One Thing Leads to Another

Hi there! Thanks for popping in on this busy Sunday! No need to read, just scroll through if you're looking for Christmas card inspiration!

Perhaps you are more self-discipled than I am, but sometimes I need to take a break from making cards and go visiting other blogs and then what happens is I'll see squirrels some wonderful inspiration that makes me want to drop the ball and play along. Normally, I can count on Hammy to keep me from being distracted, but, you know, he has his own distraction problems right now.

So I went playing:

This card was inspired by my friend Chriss Blagrave, who is this week's Muse at Muse: Christmas Visions. Here is Chriss's beautiful card:

I was inspired by Chriss's black and white colors with a wee touch of gold and, of course, we need all the signs of peace we can get.

For my card, I used another one of the dies from the "Distressed Holiday Collage" set that I used in my last post. This corner die is one of two snowflake dies in the set. I embossed the white panel using a Sizzix snowflake e/f and then I cut out the peace sediment using a die from Winnie & Walter. That, of course, smashed my snowflakes, so if I were me, next time I would do all the die-cutting before the embossing.

The black underskirt is a glittered foam paper. You can just make out the schparkle if you look closely. I attached a gold snowflake brooch to the bodice and we're done here.

Snowflake Challenges: TIME OUT, Simon Says Wednesday, Virginia's View, and CAS-ual Fridays.

~~~

But wait, I thought. I might as well make a card using the remaining die in the corner set, this one in the shape of an ornament:

Which said ornament shape pairs nicely with my NBUS Merry (dangling) Ornament die by Memory Box. This time I used a red mirri card behind the corner die and sediment openings. A big juicy red sequint serves as jewelry and we're done here.

~~~

But, wait, I thought, while I have the Merry Ornament die out, why not make another QACAS card:

~~~

And then before I moved on with my blog visits, I thought why not check out the non-Christmas Muse Challenge. There I saw that Ardyth's daughter Kate is the Muse this week, so I had to play! It's important to encourage our daughters and sons and grands in the fine art of paper crafting and written communication!

Here's is Kate's darling card:

I hope Kate won't mind that I made a Christmas card. Oh, shoot, I just noticed that I forgot to write a hashtag in front of my sediment like Kate did! #Dodobrain.

For my card, I used four individual and ancient stamps placed in a row like in Kate's design, with a sediment placed under the images. These critters are from the All Night Media stamp set, "Holiday Snowglobe".

The sediment is from MFT "Stitched Stockings." I stamped it using the baby wipe ink pad technique. (You use reinkers in drops on a few layers of baby wipes; there are videos on YouTube.) It was my first time doing that and I thank Sue Rose for the inspiration.

~~~

And then what happened was, I happened to see that a very lovely color challenge is closing down. I'm sorry to see that happen. It is Colour Me ...! and I made this shaker card as a thank you for all the past challenges and hard work by the DT:

The snippet of DSP is from SU. The tag is from PTI and the ribbon is "Soft Sky" from SU. In addition to Colour Me ...!, I'm linking with:

• Freshly Made Sketches: Sketch below.
• Fusion Card Challenge: Blue Christmas. (Photo only.)

Ok, that's enough about my play day. I hope your day was productive, even if you saw squirrels along the way! Here's a look at my long basket of CCs, so far:

There are 102 cards there! We've been a regular hamster card mill! I am so fortunate to have so many card pen pals and I added a lot of new ones since last year. Still, I was surprised after typing my labels to see that they came to seven pages, thirty to a page. Luckily, several of those labels get a family photo card, so I only need to make about sixtcough more handmade ones. Good thing I love making them! And if you've finished all your cards, my hat's off to you!

Now I have to go teach those hamster babies how to forge my signature ...

~~~

Enjoy your day! No, seriously, enjoy! LITS!*

As always, thank you for coming by to visit the Playhouse and special thanks to you if you take the time to join as a follower! Please let me know you came by, so I can be sure and return the flavor!

*Life is too short!

To open the pop-up comment box that let's you jump to the end w/o scrolling:

Click CTL + Home. 
Click the Home tab under my blog banner which resets the post.
Click Page Down to reach the end of the post.
Click Comments and the pop-up box opens.
Click Jump to Comment Form; no more car pool tunnel! Mwah!
If you ask me a question in your comment, please remember to leave

me your email address so I can respond. Thank you!