Frosty! - BBTB2 Challenge

I have two posts up for today. If you are looking for my Cardz TV post, you can find it right below this post.


Hello my crafty friends! Happy Monday to you all. Can you believe Christmas is this week?!!! Yikes! I have wrapping to do along with cooking and baking yet to do as I'm sure you do too. So I will try to keep this short and sweet! 

It's time for our last BBTB2 challenge of the year and Mayra-our talented and oh so sweet design team sister has given us free range this week. It's an anything goes challenge for Christmas. So all you have to do is show us your Cricut Christmas projects! For our grown children we are giving a gift card to eat out. We have decided to focus more on the grandchildren now and since there are 20 in our immediate family, we just had to cut back. I might suggest to them all about drawling names for next year as I think that would be really fun. Anyway I'm supposed to be keeping this short! I decided to dress up their gift card and give them some candy to go with it. So I made a little stacked snowman!! I used the Cricut cart Life's A Party for my boxes. I have been wanting to make one of these forever and a day now, so to Pinterest I went for inspiration and here is where I found my inspiration from. The one difference is that I didn't seal up my boxes because I want to fill them. I used Doodlecharms for his cute limb arms as well. A Peachy Keen face, some embellishments and magnets hold this cutie together! Now all I have to do is fill it. lol And make 4 more! Yep, still got lots to do. lol I want to thank you for taking time out of your busy Christmas schedules to visit me, I so appreciated it and you! I want to wish you all a very Merry Christmas and a Happy, Healthy New Year! Crafty hugs, Brenda

Bless this Home-Cardz TV Challenge

Hello Cardz TV Gallery friends! Brenda of Friends Craftin' with Friends here to give you my last post of the year. I know everyone is super busy this time of year finishing up those last minute things on your Christmas do to list, and trust me I have lots on my own list! So I have a CAS card for you today. Our son #4 bought a house and just got moved in. So I made him and our future DIL a card to congratulated them on their new house along with a little gift, some kitchen Christmas towels. For my card I cut my little house from the Cricut cartridge CTMH Art Philosophy as well as for the oval that is on the card that the house sits on and the pattern paper "ring" around the oval. The two Cardz TV stamps I used are "Count Your Blessings" for the outside and "Congratulations" for the inside of my card. Which I forgot to take a picture of, but it was just CAS on the inside as well. 

I want to thank all of you for all your lovely comments and for always checking out what is new on Cardz TV Gallery. I so appreciate you all for coming by each and everyday to check out the Gallery. I also want to wish you all a very Merry Christmas and a Happy, Healthy New Year! See you in the new year!!! Crafty hugs, Brenda

Silver and Gold

Hello my crafty friends, are you going in overdrive getting ready for Christmas? I hope not, I hope you are better organized than I am because yes, I'm in overdrive. I just don't have it together this year. Just got up our tree and can't find the star for the top, did get the swags in the windows and garage as well as the wreaths hung. That's about it so far. Not finished shopping yet either. I hope I can pull it all off because I feel like I am sinking. lol Hubby has been on the new drug for over a week now. So far the only side effect he has is a hoarse voice and a sore mouth. It got really sore this weekend, so sore he could barely eat, so he stopped his pills until we go to see doc this Tuesday. I'm sure doc will adjust his drug cause he told us it almost always has to be adjusted and he told hubby to stop the meds and call if he gets any side effects. So I'm keeping my fingers and toes crossed and my prayers going that this drug will work miracles for him.

Well I'm sure you are aware that it is Monday and that means it is time for a new challenge over at BBTB2. Maureen is our sweet and talented hostess and she has chosen for us to use or make an ornament using Cricut die cuts. Well as you know I've already said that I'm not doing well with getting anything ready this month so I waited until the last minute to do this card. Then I was interrupted what seems like a hundred times! The phone rang non stop and of course no one can answer the phone but me, The dog has issues and I was cleaning up after her every time I turned around and I was just getting really frustrated. So this card is just kinda thrown together. I started out cutting my ornament from the Artiste cartridge out of silver and gold foiled paper. I dry embossed the stripes on the white and used some blue paper for a layer cause I love silver and blue together-not quite the blue I wanted, but was all I had. Now ask me why in the heck did I cut out a striped red bow?!!! I have no clue what I was thinking and I plead the 5th! I was just trying to get this card done and this is what happened. sigh The bow is a My Creative Time die. I used a SU sentiment that I heat embossed in silver and that is it folks. There is plenty inspiration from my design team sisters over at BBTB2 if you need some. I hope you will link up with us with a Cricut ornament, the simple rules are on the sidebar over at BBTB2. 

As always I want to thank you for taking the time to visit me, I always appreciate you, especially this time of year when everyone is so busy.  Crafty hugs, Brenda

 view from an angle

Card Keeper-continued

Hello Cardz TV Gallery Friends! Brenda here from Friends Craftin with Friends and I'm here to show you the completed, well except for a few touches here and there, card book I made to organize all my cards in so I can get them mailed off in a timely fashion. I bound my book with my Cinch. Now since it was for me, I used 3 separate smaller o wires that I had clipped off other projects to bind my book. I hate to waste or throw away good things that can still be used. lol  When I make another one I won't do that, but for myself it was ok. My wires also got out of shape because it was different wires, but that's ok too because it is mine. Please note this is going to be pic heavy. We will start with the front cover. I used chipboard and placed my pattern paper on it.  I used DCWV Celebration paper pad for my front and back covers. Can you spot my mistake?? Yes, don't ask me what I was thinking, but I put my apostrophe between the "d & a" instead of the "a & s". LOL I saw it when I was writing up this post, so I will fix that pronto! Isn't the vintage kids so cute?  I though this was the perfect paper for my cover. 

For my "date, name & event" paper, I just made this in Microsoft word and printed out on light weight cardstock. I also add some mitten and skate die cuts. Still need some sentiments on my strip for this month.

Here I used some die cut hearts and a hat and clover.

April has a chocolate bunny and some boots since it tends to be rainy in April. May has some cute daisies.

And from June to Dec. I need some die cuts yet. Will add them later. 

I just love how my card keeper turned out and plan on making some for gifts. The pockets will hold quite a few cards and now all I have to do is get them made and in their correct months! Then I can turn to that month and I will be ready to just put the card in the mail. I am considering putting a pocket on the inside of the front cover to hold stamps and labels for the envelopes. I hope I've inspired you to use Card TV stamps in a different way other than cards. Below is a list of all the Card TV stamps that I used and you can get them here. I want to thank all our viewers to visiting and leaving comments, this blog would not be here if not for all our viewers. We so appreciate you all!!! Crafty hugs, Brenda

Stamp sets used:

Sugar Rush

Count Your Blessings

Oct. 31st

Frankly Frightful

Fall Fun

Christmas Critter Captions

Congratulations

It's All About You

Trick or Treat

Just Saying

St. Patrick's Day

Easter Punnies

Easter Blessings

Think Spring

O' Christmas Tree-BBTB2 Challenge

Hello my crafty friends, I hope everyone had a fabulous and thankful Thanksgiving! We got our Thanksgiving Blessing in that the insurance company is going to cover hubby's new meds!!! How blessed we are!! Now I'm holding onto faith that Christmas will bring us the miracle of these pills working with little to no side effects. How wonderful that would be!

On to today's challenge at BBTB2, Jayne our sweet and talented design team sister has chosen for us to use a Christmas tree on our project today. Well after getting back home from our little VA Thanksgiving get away, I was tired and wasn't very creative, but it's done and I will share it with you all even though I'm not happy with how it came out. It is what it is. I used the AG Winter Wonderland for my tree. I didn't go by the colors that were in the book, instead opting for my tree to be green. My garland I cut from foil paper as well as my star and tree container. I used stickles on my candle flame.  A SB mat to sit my tree on sponged with gold ink, which doesn't look gold at all, so wasn't happy with that! My striped mat is from an SU Christmas paper pack from last year I believe and my Merry is a die from MCT and the Christmas is a stamp from MCT. For the inside, I put another striped mat in (both mats where die cut with MCT stitched rectangle) along with a smaller mat in which I stamped some pine boughs on. Want some more inspiration, then look no farther than my design team sisters, you will be amazed! Thanks for taking the time to visit little ole me, I do love your visits and appreciate them!! Crafty hugs, Brenda

Give Thanks - BBTB2 Challenge

Hello my crafty friends, I hope your Monday is off to a great start. I am anxiously waiting to hear back from hubby's chemo office. We got the results of his CAT scan and it wasn't good. The aggressive treatment didn't work at all. The cancer grew some, not a lot, but it still grew. So now doc is going to try a new drug that cost $10,000 for 21 pills a month. Shocked?!! Us too! So we are waiting for the paper work to be done and to see if our insurance is going to cover the cost. If not there are supposed to be programs that will help with the cost. This drug is for people with color cancer who have tried chemo and it didn't work. I am so praying that this drug works for my husband.  He does have youth on his side and he is healthy except for the cancer doc said. So please pray with me that this drug works and that insurance will pay for it.  We are getting to the end of options, have one more after this and that was the first chemo he did which did shrink on tumor and kills two others. But they came back when he went on the chemo pill, and have since grew with this last treatment. Thank you for all the prayers you have prayed so far, they really mean the world to us.

Ok, now onto this weeks challenge over at BBTB2. I also want to give a shout out to our sweet Jayne, today is her birthday!!! Happy Birthday Jayne!!! Emily is our sweet and talented hostess and she has challenged us to make a Thanksgiving card.  Well this is a great challenge because I needed a couple more cards for Thanksgiving so I can get them out in the mail today! So off I went to my crafty room and made a CAS Thanksgiving card. It was Pinterest inspired and you can see the one that inspired me here. I used my CTMH Cricut Art Philosophy to cut out my leaves,  used a snippet of colorful paper to but behind my leaves. I then used MCT products to cut my layer with the leaves for my card base.  I then stamped my striped border with another MCT stamp set, using orange soda Hero Art Shadow ink and my sentiment also a MCT stamp set. Then using the leaf from one of my negative cut outs, I stamped that too with the striped border as well as another border on the inside mat. I popped up my outside and inside layer with foam tape. That is it folks, I told you it was a clean and simple card!  I hope you like it, cause I love how it turned out. So come on and join us in this Thanksgiving card challenge.

Thanks so much for taking time out of your busy day to stop by and visit me. I know it is only going to get even more hectic with Thanksgiving and Christmas that is right around the corner. All of us have much to do in a small amount of time to do it in. Happy Thanksgiving Everyone! Hugs, Brenda

Since I used a snippet of paper I can go over and play at the Snippets Playground. Di is a lovely person and it is so fun to join in over there. Some fabulous prizes as well and I should know, I won one last week!

Card Organization

Hello crafty peeps, I hope you are having a fabulous Saturday. Today I have a two or three parter for you. I will bring you half of my project this Saturday and then next Saturday I hope to finish it up and show you the finished product. I don't know about you but I'm always late with my birthday cards that get mailed out. It's really been bugging me so I thought I'd make a book to place my finished cards in. With each month having a pocket for those month's birthday's, anniversaries, etc. Maybe this will help me get my greetings out to my loved ones on time. Hey stranger things have happened!! lol Besides it can't hurt to try, right?! So I sat down and designed on paper what I wanted to do. I figured I would keep my pages 8 1/2 x 11 inches and I would have two months on one piece of card stock, and I knew each month would have to have a pocket to hold the cards. Next I would need a place to write each month's dates on and whether it is a birthday or anniversary, etc...So I planned that out in Microsoft Word to be printed later and added to the pages. I got my pages assembled and started putting my papers on each month. I used The Paper Studio "All Seasons" paper from Hobby Lobby. I cut out my months with Designer Calendar Cricut cartridge along with the shadow. I took a 1/2 inch strip of white paper and stamped sentiments from Card TV Stamps. Some you will see don't have any stamping on it, that is because I don't have any stamps for that month. I will have to be ordering them from Mary to finish my stamping. Now what I didn't plan on was my binding when I stamped my sentiments. So some of my sentiments on the left hand side might get a hole punched in it. I plan on binding all my pages along with a front and back cover with my Cinch. I may or may be adding some additional decorations/embellishments to my pages as I go along. So this might turn into a three parter, so I hope I don't bore you!! I have Jan. - June for you today. This is just the page with the paper and sentiments done. The embellishments haven't been added yet, and it hasn't been bound. The Cardz TV Stamps used on today's pages are: Sugar Rush, St. Patrick's Day, Easter Punnies, Easter Blessings, and Think Spring. 

I hope to see you back next Saturday to see this more done on this card organization. I also hope this has inspired you to make a card organization book for yourself! And as always, your comments warm my heart so, so thank you for them. Crafty hugs, Brenda

Gather Together - BBTB2 Challenge

Hello my crafty friends! I hope your Monday is off to a great start, well as great of a start as a Monday can be. lol It is cold here today, I don't think I'm liking this polar blast very much. lol Oh well we can't control the weather, so I will suck it up and stay warm!! I am anxiously waiting for Thursday to come, hubby had another CAT scan done and we will get the results on Thursday. I want to know but I don't want to know. I pray that it is good news this time around. If you pray, would you please say a little prayer for my hubby that he gets good news and that this cancer is reigned back n? I would so appreciate it!

Ok on to our challenge this week at BBTB2. Our sweet and talented Diana is our host today and she has given us free reign with ANYTHING GOES!!!! How fun is that?! So I'm trying to work on a few gifts for this  year. Nothing fancy or anything and things that are pretty quick to make. So I decided to start with soap bottles. Yes, soap bottles. lol I did one for Christmas and one for Thanksgiving. I plan on making some with monograms as well for the DIL's. For my Thanksgiving one, I used a lot of carts, Freshly Picked, Inspired Hearts, CAC, WIMG, AP and Lacy Labels. Since the words are small, I was able to use scrap pieces of vinyl, which I love and keep all my scraps no matter how small they are. You can always punch or die cut something out of scrap vinyl! Then I glued some ribbon around the neck of the bottle and then made a bow and glued on. I love how this turned out!

My Christmas one is pretty simple.  I just took some Christmas words and made them into a tree shape with a star added to the top. It was hard to get a good picture of this one. lol Once again I put ribbon around the neck of the bottle and then glued a bow on. I hope my soap bottles have inspired you to get crafty!! As always thanks for stopping by today, your sweet comments always warm my heart. Stay warm if you are in the polar blast!!! Crafty hugs, Brenda

Since I used snippets of vinyl, I am going to enter this in the Playground. It's always fun to go play at the Playground!!!

Mixed Media Tag

Hello my crafty friends, I hope your Saturday is off to a great start! Mine is, I went to my church's annual Christmas bazaar this morning with a friend. I love going to the Christmas bazaar's, they are so fun. Spend an hour looking around there and bought some handcrafted wooden spoons and that was it. I was a good girl! lol 

Loll from Stamping with Loll had a 12 Tags of Christmas where she made 12 tags that were mixed media. She also had 12 guest designers as well. And let me tell you those tags were amazing!!! She had a link up so we could play along too and it is open until tomorrow, Nov. 16th. So I thought  I would give mixed media a try. I don't know if I've ever done any mixed media stuff before and if I have  I didn't know what it was called! lol I started with a tag sized at 2 1/8 x 3 5/8, that was the size tag that Loll used so I thought I would use that size too. I laid a stencil on top of my tag and did some inking using Broken China, Weatherwood and Sapphire distress inks for my sky, but leaving an area at the bottom white. Next I took embossing paste and put along the bottom for snow. While it was wet I placed some glitter on it. Once that was dry I stamped a cute little fawn from My Creative Time and colored him with my Spectrum Noir markers. Put some wink of stella on him to make him shine.  I then used some air dry SU clay and a Martha Steward mold to make a little snowman. Colored his hat, eyes, buttons and nose with my Spectrum Noir markers too after he was dry. I popped up my cute little fawn and glued my snowman down. I used a white Viva pearl pen to make snow dots in the sky so it looked like it was snowing. I wanted to do splatter paint, but didn't feel like finding where  moved my paint to. lol  I had some seam binding that I had won and used a piece of that to put through my hole. And that is it. I think it turned out pretty cute, and I hope I used enough stuff on it to be mixed media! Now I'm off to link up with Loll's tag challenge. I hope you will go check out the lovely tags made by Loll, her guest designers and the ones that have linked up. They are stunning!!!

As always thank you so much for stopping by and visiting a spell. I hope you had a lovely visit. It always warms my heart with the sweet comments you leave me. Hope you have a crafty weekend! Crafty hugs, Brenda

Even though this is blurry you can see the wink of stella shimmer.

Showing the depth and dimension

You Are Amazing

Hello my crafty friends! Are you all staying warm here in the lower 48?? Believe it or not it is snowing as I am typing this up! Yes, SNOW!! lol Sigh  I guess old man winter has arrived, and early too.  I don't think it is going to lay any because the ground hasn't gotten cold enough yet. Thanks goodness for small favors. lol

Ok enough, I didn't call you here to tell you that it was snowing at my house. Some area's have gotten a foot of snow, I'm just thankful it wasn't us! I do however have a couple of cards for you today. They are simple little cards that didn't take much effort on my part. Love that, don't you?! First one is for my son who is at college, think he will have a fat head after receiving this card?! lol He is amazing, courageous, lovable and awesome, so I had to tell him so. The second card is a birthday card for my granddaughter. I can't believe she is 6 years old! Time marches on doesn't it?! My cards were created using My Creative Time Products. Love Emma's products!! Her products make it so easy to create with. So that's all I have for you today. Thanks for stopping by for a spell and as always your sweet comments warm my heart so! Stay warm and I will see you again soon! Crafty hugs, Brenda

Pumpkin Pickin'

Hello my crafty friends, I hope your Monday is off to a great start! My, my isn't this year ticking by at record speed?? I can't believe we have turned the calendar over to November and are all but half way through it! The holidays are almost upon us and next thing we know it will be a whole new year! I just don't know where this year has went. Well enough of the ramblings of an old lady!

As you know if it is Monday then it is time for a new challenge over at BBTB2. Our sweet and talented Caroline is our host this week and she had chosen for us to use a pumpkin Cricut die cut. At first I had no clue what I was going to do. Then this idea popped into my head and I went with it. It actually turned out pretty much how I thought it would, so I am happy about that for that rarely happens for me. lol I did goof on welding my shapes together to make a shaped card and I will explain that in a minute. 

I took two pumpkins from Create A Critter Cricut cartridge and welded them together using my Gypsy to make a shaped card. Now this is where I made my mistake. I should have welded them together along the side and not by the stem at the top! Welding the stem together makes for a "flimsy" card. Trust me on this one and weld from the side! lol It does stand though so I'm going for it. I then took stamps from two stamp sets and stamped fall words/sentiments all over my pumpkin, which didn't turn out to bad, not perfect but not bad either. I then took some burlap and glued onto my stem, then placed some leaves that a blogger friend gifted to me on and then a little bow. I took the die cut, "grateful" and die cut it out once in dark brown and then 3 times in vanilla paper and glued them all together with the brown cut on top. This gave me a ""chipboard" sentiment. I took some distress ink and inked around the pumpkin and then inked lightly in the pumpkin, over the words. It doesn't show up well in my photo's, but looks great in real life. Stamped a sentiment on the inside, added some more leaves and called this one done. Like I said, I am pretty pleased with the way it turned out. How about you, do you like my pumpkin shaped card??? So how about making a pumpkin project of your own and join us at BBTB2. Need more inspiration? Well then look no farther than the BBTB2 design team, I promise you won't be sorry. As always I appreciate you stopping by and visiting for a spell with me. I hope you will come back again sometime. Thanks for all your lovely comments. Crafty hugs, Brenda

Heartfelt Wishes-Cardz TV Gallery

Hello crafty friends, happy TGIF to you all. I want to thank you for stopping by today and checking out to see what is new on Cardz TV Gallery. Goodness for sure!! Are you loving all these fabulous projects each and everyday? I know I am! Mary has many talented designers and they are oh so creative. Be sure to stop by Cardz TV to see what the 3D team and Card team has in store for you as well as Mary! You won't be disappointed!

Today I have some little boxes, kinda like a bag in a box if you will and they are made with the envelop punch board. If you want to see how to make these cute boxes, watch here. My husband goes for chemo ever other week, so with Thanksgiving right around the corner, I thought I would make these little boxes for all the nurses, staff and doc for all they do for us and many other people. I will add a little treat in the box before I take them over on the 20th of this month. Just to let them know how much we appreciate all the good care they give hubby and others getting chemo for the day. I will also bake a goody for everyone to enjoy as well. The Cardz TV stamp set that I used is Heartfelt Wishes. Great sentiments in this stamp set! The tag and the leaves are dies from My Creative Time.

I also needed to get well cards, so using the same Cardz TV stamp set, Heartfelt Wishes, I made two get well cards. Once again the leaf, tag, heart dies are from My Creative Time and my image on the second card is a SU stamp set. Thanks so much for your sweet comments and for visiting Cardz TV Gallery and my blog! Crafty hugs, Brenda

Winter Wishes

Hello my crafty friends, I have a few winter themed cards for you today. These will go to OWH as they are looking for some winter themed cards. I used My Creative Time dies and stamps for make my cards. I made them while having a crafty day with a friend of mine. I hope you like cause I had a lot of fun making them. lol  Thanks for stopping by today and leaving me such sweet comments. You all really make my day complete! Crafty hugs, Brenda