SAS4K DT Cards: Christmas in July!

**For my Paper-Crafting Journey Challenge Design Team Post, click here.**

Ho Ho Ho!  While in reality my outer adult has been sweating and melting my way through this past week in the sweltering heat, my inner child has been playing in the snow, singing Christmas carols and glittering everything in sight. Time for the men in white coats? Nope... it's Christmas in July here at I Never Went to Kindergarten-land, the Send A Smile 4 Kids Challenge blog and at Bugaboo Stamps!  (Although I confess the men in white coats have been after me for years LOL)

Our current challenge at SAS4K is Christmas in July and we hope it will help you get a head start on your Christmas holiday card crafting! Donations of your cards isn't required for the challenge, but it's always welcome... just follow the guidelines here. 

We have two fabulous sponsors for this challenge: Bugaboo Stamps, donating 7 digis for a random winner, and Crafty Sentiment Designs, donating 3 digis for a second random winner. Plus you may be chosen as a Top Three!  Both sponsors also generously provided the DT with some really great images to play with and I had a ball doing my favorite kind of cards - Christmas Holiday! Bring on the snow and glitter! LOL 

I couldn't decide which image to use for my first card so I chose to use all THREE images we were given from Crafty Sentiment Designs (you can find them in their Christmas Digi shop):

 

Here is an image of it somewhat flat and folded up. It doesn't stay completely flat, but I'm sure some time in an envelope will change that. =)

I spent a lot of time coloring and glittering on this one, but I love it! I did some 1" folds at the bottom to be able to get the depth and dimension between the images that I wanted. Then a print of a digital Snowflakes paper from Summertime Designs' Winter Gifts kit by Summer Driggs (cool free kits!) gave me my color cues for the snowmen's outfits and accessories. I colored all the images with Copics and ProMarkers and added a well-restrained dose of Stardust and Waterfall Stickles on my snowmen and the little star swag on the tree and a bit of Christmas Red and Lime Green Stickles here and here. I used a metallic silver gel pen on the silver bell.

I fussy cut my images and adhered them to the various folds and then added a couple layers of cardstock on each fold to cover the bottom of my images. Here's a side view:

On the front I added a little red and white bakers twine and layered a computer-generated sentiment and a snowflake made from two Martha Stewart punches. The snowflake was colored with Copics to match the colors on my snowmen and glittered up. I even added Stardust Stickles to the clear gem in the center... it doesn't photograph well, but IRL it gives it a frosted look with lots of sparkle.

So cute and Christmas-y! =)

I'm entering this card in several challenges and link-ups...
2 Sisters Challenge Blog - #99 Christmas in July
Crafty Hazelnut's Christmas Challenge - #80 Snowmen
Chocolate, Coffee and Cards - #16 Anything Goes
Fussy and Fancy - #66 Fancy Folds (hoping my folds are fancy enough LOL
Whimsy Stamps - #46 Anything Goes
Holly Jolly Christmas Challenge - CHRISTMAS Acrostics:  I used Coal buttons/nose, Carrot nose, winter Hat, Happy Snowmen, Red Ribbon, Red Twine, Red Christmas balls, winter Scarves, Sparkling Snow and Snowflakes, Twinkling Stars, Christmas Trees, Sparkling ear Muffs and Silver bell.  Whew!
Papertake Weekly - Anything Goes 
Hooked on Crafts - #22 Christmas in July
Lollipop Crafts - #84 Christmas in July

I made a second card for our challenge post using this sweet gingerbread girl from Bugaboo Stamps:

I really focused on coloring on this one (using Copics) and am quite pleased with most of my blending, especially on my candy cane. The photo loses some of the detail, but there is a real 'roundness' to the cane in person. I used red liquid pearls to fill in the heart on her sweet ginger butt.

 Then I carefully applied white enamel in the icing sections and held my breath as I dumped Glamour Dust over it while it was wet. I waited until it had dried to dust it off and see what stuck. Turns out, quite a bit! Lovely sparkle.

(Oh, how I LOOOOOOVVVVVEEEEE Christmas holiday cards! hee hee ho ho hee!) 

I kept the layout very simple and made a smaller card than usual (4.5x5.5") so that the image was large and in charge. The papers are from a DCWV Christmas and Winter 180-page pack and I used some kraft cardstock. All my edges are well inked with either Burlap or Walnut Distress Inks (or both!). Very country, I think. I know my followers will be oh-so-shocked to hear I popped my image up on foam dots. Ha! I tied on a bit of Christmas red and white twine and a button and added three itsy bitsy pearls to finish it off. Yummy!

I'm entering this card in the Just Some Lines challenge - Clean and Simple.

Now... this month is going to be full of fun...

SAS4K is joining Bugaboo for their Christmas in July celebration over at Catch the Bug from July 14-21. Plenty of fun and prizes to be had and lots and lots of SPARKLE! =) LOL And they will be doing a card drive for SAS4K as part of their celebration. Click on the image below to get all the details!

And if you've hung in all the way to the end of this monster post... here's a bit of a reward:
On Monday I'll be having my first ever BLOG CANDY here at I Never Went to Kindergarten, with a special bonus for my current followers. It will be a super sweet Christmas in July!

So see you Monday and until then...

Happy Crafting!
Christy
Christmas Elf

PCJ DT Card: Summer! - Daniel Summertime

Happy Saturday!

It is H.O.T. here and has been all week.... high 90s every day with strong sunshine (that's 36, 37-ish for you Celsius followers. LOL) It's too hot to think and I'm wondering if some of my brain has melted... I went to do my post for today's SAS4K cards and I realized I never did my PCJ DT post on Thursday!  I hope it cools off soon!

So... the challenge this fornight at Paper-Crafting Journey is SUMMER!!!!

That's whatever SUMMER means to you... weddings, beaches, vacations, colors, water... maybe even Christmas for you peeps south of the 'quator! =) Our challenge is sponsored by Fresh Brewed Designs and they have some great digital stamp images plus they'll be having a blog hop soon to celebrate the release of some new rubber stamps on July 14-16 with some special giveaways!  For our challenge, the randomly chosen winner will get to choose three of their digis!

Summer to me always reminds me of my childhood. We didn't go to the beach much, but there were lots of swimming pools and playing outside in the dirt.... and tans. Even though I used to get a lovely honey brown color every summer, I haven't gotten a tan since I was 18 years old. That summer I saw the face of an older relative who tanned all the time, even sometimes in tanning beds, and I decided I didn't want to look like that in 20 years. I haven't used an SPF under 30 in nearly a decade. I guess it worked, because when people found out that this past birthday was the big 4-0, responses were mostly "no way!" and "you're not 40!" I find this particularly ironic because in my midteens I was always mistaken for being older than I was. LOL It's also funny to see me next to a couple of my brothers who inherited their coloring from my mother's Native American ancestor as I'm so pale and they, well, my mother once misidentified her own son at a distance, thinking he was latino. hee hee

Anyway... So I chose this cute little boy, Daniel Summertime...

I colored him with Copics and chose darker skin tones than I have been using to get that tan look. It took a little more blending and layers of coloring, but it came out ok. I decided that Summer also meant bright, vibrant colors, so I took my color cues from these super digital papers from the Flipflopsicle kit by Summer Driggs. (Summertime Designs are FABULOUS papers and FREE!)The two center panels were taped together and popped up over a jute ribbon. I fussy cut Daniel and popped him up as well.

The sandcastle and bucket buttons are from a pack I picked up at Wal-Mart and the piece de resistance is my flip flop. It's one of those keychains you get from Oriental Trading Company or party stores to give to kids as favors. I stuck a little clear gem in the hole from the chain. Isn't it cute? A few last gems in the corners and done!

So there you have it... my idea of Summertime... what's yours?  Be sure to join us at Paper-Crafting Journey and post your Summer paper craft! =)  And don't forget -- 12 more days to submit for our Design Team Call here! 

Happy Crafting!
Christy

SAS4K DT Card: Buttons and ribbons (and a bow if you're not me)

Hello again, my crafty friends! 

OK, so I've been crazy-super-busy the past few weeks and oddly hinting that I would share the why with you. Last week was National Medical Laboratory Professionals Week and as an admin, I'm on the Committee that plans and puts together all the celebrations. This year I had stepped down my commitments and was "only" assigned a few pre-Week tasks. These included both a Tshirt sale and... candygrams.

I suppose I have only myself to blame as several years ago I suggested it as a way to improve morale, get more people interested, and create a way to sort of "advertise" our week elsewhere in the hospital. Our Lab employees buy a card that they fill out on one side with the name and mailcode of the recipient, who may be anywhere in our health system, and the other side with a little message. Then a group of us get together and prep little white paper sacks of candy, fold em up, staple on the cards and mail out at the beginning of Lab Week. The most we'd ever done was about 800 altogether... mostly chocolates, but some hard/chewy candies and we even offer sugar free chocolates and sugar free non-chocolate candies for the diabetics among us.

This year.... this year we topped out at a jaw-dropping 1760! There was a BIG jump in the number of candygrams sent out to non-lab departments. I am soooooo lucky that this year I actually had a handful of volunteers because some years it has been just me, or me and one other person with her two kids. This year I had two adults and five kids (kids make great candybag filling slaves! LOL) most of the day and a few hours each from three other adults. Also fortunately it's very organized and well-thought out assembly line style which really keeps the pace up. We did 1400 in 8 hours and I did another 300 the next day and 60 more latecomers early in the week. None of them had ever helped before and one told me that she if never sees another little white bag full of candy again it will be too soon. LOL  If I can get a picture one of them took of the tables full of little white paper sacks standing at attention and being filled up with sweets, I'll share it... but what I can share with you is my photo of how much candy I bought on my first run to the store.

This is what $1000 worth of candy looks like:

And yes, I got many, many, many weird looks while shopping. Usually people selling candy buy the full bars and people assume they're at a stand or filling vending machines. But bags and bags and bags of miniatures really had them guessing. I had to make another trip to pick up sugar free items and more chocolates as we sold probably close to 1500 of those. So, with making flyers, candy shopping excursions, printing candygram cards, the TShirt sale, assisting with planning the educational lectures and helping with some other prep work, I was lucky to be home to let the dogs out to pee on a regular basis, poor pups.

Anyway, I am now free from Lab Week responsibilities and ready to get back to my normal crafty creativity. This week I got to spend some time coloring!

Send A Smile 4 Kids has a great challenge up today.... buttons and ribbons and/or bows!  I jumped on the "and/or" because I just don't seem to leave room in my imagination quite yet for bows when I'm thinking through my design... or I never have just the right ribbon I would want to use.

Our sponsors this week have generously granted us some great prizes for THREE randomly chosen winners:

$10 for Di's Digi Downloads

$20 for The Paper Shelter

$12 for A Day For Daisies

There's something about the angles in so many of her drawings that made me pick A Day for Daisies as the focus of my card for the challenge. I chose the image Puppy Love.

Although I am no Delphine or Coops, I have been practicing my coloring, although not as much as I'd like, and played a bit more with texture and light sources, which are two of the things I admire most about these very different card artists. I particularly worked on getting the sort of mottled look of some of the acid-washed, beat to death denims we have these days, but without any rips or tears. And I decided on a stronger light source this time and from a definite direction. If this little charmer's blond hair doesn't point you the right direction of my light source, I really failed. LOL I also see now why some Copics coloring champions also use pencils to deepen the darkest edges. Getting what should be dark crevices the right color is going to take (much) more practice, but I'm happy with what I've learned so far. One thing I'm not happy with is the errant gray mark on his ear that I had to kind of color over and blend in... I have some depth perception issues and I have to be more careful about how far away from the paper my pen tip is or "oops!" happens a lot. LOL

The papers are DCWV The Pet Stack. I love the bits of blue in all the earthy colors in this stack. I wish that DCWV did more smaller papers and brought the pattern down to scale. I used Walnut Distress Ink on all my edges. The buttons and the twine are from the candy stash that I won from Michelle O last year. I haven't really buttoned up much, but she sent a whole bunch of vintage buttons and I love the look with the colors of the DCWV papers. My ribbons are a mesh wired ribbon layered with a brown sheer, both from Berwick-Offray. A little puppy button from Jesse James adorns my sentiment and a few teeny pearls finish my other corners. My image is ... (you know what's coming) popped up on foam dots. I did use a stylus to just slightly round out my image a bit around the edges too.

My teamies have beribboned, buttoned and bowed up some fabulously gorgeous cards... head on over to Send A Smile 4 Kids Challenge to oooh and aaaah over them, then get to crafting and share your kid-friendly cards with us for a chance at those super prizes. Even better, follow the guidelines here and make a couple to send some cheer to a girl or boy of any age who's stuck in hospital on these gorgeous spring days! (And even if it's raining and the world is waterlogged, who wants to be stuck indoors at a hospital?)

Thanks for hanging in for this VLP (very looooong post) and have a crafty week! I will see you all soon!
Christy