I have frantically been working on this year's Christmas stockings to get them done in time and I have done it. I hope I still have time to finish up my other projects, too! My great aunt made them for all of us when we were each born, so the tradition started there, then my Mom took over and made them for the husbands and wives as we all married and then our children as they were all born, but with the births of great-grandchildren, she put her foot down and said that the next generation would each have to take over for their own grandchildren. I have made them for my grands, but I am the only one so far who has. I also got talked into making for my niece's son when he had his first Christmas four years ago. Well, she had a little girl this year also and I had to make two for my two new grandsons anyway, so I am surprising her with a stocking for little Ella as well. They take forever to make with all those little sequins and beads but are so pretty when they are done. What kind of traditions do all of you have?

Lisa is once again offering her gorgeous image downloads for the holidays. Here is the link to check them out, but why not go to her site and purchase some of her art. It's wonderful and great quality stuff!
http://www.tentwostudios.com/

I made this frame up for the Ranger-Ink yahoo-group challenge for November. The challenge was to make a project using any of the paint products currently on the market by Ranger. I chose to use the daubbers. I used a wooden frame from Michaels and painted it with denim blue, then used the cloudy blue and lightly streaked over it in a cross-hatch fashion to give it a distressed look. I ran some letters for my daughter's initials through the harlequin embossing folder for some texture and then painted all of the grungeboard pieces in sailboat blue. Once dry, I sanded them a bit to distress them and then tied on some ribbons randomly and glued them on using the Ultimate Glue. I stacked a few paper and silk flowers, added brads, and adhered with glue-dots. I then rounded the corners of a black and white senior portrait of my beautiful baby-girl, Savanna to finish it off. ( Are you reading this Savanna?) I am pleased with how it came out and it was so quick and easy to do! What do you think of it?

On a couple of my atc groups, we are going through the alphabet in our swaps and we are on letter Q. Of course "Queen" comes to mind right away but I don't like my card to follow any one else's train of thought, so this is what I came up with this time.

Last month I won the challenge on BlindSwapAtcs and so I had to choose three items to use for everyone to include in their atc's for this month's challenge. I can't win this time but I still played along and I chose some text, a face, and a bird. Here is my entry for the lucky winner of them all. You can't see the text very well in this photo but the background is all text.

Pat had a fun challenge over at Technique Junkies and I decided to have a go at it not only becuase it looked fun and easy, but because I need three birthday cards this month and two of them right now! I made two of them the same for two of my close friends and then I made one masculine version for my little grandson, AJ, who turns four tomorrow. He likes pirates and thinks all skeletons are pirates, so I think he will like this one!

I have my inchies and atcs done for November now and the theme is Fall for the Inchies and Pumpkins. I stamped a large image on shrink plastic and colored it in on the back with colored pencils and cut around the scarecrow and then shrunk and mounted onto the cardstock inch squares that i distresses the edges of. I'm really starting to like these little treasures. These were hard to photograph with the glare though so not very clear but they turned out pretty cute!

I altered a picture frame from the Dollar Store using grungeboard cut into strips and painted with Ranger daubers and then sanded and distressed with Tim's scratch tool. Glued them down with the ultimate Glue and let dry. Rubbed with distress ink (vintage photo) and used blending tool to work into the grungeboard then misted with the mini mister of water and wiped with a soft cloth in small sections until I liked the outcome. I cut some chipboard flourishes in my BigShot and ran them through the embossing folder for texture and painted and distressed them as well. Added a photo of my Grandson at the pumpkin patch and here it is. Voila!

Made up a couple of cards for my next class using the layered collage technique from Technique Junkies. Very easy to do with stunning results and I am usually collage-challenged but these came together really easily for me. Thought I would post them here to share along with a few inchies I made upo for October's swap in my inchie group. This month's theme is Eyes. I just started doing Inchies and they are quite a challenge for me but I am enjoying them!

Little Phillip finally got to come home yesterday! He is back up to his birth weight and nursing well. He is just a sweetie! Wally took a four generation shot of us last night so I am posting it here.

I am so glad we had the shower so early, or at least we thought it was early! Phillip Alexander Knight decided to enter the world 44 days early.
They thought they had the labor stopped and were going to keep her overnight so I went home and got about an hour of sleep and got the call that they were transporting her by ambulance to a hospital that specializes in premies. He was born at 7:03 a.m. weighing 4 lbs., 6 oz., measuring 17" long. He had feeding tubes and oxygen at first. They removed the oxygen when he was only about 8 hours old. The feeding tubes came out last night and he is now nursing well but needs a silicone nipple guard to that he can fit into his little mouth. Kayla was released today and we are hoping he will come home next Saturday. That is the game-plan at least but may end up sooner if all goes well. He is doing so much better than they expected him to already!

We helped throw a baby shower for my middle daughter, Kayla and her husband, Wally this past week-end. We had about 45-50 people there and had a lot of fun. Made way too much food as usual . They got a lot of great gifts and little Phillip should be the best dressed boy in Jackson County when he arrives in November! (or Philly-Steak, as my oldest daughter calls him) We added something to the invitations I hadn't seen done before that was quite cool. "Anyone who brings a pack of diapers wins a prize." I had some larger dollar prizes for these as I used to do a home-party plan so have lots of things still in boxes to use as prizes. They got 12 packs of diapers in three sizes!!! Wow, I was so impressed. So if any of you are having showers for your girls, add this to your invites, it works!

I have been so busy I haven't posted at all this past week. Here are some of the things I have worked on for trades. I made some Twochies , crows/ravens atcs, and M is for Mona Lisa atc for my atcs 'r' us yahoo group swaps. I think they turned out pretty good. Hope their new owners will enjoy them.

This week's challenge at PaperImageryDesigns was to creat a "Twochie". Well, here is my first ever. I also added my atc to the jackpot drawing for august. We had to use: turquoise,berry,tangerine, and black. Not exactly a combo I would choose myself but here is what I came up with for that one also. You must always include one of their many wonderful images on your projects.

This week's PID challenge was to make something and use an embellishment on it that is made of metal. I used copper cardstock and embossed it with a Cuttlebug folder, spread Stazon ink on it . Used a PID image and mounted on black cardstock edged with gold Krylon pen and added metal photo corner and metal word brad above it. I love how it turned out. What do you think?

Got my inchies and atc's done up for this months swap also. Inchies this month were cats and atc's were Words. I just started doing the inchies this summer and they are quite a challenge for me.

Played with the Cuttlebug Embossing folders with my grandkids, Victoria- 7, and AJ-3 last week-end and we made up some atcs using the yellow pages, cardstock, and distress inks for our swaps due this month. Victoria is also a member of this atc group and swaps twice a month. She is getting quite good and has always loved art. AJ loves to turn the crank and glue down the die-cuts onto atc's as well. He is starting a collection of his own as some of these wonderful gals also send rak's to him. I made the spider-web and Victoria made the pumpkins.

This week's challenge at PaperImageDesigns was to make a Moo card using one of their images. I used Tommy on an old map looking lost and asking, "Are We There Yet?" he is so cute though my photo is a bit blurry.

I won the ATC Jackpot drawing for July at Paper Imagery Designs! Yeah! I am so happy to be getting all of these red, white, and blue treasures! Here was my entry for it. I have to make one for August yet to enter but haven't had time yet.

More swaps in the mail tomorrow.

Just got a bunch of swaps ready to mail and thought I'd share a few with you here. If you want to know details about any, please comment and I will get back to you. Please comment anyway. I love reading these!!!

Here are a few of the recent swaps I sent out on a few of my yahoo groups. J ust thought I'd share the pic's with you. Any questions, just ask and leave some comments!

Last week's challenge at PID was called "Atop the Head" and I finally had a chance to play yesterday and get mine created. i titled it, "That's Queen Nia to You ". hope you enjoy it.

I teach a monthly class at my LSS and one month, it was atc's. It caught on and we started a monthly swap club with a theme. For August, we are doing "At the Zoo". Here is what I came up with using Taylored Artwork stamps, watercolor pencils, blending pen, cuttlebug embossing folder, and distress ink. pop-dotted the pieces to give it some dimension. i am pleased with how they came out. What do you think?

This week's challenge on PID is "gothic arches". I got busy today and already have mine done. Yeah! You will see it here. If you haven't checked them out, you should. Very cool images and fun challenges and mingles to join in. Here are the links to the blog and the website.

http://paperimagerydesigns.blogspot.com/

http://www.paperimagerydesigns.com/

Here is my challenge for last week's PID Monochromatic. I just got in under the wire with this one, but I really love monchromatic so had to make time to play. I've titled this one "Dorothy Sings the Blues." What do you think of her? I really like the images they have over at Paper Imagery Designs. If you haven't checked them out, you should. They're a great mother/daughter team and have some awesome talent!

My hibiscus also opened up a new bloom and it's so pretty. I wish they lasted more than one day!

I got 10 roses yesterday from Jay for our 10th Anniversary. Too gorgeous not to share!

here is a tag I made for the July 4th spirit. i used Tim Holtz's batik technique from his blog and all Ranger products to make it. It was my first attempt and the paper stuck to the iron a bit, but it turned out OK in the end. I will try more of this technique.

Here is a picture of the three birdhouses I altered for the Birdhouse Mingle we are doing at PaperImageryDesigns. We could sign up to do 1,2,or 3. I had so much fun, I chose three! Bought the little wooden houses at Michael's and added acryllic paints and Ranger paint daubers, PID images, buttons, silk flowers, wooden fence and birds, etc. It was a great challenge. Can't wait to send them off to their new homes and see what my partners created for me in return.

I have been trying to join in on the weekly challenges at Paper Imagery Designs but don't always have time to play along. You can make whatever you want to enter each week but must use at least one of their great images on it somewhere. Here is what I came up with for last week's winged things.

I used the phone book pages technique from Bernie Berlin's atc workshop to make the atc.

Hero

Here is an atc I made using Artistic Outpost stamps. I just love this set and I like how it turned out using Ranger alcohol Inks to create the stripes for the background. Got in the American spirit for July with this one.

Tim's Technique Challenge

Today I also tried a Tim Holtz technique challenge at ISC's blog. I tried out his July '08 Faux Bleaching technique and my results are here. Let me know what you think.

Moo Card Challenge

Today I tried my hand at Moo cards for the first time for a blog challenge of ISC. Here are my sets of Moo cards.