Polar Bear

 My 2 retail shops have been so busy I have not had time to think about Christmas or winter cards. I now have a little break from that and with the relief from the searing summer heat, my thoughts turned to Christmas. When I saw the challenge from The Paper Players CAS and Bears I had to break out this NBUS die cut for a cute Christmas card.

The paper is from a craft resale shop so unlabeled. It reminds me of the colors of the Northern Lights. So it had to be a polar bear card. I found the polar bear dies on Amazon. It comes with several poses of bears along with skates, skis and the scarf. The skates are die cut from metallic silver although one looks black and one looks green. Shiny metal just does not photo well. The scarf is a scrap of lavender and white stripe highlighted with a Highland Heather blend pen.  I added a fussy cut Santa hat from clip art. The sentiment is an old retired Stampin' Up! one. 

Frame It

Let's Craft and Create new challenge is anything goes with added challenge of Frame It.

I have used Stampin' Up!'s Splendid Autumn 6x6 DSP. I think nature scenes are always good for sympathy cards.

I trimmed the paper to 4 x 5 1/4. I used a rectangle die to cut a portion out of the center of the DSP. Then I cut a rectangle frame from a Sizzix die. I glued the frame on, then attached the cut out rectangle into the frame using mini dimensionals. The SU sentiment is stamped on the 3/4" piece that I trimmed off the top of the 6x6 paper. I added some orange gems to emphasis the orange flowers in the design.

Halloween for Kids

Bring your coffee, I have a long post with a fun gallery of Halloween cards to share. I love making fun non scary Halloween cards for kids. So when Send A Smile 4 Kids asked me to be a guest designer for September, I was thrilled. This month's theme is fall/Halloween cards.

 Number 1 is a fun fold called diamond flap CASed from a post on Paper Panacea. Cheryl makes super fun fold cards. If you go to Cheryl's blog, she gives you a link to make this card.

I was able to use a bunch of my Halloween paper scraps for this one. The ghost and spider are stickers. The tiny boo is an old stamp from SU.

It opens like this

Number 2 is called dutch door fold. The witch is a retired SU stamp.

It opens like this

#3. Another fun fold with scrap papers and a ghost sticker.

It opens by pulling up on the boo section. You can either decorate the inside or leave it blank as I did because SAS4K hospital personnel wants space to write their own words. The pumpkin is a holograph sticker.

And last but not least is a bright colorful one. This is just a standard A2 card.

Again, a ghost sticker. The pumpkins are an old wooden stamp. They were colored and then fussy cut. The bat is from SU, again stamped and fussy cut. The B is die cut from black glitter paper. The swirl E/F is by Sizzix.

I hope these cards will bring a lot of cheer to  hospitalized children.