Sparkly Christmas...

Hi Everyone! I can't believe it's already been a week since my last post- how time flies! This weekend has been the usual business of swim team practice, homework, play dates and helping my mom with her physical therapy. The wrench in all my tenuously balanced life came when my computer began acting wonky on Thursday then all out died on Friday-ugh! Now most who know me would expect me to appear a bit more over-wrought that my darling MacBook Pro had died- except two very lucky things. First, I had just backed everything up in 3 different places a few days before (whew!) and it's still under warranty, so the nice people at the Genius bar are busy replacing the hard drive as we speak.

I have been busy making cards for my class this coming Friday that I can finally share with you now that I stole back my old laptop from my children-lol!When I start preparing for a class, I first pick the stamp sets I want to use and any patterned paper that is special or just came out. The hardest part for me is often getting the stamps and paper into a "card" and that's where sketches can be very helpful. This morning a sketch from Jen DeMuro (SFYTT) came out that seemed a perfect place to start.

I wanted to use the tree stamp from the "A Cute Christmas" set and some sparkly paper from the "Candy Cane Christmas" pack, both from the new Holiday Mini catalog (so fabulous, you must check it out!).

Although I really liked the original sketch, I had to turn it sideways to make the tree image work. The trees were stamped in Memento Tuxedo Black and colored with Baja Breeze, Pink Pirouette, Wild Wasabi, Real Red and Soft Suede markers. I used a deckle edge die to cut out the main image and the rectangle underneath on my Sizzix machine. The greeting is from the retired set "Warn Words", punched out with the Modern Label punch.

The flower was made by die cutting two different flower shapes out of the "Candy Cane Christmas" fabric- yes, Stampin' Up has finally made some fabrics to coordinate with their paper-yay! There are soooo many projects in my heard for these (Christmas stockings, holiday decorations, hair bows...) and they come in the versatile "fat quarter" size. The flowers were sewn together with some Linen thread and a button from the Candy Cane Big Designer button collection.

This is one of the cards we'll be making at my class on Friday, so hopefully you can make it- if not, let me I can pack you a kit to go! I will be posting more cards each day this week that we will be making Friday night, so stay tuned...

Enjoy the last bits of your weekend~

Heidi