Make a Card (not on) Monday - Washi Reindeer

Here's another Christmas card I made for the craft show. I hand tore pieces of washi tape to create the background...no measuring. I just eyeballed the lengths. The reindeer die cut comes from the Cricut December 25th cartridge. I think the measurement was 2 3/4" but I can't find my notes. :(
After I cut the deer from textured white cardstock, I tied a bit of twine around the neck before attaching.
I have a few left for sale. Check out my "store" here. :)

Details:
Cardstock - Recollections: red / Paper Studio: White / DCWV: textured white
Color - Memento: Ladybug
Embellishments - Recollections and Unknown: washi tape / Stampin Up: Candy Cane twine
Tools - Cricut: December 25th

School Summary - 7th and 9th grades - weeks 11-14

I respectfully ask that you not pin pictures of my children to Pinterest. Thank you!

You can see what we're using here: 9th-grade curricula and here: 7th-grade curricula.

Literally this is the most boring school blog year I've ever had. I'm not sure I'll even blog school regularly next year. It's just a different set-up than our first five years. They are working independently, and it's more book work than hands-on. Maybe I'll continue with it, maybe not. :)

Weeks 11-14

In Tenor's homeschool this month…

He started learning Greek letters in his AHL work...which is super easy since he's on his 3rd year of biblical Greek. Yay for one thing that's easy!

Tenor art assignment

My favorite thing this month…
He wrote a few psalms for AHL assignments that I just loved. He does have a good sense of poetry when he puts his mind to it.

Helpful homeschooling tips or advice to share…

Again, just emphasizing that the weekly conference is really important. (I'm just going to leave that line there for the rest of the year as a reminder to myself.) I'm trying to get him to go back and take notes on things he's already read to help cement it, but it's taking a long time. I should have had him take notes while reading from the beginning of the school year.

What’s working/not working for us…

He seems to be struggling with the logic elective. I'm not sure if he is reading the exercises and answering too quickly or if he's not grasping the concepts... if he has continued interest, we might find another logic resource at the end of the year to keep working on it.

Soprano art coloring

In Soprano's homeschool this month...
Boring post alert...it's the same old, same old for Soprano too. :)

Art coloring and notebooking

Beautiful Feet assignment for Brighty of the Grand Canyon

Beautiful Feet assignment for Brighty of the Grand Canyon

My favorite thing this month…

She had to create a poll for the family to cast votes as an Uncle Sam and You assignment. She picked the questions, the answers, and tallied up the votes after we were done.

What’s working/not working for us… Her school day is taking for.ev.er. I feel like she should be done much earlier each day than she is. We're working on trying to figure out how to help her be more motivated and to get done sooner.

Places we’re going and people we’re seeing...

Tenor went on his first Senior High youth group weekend retreat. He had a great time. :)
We went to D.C. again. It was originally going to be a weeklong trip but our accommodations fell through. However, we had already received notification that our White House ticket request was approved. We went down for just a day instead.

View of the gardens from the First Ladies' Hall

China Room

East Room

Mom, mom, mom, that's the Gilbert Stuart portrait of Washington that Dolley Madison saved when the British were burning Washington! I guess something we learned stuck.

Green Room -- aptly named

State Dining Room

White House North Lawn

 After the White House, we hit the Smithsonian Natural History Museum.

The only 'super moon' I actually got to see since the weather was so overcast at home.

We found a platypus! Another of Soprano's favorite animals.

After another busy month of schooling, we enjoyed taking off the week of Thanksgiving. A few more weeks, then Christmas... crazy!

Make a Card Monday - Christmas in Black and White

A friend's workplace hosted a craft show last week, and she generously invited me to share her space. Yay! But I had zero Christmas cards ready to sell. Eek! I found this pretty card after a quick scroll through Pinterest.
I popped the front panel up using foam dots.
I have a few left for sale. Check out my "store" here. :)

 

Details:
Cardstock - Recollections: black / Paper Studio: White
Color - Memento: Tuxedo Black and Cottage Ivy / Prismacolor: watercolor pencils
Embellishments - Unknown: washi tape / Eyelet & Brads Outlet: Square Jewel Clear
Tools - Nestabilities: Standard Circles / Stampin Up!: Triple Banner Punch
Stamps - TAC: Peaceful Angel / TAC: Wishing You

O Christmas Trees

We might just have tree issues in this house. :) Here's the tour:
The living room tree (not real...I'm too lazy to put lights on it every year). We got it at Walmart a couple years ago. It's an ornament tree with scads of ornaments from my childhood, Bass's childhood, a couple ornament swaps I did as a teen, ornaments we've been given during our married life, and some of the padawans' ornaments.
Plus beaded garland, ribbon, a lighted star, and this year, Bass's grandfather's train underneath. Tenor begged hard to put the tree in the front window and set up the train this year.

One of our traditions is to get an ornament for ourselves each year and get one for the padawans. When they grow up and move out on their own, they'll have a stash of ornaments to put on their first trees. Those trees will probably be pretty full too! My mom has given them ornaments each year plus other ornament gifts have come their way.
This year we gave Soprano a tennis ornament (I bought it last year on clearance; she quit tennis this year; I gave it to her anyway. haha)

Both padawans received a Washington D.C. ornament to remember our 3 trips there this year.

 Our 'parent' ornament was also from Washington D.C.

 Tenor's ornament was a Doctor Who tardis. What I didn't know was that my "students" got me the same exact ornament as their Christmas "teacher" gift. :)

Our other trees include our woodland/Maine/outdoors tree in the family room. This has lots of felt ornaments, cranberry bead garland, and a ton of birds... :)

and my beaded snowflake ornament tree. The hand-beaded garland and ornaments were made by my great-grandmother so this tree has sentiment hanging all over it.

 Tree #4 is in Tenor's room. He puts some of his personal ornaments on it.

And Soprano's pink tree in her room. We use old milk crates as the bases for the padawans' trees. I sewed a little box-shaped cover from old white denim fabric I had in my stash. Super easy...a long rectangle attached to a square with a fold over hem at the bottom. We put a piece of cardboard on top of the crate, then cover it to hide the ugly and add stability for the trees.

 

That brings the current decorated-tree count to 5! The mitten drying tree doesn't count, right?

Make a Card Monday - Hedgehog Thanks

I loved this card completely the second I saw it. Soprano and I share a (kinda weird) love of hedgehogs and I bought this stamp set because of it. This is the first time I've put it to use. These hedgies are adorable and super easy to color. *squee*

Details:
Cardstock - Recollections: teal / Paper Studio: White
Color - Palette: Boudoir Blush / Palette: Cote d'Azure / Memento: Tuxedo Black / Copic: E42 / Spectrum Noir: EB5, GB8, GB10
Tools - Lawn Fawn: Scripty Thanks die / Lawn Fawn: Small Stitched Rectangle Stackables die
Stamps - Lawn Fawn: Hedgehugs

Make a Card (not on) Monday - Muted Masculine Birthday

So... (you know when I start with a 'so' that it's going to be a long rambly story lol). So... here's why there's a card post not on a Monday. I get together with a bunch of friends a couple times a year for a crafting weekend. Sometimes we can only make it an evening, but often we try to stretch it to an overnight. I usually scrapbook during those weekends but I haven't really been in the mood to scrapbook lately. Scrapbook tangent: I decided that my lack of enthusiam for it might be helped if I switch the padawans' books to digital and our family book to Project Life pocket style. Not having done pocket scrapbooking before, I wasn't quite sure how it would work to plan and a pack a whole weekend's worth of it. I decided instead to maybe just make cards.
This is how one little idea took on a life of its own. :)
I thought, hmm, I should maybe make cards only using stamps that I've never used before. I figure if a stamp set is maybe on average about $15 and cards in the store are $3-4, I should probably make at least 4 cards from each stamp set to "break even" on the cost of it. So I started pinning ideas that used stamps I have or were at least similar to what I own.
I pinned 450 ideas. 450, y'all!
If I ever climb my way out of a pile of cardstock and stamp sets, I'll have 1600 cards in my stash... and a lot more cards to post. :)
Storytime over. Here's the first card. :)

I got inspiration for this muted masculine card here. I like this for a guy's card because it's not the typical fishing/hunting/cars/sports themed card. Not all of the guys on my list have those specific hobbies. This is for them. :)

Details:
Cardstock - DCWV: dark gray textured / Recollections: light gray / Paper Studio: White
Patterned paper - DCWV: Tattered Time mat stack
Embellishments - unknown: silver brads
Color - Palette: Charcoal
Tools - Nestabilities: Standard Circles / Cuttlebug: Twill Tape embossing folder
Stamps - TAC: Sentiments (sentiment)

Make a Card Monday - Christmas Nativity

While the blog has been pretty quiet, life hasn't. I just need to find the time to post (and get over my annoyance with Picasa no longer being supported which means every time I try to post I have to remember how to get my pictures where they need to be. Killin' me, Google.)
One of my most recent projects was to finish up this year's Christmas cards. I found this lovely card on Pinterest and knew I wanted to try it myself.
With so many cards, assembly line work seems to help.
Step 1: embossing the front image

Step 2: watercoloring over the embossed image

Step 3: stamping the back images and sentiment

Step 4: cut shape from front and gold panels

I cut the opening using a Nestabilities: Labels 8 die, then I stamped the Palm Tree and star backgrounds using Versamark.

Step 5 to the end: lots of scoring and folding and gluing

 Step 6: more gluing :( (That glitter paper did NOT want to cooperate. Lots of ATG tape and then weighting it down with heavy books seemed to help. Hopefully they'll make it through the mail before falling apart.)

Merry Christmas!

Details:
Cardstock: Stampin Up!: Rich Razzleberry / Paper Studio: White
Patterned paper: Recollections: Christmas stack
Embellishments: Inkadinkado (emboss pad) / Recollections: Ebony (emboss powder)
Color: Palette: Noir / PTI: Raspberry Fizz / Versamark / Artist's Loft (watercolor paint)
Tools: Nestabilities: Labels 8
Stamps: TAC: Silhouette Nativity (images and sentiment) / TAC: Snowman Nativity (star)