Big Shot Fun!

Well, slowly but surely, I am getting back into crafting a bit.  I still have very little time, but I've managed to do a couple of things in the last couple of weeks.  Just wanted to do a quick share, since it's been a busy day, and tomorrow is Monday (oh no!), and it's almost 8:30pm, and I still have a whole bunch of things to do before bed!

First is the Christmas card I did for the Christmas card swap with my PBS paper crafting swap group.  I wanted to do something with poinsettias, and I found some really cool papers a few weeks ago that I wanted to use.  I got a Sizzix die that I really liked and that I thought would work for poinsettias, and OH, it is SO much easier than making those poinsettias that I was doing before!  This is not a traditional holiday color palette that I used here, but I like that- I kind of wanted to do something a little different.

 I used the striped paper on the bottom as the color inspiration for this, and I think it works really well.  The poinsettias were cut out using my Sizzix Big Shot and the Sizzix Originals Flower Layers #2 dies.  I used the same die to cut out the leaves in green, and cut in half and adhered underneath.  The paper I used for the leaves was a sort of crepe, crinkled texture, that I think gives a lot of dimension.  Now, the poinsettias didn't look quite right, because they were so flat.  If you remember the poinsettias I did a couple of months ago, I used the same embossing technique with an embossing tool on these to give them some veining as I did on those previous ones, and it looks much better than it did with just the flat paper.

Next up is a special project- invitations to my sweet daughter's birthday party!  She will be 10 this coming Wednesday, the 15th, and honestly, I have no idea where the time has gone!  We are having her party next weekend, and thought it would be fun to make the invitations ourselves.  I used another couple Sizzix dies that I got from the wonderful world of the Sizzix clearance center, and Meredith and I are both very happy with the results.

We had a lot of fun with this!  We didn't have a lot of time, or I probably would have tried some additional embellishments.  I love the cupcake though- so cute!

That's all for now- hopefully when things settle down a bit, I can do a bit more creating.  I need to get back to my bookmarks!