Artwork with November's Stamp of the Month: Around the Block!

Has it really been that long since I posted some artwork? Time sure flies, doesn't it? Our family got a bit overwhelmed by soccer there for a while, and I must admit -- it was a bit much with Delaney being on two teams (never again!) while Kyle was on a team as well (not to mention Kenny). I have been doing some crafty stuff though here and there during all the soccer chaos, I'll post one thing in particular at the end (soccer-related, of course).

For right now, I thought I'd share three of my favorite cards from playing with the November Stamp of the Month: Around the Block. Out of this Idea Book's collection of Stamp of the Month's -- this set wasn't my favorite, at least at first! But I have had so much fun playing with it, it became one of my favs. I may be dating myself here -- but does anyone else remember playing with little Colorform sets when you were a kid? I think we had a Barbie one, a store one (maybe Holly Hobby), and who knows what else. Well, this was sort of the same! I selected my house, how I wanted to decorate it, which windows, roof, door, etc. -- too fun!

In this first one, I was just playing around with making a brick house:



I stamped the frame of the house on Cranberry cardstock with Garnet ink. Then I stamped the solid bricks in Cranberry ink, slightly staggered around with the outline bricks in Garnet ink (some overlapping). Then I stamped the roof, door, window and other house accents on Garnet Cardstock with Garnet ink again. Then I colored the accents with a Cranberry marker and put it all together. I decided the house was a bit too tall for the scene I was wanting to make, so I simply cut a bit of it off before attaching the roof. Then I embossed in White some snow on Heavenly Blue cardstock for the background. The snow was from Winter Memories. Then I stamped two trees in Ponderosa Pine ink (the smaller one is second generation), and added some "snow" with liquid applique on the trees and edges of the white cardstock. (The trees were from a retired set: The Beauty of Christmas.) A current set with realistic-looking trees would be: Warm Memories. Then I attached the house with 3-D Foam tape and stamped "Winter Wonderland" in Cranberry. How cute is that?

Then I was wanting to color my house in a different way, so I was playing around with paper piecing:

In this one, I used the new Sweet Home papers (how appropriate, of course!). It ended up being my favorite of all my cards made with this set. The beautiful patterns just bring so much texture and color to the finished house, that I simply love it. I stamped the main house on the back of the garnet-colored print with the roof stamped on the Garnet side. I even punched out the window and stamped the inside on some vellum for the roof. I also stamped on the main house where I wanted the window and door -- then the sentiment "Home is where love is". Then I used the Buttercup print to stamp the inside of the windows and flowers (coloring in the leaves with a Garden Green marker), and the door, drapes and window pot was stamped on the back of the buttercup paper. Then I simply attached everything together. I used a couple of the other prints to help dress up the card and attached the final house and cloud with 3-D foam tape. Soooooo beautiful!

And last, but certainly not least, is a delicious Gingerbread house:



I wish I came up with the original concept, but there were a lot of these adorable "gingerbread" houses floating around on our bulletin board. But how yummy is that?

I simply embossed with White the house on our Brown Bag cardstock, then after carefully cutting the house out I sponged the edges with Brown bag ink to make it look "baked". I used papers from the festive Jingle pack to pull the card together with our fun new Glitter rub-ons for some accents. (I also used some non-CTMH Stickles to dress up the house a bit.) Simply delicious! HA!

Now, just like all of you, my "crafting" or "me-time" is hard to come by -- but I have been squeezing some time in here and there. One of my big projects was making everyone in Delaney's travel team a mini squashbook for their 2009 season. (Yes, I'm not really sure WHAT I was thinking when I made that decision.) So here is proof that I have still been crafting away when I can. Here is a picture of all 12 personalized books for the Three Lions team:

Everyone's book was designed the same, just replacing pictures of each girl. We tried to take pictures of all the girls throughout the season and just tried to pick the best "action" shots we could find.



We passed them all out at their Halloween party, since they had a tournament on Halloween weekend! Delaney loves her book, and I hope the rest of the girls did as well. We even went back later and filled out the backside of Delaney's album with pictures from their Halloween party as well as their championship photo for winning their last tournament. Way to go girls!

Dani