Travertine Tile Coasters

Hello!

With summer over and the fall routine in full swing I've been finding my way back to the craft room, and it feels great! I've started some Christmas projects already. One gift I plan to give is homemade coasters. I tried my hand at these once before with paper, but this time I tried stamping directly on the tile and really like the results.

A google image search had led me here and I love the ones she created. In fact I plan to borrow that stamp from Char so I can case those. I drew my inspiration from them.

I didn't use embossing powder as it's too messy for me, but I did "bake" in my oven to heat seat. I then applied 3 coats of acrylic sealer, which gave it a nice smooth finish. I also cut out some cork circles with the smallest circle nestie and glued to the under side. The stamps are Hero Arts Old Letter Writing and the butterfly is from Three Artistic Butterflies.

I only made one coaster, as a test, but also as a gift for a co-worker. I had a coffee at her desk the other day and she gave me a Kleenex as a "coaster" so I will take this in for her.

I can't wait to make some sets for Christmas gifts. This is a very easy craft to do, just my type!

Thanks for peeking!

Homemade Gifts

I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas! We had a nice day with family and my husband cooked an amazing meal. He loves cooking the Christmas dinner and I'm the sous chef. The only problem was we cooked WAY too much and even after sending lots home with our guests we have tons of leftovers in the fridge. Oh well, I guess I won't have to cook for a couple of days :).

Now that Christmas has come and gone I am feeling the need to get the house back in order and might take the tree and decorations down today. My family thinks this is very scroog-ish but at least I waited until the 27th this year. I once took the tree down on Boxing Day! I have already put all my Christmas craft supplies away. Don't get me wrong I LOVE CHRISTMAS and enjoy all the lead up to it, but once it's over my house just feels cluttery.

But before I completely exit Christmas mode I wanted to share with you a couple more homemade gifts that I did. The first picture is of vintage glass snap jars (found at a garage sale) that I filled with scented Epsom salts for my work BFs. The one with the orange tag is fruity bath salts that I paired with some bath/shower gel. The other one is a foot soak that I paired with some peppermint foot cream from the Body Shop.

This next picture is of cookie mix in a jar. I have seen these before at craft sales and have always wanted to try making some. I followed Bakerellas recipe and modified the m&ms. Some had m&ms and choc. chips and some were made just with the choc. chips. One jar contained 3 different kinds of choc. chips. I gave these to my sister and sisters-in-law and some neighbours.

Well that concludes the Christmas crafting for me. Thanks so much for popping by, I really love having a place to share my stuff and am so encouraged by the comments I have received. Now I'm off the take down that tree! LOL.

Christmas Baking

I love baking but when it comes to cookies I usually stick to our favourite three types, and I always leave the Christmas cookies to my M-I-L. Her kids love her date cookies, sugar cookies, and shortbread. She also makes the best tarts....I can't wait.

But this year I decided I wanted to make some Christmas-ey type cookies. When I mentioned I was trying gingerbread to my work pal Lorna she suggested gingerbreadman sandwiches. I found this soft gingerbread recipe online and paired it with a cream cheese/ icing sugar filling. They were really yummy.

I still wanted to try traditional gingerbread so I turned to my Martha Stewart 'Cookies' book. Her recipe makes a TON and unfortunately we don't like it very much. It is a little dark and bitter for our tastes. But I did have fun outlining their shape in Royal icing. This was the first time I have used Royal icing and I used Wilton squeeze bottles to apply it. I think I need more practice though ;).

The last cookies I tried were Martha's sugar cookies, which I have made before and love. I did my best with the icing on these ones. Yep, definitely more practice needed. By my husband was sweet and reminded me that people train for years learning to decorate baking.

I bagged up one of each large gingerbread and snowflakes to slide into gift bags I am giving to folks in my work group tomorrow, which also contain the glitter balls from the post below.

Here are the gift bags ready to go. I love Christmas!!

Well, that's that. Thanks so much for visiting!

Glitter Balls

I first tried this project two years ago with a few girlfriends. It is a simple craft...use re-inkers in clear glass balls with glitter to create pretty ornaments. I tried it again this weekend as a little 'extra' to go with the Christmas cards for my office mates (Charlene - look away!) and some neighbours.

I purchased the glass balls at Michaels. Here they are after applying the ink and glitter:

Here they are once I added a little embellishment and cord/ribbon:

Some close ups (sorry for the poor pictures):

And finally, packaged up ready for delivery:

This is a super easy, fun craft with lots of online tutorials out there for how-to. By my calculations I think they cost about $1.25 per ornament to make, which makes them an affordable gift as well.

Thanks for stopping by....have a great day!

Thanks for visiting!

Loonie Stampers Challenge(s)

There are so many great challenges out there in this blog world but who has time for them all? I am going to try to be more organized and participate in more of and them more often.

The one challenge I do try to always participate in is the Loonie Stampers Challenge, a weekly colour challenge put out by a group of friends, including my friend Charlene. These girls are all inspiring, and I have been playing along for over a year (I think). Unfortunately, I had gotten four weeks behind on the challenges so this weekend I spent some time catching up.

This week's:

I think this is a gorgeous Christmas combo but I am done making Christmas cards so thought I would try something a little different. I was thinking of attaching these tags to some Christmas baking for friends and neighbours. I would have liked to stamp the leaves in Spring Moss but I don't own that colour...yet ;)

Here's last week's:

Love this colour combo. I never seem to have enough birthday cards on hand so used this challenge as an opportunity to make a quick one. Not sure if you can see that the scalloped border is gold.

And finally #66:

I liked the colour map but couldn't seem to get anything going. I don't have any light grey cardstock and got the idea to use a grey copic...but seriously, what was I thinking with grey flowers?? And my sentiment is crooked. This one will NOT be going to a true friend, it won't be going to ANY friend...ha ha.

After the last card I thought I would leave it at that and not even attempt #67, although all the Loonies cards are really something in those colours. I am in absolute AWE of what Char did with that challenge..go see! From Char's blog you can link to the other girls.

Thanks for visiting!

Advent/ Countdown Calender

I haven't been blogging much lately, but I have been crafting. I am finding with the shorter days and lack of sunlight it's really difficult to get decent pictures lately, but I wanted to make sure I got this project posted. I made two of these earlier this week, one for my son (13) and one for my nephew (4). I had a lot of fun and would like to do more of these in the future. I have a 9 month old nephew who will eventually get one and a 42 year old husband who has also expressed interest :).

I used some Basic Grey pp I got on clearance after last Christmas and various Christmas stamps and embellishments from my stash. The box is by Karen Foster and is nice, stiff paper covered chipboard. I am hoping these last the boys for a long time.

Each drawer contains a candy or chocolate of some sort. I also slipped $1 and $2 coins in a few boxes, as well as a bill on the 19th as an extra treat for Jake on his birthday. I have always tried to keep Christmas and Jake's birthday very distinct but he suckered us into buying his b-day present early this year (skis), which is just as well as he has used them a dozen times already this season.

Thanks for visiting!

PTI Blog Hop!

Helloooooooo blog hoppers! Thanks for stopping by. Can you believe we only have one month of Christmas crafting left? Never mind the shopping!! My son has a hockey game tonight so I won't be able to check out the blogs until later tonight :(

I almost didn't post these simple little tags, which were inspired by Niki Estes AMAZING tags using the same stamp from Holiday Button Bits. I love how she stamped a sentiment on her tags but I was unable to do so as I was using 2" x 4" scraps (in various PTI colours) that I had left over after mass producing Christmas cards. I cannot recall the name or brand of the pp I used (my bad). I decided to post after all to show how quick and easy it is to make fun little gift tags with this image and your cs scraps. I stamped the inside with "to and from" and they took very little time. I plan to use these on presents wrapped in simple kraft paper tied with some fantastic ribbon.

Thanks again for popping by...have a fantastic night and enjoy the hop!

PTI Blog Hop! - Pink Paislee meets Papertrey

Hi there!

I thought I would put the text at the bottom of the post for those who only wanted to check out the cards :)

When I saw the Pink Paislee line Mistletoe & Co I immediately realized how well it would go with some of my favourite PTI colours: Scarlet Jewel, Dark Chocolate, Kraft, and Spring Rain. I used some True Black in places as well. I love non-traditional colour combinations for Christmas cards.

I had a lot of fun making these quick and inexpensive cards. I did them all in an evening while watching tv in my craft room. It was great to use different background stamps, Fiskars punches, ribbon, and buttons. Everything is Papertrey Ink or Pink Paislee with the exception of the "joy, peace, and love" stamps, which are Ali Edwards. Of the Pink Paislee products I used the Postcards pp, stamps, and rub-ons from the line. PTI stamps used were Background Basics Retro & Text Style, Polka Dot Basics, Damask Designs, and Fancy Flourishes. I love it when I can incorporate so many different elements into a project. It just dawned on me that I haven`t used any PTI `Christmas specific` items, although I certainly have my share of those items after the last couple of releases!! I`m sure the blog hop will provide some great inspiration on ways to use them :)

Thanks for much for visiting my blog.

LSC #62

Hello out there,

I am spending some time today catching up on some challenges. The first up is the Loonie Stampers Challenge #62. Love these colours. For my card I used my new Winter Wonderland cricut cartridge and the PTI Snowflake Serenede set. It's hard to see as my photo is dark but I stamped some background snowflakes in Versamark. I did cheat a bit with the touch of ocean tides.

Be sure to visit the Loonies cards for some Christmas inspiration. Char has links to everyone.

Thanks for visiting!

Rasberry Suite #17

I love this colour combination!! I saw something similar for the Embellish call but wasn't able to make anything in time to submit for that. So when I saw Dawn's latest challenge I knew I couldn't let this gorgeous combo pass me by twice.

The pp is from the Cosmo Cricket Line Jolly by Golly and is called Merry Berry. I used my cricut to cut out the holly leaves on the Labels 1 die in PTIs Aqua Mist. I also used PTIs Dark Chocolate, Vintage Cream, and Kraft cs. The sentiment is from PTIs Everyday Classics set and you guessed it...the grosgrain cream is PTI. Oh, how I love PTI....

Did you notice the little berries? They are a brad from Making Memories.

Well, thanks for visiting. I'm off to check out some other entries while I cook dinner. I can multi-task like that! Ha ha.

Merry and Bright

Well, it's back to work today after a lovely long weekend. I got a jump start on my Christmas cards over the weekend. I used this simple and cost effective design to make 30 cards in this style. I love all the bright colours. I started another 30 cards in a different design and will try to finish those throughout the week. No, I don't have 60 families on my Christmas card list...I will be selling them at a local craft fair in late November. As well, I have an order of 50 to fill for my mother's neighbour. So, I will be busy over the next little while. I am really not into making Halloween cards so I will head straight to Christmas...ha ha.

Today also marks the start of hockey season for my son. This is his 10th season playing and every year it seems to come faster and faster. While I love to watch him play, it means trading time in my cozy craft room to sit in a cold arena.

Have a great day and thanks so much for visiting!