The Character Cafe December Blog Hop!

It's that time of the month again in a good way - blog hop time! This month my image is a fun one - snowmobiling! If you like this image (named Sledding) you can get it at The Character Cafe or leave a comment at the end of this post and you could win it!

Also, if you leave comments on all the blogs in the hop, and at the last stop, you could win a gift certificate to The Character Cafe as well! So if you started on my blog go to the Character Cafe Store to start at the beginning (the link is below).

Here's the order:

Start at The Character Cafe Store
DJ - Moon Rocket
Joyce - Sledding
Chelsea - Top Hat Baby
Lola - Snow Friendly
Jessica - Snow Friendly
Nancy - Sledding
Cleota - Top Hat Baby
Deanette - Sledding
Fink - Snow Friendly
End: The Character Cafe Blog

And finally, here's my card for this hop. Hope you like it. In December we're amping up the bling! You'll see glitter, foil papers, rhinestones, anything sparkly! On this card, I used irridescent watercolors for the sky, a pearlescent white cardstock that I embossed with a swirly design to simulate snow swirls, peel offs from Magenta, rhinestones, and a great product I found a couple of years ago called Faux Snow.

Another Challenge - Holiday Cards

This week I chose to use another Character Cafe design to enter the challenge at Our Daily Bread. This is a lovely Thanksgiving/Fall design:

Cosmo Cricket Challenge

One of the reasons I enjoy being on design teams is that you sometimes get assignments that are outside of your comfort zone - either in what you are to make, how you are to make it, or color outside of your favorites. One of the assignments I had from the local store I design for - Wiggles and Giggles, was to make a layout from the new Cosmo Cricket Circa 1934 line, which is one of the trend you see now with the retro colors - which are REALLY not my colors! You know me - I love bright colors, especially jewel tones. This is about as far away from that as you can get! :)

Anyway - two of the phrases on the two embellishment sheets I was given sparked what pictures I might use: "You and Me. Always." and "Home is Where the Heart Is." At first I thought about recording all the places we had lived, but I couldn't find the pictures! (That worries me, and I'll have to follow up on where all my pictures are!) So then I decided to use pictures of us at different stages in our relationship. I found a picture from our wedding reception, a professional portrait we had done about 5 years in, and then one of us taken at Christmas a few years ago. I then added in a couple of pictures with the grandkids. I cut out some of the motifs from another piece of the paper in the collection, and added some pearls I had in my stash that matched the colors really well - I got them at Michaels - it had the red, green and gold all together!

I think it turned out pretty good in the end! What do you think? The pictures got a little skewed in the scanning, but you can get the idea.

Feature Friday at The Character Cafe

This week our challenge was to use neutral colors and to make a flower. I used the cardinal image released this month with a scrap of Anna Griffin paper I had that was just perfect -neutral colors and Christmas to boot! I then added a poinsettia I made out of a stamp from Holly Berry House. The center of the flower is actually a white brad that I covered with gold Stickles.

Winner of Last Week's Blog Hop - Festive Lion from The Character Cafe

Congratulations Linda S! You are the winner of the Festive Lion image from The Character Cafe!

There were 4 items in your list. Here they are in random order:

Linda S
craftymom205
Jennifer
Anne
Timestamp: 2010-11-12 13:43:58 UTC

Paper Sundae's Challenge #43 Let It Snow

I thought I would use The Character Cafe's new November release for this challenge. It is a nostalgic image of a father and son bringing home a Christmas tree. Like it? Get it HERE!

Christmas Layout Class at Wiggles & Giggles December 4

I'll be teaching a Christmas class at Wiggles and Giggles in Wethersfield on December 4 at 1:00. We'll make two layouts and three cards! Yeah, I know, ambitious! We'll be working with this cool kit from Creative Imaginations that comes with 23 sheets of paper and a sticker sheet and red gems! Even after we make the layouts and cards you'll still have paper to play with!

Here's what they layouts look like - the two-page spread was designed by Lori Gentile - I designed the rest. The layouts are fairly simple, so anyone can take the class. It does require some detail cutting, however, so if that's not your thing, you will want to consider that.