Table Decor Challenge

Yes, we are still celebrating!

I have a challenge for you which you can read about below, but there’s more:

AJ Otto – The Willow Garden – AJ has some BLOG CANDY to share!

Sharon Johnson – No Time To Stamp? – has  more BLOG CANDY!

LeAnne Pugliese – Wee Inklings – Doesn’t every Mother need a helper, especially during the Holidays?  Well, for LeAnne’s Featured Project that is just what she is giving us, a Mother’s Holiday Helper! LeAnne is running a Challenge along with her project, providing us with templates and instruction so we can quickly and easily create our own helper.  Don’t miss it!

Now for my Challenge.  When I was growing up I was only too happy to decorate the table for special occasions.  As I had two brothers I didn’t get much opposition.  My mother was also keen to have have me take on the task as she was usually busy with the food.  My decorations were never that fancy but they usually involved hand made place cards and napkins folded in some fancy way I had learned or devised.  Sometimes I added flowers or candles.   My children also like this task and have incorporated stamping into their table decor.

My challenge is to create some items to decorate your table during the Christmas season.    You can make it as simple or as fancy as you like.  I’m calling it a 1-2-3 challenge so you can choose to complete one, two,or three co-ordinated items to dress up your table.  Here are a few ideas but feel free to share your own hand made table decorations:   place cards, napkins, napkin rings, candles and candle holders, menus, centrepieces.  Make sure you check out the decor designed by these talented ladies also:  Jennifer, Darlene, Joan, Jerri

Anyone may participate in these challanges and all the fun events, blogger or not!!!  If you upload to your Blog, provide a link to your entry in the appropriate post by the Challenge Hostess.  I also encourage you to upload your projects over at Splitcoast.  If you do upload at Splitcoast, PLEASE KEYWORD all Splitcoast uploads for this event SSC08 (Stamp Simply Celebrates! 2008).

Every year I choose a different colour scheme for Christmas decorating.  This year it is gold and white/cream.  I will  add more to my table decorations but I have three for starters: crackers, place cards and a treat triangle.  To make the cracker I took apart an used cracker from another year and copied the dimensions.  I used gold foil wrapping paper and whisper white cardstock, embossed with gold e.p.  To keep the shape as I rolled I put three pieces of rolled up card board inside, a centre piece and two end pieces.  With those three pieces in place I scrunched the paper where I wanted it to indent and then tied the ribbon bows.  I will be adding cracker snaps and novelties when I make the ten I need for our Christmas dinner this year. I’m sorry if my instuctions are a little hard to follow,  I will try and do a tutorial some time soon.

The place cards are very easy, I used brushed gold and whisper white cardstock, embossing and cutting out the tree and sticking it in place with stampin’ dimensionals.  I wrote the name with a Tsukineko emboss dual pen and embossed in gold.

For my third element I wanted some sort of little box to hold the Lindor balls which just called out to me when I was in Michaels.  They obviously needed to be part of my table decor, they were the perfect colour.  We all know I didn’t buy them to eat!  My daughter came up with the triangle idea, open not closed because she thought those perfectly co-ordinated balls need to be seen not boxed up.

The shape is an equilateral triangle, scored 1″ in on each side.  Where the scoring lines cross I cut out the resulting diamond shape.  I then pinched each corner together, punched through both sides and tied them together with a bow.  I don’t know that I have described it all that well, here is the shape of the triangle after scoring and cutting out the corners.

Thanks for dropping by and joining in the celebrations

Supplies:

Stamps: Snow Swirled (again!)
Inks: Encore Gold
Cardstock: Brushed Gold, Whisper white, Hallmark Giftwrap
Also: Gold organza ribbon, gold e.p., Tsukineko emboss dual pen

Double trouble

This is a fairly simple card but not at all simple to photograph.  It looks out of focus because I have stamped two of each stamp, the gold slightly offset from the red.  In real life the gold is more prominent and you can see four little gold ball stickies too.  The card is vanilla, but again, its hard to tell.  I used my stamp-a-ma-jig for the tree and the sentiment rather than trying to eyeball it, like I usually do.

Don’t forget to check in at No Time To Stamp tomorrow for the beginning of the celebrations there.  I will be back tomorrow to take part in the festivities.

Supplies:

Stamps: Snow Swirled,
Inks: Encore Gold, Riding Hood Red
Cardstock: Riding Hood Red, Very Vanilla
Also: Gold Rhinestone Stickers from Michaels

Elsewhere

My time has been spent elsewhere in the last week.  On Tuesday I had a table at the craft sale where my husband works.  When I first heard about it I was very keen, then we heard that I couldn’t be the seller, my husband would have to do it as I wasn’t an employee.  We put off making a decision as we were both very busy and then finally decided we couldn’t fit it in.  When Andrew informed the organizer, who had visited my blog, she encouraged us to change our minds. Well to cut this long story short, my sweet husband did end up selling cards and candles for me.  I had quite a few late nights getting everything ready.  It was not so much the making of items, rather the packaging and stamping my name and the Stampin’ Up angel policy stamp on everything that took my time!

Here are two sets of candles I sold. I took a picture of the red set before packaging it so you could see the candles a little better.   I also had some individual candles with matching tags.

I had many single cards as well as bagged and boxed sets of cards.  I did some very quick tags sets which all sold, making me wish I’d done more!  Andrew came home and told me the kind comments he could recall which was nice.  I really would have loved to have been there.  He also gave away a few of my new business cards which he had designed and printed for me the night before.  All in all it was a success, but I think I need a bit more lead time next time!

Elsewhere in the world of stamping blogs, my friend Sharon at No Time to Stamp has reached a momentous milestone.  The host of the weekly Stamp Simply challenges and stamping designer extraordinaire has reached 1,000,000 hits on her inspiring blog.  She has a wonderful ten day celebration planned to start on December 1st to thank all her visitors.  Make sure you check her blog for details.  I am privileged to be taking part in the festivities as one of 18 bloggers who will be offering all sorts of Christmas projects, challenges and blog candy to help you with your Christmas preparations.

See you soon.

Gold swirled

I’m glad my daughters managed to stamp something this week because I have not had much time at my craft table.  I did manage to get a bit done last night but nothing is photographed yet.  This card was done by my older daughter and her friend earlier in the week.  I keep telling them to make two when they design together, but they only do one!

Snow Swirled is definitely the Christmas favourite around here this year.  L14 embossed the tree in gold and stamped the background images in gold ink, simple but very pretty all the same.

Supplies:

Stamps: Snow Swirled,
Inks: Encore Gold, Versamark
Cardstock: Handsome Hunter, Brushed Gold, Very Vanilla
Also: Gold cord, gold e.p.

Candy cane colours

Isn’t this pretty, it reminds me of candy canes.  My younger daughter made this one the other day, which is great because I’m not getting anything new made at present.  Instead of cardmaking, we have been gingerbread baking.  All three of my children are entering a gingerbread contest and they are all working with friends on different designs.  The last two nights have been spent mixing, cutting and baking the pieces. My dining room table is covered in large and small pieces of gingerbread for the dollhouse, the church and the village!

Supplies:

Stamps: Snow Swirled,
Inks: Riding Hood Red
Cardstock: Riding Hood Red, Pirouette Pink, Whisper White
Also: Pink grosgrain ribbon

Snow swirled greetings

Here is another take on sponging the Snow Swirled set.  When I did this one, there was no sign of snow, but now we have piles in our yard, melting after a 15cm snowfall earlier in the week.  Hopefully it will all disappear this week as we have a large amount of leaves to rake up.

To make this one I stamped the tree and the snowflakes in versamark and then embossed in clear e.p.  I then outlined some of the flourishes on the tree with an eggplant marker and sponged with pale plum.   The sky is sponged with pale plum, perfect plum, eggplant and a bit of black.  The effect reminded a little of the northern lights that I am yet to see.  The sentiment is just one line from a Merry Messages gretting

Supplies:

Stamps: Snow Swirled, Many Merry messages
Inks: Pale Plum, Perfect Plum, Eggplant, Basic Black, versamark
Cardstock: Elegant Eggplant, Whisper White
Also: Clear embossing powder

Simply Sharon

As I mentioned last week Sharon has been featuring her design team in her Stamp Simply challenges lately.  This week her design team took the lead and decided the challenge would be to make a “Sharon Style card”.  I am impressed with all Sharon’s cards but my plan was to CASE one of her White on White cards, which are simply beautiful.  As you can see that just did not happen.  Instead I was inspired by this card.   I even went with her colour scheme of brown and gold, why change something that works so well?

Supplies:

Stamps: Snow Swirled
Inks: Versamark
Cardstock: Brocade Background designer paper, Brushed Gold, Textured Beige cardstock I picked up at the dollar store.
Also: Gold organza ribbon, gold cord, gold e.p.