My friend, Jami, sent me this beautiful Christmas card she made using the (retired) Beautiful Batik set and a Christmas wishes stamp in Hawaiian (Mele Kalikimaka). Isn't it beautiful?!

Unfortunately the picture doesn't do justice to this card. I wish you could see the textured Purely Pomegranate card stock she used, in a square shape. This is the second card I've received this year that was square – I love it! I'm going to have to play with that more. She also used Gable Green for a nice contrast to the pomegranate – lovely! I also like the ticket corner punch she used in the corners of the Gable Green card stock.

I wish I would have thought to get a picture of the back. She used the cutest stamp that says, "Hand Made with ALOHA" and it has a little palm tree and waves! Thanks, Jami!

I know I've been MIA lately, but I hope that regardless of your religion that you and your families have been blessed and have spent some quality time together this past year.

- Kari

I love that song (sung by Burl Ives of course!). When I was designing this gift certificate holder, it reminded me of this song, and then I had one of those "huh" moments, because as I was finishing the card, this song came on the radio! Weird, huh? J

I have a new customer who wanted to get her friend some Stampin' Up! merchandise, but wasn't sure what to get, so she decided on a gift certificate. I like to spruce up my gift certificates by putting them in pretty "packaging". This is what I came up with for her friend.

I took a full sheet of (retired) Baroque Burgundy card stock (8.5x11") – and scored/folded it at 4" & 8" when in portrait view (the short side). This left me with a 3" piece to fold up to hold my gift certificate:

I cut off an angle of the 3" piece to make it easier to see the gift certificate. I stamped the inside of the holder with To You & Yours and Gold Encore ink.

The front the holder I decorated with gold card stock (now retired – but still so pretty!) where I had punched the corners with the Ticket Corner Punch, and I used my Big Shot to die cut the word "Peace" from retired silver card stock. I stamped the house from To You & Yours using Bravo Burgundy ink on Whisper White card stock. I used my 2-way glue pen and Dazzling Diamonds glitter to give the look of snow (hopefully you can see it better in the picture below). I sponged the edges with the burgundy ink, punched the corners with the Ticket Corner punch and matted it with another piece of the shiny gold card stock. I raised this up with foam squares (it doesn't show well in the picture, but this is raised a lot), and then matted it one more time with more burgundy card stock.

I hope she and her friend likes it and that Laura gets exactly what she wants!

(Remember you can click on any of the pictures to bring up a larger view.)

Merry Christmas!

- Kari

I love receiving Christmas cards, especially handmade works of "heart". Check out these cute cards I received from my dear friends Leslie and Amanda:

Leslie used Season of Joy with Purely Pomegranate (one of last year's In Colors) and Always Artichoke. I love the square card idea (4 ¼" square) – so it's a different shape, but still fits in a regular envelope. Thanks, Leslie!

Amanda used this cute reindeer (not sure of the stamp set). Unfortunately you can't see all of the glitter that looks like falling snow – it is so cute! I like how she dragged her ink pad (probably Close to Cocoa) around the edges of the Whisper White – nice touch. Thanks, Amanda!

I love to see what you all are doing – won't you share your holiday cards? You can send a link to your website or send me a picture and I'd love to share it with everyone.

Merry Christmas!

Kari

I love to make homemade cocoa (aka hot chocolate) and I've found that my family enjoys receiving it as a gift. I wanted to send some to my sister-in-law and nephew, but didn't want a glass jar because of breakage during shipping, so I decided to use one of my gusseted cello bags (retired from Stampin' Up!, but I'm sure you can find them at craft or kitchen stores).

To make the bag more interesting, I used some of our retired Rub-Ons on the bag itself before filling it with my cocoa mix. (I tried something new with this batch – I chopped up dark chocolate and added it to the mix – yummy!)

I used the Winter Post set from the Holiday mini catalog (only good until Jan 18^th) to decorate the topper in a collage fashion using Old Olive, Riding Hood Red and Chocolate Chip. I hand wrote the directions for making the cocoa on the back of the topper.

Here's a close up of the topper itself:

We're supposed to get some cold, snowy weather again this weekend, so it looks like I need to go make a batch of cocoa for Kyanne and I!

Enjoy!

Kari

Sorry it's been so long since my last video. I purchased some new software and the learning curve is steeper than I expected. I think in the long run it will be worth it, but it has been a bit frustrating these past couple of weeks.

Anyway, enough of the whining (though a little cheese with my whine wouldn't be bad). J

We made this project during November's Christmas card stamp-a-stack. It's a nice way to give a gift card to someone.

I hope you enjoy this clever little gift card holder made from a standard envelope:

- Kari

I love it when I get to feature projects created by my customers, friends and downline. I am always learning, and I love learning from all of you!

These beautiful cards were created by Tracy Bumpus who is in my downline. She shared these cards during our last team meeting (don't you wish you were here?):

This card was made with the Deer Friends hostess set. I love the sparkly red nose!

This card is even prettier in person. It uses Heard from the Heart and Lovely as a Tree stamp sets along with Night of Navy, Brushed Silver and Bordering Blue card stock. The trees and saying are embossed in white.

This is a sweet, simple card using the Season of Joy stamp set and the dotted background. Great to mass produce!

Last, but certainly not least is another Season of Joy card. I believe Tracy used Old Olive and Riding Hood Red cardstock along with that beautiful Riding Hood Red ribbon.

I hope you enjoy these as much as I did!

• Kari

"In ordinary life we hardly realize that we receive a great deal more than we give, and that it is only with gratitude that life becomes rich." -Dietrich Bonhoeffer

We are having my family and Chuck's family over for dinner today, so I decided to play around a little and created these cute (if I do say so myself) placecards so everyone knows where to sit:

Here's a close-up of the one I made for my husband:

These were fun to make and didn't really take that much time. I used the scallop circle punch for the "feathers", a 1 3/8" circle for the body, 3/4" for the head and I free-hand cut the hat and hat brim (using the 3/4" square punch would have been easier, but I don't own it). I'm into recycling/re-use, so I used my leftover scraps of last year's In Colors. I am really tickled with how they came out. I hope you enjoy them as well.

I hope you all have a wonderful, warm, plentiful Thanksgiving holiday.

Happy Thanksgiving!

• Kari

I wanted to share the rest of the Christmas Card we made at this month's Stamp-a-Stack. Everyone had a great time and got all of their cards done with plenty of time to spare. I wish I had thought to take some pictures during the class, because I love what some of the ladies did with my designs – it was awesome!

I finally indulged myself and purchased the Winter Post stamp set from the Holiday mini catalog. This is such an elegant stamp set that can be used for much more than just Christmas. I'm picturing a scrapbook page using those skaters as an accent for winter-themed pictures.

Anyway, I started playing with the set and created this card originally:

I couldn't decide if this was "the" card, so then I created this one:

My family decided that the second one was the card, but I still wasn't sure, so the ladies got to make whichever once they wanted (or one of each if they so chose). This was easy stamping – we stamped with Chocolate Chip Craft ink and embossed with clear embossing powder. We sponged all of the Very Vanilla edges and used the Color Spritzer with a Chocolate Chip marker to add some more "age" to the layers. Unfortunately the second picture doesn't look as good as the first (blame the photographer – me!), but hopefully you get the idea.

The next project was the gift card holder that I mentioned in this post, but we used different stamps and changed the colors a bit:

We used both the Winter Post and To You & Yours stamps on this cute little gift card holder. I still used the same materials in the Handmade Holidays Simply Sent kit, just changed them around a bit. We added Dazzling Diamonds to the "Do not open" image, so it didn't photograph too well. I like the subtle tone-on-tone stamping of the Mellow Moss background with the Post Card stamp set from Winter Post.

Here's a picture of the inside both with the envelope flap closed and open (remember you can click on a picture to see a larger view):

I shared these last 2 cards before, but I thought it would be nice to see all of the projects in one place. This is a very elegant card in blues (Bordering Blue and Not Quite Navy) using the To You & Yours, Lovely as a Tree and Many Merry Messages stamps:

And last but not least is the fun and cute Santa hats card. One of my customers did some really cute work with the Liquid Applique on this one – she made star bursts on the pom-pom and zig-zagged the paint on the brim – it looked fabulous!

Be sure to check back tomorrow for the Holiday Extravaganza deals from both Stampin' Up! and me!

- Kari

Create this adorable box for party favors, small gifts, candy holders, place cards or you name it! You only need one stamp set and a few supplies:

Stamps: SEASON OF JOY

Paper: CARD STOCK WHISPER WHITE, CARD STOCK ROSE RED, CARD STOCK CERTAINLY CELERY

Ink: ROSE RED, OLD OLIVE, VERSAMARK PAD

Accessories: HEAT TOOL, HEAT & STICK POWDER, GLITTER DAZZLING DIAMONDS, GLUE DOTS MINI, CRAFTERS' TOOL KIT, BRADS SILVER, STAMPIN DIMENSIONALS, RIBBON GROSGRAIN CERTAINLY CELERY 1/4 INCH, PUNCH 1 INCH CIRCLE

Project and instructions courtesy of Stampin' Up! (©1990-2008)

This is another project we made at this month's Club meeting:

This is actually a gift card holder made out of a standard sized envelope! I love how easy these are to create. Simply fold an envelope in half, then cut the flap along the fold line. Seal one half of the envelope, leaving the other half open to insert your gift card. I like to punch a half circle (using my 1 1/4" circle punch) to make it easier to grab the gift card.

Decorate the inside and front as desired. I used the Handmade Holidays Simply Sent Card Elements kit for the front, along with the coordinating To You & Yours stamp set (these are awesome together!). I also used the Vanilla Hodgepodge Hardware, 2-way glue pen and Dazzling Diamonds glitter:

These are so much fun to make, I may just have to create a video tutorial for this one – what do you think? Would that be useful for you?

Enjoy!

- Kari