Santa Claus is coming! And he's bringing presents!

Santa's hat and coat are paper pieced and glued on and the presents are from the set, Punch Pals. His belt is made from a piece of ribbon and the buttons on his coat are black brads. Before stamping Santa, I made a reverse mask using my large oval punch for the "rug" on the floor so he'd have something to stand on. I just colored over the blank in the mask with my marker, and then "stitched" around the edges with my white gel pen.

Then, I had a happy accident when the designer paper I wanted to use as a mat highlighted those cool blocks of color behind the main image. I've taken a picture so you can see what the paper under Santa looks like. The white line is a representation of what the main image covers.

Scrap pumpkins

This card is made all from scrap pieces - even the pumpkins were stamped on a scrap and then cut out. I did add three of the jumbo eyelets to the piece stamped with the Sanded background. I really like how this turned out, and worked the pieces together based on colors.

Dashing quick cards

These cards were made with Stampin' Up Dashing designer paper and scraps. I also wanted to use the set Punch Pals. This little snowman is one of my recent favorites. I think his cheery little scarf is so cute, and the way he's wearing it is inspired by co-worker Adrienne. Can you tell we spend hours together every day? Her name pops up here a lot!

This next card uses the scallop punch and is so clean and FAST!

Finally, a little penguin couple out enjoying the weather together. These guys are so fun to color and they're ADORABLE. The letter brads were just extras that I had in the stash!

All the white paper used is Stampin' Up's Shimmery White paper. It lends a holiday holiday shimmer and prettiness. Thanks for looking! And happy early holidays!

Co-worker candy and candy alternative

Happy Halloween! Last night I made some treats for my co-workers that I handed out this morning. Most of my co-workers got a 2-pack of Reese's treats wrapped in Stampin' Up designer paper (4"x6" was a perfect size to cover each). I wrapped them in some of the now retired copper cording and tied on a tag with a Booglie Eyes character or saying on it. Other than the tags that had marker-colored characters, this was a quick project and I got a lot of happy reactions to them! I wrote on the back of the tag that they were from me.

Then, for my department co-worker who is a die-hard chocolate lover, I gave her

cheddar cheese! These were individually wrapped cheese packages that were at Target (why doesn't the cheese sound good when I add in the Target part??). Anyway, in spite of her affinity for chocolate, she is on a low-carb diet, and I didn't want to thwart her plans. I do know though that she loves cheese, and knew she'd understand how happy I was that the cheese's orange color fit in with the theme. These packages were each stamped with Autumn Apparitions characters, popped in the refrigerator until they dried, and then tucked in a cellophane bag that I topped with more designer paper and some eyelets and ribbon. This package was extremely well received. :) Makes it always fun to give things to her!

I hope you and all your friendly ghosts and goblins are having a hauntingly good day! Thanks for stopping by.

Ho ho ho - gifts to go

This card was based on this card made by Laurie Schmidlin. I loved the non-traditional, bright colors. :) This card uses sets Punch Pals and Naughty or Nice. These sets go really well together because they're both done in line-drawing style. They're also great for coloring in, but I think the open expanse that is Santa's body is also really wonderful for paper piecing.

I also go to use my snowflake embossing envelope with my Cuttlebug. His beard is covered in Liquid Applique and Dazzling Diamonds glitter. I've used Liquid Applique before, but WOW, did it ever puff up this time! This photo below is a side view of his beard and hat after I heated the applique up.

Then there's a closeup of the beard and dry embossed piece behind the main image.