Hello 2018 Shaker Card

December 31, 2017January 1, 2018 Happy Ink Designs2 Comments

Happy New Year friends!! I hope everyone is as excited about a New Year as I am!! I don’t necessarily do New Year’s Resolutions, but I do have some goals set up for 2018. How about you guys?

Our elves have gone back to the North Pole, the bomb that went off in our living room that we lovingly call “Christmas Morning” is also gone. No signs of it ever happening. I’m taking our Christmas decorations down this weekend and the boys go back to school on Tuesday! Looks like things will be back to normal in no time. I like to decorate for Christmas the day after Thanksgiving so that I can enjoy my lights and decorations for a full month. I love how everything looks when I first put it all out. But by about now, I’m ready to have my house back, my living room, my normally lowered electric bill back… It’s time. I’m ready to move right on into 2018!!

I decided to do a “Hello 2018” card because I’m excited about this new year. The theme this week at Always Fun Challenges is…. Something New. (To see my card for the last challenge, A Christmas Carol, click here.) Something New, New Year, I went with an easy choice, but I’m just really looking forward to moving on into a brand new year, with new expectations, fresh starts, you know what I mean? Anyway, here’s what I came up with:

I thought I had made something similar to this, but I wasn’t even close. I’ll add a pic down below of what I thought was similar when I was making this. I have a HORRIBLE memory…

I love a good shaker card!! I knew I wanted to do something kind of tlike shiny and sparkly and the best way to achieve that is with a shaker. I thought about going gold, but the card I had in mind, the one I thought was similar to this one, was in gold so I went with silver.

It sure is sparkly and shiny, isn’t it?? Below is the card that I had in mind while making this, that I thought was very similar to the one I was making. Click here to see my post featuring this card. I was a little worried I was making the same thing over again and just didn’t fully realize it. It definitely is similar, but not quite the same. I made a few of these for a custom order from my Etsy store

I really like the Happy New Year card above, but I LOVE the not so traditional Hello 2018. I just think it’s different. I like that about it. And I just HAD to use these adorable WISH trees as props before I packed them up for the year. My dear friend got them for me from a local store and I can’t stop staring at them. They are gorgeous!!

I hope everyone has/had a fabulous New Year’s and I’ll see y’all again next week!! If you’d like to add your project(s) for this week’s theme over at the Always Fun Challenges blog, click here to be redirected.

If you’d like to see my process, just click on the video below.

I couldn’t capture it in a photo, but the white paper I used for my card front was really interesting looking. It was part of a glitter paper pad from Michaels, but while all the other colors were super sparkly, this one almost looked like a matte sparkle. It sounds contradicting, I know but it really did look that way! I don’t know how else to describe it. I couldn’t find a few of the items I used to include in my products list below, including the matte glitter paper, so I’ve added them separately with a picture and a link. I just googled these items and included what I found below.

This is the paper I used for the card front. You can find it here.

This is the paper I used for the black and silver glitter. You can find it here.

The number dies that I used I couldn’t add because it’s a Stampin Up item so if you want it, just ask your Stampin Up demonstrator about the Large Number Framelits that coordinate with the Number of Years stamp set. I’m sure they can lead you right to it.

Everything else is listed below.

OH!! I almost forgot to mention this, but Simon Says Stamp is having a HUGE year end sale right now. Hurry over before it’s too late. Click Come see our new arrivals at Simon Says Stamp!” target=”_blank” rel=”noopener”>here to check it out!! Heidi is STILL adding items as we speak so don’t miss out!!

(Affiliated links used when possible at no cost to you)

Cardmaking · Holiday Fun · Life

Elf on the Shelf

December 18, 2017December 18, 2017 Happy Ink Designs2 Comments

Ok, if you haven’t heard of Elf on the Shelf yet, you MUST be living under a rock. Just kidding, surprisingly a lot of people haven’t heard of it. Our lives revolve around it this time of year and has for the past 4 or 5 years which is why we know ALL about it. If you already know about these elves, you can just skip down to the pictures.

Elf on the Shelf is an Elf that is sent here from the North Pole to watch over your child and make sure he/she is on their best behavior until Christmas. Our’s comes Thanksgiving night and leaves every year on Christmas Eve. He/she reports back to Santa each night and lets the big jolly man in red know if your child has been good or bad. Our elf’s name is Eddy. Eddy comes back each morning and is hiding in a different spot every time. Sometimes he’s just hiding in the tree or hanging on a picture. Other times he gets into mischief.

This is our first year that we have TWO elves!! Bubby (my son’s best friend that is living with us) asked for an elf of his own last year and thanks to the magic of Christmas, we now have welcomed Milo into our family!! It’s pretty awesome to have two now. They get into all kinds of trouble together!!

Sometimes they leave little gifts for the boys or little messages, like telling them to do 3 good deeds for the day, other times it’s just a delight to watch them search around the house in the morning for their little elf friends.

There are a few rules, however. They cannot touch their elf or else the elf will lose his/her magic. We have a little emergency kit of red and green glitter that we can sprinkle over our elf, in case of accidental contact. My kid reads my blog so please keep that in mind. But do you guys love Pinterest as much as I do?? It’s amazing all the great ideas you can find on there!!

Each year on Christmas Eve, our elf leaves a little gift and a note letting Jayden know that for a very short time, Santa has lifted the no touch rule and your child is allowed to touch and hold and hug their elf to say goodbye and then he/she places the elf on or near your Christmas tree before they go to bed. When they awake, the elf is gone until the next year, but Santa has been there so the sadness of the elf being gone is usually replaced by the excitement of presents!!

Anyway, there’s all kinds of info. on these guys on the internet so if you have little ones or just want to see how creative some of these elves are, just head to the interweb or better yet, Pinterest.

I’ll leave you with some fun pix from this year and years past.

Cardmaking · Challenges · Handmade Greeting Cards

Let It Snow

December 17, 2017December 18, 2017 Happy Ink Designs3 Comments

Happy Holidays, my crafty compadres!! I’m back just in time to share a Christmas creation with you. I’ve joined back up with my talented friends at the Always Fun Challenges blog to share this months theme which is “A Christmas Carol”. I went with the obvious. Let It Snow is one of my all time favorite Christmas carols so this was an easy one for me this week.

This card was simple and quick, just my style. I’ll list the products I used below, as always. While I do love the song, unfortunately we don’t get any snow here in Northern California. I know some of you may be snowed in even as we speak. Sometimes I wish I lived somewhere that it snowed, but then again, I wouldn’t want to do all that shoveling…

Aren’t these snowflakes absolutely gorgeous??!!? I just can’t get over how much I love them!!

I’ll keep this short and sweet, but I did want to update you guys on what’s been going on with me. I had my surgery last month and while I did have a couple of little setbacks, I am well on my road to recovery. Thank you so much for the well wishes and prayers. That’s what gets me through all of these surgeries. I had a 6 inch cyst on one ovary and the other one was twice as big on my right. But they were able to save my ovaries!! I wasn’t expecting that. They also repaired a hernia that I got from too many abdominal surgeries. I guess when someone has as many surgeries as I have, it weakens the abdominal wall, making me more susceptible to hernias. Lucky me. What’s interesting, is they used biological mesh to repair the hernia. Biological mesh is also known as pig skin… Yes, I have pig skin inside of me now.. My dog kept smelling my belly when I got home (they cut me from below the breast to below my c-section). I don’t know if he could smell the wound or smell the pig. I guess I’ll never know. Anyway, I’ve been having a real hard time with the pain this time around, which is why it’s taken me so long to get back into the swing of things. But the important thing is, I’m here now, I’m healthy, I’m with my family and I no longer have to worry about whether or not those cysts are cancer!! WOOHOO!! Life is good. God is good!!

I hope everyone has a very Merry Christmas. I hope you get to spend time with someone(s) that is special to you and I hope you all take a little time to reflect back on 2017. Cherish the memories that mean the most to you and learn from the ones that don’t. I’ll meet ya in 2018!!

I’m entering this in the Simon Says Stamp Flickr Challenge #86 as well. The theme this week is Anything Goes!!