With the holidays almost over and Valentine’s Day / Spring weddings on the
horizon, it’s time to start thinking ahead! So today I have a sweet love-themed
card to share with you.
 This is Pink Ink’s generously-sized beautiful Curlicue Heart stamp. It measures approximately 2.75” wide x 2.50” tall. I have gold heat embossed it onto a white Inchie Arts 3-inch Art Square and watercolored the image with Peerless Watercolors.  To give the image a homespun quilted look, I used a square stitched die to emboss stitch lines into the Art Square, then layered it onto a pinked-edge dark pink square die cut. The image was then layered onto a white card base embossed with hearts. Gold thread was wrapped up and placed behind the image, to resemble a bird’s nest. Wishing you all much love in 2016!  Pink Ink products used, available online through Ellen Hutson LLC: Or check Pink Ink's website to find a local store near you that carries our stamps, or to order wholesale. |
Tuesday, December 29, 2015
Curlicue Heart by Sharon Harnist
Sunday, December 20, 2015
Just The Right Tag
12/20/2015
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In some ways it's been a little harder to feel the
Christmas spirit this year. Probably due
to the grim news and blustery politics of late.
On the other hand, I am feeling warm and fuzzy about having my son home
for Christmas...it's been a very long time since he's celebrated with us. His birthday is just two days before
Christmas, so it has always been a "twofer" holiday for our
family. He's been enjoying cooking for
our little family and is plotting the main dish (Chicken Jardiniere) for his
birthday dinner. We've also been making
batches of Chez Noel cookies, one of my mom's delicious, old timey recipes.
(You can find it at the end of the blog post).
As the holiday draws near, nothing helps to get me in the mood
like dragging out the wrapping paper rolls, ribbon spools, scotch tape and
scissors! I put on my favorite Christmas
tunes and I am off and running. I am one of those types that loves to wrap presents. I even volunteer to wrap other people's presents!
However, my downfall are those tedious Christmas tags. For some reason, after wrapping everything I
dread scrounging about for an appropriate tag.
This year, all I had left were the mismatched, leftover, weird and wonky
ones. So...what's a crafty person to
do? Devote 3 hours to making a big batch
of tags (36 in fact!) and I didn't cut into a single new sheet of paper, just
used snippets and scraps from the "red & green" bag. I put all of my favorite Pink Ink Itty Bitty stamps and old scalloped
punches to work, reeled out several yards of pretty twisty colored twine and
voila! Tags. Plenty of them. Pretty ones.
That match.
So now I'm done with the tags and the cookies and the
wrappings and am ready for our birthday/Christmas dinner...finally feeling the
"spirit" that had eluded me.
And this is my wish for you, that you are able to connect with whatever
small and simple things that bring you peace and joy at Christmastime.
And now...
Lois Johnson's Chez Noel Cookies Oven Temp. 350 degrees
Shortbread Base Layer:
3/4 cup butter at room temp.
1 1/2 cups sifted flower
3 Tbsp. sugar
Mix and press into 15 1/2 x 10 1/2" sheet pan. Bake 15 - 20 minutes
Pecan Topping:
1 lb. box dark brown sugar
3 egg whites
1 cup chopped pecans
1/2 tsp. vanilla
Beat egg whites until still and fold into mixture of
remaining ingredients. Spread on top of
first baked mixture. Bake until brown -
about 15 - 20 minutes more.
Enjoy!
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Saturday, December 12, 2015
My Little Factory
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Every Christmas I debate with myself over making a batch of
homemade cards. I mean, with a whole
stamp company at my disposal you'd think I would delight in the task, but time
is precious in December, and finding the hours to make 25 + cards by hand can
be difficult. But this year in
particular, it seems as if peace is a very precious thing as well and to sooth
my soul I wanted to make a card to sort of "wish the world" a Merry
Christmas.
So I used Pink Ink's "Angel On High", "Peace
On Earth" AND "Peace & Love" stamps to get my message
across. I knew I wanted a pretty, soft
subtle card this year. I just haven't
been in the mood for boisterous Santa Clauses and sweet candy canes. Instead I chose a palette of soft sage green
with muted gold metallic accents.
To create my "factory" I first color the
images...adding a touch of gold metallic paint to the angel's dress ribbon,
then I cut the images and all background papers to size. I measured and cut 2 lengths of olive green
organdy ribbon (4.5 inches each) for each card.
Next, I attached my angels to gold metallic card stock "mats"
and placed four squares of foam tape on the back corners of each angel with
gold backing unit (leaving paper covers on).
At this point I attached the smaller green paper piece to
the center of the larger one. I then ran
my tape runner around all four sides of the back of the larger piece and
wrapped the ribbon pieces diagonally around each corner, pressing firmly on to
the adhesive. (You could also tape the
ribbon ends down with regular scotch tape for extra security). Now the two
separate pieces are assembled; sticking down the larger papers on the center of
my card and attaching the matted angel to the center of the green papers.
The last part of my little assembly line was
dotting each card with 8-9 dabs of Stickles platinum glitter glue and (after
dry) using a metallic gold prisma pencil (#PC950) to add "star shines"
around each glitter dot.
Homemade cards take time and thought, but I cherish all
those on my "list" and want them to receive something pretty, made by
my hands, and to wish them peace this Christmas.
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Thursday, December 10, 2015
Baby Hats
10/12/2015
Hello! I have a fun card I made today with some adorable new stamps from Pink Ink Stamp Company! Their new spring release is available now!
I wanted to use something that wasn't super springy, since it ummm... isn't even the first day of winter yet :) So I chose the cute little baby hats! Baby's are born all year, so you could quite possibly need a baby card in December!
So when I first saw this stamp, I thought it was adorable, but wasn't quite sure what to do with it. I studied it for a few minutes and then I thought "wouldn't they be cute all randomly stamped to created a background! So that is what I did here. I stamped them with waterproof black ink onto watercolor paper, and watercolored them with my Zig Clean Color brushes.
I cut a little off the bottom edge and added a pink stitched scalloped border, then layered that over some pale blue card stock. I stamped the sentiment on a stitched banner flag and then layered it onto a bigger one cut from the same paper as the blue underneath.
Thanks so much for stopping by! All of the supplies I used on this card are listed and linked below!
Hugs,
Kay :)
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