always Fun – Santa Claus
  6. Arty Divas – Anything Goes
  7. Tuesday Throwdown – Anything Goes
  8. Crafty Gals Corner– ‘Tis the Season (Happy 6th Blogiversary!)

*Vicki* from Stamped Smiles31 Comments

Crafty Retreat Results

Hello friends!  I finally found the time to make a post and gather all of my photos together so that I can share a post with you from last week’s “Crafty Retreat” that I went to at my friend’s house.  I’ve pretty much known the “host lady” and her family since I was a little child, so they’re pretty much friends of the family with me. 🙂

I actually had forgotten to take my own photos except for a few on the second day during the day I taught a class, but I was able to get a few photos from others to share.  (You know how it goes when everyone is moving about or you’re working on something or teaching and forget to take photos!  LOL)

So the “theme” for the crafty retreat was called “Hats off to Painting!”  The majority of the group likes to tole paint, but we all (including myself) like to try our hands at many other crafting avenues to try different products that we may not be familiar with…so there are some “mixed” projects today I’m sharing!  I had such fun during the entire 3 days!

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Here we are with our decorated hats on for a group photo!  Even little ‘Gizmo’ had his hat on, but not sure he was feeling the fun like the rest of us! LOL! (Unfortunately the host was taking the photo!)  We all had our Dick Blick aprons and shirts on which was very kindly donated for our “Painting Divas” group…they were VERY generous with the bag of goodies they gave us!  We had all 3 days worth of fun, classes and prizes!

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So, the reason for all of the fun crafty hats is that we were to take a hat and decorate it for a challenge.  Here is a photo of all of our hats.  There were some really fun and creative ideas as you can see!  One of the girls was quite tired from all of the crafting and decided to take a little siesta during the festivities!  LOL!  It was very cool that I was the winner voted for my created hat design.  (You can see on the table above and here’s a closer look below):

Vicki-Sreampunk Hat

I guess it’s a bit hard to see in the photo above of me wearing it, but I had hubby bring home one of his hard hats from work along with a pair of goggles and then I went to decorating it in “steampunk” style!  I had fun with it and enjoyed the process!

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Here is the altered “Potions and Spells” book that I taught for the class!  Last year at the “Crafty Retreat” they saw my “altered book” that I had previously made during my time as a Splitcoaststampers.com “Dirty Dozen” DT member and asked if I could teach how to make one for this year’s class.  So instead of the “altered book” idea, I had them all use a Tim Holtz Configuation Book.

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Here are some of the book covers all lined up that we were waiting on to dry before we were able to start painting them.  A couple of the book covers were left at the work table, but while those were drying, we worked on the inside of the book.

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Here’s another photo of me standing there holding one of the books and everyone was finished with their books looking at them at the end of class.  They seemed to really enjoy this messy project!  I just loved teaching these fun ladies too!

Vicki-Santa Gourd Ornament Class

This is from my mom’s class where she taught us this cute Santa ornament that we painted on a gourd!  He makes me giggle!   I love it!

Vicki-PenguinChill Class

The host lady is the one that taught this cute penguin class!  I adore penguins and I’m so happy that I took the time to finish this up when I got home!  (More details and a 3D look at these projects are in the video above.)

I really hope that you’ve enjoyed all of these projects as much as I enjoyed creating them!  I also had another set of calendars that I finished, but I’ll share on another post on another day as this one is pretty full!!  LOL!

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One more thing to share is that we have a robin’s nest with one little blue egg inside.  We have a a Prairie Fire Crab Apple tree in our backyard full of pretty blooms and I guess the robin thought it was a nice place to make a nest…so we’ll wait and see if there is a baby bird coming soon!

HAPPY MOTHER’S DAY to all of you moms out there!  Hope you have a wonderful weekend!!  Thanks so much for stopping by and I’ll see you soon!!

*Vicki* from Stamped Smiles23 Comments