Kinda Eclectic for Ronald McDonald House

This coming weekend, I will be away on another stamping related event! I am excited to be attending the Stampin' Up! BC Fall Conference in Abbotsford. As part of the Conference there is a contest to design a card for the Ronald McDonald House Charity. As you may know, McDonald's funds a home away from home for families whose children have serious or life-threatening illnesses that need to be treated in a center too far away from their home towns to commute. I know some families that have used Ronald McDonald houses and it has been a true blessing in a time of pain and hardship. So I was happy to have the opportunity to contribute.


                                                             


We were to make the cards bright and cheery and not include a sentiment, so they can be used for any occasions. Well, bright and cheery brought Crushed Curry and Bermuda Bay to mind, and the sunshine from Kinda Eclectic.

• I love these colours together, Bermuda Bay, Crushed Curry, with a defining border of Basic Black and Sahara Sand and Very Vanilla as neutrals.
• There was a little help from Gorgeous Grunge to add to the collage strip under the sun with the "tire tracks"! The Kinda Eclectic stamp set has this interesting stamp with polka dots that have portions of typed words inside each of them. I added this stamp to the collage strip as well, stamped in Sahara Sand.
• I love those vintage looking leaves and it was worth hand snipping two of the branches out just for the class they add to a project.
• The sun is stamped and then die cut with the Circles Collection Framelits a bit off center so it looks a little like it is on the rise, to symbolize encouragement.
• And butterflies have always been representative of hope to me and new life and health, so I hope they mean the same to others.  These butterflies from Kinda Eclectic have great texture and coordinate perfectly with the Elegant Butterfly Punch and the Bitty Butterfly Punch.

If you ever wonder what to do with all the cards you make, I'm sure you could donate some of them to your nearest Ronald McDonald House, and brighten up the days of someone in distress.

The Weekly Deals are new this morning.  Here they are:

Click on the links below to take you to my On-Line Store, where you can read about, look at, and purchase if you wish, the products used to make this card today!

Product List

Kinda Eclectic Clear-Mount Stamp Set [135350]	Kinda Eclectic Wood-Mount Stamp Set [135347]	Gorgeous Grunge Wood-mount Stamp Set [130514]	Gorgeous Grunge Clear-mount Stamp Set [130517]	Regals Designer Series Paper Stack [130139]
Bermuda Bay 8-1/2" X 11" Cardstock [131197]	Basic Black 8-1/2X11 Card Stock [121045]	Very Vanilla 8-1/2X11 Card Stock [101650]	Bermuda Bay Classic Stampin' Pad [131171]	Crushed Curry Classic Stampin' Pad [131173]
Sahara Sand Classic Stampin' Pad [126976]	Circles Collection Framelits Dies [130911]	Elegant Butterfly Punch [127526]	Bitty Butterfly Punch [129406]	Paper Snips [103579]
Big Shot Die-Cut Machine [113439]	Mini Glue Dots [103683]	Stampin' Dimensionals [104430]

And a Partridge in a Pear Tree for Freshly Made Sketches

 I was at a Papercrafting Retreat this past weekend and had gobs of fun doing what I almost never get to do - experiment with products.  Just before I left for the weekend, I got a special delivery.  One of my stamp sets had been backordered, but it arrived as I was packing up the car.  The Partridge & Pears stamp set was not one that caught my eye at first, but after seeing other creations with it, I decided I needed it.  After putting it together at the retreat, I felt it would be the perfect "circle" on the Freshly Made Sketches challenge 159 sketch.

I think that pears were the driving force behind the colours I decided to use for this sketch. I confess that ripe pears fresh from the tree are one of my favourite treats each fall.  Few fruits are as juicy and as tasty as Bartlett Pears.  Look at the yellows, greens and golds.

Here's my take on the sketch:

• Since I was planning on using my Old Olive Blendies for colouring the leaves, I decided to use Old Olive cardstock as my card base and Old Olive Designer Series Paper Stack Fancy Fan design as the background panel.
• The Gold Foil Sheet panel is the perfect panel to highlight the main image.  You can stamp on it with StazOn Jet Black ink without fear of it smearing!
• I stamped the main image in Memento Tuxedo ink on Whisper White and started using the Old Olive Blendabilities Markers to colour in the two tones of the leaves.  The Daffodil Delight assortment of Blendies was perfect for the pears and I added a little highlight of the Gold Stampin' Dazzle Marker on them as well as on the little "berries", whatever those might be???
• The sentiments are also both from the same stamp set, Partridge & Pears.  The banner and the tree itself were hand snipped using Stampin' Up Paper Snips.  The tree was mounted with Stampin' Dimensionals. 

Then, there's the partridge!  What exactly is a "partridge" anyway?  And why is it in the pear tree?

The song, Twelve Days of Christmas, was thought to have been a children's game played on the Twelfth Night, where each person added a verse and the next singer had to remember all the past verses plus create a new one.  And the Red Legged Partridge from France where the song originated, would perch in trees, pear trees as often as not!

So I have a lot to share with you from the retreat over the next few days, but I also have all my craft gear to put away and a Christmas Stamper's Dozen tomorrow night to prepare for, so I'll leave you with the lyrics to the song:

On the First day of Christmas my true love sent to me

a Partridge in a Pear Tree.

On the Second day of Christmas my true love sent to me

Two Turtle Doves

and a Partridge in a Pear Tree.

On the Third day of Christmas my true love sent to me

Three French Hens,

Two Turtle Doves

and a Partridge in a Pear Tree.

Subsequent verses follow the same pattern, each adding one new gift and repeating all the earlier gifts, so that each verse is one line longer than its predecessor:

4 Calling Birds

5 Gold Rings

6 Geese-a-Laying

7 Swans-a-Swimming

8 Maids-a-Milking

9 Ladies Dancing

10 Lords-a-Leaping

11 Pipers Piping

12 Drummers Drumming

or variations of the same.  Did you know that if this song was actually played out in real life, the recipient of the true love's gifts would have received 364 gifts, most of them running around on 2 or 4 legs!  Hope they had a big house or property!

Click on the links below to take you to my On-Line Store, where you can read about, look at, and purchase if you wish, the products used to make this card today!


Product List

Partridge Pears Wood-Mount Stamp Set [133854]	Partridge Pears Clear-Mount Stamp Set [133857]	Brights Designer Series Paper Stack [130134]	Gold Foil Sheets [132622]	Old Olive 8-1/2X11 Card Stock [100702]
Whisper White 8-1/2X11 Card Stock [100730]	Jet Black StazOn Pad [101406]	Tuxedo Black Memento Ink Pad [132708]	Gold Stampin' Dazzle Marker [133634]	Stampin' Blendabilities™ Markers Daffodil Delight Assortment [130998]
Stampin' Blendabilities™ Markers Old Olive Assortment [130999]	Paper Snips [103579]	Stampin' Dimensionals [104430]	Fuse Fast Adhesive [129026]

Snowflakes Card for As You See It Challenges

I live in Canada. And I'm proud to say so! But I just want to let you know that we do not have snow and ice all year long!  In fact, in the summertime, the part of British Columbia where I live typically experiences temperatures in the upper 90's. It's late October right now and there are still green leaves on the trees, although most are starting to change. We probably won't have our first snowfall until mid-November. So my next card is one that is looking ahead to the winter months and Christmas! It uses the Snowflake Card Thinlits Dies from the Holiday Catalogue.  It incorporates all the elements in our As You See It Challenges #059. This is a fun challenge with a scavenger hunt flavour!

Amanda comes up with the most delightful challenges! I know you would have fun working on this one.  I completed and photographed my card and was really happy with the way it turned out. I edited the photos and uploaded them and it wasn't until I added the Challenge picture that I realized I had totally missed out on the sequins. Those little rascals were hiding in plain sight in the middle of the page! So I had to go add some sequins and rephotograph, edit and upload! Not my idea of fun.

• One colour combination that I really like is Soft Sky and Basic Black. When you add some silver, it ups the zing factor! The contrast between the black and blue gives the Soft Sky more presence and definition and the Soft Sky softens the Basic Black.
• This is my first time playing with the Snowflake Card Thinlits Dies and there is so much more in the set than just the swing card die.  I got three die cut words, the trees (the triangles) and the delicate snowflakes, just to name a few. The circle was die cut using the Circle Collection Framelits.
• One of the sentiments is from And Many More, a very versatile sentiment set, and the other is from the Ornamental Pine stamp set. The Very Merry is punched out with the Word Window Punch and mounted on a Modern Label punched from a Silver Foil Sheet.
• When using the thinlits to die cut the words and snowflakes, it works much better to place a piece of wax paper in between your cardstock and the die. It makes the paper much easier to remove from the thinlit.

• Here you see how the card folds up so that it fits in a standard envelope.  When you use the Snowflake Thinlits Die, it actually doesn't include the third panel that I have added on to this card. The way to achieve that is to cut your paper slightly less than 5-1/2" wide and pull one end through the thinlit instead of having the thinlit rest on top of the paper. Then it won't cut the paper and you have an extra flap.  The measurements would be 5-3/8" x 11".

I hope you have a great weekend.  I'm off on a papercrafting retreat here:  

I really excited about the amount of time I'm going to have to just craft! I'll show you the results on Monday!

Click on the links below to take you to my On-Line Store, where you can read about, look at, and purchase if you wish, the products used to make this card today!

Product List

And Many More Wood-Mount Stamp Set [134273]	And Many More Clear-Mount Stamp Set [134276]	Ornamental Pine Wood-Mount Stamp Set [135104]	Ornamental Pine Clear-Mount Stamp Set [135107]	All Is Calm Specialty Designer Series Paper [135823]
Silver Foil Sheets [132178]	Soft Sky 8-1/2" X 11" Cardstock [131203]	Basic Black 8-1/2X11 Card Stock [121045]	Tuxedo Black Memento Ink Pad [132708]	Snowflake Card Thinlits Dies [135855]
Circles Collection Framelits Dies [130911]	Frosted Sequins [135835]	Big Shot Die-Cut Machine [113439]	Mini Glue Dots [103683]	Tombow Multi-Purpose Adhesive [110755]