My Favorite Thing About Winter...

Hey y'all, how's your day going?  We did indeed eat lots of pizza and cake (and also pie) for my birthday last night : )  And instead of playing with my new stamp sets today I've got a couple of cards with retired stamps.  Because that's how my stamping muse works sometimes, she's ornery.

So what's my favorite thing about winter?

Drinking tea.  Like, for reals, I usually drink multiple cups of tea every day when it's cold outside and I think it's time to brew another cuppa right now.  The drinks on this card could be coffee or hot chocolate but for me personally it would 100% be tea.  I have a bad habit of buying too much tea so this winter I've been trying to be virtuous and drink my stash.  Anyway, I'm hoping that warm beverages count as winter fun, because that's the theme for two challenges.  First up is Retro Rubber:

Hug in a Mug is 6 1/2 years old so plenty retro for this challenge.  And I did put snowflakes in the background, so that makes it count as winter-related, right?

The Paper Players has the same theme this week:

And since the Paper Players specifically wants CAS cards, I used the sketch from CAS Colours & Sketches:

And my colors are inspired by Helen Read at All Things Stampy, she makes such beautiful things:

Though I didn't really use Crumb Cake, I shaded the whipped cream and marshmallows with the Ivory Stampin' Blends marker.

My Hug in a Mug card is actually the second one I made, here's the first one:

I wasn't sure if this counted as winter fun or not but I do still love these guys from the Penguin Playmates DSP from a couple of years ago.  It was a Sale-a-Bration item and I got LOTS of packs of it : )  For both cards, I used a piece of scratch paper to mask the diagonal, then used blending brushes to add color on one side of the diagonal.  A few stamped snowflakes and there I have the background of the sketch.  And this card is totally flat too, so easy to mail.

That's it for me today.  We'll see if I can bust out a new stamp set for tomorrow or not ; )  Cheers, y'all!

Supplies, first card:
Stamps:  Hug in a Mug
Ink:  Boho Blue, Pecan Pie, Stampin' Blends in Boho Blue, Pecan Pie, Ivory
Paper:  Boho Blue, Thick Very Vanilla
Accessories:  Dimensionals, In Color Dots

Supplies, second card:
Stamps:  Penguin Place
Ink:  Soft Sea Foam, Just Jade
Paper:  Soft Sea Foam, Penguin Playmates DSP
Accessories:  None