Creepmas Wishlist - 12DOC ....

...  Morning!  Welcome to Day 7 of the 12 Days of Creepmas sponsored by Smeared Ink.  I am having such fun making these cards that blend elements of Halloween with Christmas. If you're not sure what Creepmas is all about, it's basically a fun way to push back at retailers and the like who insist on putting out Christmas products before Halloween has even finished.  It's a case of let's spread the fun and it is in no way meant to offend!  A favourite element of mine in Christmas cards is snowmen.  The current challenge at One Layer Christmas Card Challenge - OLXCC#23 is to feature snowman, and that inspired my Creepmas card:

Stamps: Rick St Dennis Digi - Creepmas Early Thaw
Accessories: White Lustre Card; Kaisercraft DP - Christmas Carol; Copic Markers; Wink of Stella - Clear; Glossy Accents; String

Perhaps you can guess why this card isn't exactly suitable for the snowman challenge - yes, it's not one layer!!  Silly me!  While it's not suitable for the challenge, I did feel it important to acknowledge the inspiration!

I printed the snowman on white card, coloured with Copic markers, cut him out and added lots of sparkled with a clear Wink of Stella brush.  I cut some lovely festive red design paper and covered the card.  I found a Christmas wishlist tag in the paper pad, so I amended to read Creepmas Wishlist, edged it with a black marker, wrote a list and attached it to the card.  On the inside I used another piece of design paper for the mat layer.  I edged the white panel with a black pen and finished with a simple date label.

Here's the full list of those playing along with the 12 Days of Creepmas Blog Hop:

Fiona
Black Dragon
Susan R
Jessica
Suzi
Airless Chambers
Deborah
Susan S
Val
Sarah
Kat
Leigh
Lady Brayton
Sue

The weather here in Michigan this weekend is amazing - really warm. In fact yesterday we reached almost record warm temperatures, and at the time of typing this post (Saturday evening at 6.10pm, it's still 14°C (that's 56°F).  Today we are expected to set a new record high for December.  I'm really enjoying it!  That's all for now.  See you soon.

AC - Too Late to Negotiate? ...

.....  Good morning!  For some reason I haven't had chance to get into my craft room this week - I can't even blame housework!  And I'm running a bit late with this post too. 

Today's project is not cute and cuddly, in fact it's a bit creepy and possibly downright scary!  I've made a Creepmas Tag.  What's Creepmas?  Well, in recent years many retailers have put out Christmas products silly early.  I remember seeing Christmas cards on sale in the UK as early as August!!!!  Duh!  And here in the States, many stores had removed all their Halloween products by mid-October, way before Halloween and replaced them with Christmas stuff.  So as a friendly response to Christmas creeping into Halloween, various groups decided to put Halloween into Christmas - hence CREEPMAS!!!  The annual 13 Days of Creepmas starts on 1st December and allows those of us with a warped sense of fun to play!!!  I was playing yesterday and came up with this tag, it's somewhat early this year :) :)

Stamps: Rick St Dennis Digi - Early Thaw; Dylusions - Christmas Words; Winnie & Walter - Winter Wonderland
Inks: Archival - Jet Black
Accessories: White Lustre Card; Manilla Tag; Distress Stains - various; Copic Markers; Wink of Stella - Clear; Ribbon

Last year I went to a really fun class with Valerie Brinchick to play with Distress products - inks, stains and paints.  We tried all types of techniques on tags and as a consequence I have quite of lot of half finished tags.   I used the colours in the tag for inspiration to colour this very scary snowman.  I printed it on white card and coloured with Copic markers and carefully cut it out with a scalpel.  As the colours are similar to those on the tag, I layered the image on black card.  I stamped some fir branches and pine cones in archival ink on the tag and then adhered the snowman with dimensional gel.  I finished the front with a fun sentiment which I stamped on vellum.  I created a tag for the back - using Distress stains and more stamps.  Finally I added a black ribbon and tied on some purple sparkly thread. 

If, like me, you have a slightly twisted (but still fun) take on Christmas or you simply love Halloween and all the associated images, you'll find this snowman and many more Creepmas images at Rick's online stores - Zibbet and Esty.  Of course, if you don't like creepy and scary, Rick also has a fabulous selection of cute, fun and elegant images.

Looking out of my office window I can see blue skies and sunshine, a marked contrast to the snow - yes, I said SNOW - that we had yesterday.  It might look lovely, but it's absolutely freezing!  I was told when we moved here, that if you didn't like the weather to"wait five minutes and it'll change!".  They were right!  That's it for now.  Have a good day - see you soon.