Cottage 6 Studio

Santa in Analysis

I bought this stamp about six years ago, the first Christmas that I made my own cards.  I bought this stamp specifically to make one card, for my dad and stepmother, both Clinical Psychologists.

Unfortunately, my pencil coloring has not improved since then.  I used colored pencils and baby oil.  Really this technique calls for Prismacolor pencils, but I don't have any.  Perhaps Don's sister will give me another Michael's gift card for Christmas.  If she does, I'll have to get myself a set and see if I'm better able to do shading with them.

Anyway, not wanting to end my year of Christmas card making with cards I'm not so happy about, I decided to try some paper piecing.  As I was working on that idea, I remembered some flocking my mother found at Michael's for $1 and decided to try the red on Santa's suit.  I sponged the floor to simulate carpeting, and paper pieced the wall, the chaise and the chair.

Not too bad, not great.  So I decided to sponge a bit lighter and paper piece Santa's suit.

Muuuch better!  These will be going to some therapists at Don's counseling center.

Better get moving, only a few hours left to finish these and the last of the cards I started yesterday, and then I will actually be done.  One hundred ten cards in eleven months!

How are your Christmas cards coming?  Do you make yours...buy yours...a combination?  If you want to see all the cards I designed this year, there's an album on my sidebar.

Tomorrow is VTT again already, starting a month of Christmas-themed treasures from me.

See you then.

Anna

Let There Be Peace on Earth

This hymn was going through my head today while I was walking DJ.  Do you know it?

Let there be peace on earth, and let it begin with me.

Let there be peace on earth, the peace that was meant to be.

With God our Creator, family all are we.

Let us walk with each other in perfect harmony.

Let peace begin with me; let this be my moment now.

With ev'ry step I take, let this be my solemn vow;

To take each moment, and live each moment in peace eternally!

Let there be peace on earth, and let it begin with me.

We sang this during our Interfaith Thanksgiving service last week and I was thinking about the recent escalation of hostilities between South and North Korea.

That's when I came up with this clean & simple card.

I'll be making six of these, which will make 106 cards and then four of another design which I'll show you tomorrow.

Until then,

Anna

From Our Home To Yours

So here is the card that I should have posted yesterday and I'm in the middle of making six more to complete my cards for October at the Splitcoast Christmas Card Challenge.

 

I love this set from Purple Onion Designs, and I am so happy that it has finally seen ink! (BTW, she's having a great sale now through December 10th!)

The background of falling snow was made using the Sanded Core'dinations technique from the TJ newsletter.  Using the lace as mounds of snow on the ground was an idea I picked up in the gallery on the Purple Onion blog.  I had been planning to use layers of torn white cardstock, but when I saw Courtney's card, I knew I was stealing that idea!

The rest is pretty straight forward.  I stamped the igloo and arctic blast in Staz On Jet Black ink and colored with pencil and baby oil.  The arctic blast is popped up with dimensional tape and I highlighted it and the igloo with a little Crystal Stickles.

More Christmas cards to come tomorrow!

Anna

Christmas is Coming

and I really need to get my cards finished for the Christmas Card Challenge on Splitcoast!

Here is one more toward that goal, so I have 17 to go.

I like this card, but not enough to make multiples.  I had the brown polka-dotted paper out on my craft table when I was making the last card.  I liked the way it looked with the cream and red card stocks so I pulled this together.

The wonky rectangle shape was made using my Fiskar's shape cutter then stamped with a sheet music stamp from Morningstar Stamps.  Then I aged it with a little Tea Dye stamps around the edges and stamped over everything with stamps from the Cardinal Resting in Holly set from Rubber Stamp Tapestry.  The image is from a sheet from Inka Stamps.  Her store is closed but she has an etsy shop now, I'm not sure if she has the same sheets, but they're still beautiful.  The sentiment is from a set I bought a few years ago from Stampendous.

I'm headed back into the art room today, so I should have more to share with you this weekend.

See you then!

Anna

Yay, another card, and it only took me five days to get to it this time!  My mojo seems to have returned.  Phew, I was worried there for a while!

This is another Christmas card made for family using pictures from Christmas 1914 from my Grandfather's photo album.

One of Grandpa's gifts that year was the camera he used to take this picture, so this may even be the first shot he took with it.  Here are his father, brothers and sisters.  Granny was probably working on Christmas dinner.

I made two of these and will be sending them to second cousins, children of two of the people in the picture.

I cut the sheet music using my Fiskars shape cutter and aged the edges with Tea Dye Distress Ink.  The red cardstock was distressed using a seam ripper.  The sentiment is from one of those $1 polymer sets from Michaels.

I do have another card done already, so I'll be back with that on Friday and I'll also have a post later tonight for Vintage Thingie Thursday.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Anna

Happy Christmas Again!

Happy Monday!

When I showed you my latest Christmas card last week, I told you that I had a couple of other ideas, and this is one of them.

Here I used the Sanded Core'dinations technique from the Technique Junkies Newsletter to give the trees their texture.  On the left, I used the Candy Cane Stripe CB folder for the look of garland and on the right I used the Swiss Dots CB folder for ornaments.

I don't actually have any Core'dinations cardstock.  Here I used cardstock from a Die Cuts With a View that has a white core.

We have another show coming up this weekend.  We'd never even heard of this show, but they came around soliciting for vendors at the Sea Cliff Mini Mart.  We called, asked some questions and had a look around the church and decided to give it a go.

I have a homework assignment to finish this afternoon and then I'll be working on some items to sell which I'll share throughout the week.

See you then!

Anna

When your Mojo is missing...

try a challenge, or four.

 I whipped up this card this morning to fit four challenges over at Splitcoast Stampers; the Christmas Card Challenge, of course, Sunday's Featured Stamper, Monday's Clean & Simple, and today's Color Challenge.

You can find the card I CASEd for the Featured Stamper here.   While you're there, you should check out her whole gallery.  Jenn Spencer has a great clean & simple style.

You will see that I changed the color scheme (for the Color Challenge), used a different CB folder for the main panel, crimped the trees (for the Clean & Simple Challege of Crinkle) and used pearls instead of jute for the garland on the left-hand tree.

And I have even more ideas for Christmas Cards stemming from these challenges.

But those will have to wait because we'll be taking another look into The Baby Box for Vintage Thingie Thursday in my next post.

'Till Then!

Anna

Uncle "Pin"

Hi there.

Posting a bit later than planned today.  The dog was having his usual afternoon sunbath on the bed earlier and I decided to join him.  What I thought would be a few minutes turned into a couple of hours.  Not a bad way to spend a Sunday afternoon, though.

Earlier, I finished this Christmas card for my Godmother.

The little boy in the picture is her father, my Great Uncle William "Pin."  The photo comes from my grandfather's photo album and was one of the first that he took with the new camera he got as a gift for Christmas in 1914.  I realized a few months ago that his picture would be perfect to use in Christmas cards for my Godmother and her brother.

After yesterday's cardmaking fiasco, I was going through the Splitcoast gallery for inspiration and came across a link to a blog called Instead of Ironing.  Wow!  Fabulous cards and tons of inspiration.  So much in fact, that I CASEd the layout from this card.  Gorgeous, right?

My card is A6 size - 4 1/2 x 6 1/4.  This was dictated by the size of the photo which got lost on an A7 and took over an A2.  I used stamps from Rubber Stamp Tapestry's Holly border set on the strip of kraft cardstock near the bottom and the sentiment is from Stampendous.

Back to the art room to put away the paper that exploded in there earlier.  I'll see you tomorrow.

Anna

Delicious Damask & Delightful Chocolate Sauce

So, I'm back with another holiday card made with Purple Onion's Damask stamp.  I did finally decide on blue.  I tried Fired Brick, Dusty Concord and Broken China Distress Inks but none of them worked for me for various reasons.  So I went to bed.

Before I fell asleep I decided I would try this Marvy ink in Salvia Blue.  I knew I didn't have an appropriate reinker color to dye the pearls, so I would use these brads instead and a little rick rack from the same thrift shop.

And it turned out pretty much the way I saw it in my mind's eye last night; I love that!

Over the last few years of blog surfing, I've picked up a few really delicious recipes.  When I find one, I always wish I could reciprocate, but most of my recipes come from other sources.  Finally, I have one that I can share freely.

Don's parents will be leaving for Florida next week, so we had them and my mother over on Thursday night.  For dessert we had vanilla ice cream with my maternal grandmother's chocolate sauce.  We don't have a lot of her recipes but luckily she contributed this one to the Anglican Church Women's cookbook in 1974.

This is my mother and grandmother, not from 1974, but a picture that I love.

The sauce is really delicious, quick and easy.  If you're a baker, you might even have the ingredients in your pantry right now.  It's pretty sweet, so I recommend it on something like vanilla ice cream.

You will need:

• 1 Tbsp butter
• 1 square (1 oz) unsweetened baking chocolate (I recommend solid, not the pre-melted kind)
• 1/3 cup boiling water
• 1 cup granulated sugar
• 2 Tbsp corn syrup (Grandma used Beehive brand which is dark and thick but light will do)
• 1/2 tsp vanilla
• 1/8 tsp salt

Melt the butter, add chocolate, and stir over very low heat until melted.  Add boiling water slowly, stirring constantly and bring to a boil.  Add sugar and corn syrup stirring until dissolved, cook 5 minutes.  Add vanilla and salt.  Serve hot or cold.

Hope you all have a fantastic holiday weekend!

Anna

Damask Christmas Card

OK, I'm finally posting that Christmas card.  This one is inspired by my own Halloween card and one over at the Purple Onion Designs blog.  Actually, I had a slightly different idea in mind at first which was a one-layer card, but I'll try that another month.

To make this card I stamped the damask image from Purple Onion using Ranger Distress Ink in Shabby Shutters.  I used a stamp positioner to do the images across the middle and then free-handed the rest.

Once this was dry (Distress Inks dry slightly slower than other dye inks), I sponged more of the ink around the edges and distressed them with a seam ripper, and then applied more ink directly with the ink pad.

A few days earlier I bought some flat-backed white pearl embellishments at one of the chain stores and colored a bunch with Adirondack alcohol ink in lettuce.  After attaching some seam binding and stamping the sentiment (Stampendous) and adhering it all to my card, I applied the pearls using a clear grid ruler as my guide.

I made five of these in Shabby Shutters.  I may make the other five in blue, or maybe red.  Whatever I decide, I'll show you the results tomorrow.

See you then...

Anna