Gift Bag

Cards are done and mailed. Gifts are wrapped. Except for 2 that I did not have a box to fit. So I decided to decorate a gift bag.

I was inspired by the color challenge at The Kraft Journal They have so many gorgeous colors in the photo

I had some scraps of blue and purple "jewel" tone papers that are colors in the wreath. The gold metallic is also from the scrapbox.. I used SU's Star Framelits to die cut all the stars. I cut a star in black to put behind the larger one for a shadow effect. The tag sentiment is from SU.

I have also used a sketch challenge from Freshly Made Sketches for my design.

That was really easy and probably a lot faster than actually wrapping.

White Christmas

I love the elegance of white-on-white cards. So I had to try my hand at  The Kraft Journal challenge this week.

I dry embossed snowflakes on the Kraft cardstock and then rubbed a white ink pad lightly to highlight the snowflakes. Then used the same Cuttlebug impression folder on the long white strip.  I first stamped the SU sentiment in red and then used the polka dot folder on the rectangle piece. I like that the words fit between the rows of dots so it shows up better. The tree is from SU Festival of Trees, stamped with VersaMark and embossed with white embossing powder. There are tiny flowers on the tree so each one got a pearl center.
I used this sketch from Mojo Monday

Creative Mess

I have really been challenged with this week's sketch from Tuesday Morning Sketches

I knew I wanted to do stars for the circles and a tree where the banner is but could not decide on the right DP. Once I finally decided on the DP here is what my workspace looked like

So fess up--I bet you all have had a desk top looking like this at some time! LOL!!  Well, as  the saying goes, "A messy desk is the sign of a creative mind,"
So here is a clearer picture of the actual creation.

Now I have some cleaning to do. The other half of that saying has to be "too much mess stifles creativity."

Merry & Bright

I love this inspiration picture from Curtain Call and knew I'd have to make a card.

I used the SU stars framelit dies to make the stars. The sentiment also from SU is heat embossed with silver but that sure didn't photograph well. Embossing the white background stars gave some texture. The blue and green glitter tape is from Michael's. It has a clear peel off strip on the back and I think it took longer to get that peeled away than to make the whole card!.
I also used  the tic-tac-toe grid from The Paper Players for the design. I did the diagonal row: star, embossing, white. Also sneaked in extras on the bottom row: die cut & glitter.