Cedar and Pine Cross Canada Blog Hop

Welcome to our December Blog Hop featuring Cedar and Pine Creations. To purchase any of the items seen in our blog hop today, contact your local consultant to place an order. This is the second of our new catalog, with the new 2 month model. If  you like these (or last month's Holly Jolly) and haven't purchased enough yet, they are only available until the end of the month!

We hope that you will take the time to leave comments on our posts, as we love to get feedback from our viewers....whether it was something that you really liked or some new technique that was used that you would like to learn how to do....by leaving us comments, we get to hear what you like, and what you want to see. Thank you… now on to our hop


If you have just hopped onto my blog, you can start here as this is a circular hop, but if you want to follow us across Canada then please start at the beginning .... OH WAIT... We miss Michelle already.. too much pressure! So if you get lost along the way, go check in with Brandi, or keep clicking until you are back here again.

I definitely wanted to have some great layouts done since both holiday packs are phenomenal. However, I have been looking for jobs, ran a bunch of card and tag classes and well, actually want to get Christmas cards out to family and friends... I didn't get them mailed last year, so since they were all blank I donated them to the Sea Cadet unit I grew up in and there are bidding wars going on, which is a nice feeling.

Long story short, you get to see the window card I did for my "Fancy Card" Class for my more advanced (and patient) customers. There are too many amazing holiday stamp sets this year, so I combined 2: the Cedar and Pine Cardmaking with the amazeballs nutcracker, and Merry Christmas Tree. I have used both for several types of cards this year, with a ton of different colour combinations. I think the favorite trick I used was colouring with shimmer brushes, especially the black. It just adds a really subtle bit of shimmer, with such deep colour. I am a glitter fiend, but am working on "less is more" since no one wants a glitter lap when they open cards. I did add some bling around the window to bring focus to the tree. This card is 5 by 7 which is a little bigger than normal, but the space was needed.

Some tips and tricks for window and stamping placement.

• Put the paper on the front of your card first (you will have to add more glue around the window most likely, but trust the process). Don't put anything else on the front yet. 
• Stamp.the inside of the window, and then position your oval thin cut (with the cut part facing up) over top. I had people use some washi to grab the front of the card when it closed up, then added some more. If you are a craftaholic and have a magnetic plate, that would be super easy too. 
• Run it through your die cutting machine with the card open, depending on how thick the front is, you may have to do a few passes.
• Now you can finish adding to the rest of your card
• If you are better at erasing pencil than I am, you could definitely just cut the oval window, mark the widest points inside, then stamp but I tend to be too heavy handed. The stamp is just a tiny little bit bigger than the window, so you can't just stamp through it in this case. 

Your next stop on the Cross Canada Hop is the lovely Rosalynd at My Stamping Room

If you get lost along the way, you can head to Brandi's blog, as she has the complete blog list.


Thanks for hopping along with us - we hope we were able to inspire you to get creative using some of the designs, products and techniques seen along the way. We hope you will join us again next month when we will be featuring projects created using the coming soon "Spruced Up" Collection. So mark January 10th on your calendars and hop along with us.

Christmas Card Stress

Hello All,

So is anyone else having stress about Christmas Cards? I am not very financially solvent and so I am going to try to use up all sorts of old patterned paper and use all sorts of stamps I already have. My big issue right now is that I just don't have the inspiration to get started. So I am going to put out there the question how do you get inspired for Christmas Cards/ Holiday Cards?

My current plan is that I am just going to start colouring images and will worry about what paper to put them with and how to lay them out later. The current image count is at 7 snowmen and 1 Angel.

Simon's Challenge

So I am making a blogging comeback, starting now. I found a new site that with neat challenges, and I am always open to more so leave me links in comments if you know of any. This one is from simonsaysstamp.com . The challenge was to create a Christmas card. I wanted mine to look sort of like an ornament for on the tree. I love the stamp on it!

I will post more as I get back into the groove of things but for today here is the picture. I used some felt fusion holly and eyelets to go with the sponged ink.

Feels good to be back!

Its been a while

Well I have been rather deliquant over the past few weeks, even though I have a bunch of things to post and have become super into stamps over the holidays. I got a shiney new camera for the holidays, so I am excited about showing you some of my pictures!! I would like to take the time to show you my first real christmas decorations with the man I love.

So that is the tree all lit up and not so lit up. I know the tree is big, but it looks SOO real and you wouldn't know that the lights were LED unless you got really close. That was the selling point for me actually and so the dear BF bought me the tree! If you will look closely you may notice that the top of the tree has a hideous topper on it, but it was the most acceptable thing we could find. I will have to either learn to crochet or hit some craft shows next year. I made the skirt myself, but its fairly plain so I won't dwell too much.

I also decided that since this is our first christmas living together and that the BF has never had his own stocking I would make one very special for him. So off we went to the craft store to pick our fabrics. He had never been to a fabric store, and very little concept of what fabric he could use. The first one he chose was drapery material and was super heavy and like $100 a meter or something obscene like that. Then next was flannel. The third he was convinced was perfect; it was a thin cotton, so I could totally make it work. He wanted pengiuns so he got them. Then I edged them with some bling ribbon so there could be a little shine, and then embroidered his name on it just for him. I did however realize upon completion that there was no place to hang these stockings other than putting tacks in the walls and that they may be a normal size but I get carried away...so the stocking was filled to overflowing and put in a pile with the rest of the gifts from santa.

Hope everyone had a safe and enjoyable holiday and is looking forward to a year of wonderful suprizes, crafting and breaking every resolution you made. Within the next 3 weeks if you are trying hard enough!!

Frowny face

Well I had a far less than productive day. I didn't make it to school because I was exhausted, I learned that I only needed to enter a card OR a layout instead of both for the bearybox.com challenge and neither of mine won (there was only one prize, the card that won was way nicer than mine anyway, I just wanted free stuff), my present from shawn (Christmas tree) doesn't light up all the way, and we went to see "Quantum of Solace" (major letdown).

Here are my thoughts on the Bond movie;

1) When did the Bond villans get so normal? Mr. Greene is NOT an acceptable Bond villan name and I understand they they are trying to make an action film that is relavant in today's world, however the classic Bond villans had fantastic names.

2) Why did Bond get not one cool gadget to play with? He had a sweet car, but it didn't do anything. The had some pretty cool computer screens and things of the like, but no actual toys at all.

3) Cheezy sexual inuendos were what made the classic films so good.

4) I must give props for the impressive chase scenes. They really did some neat things that somewhat redeemed the movie. I don't want to go into too much detail and wreck things.

I still think that the movie was OK, but it definately will not become a classic and is far from the calibre of the last one. That is that rant.

Moving on to Christmas Trees....SO Shawn decided that he needed to set up the christmas tree he bought me for my christmas present(I am aware that it is still November, but we are slow to do things. If we start now it may be decorated by New years). Inside the box it said "don't return to store, call our handy hotline if there is a problem". Well there is a busted string of lights so we called the hotline. It was random, but we will have to call back during regular business hours.

Again, I have not finished my research on my Tim Horton's Field Mushroom Soup expose, so maybe tommorrow.

Beary Box Card Submission

Hello Again


I have completed my card and I am going to post the sketch



And I am going to post 2 pics of my card because in one you get a little overwhelmed by the glitter because of the flash, but I really want to showcase how beautiful this angel stamp I found in the depths the crop room of my Local Scrapbook Store (LSS) is.




















I hope that these give you a good look. Other than the glitter and my colouring with watercolour pencils, I stuck to a very neutral brown pallet. The sentimant is "Love and Joy come to you". I am to excited about Christmas to make any other sorts of cards right now!!! I asked Santa for a Pentax D200 camera so we will see if I have been naughty or nice.

Hope you enjoy!