Sweet Mrs. Claus Bakes Cookies

Mornin' kids!  I tell you what, it's beginning to look a lot like Christmas in my craft room...this is my fourth Christmas card in a row and I've pulled out a bunch of pictures from Christmas past to work on scrapbooking.  But for now, card!

I decided Mrs. Claus needed some inky love and it just seemed natural to pair her with the candy and cookies from the retired Candy Cane Christmas, which was on my mind after last week's card.  I'm planning to make cookies to give to the three ladies who run the nursery at the Y and watch my kiddo while I work out every day (along with a mug for each of them and some hot cocoa mix and probably some of the hot cocoa flavor Hershey's Kisses because I wasn't a big fan of those so I need to get rid of them and hey, they go with the theme here).  So maybe I'll use this card for one of the ladies in the nursery.

I used this week's Freshly Made Sketch:

I almost went with snowflakes from Snow is Glistening, but in the end the Color Throwdown persuaded me to go with Mrs. Claus and her cookies instead:

I had planned to use Real Red and Call Me Clover for the first two colors, but I couldn't resist that Poppy Parade striped paper with the white flocking and it turns out I don't have the Call Me Clover Stampin' Blends yet so I went with Shaded Spruce instead.  Still need to work on my blending skills on her dress, though I thought her hair turned out okay.  I decided to go with Crumb Cake for her hair instead of gray because it fit better with the color challenge.

That's it for me today, folks.  Hope you have a sweet day!

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Signs of Santa, Candy Cane Christmas
Ink:  Poppy Parade, Shaded Spruce, Crumb Cake, Memento Tuxedo Black, Stampin' Blends in Poppy Parade, Shaded Spruce, Crumb Cake, and Petal Pink
Paper:  Shaded Spruce, Basic Black, Crumb Cake, Thick Whisper White, Santa's Workshop DSP
Accessories:  Santa's Signpost Framelits, Dimensionals, Tailored Tag punch

Visions of Sugarplums

Happy Friday, y'all.  This week just 'bout done did kilt me...I haven't been sleeping well and Sadie keeps waking me up in the middle of the night to let her out again.  So yeah, I'm tired.  I didn't get to take a nap at the same time as Ryan yesterday because it was a short one before we took Sadie to the vet, so I used that time to make a card to share today.

I got rid of a bunch of my old ribbon last year and I wish I hadn't gotten rid of the Early Espresso ribbon I was looking for and I ended up with this Chocolate Chip ribbon instead.  Oh well!

Here's this week's Fall-To Layout:

And the Paper Players theme challenge:

And finally the Retro Rubber Challenge:

Looks to me like the snowman is holding a cookie, so that's what I focused on for my card.  Candy Cane Christmas (my stamp set) is two years old, I rather thought it was older but that's okay.  The most retro item on here is the scissors I used for the scalloped border.  I've had those since wayyyy before I started stamping.  Like, the 90s.  They're at least two DECADES old!

Anyway, hope y'all have a great weekend.  Cheers!

Supplies, almost all SU!
Stamps:  Candy Cane Christmas
Ink:  Crumb Cake, Early Espresso, Real Red, Old Olive, Whisper White
Paper:  Crumb Cake, Candy Cane Lane DSP
Accessories:  Chocolate Chip ribbon, fancy scissors from Fiskars

Sweet Season

Hey kids! How's it going?  I'm enjoying a day of not leaving the house at all--the high today here is 27, and with the wind chill it feels like it's 10 degrees.  Not exaggerating.  I live in the middle of a row of townhouses, and the wind is so strong that I can watch the water move in my water bottle when I'm on the top floor because it's shaking the building.  Yep, definitely a good day to stay inside and not freeze my buns off.  I told Sadie no walk today because I do not come equipped with a fur coat (plus my belly is to the point it's hard to zip up my jacket over baby bump).

So I made a card this morning!

I have been all about the baking since before Thanksgiving, like for reals, and the Candy Cane Christmas stamp set has Christmas cookies to match the Candy Cane Lane DSP and it's a few bucks off right now as a year-end closeout so I bought it.  And just looking at this card makes me want to make more cookies (because we already demolished the batch I made on Monday).

Anyway, I used today's brand new Create with Connie and Mary sketch:

While we're talking about Connie and Mary, they chose my snowflake card as one of their top picks for their last challenge:

Thanks, ladies!  Glad you liked it even if the photo of it wasn't that great.  I need to figure out something else for my card photos, or else get a new little bitty camera (I don't like using the giant one for card pics).

At any rate, I also used this week's Color Throwdown:

This is a real challenge for me, because I think that red and hot pink are clashy and it's hard for me to make anything with both of those colors together without getting all twitchy.  So for my card (scroll back up if you can't remember what it looked like, I just did), I stamped off once before doing all the little stamps on the bottom of the card and suddenly the red and hot pink didn't bother me as much.  I used Real Red, Melon Mambo, and Old Olive for my colors, plus some Crumb Cake.

Well, for my next trick this afternoon I'm going to get packages ready to mail because if I don't send them off tomorrow they probably won't reach their destinations in time.  Cheers, peeps!

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Candy Cane Lane
Ink:  Real Red, Melon Mambo, Old Olive
Paper:  Old Olive, Crumb Cake, Thick Whisper White
Accessories:  Stitched Shapes Framelits, Layering Circles Framelits, Dimensionals, retired Candy Dots