Season's Greetings Group

Here's one last Christmas card that I made using the sketch challenge on SCS from last week, SC259. I love the look of the traditional Christmas colours! Supplies:

Stamps: SU Holiday Lineup, Four the Holidays
Ink: SU real red, old olive, pumpkin pie, close to cocoa, StazOn jet black
Paper: SU ww, old olive, real red
Ribbon: SU 5/8" old olive grosgrain, 1/4" real red grosgrain

Snowman Soup

A couple posts ago, I showed you these ornaments that I created for my husband to give to his grade 1 students. Originally, we were going to create Snowman Soup's for his students however, the woman who teaches his class in the afternoon decided to do that as an art project with them, so they're getting those ornaments.

Since we had all the supplies for snowman soup already, Grant decided we should give them to the class he teaches in the afternoon. He's been teaching that class for about a month and a half while their usual teacher is on a leave. So here they are!This is the whole lot of them that I created - a total of only 20. Each package contains a packet of hot chocolate, 3 Hershey kisses, a candy cane and 8 marshmallows. Here is a close up of the front of the tag. I LOVE this snowman image and it works so well with the snowman soup poem that we ended up using! This snowman image is one of my favourite of all the Stampin Up Christmas/winter images. Here's the other side of the tag that shows the Snowman Soup poem and directions on how to make it! I stamped the snowflake image all over the white cardsock before printing the poem on it. I love the way it looks. There are many different versions of snowman soup as well as other little Christmas candy poems out there. In trying to find the one that I liked best for Grant's students, I made a document that I posted on SCS so that everyone could access a single document that had all of the different versions on it. You can access it here: Compiled Soups and Poops.

Supplies

Stamps: SU Two Cool Dudes
Ink: SU baja breeze
Paper: SU ww, real red
Ribbon: SU real red 1/4" grosgrain, SU silver elastic cord
Bags: SU large cello bags

Birthday Scrapbook

I mentioned in this post, where I showed you the card that I made for my Mom's 50th birthday, that I would try to get some picures of the scrapbook that I made for her. Well, I finally did. I took some pictures of my favourite pages from it (and ones she hopefully won't be too embarrassed to have posted)! The whole album is 8x8 so majority of the pages I'll show you are the combined two page layout.

I have a funny/interesting story about this album (scroll down if you don't want to read), but I only made it the night before giving it to her without even seing the photos! My sister called the night before Mom's birthday and said that she had gone through old photo albums and got pictures of important/memorable events and reprinted in black and white and she was going to scrapbook them. Now, no offense to my sister, but she's used to decorating for little kids as a grade 2/3 teacher - so I offered to do it (which I think is what she was trying to get me to do all along). So, I had her tell me what pictures were of and whether they were portrait or landscape style so I knew how to set up the layouts. With only that information, I stayed up all night (literally, from 12 pm to 7 am) creating the album. Once I arrived home (about an hour before my Mom was to come home and open presents, I saw the photos and added them in where I had planned. I have to admit, I absolutely love the way it turned out. The only thing that I don't love is that, without the photos, I could not assume anything about cropping so they are all matted with a 4.25" x 6.25" white cardstock, because of that some photos have lots of junk in the background and some are actually way smaller because they are old photos. All in all though, I love it and I think Mom did too!

Anyway, now for the photos: The above photos are obviously from my parents wedding and a picture of them from a few years ago. I just love that sentiment paired with these photos - I wish we had a picture of them from their 25th wedding anniversary to put on the right-hand side. This layout shows my sisters (left) and my (right) grade 12 graduation. These pictures make me wish we had both gone to our University graduation ceremonies to have pictures with our parents there. Oh well, I was celebrating in Mexico instead! This layout is a couple of photos of my Mom from a few of her trips (I can't recall which ones). I love these because it's great to see my Mom so happy travelling - she had to put it off a long time because she (and my father) had two kids to raise and then put through University. We were very spoiled!
Finally, this layout does not yet include a picture because I left it blank so we could add a picture of her from the exact day of her 50th birthday. It's on my sister's camera though so who knows when we will actually get to put it in there.

Supplies

Stamps: SU Kind & Caring Thoughts (hostess), PTI Father Knows Best
Ink: SU black, versamark
Paper: SU kraft, ww, basic black, baja breeze (retired), urban oasis dp (retired)
Ribbon: SU 1/4" black grosgrain
Punches: SU 1/2" circle, scallop edge
Misc: SU white ep, SU baja breeze flower fusion (retired)

Grade One Christmas Presents

I've finally finished making all of the ornaments that Grant is going to give his grade one students for Christmas. They love seeing their name on things so we thought these personalized ornaments would be perfect.

Here is a closer picture of one of the ornaments. Seeing as I didn't have any outline stamps that would be good to use for these ornaments (for this age group) Grant and I found this digital-stamp that was available for free from Aimee Asher. I printed it out on transparency then used black embossing powder on it so that the image wouldn't smudge. On the reverse side of the transparency I coloured all the parts I wanted white with my versamark pen and heat embossed them with white embossing powder. Then I coloured the images with sharpies and inserted them into the ornaments. Again, I used this ornament tutorial from SCS on how to insert the image into the ornament. Then I simply added silver elastic cord to be able to hang the ornament and the various coloured ribbon for extra pizzaz!

Overall, this was a very inexpensive gift. All that we had to purchase was the glitter and ornaments which came to only about $26 for 24 ornaments and we only needed 17 for the class!

Supplies:

Stamp: Aimee Asher snowfriends digital stamp
Ink: SU Versamark
Embossing Powders: SU black and white
Ribbon: SU silver elastic cord; Michael's red, blue and green Spool o'ribbon
Glitter: Martha Stewart crystal coarse glitter
Misc: transparency, clear ornaments, sharpies

Secret Santa Personalized Ornaments

Grant's school has been doing Secret Santa's and they have been giving gifts over several days. As part of what Grant has given to his coworker, we created these personalized ornaments for her, her husband and her daughter. They also received the Rudolph Spares. He will give his co-worker a larger store-bought gift tomorrow. These are the ornaments for her and her husband. The image was stamped in Versamark on transparency and heat embossed with white embossing powder. To write the names I used my Versamark pen and then heat embossed it as well. I was unable to get a good photo of the one for her daugher (it has a cute little image inside) but hopefully I can show you other similar ones soon as it is what Grant will be giving his students for Christmas!

If you have any questions about how to create this project, refer to this glass ornament tutorial on SCS. For my decoration, the transparency is cut only about 1/8" smaller than the diameter of the ball because I liked the way it looked better (also the size of my glass balls are different).

Stamp: SU Two Cool Dudes
Ink: SU Versamark ink pad and pen
Ribbons: SU silver cord, white organdy ribbon
Glitter: Martha Stewart crystal coarse glitter
Embossing powder: SU white
Misc: Transparency, circle cutting system, glass ornament

Rudolph Spares

I've seen a few of these on SCS and had to give it a try. I just love this reindeer image from the "sparkly & bright" stamp set. To make the nose stand out on the tag, I coloured it with my real red pen then applied a small amount of crystal effects. Before the crystal effects dried, I sprinkled some dazzling diamond glitter in it! Once it dried it looked like it was shining! After I punched the image I just wrote "rudolph spares" with my real red pen.

Stamps: SU Sparkly & Bright
Ink: SU chocolate chip, real red
Paper: SU chocolate chip, ww
Punches: SU small tag, SU tag punch
Ribbon: SU 1/4" chocolate chip grosgrain, SU silver cord
Misc: SU crystal effects, dazzling diamonds glitter, SU cello bag