Jen's Uncharted Territory: December 2011

Saturday, December 31, 2011

A Very Happy New Year to all!

If you party, please party safely. If you don't enjoy a quiet evening! Happy New Year all!!

Thursday, December 29, 2011

Finally- a Tim Holtz 2011 tag- Tag #1!

I actually managed to get this in while it was 2011- I was beginning to think it wasn't going to happen. The first tag he posted was probably my fav so I've started there (there will be a few that I won't even consider making... sorry Tim.)

Generally, I like the way it turned out though I missed the "rub off quite a bit of the embossing powder" step so the whole tag is more white than I'd like- it makes it a bit hard to read "SNOW" in glitter. Oh well. First try, I'm ok with that.

I hand cut the pinecone spiral since I don't have the die- one turned out better than the other but pinecones can look darn scruffy. I almost went and got 2 real pinecones for this- I have a bag FULL of these types that's been sitting around for years waiting for the right use. I decided to stick to paper though. The banner was hand cut too. The pearls, crystal and bells have been in my stash for YEARS (the bells probably go back into the early 90's) and I just put them on headpins and made dangles of them. The ribbon was baby blue and I dirtied it up a bit with the Denim and Walnut inks.

I'll try to get back on here later to document the exact items I used to make it:

Ink: Faded Jeans, Walnut: Tim Holtz, Basic Brown: Stampin Up

Paper: Manilla folder, music paper from a song book

Punches: Fern: ?, Holly: ?

Embossing folder/dies: Snowflakes?:?, Flourish?:?, Happy Hauntings: Cricut (letters)

Misc: Embossing Powder: Joanns, ?:Stickles, Ribbon: ?, Mini bells, pearls, beads, Glass glitter:?

Challenges:
Shopping Our Stash #32: Use ribbon
Top Tip Tuesday #66: Anything Goes
Simon Says: Tim Holtz Tag
Whimsical Wednesday: Tag

Favorite project of the past year?

First, let me say a belated "Merry Christmas to all!" I hope your holidays were cheerful and generally uneventful (we spent 5hrs in the ER the night after Christmas because a 4yr old doofus refuses to keep his butt in his chair at dinner. In the end, no stitches in the split lip. I'm hoping no one else ended up in the same boat.)

Second, Whimsical Designs is having a "Happy New Year or favorite project from the year" challenge. I think my fav might be the ATCs I made back in Sept:

There may be a few other cards and layouts I like more but I'd never made an ATC, really wanted to and REALLY liked the way these turned out so overall, they've got to be at the top section of my list.

Wednesday, December 14, 2011

Final Christmas Cards

You may remember a while back (the beginning of OCT?! Are you KIDDING me?!) I was trying to figure out my Christmas cards. In the end, the vellum seemed to be my and a majority of your preferences. However, after I got into the card and I reconstructed my Christmas card list (remember I dropped my computer and shattered the hard drive back in May? Well, buh-bye card list!), I realized I was going to need ~50 of the music paper rosettes. Ummmmm.... no! 1 or 2, sure. 50? No! So, I cooked up an alternative. I used my snowflake die to pop out a bunch of musical paper snowflakes that I then dingied up with walnut ink. The final cards have different sizes of snowflakes but they're all pretty cute. I got lucky when I ran out of buttons and couldn't find more to match- the director at my son's preschool offered to let me dig through a MASSIVE button box they have for crafts. In less that 2min I had about 15 buttons. Thank you Renee!!!

Sorry for the miserable photos- our kitchen has lousy lighting and the flash really picked up the shimmer from the vellum.

Ingredients:

Paper: Garden Green, Kraft Cardstock, Old Olive Vellum (SU)
Stamp: Silhouette Song Bird (Unity)
Ink: Cranberry (SU), Walnut Stain (Ranger)
Misc: Embossing folder (Tim Holtz), Snowflake die (Stampin' Up), Music paper (Chopin Waltzes for the Piano), Button, Linen Thread (Stampin' Up)

Challenges:
Crop Stop: 49: Music
Crafty Hazelnut: 50: Traditional Christmas
Playing in Paradise: 45: Include a tree

Wednesday, December 7, 2011

Clorox Christmas Card

Tatertots & Jello is working with Clorox to sponsor a giveaway to someone recalling a messy moment or a craft project they did with Clorox. I'm in the 2nd group in this case though we use a LOT of Clorox wipes in a normal week (we have a 4yr old boy. What do you expect?)

A while back I tried using a Clorox Bleach Pen on kraft paper and LOVED the results. Anything snow-related on the card was done with a bleach pen. I just used it like a marker - VERY easy to do and highly recommended though you might want to do it with a light fan nearby to help reduce the bleach smell that hangs around until everything is done. In case you're wondering, it does dry quickly.

I received information about Clorox’s Bleach It Away campaign and am sharing my messy moment/craft fail/bleach project for the chance to win prizes from Tatertots & Jello and Clorox. You can find out more information about this campaign – www.BleachItAway.com. If you share YOUR messy moment story, you can enter to win $25,000 and daily prizes, and you can get a coupon for Clorox® Regular Bleach.

Tuesday, December 6, 2011

Christmas Banner

Hey! Remember me! Long time, no post! I'd love to say I've been swamped under crafting but not so much. I've been working on Christmas cards but that's about it. It's been more like crazed Christmas shopping, decorating, cleaning, subbing at Beast's preschool, dealing with the utter shock that it's Dec. (I'm SURE it must be April!), blah blah blah.

One thing I did manage to do was finish our Christmas banner for the mantel. It's a bit plainer than I envisioned but I like it this way- definitely clean and simple. I was having a hard time coming up with the right font for this one. I thought of doing Cricut letters but wanted to simplify my life with stickers. I found some really ornate gold ones that probably would have worked beautifully but then I saw these. It's a bit hard to see but they're raised and clear but have a silver backer so they have a rather glassy-like shine to them.