New Beginnings!

Happy New Year--2011 to you all!  So today is 1-1-11, hee hee---looks kinda funny and doesn't happen much either!!  Wow it's the new year already and I can't believe the holidays flew by so very fast!  We had a wonderful holiday here at the Dean house and we were surprised to wake up to a white Christmas morning.  It was the kids first white Christmas, it snowed very prettily for a few hours but nothing stuck thank goodness (just the kinda snow I like).  Santa was very good to us all and he brought Riley a new drum set and guess what Santa did?  He dropped it off in large boxes for Mom & Dad to put together on Christmas Eve until 3:30 am, LOL--oh the fun!  They both got their new Ipod Touches so they were excited--Riley said it was one of his favorite Christmases so that's good!  I got hubby Apple TV and we've had fun playing with that.  It can link up to YouTube so just for fun I watched a minute of one of my YouTube videos on our 80" tv, LOL--oh my how I hate to hear or see myself especially that large, hee hee!  I got some nice gifts as well including a gift certificate to take some gourmet cooking classes with hubby which will be fun!  We had Christmas dinner at my brother's new house this time, usually I host as we don't like to travel on Christmas day.  But I made an exception this year since my neice and nephew were in town special and I don't get to see them very often.  I realized that I don't have very many pics of Christmas, I always get caught up in the day and forget to take pictures, LOL! (bad mom)!  But I'm just thankful we were all healthy, had a good holiday and got to spend some quality time with family--that's what its really all about!  We're not real big on doing up New Years Eve so we just watched movies and had some food with friends at home.  Alexa went to a friend's party for the evening as well.  I have some pictures below in a slideshow to share with you all of some of our holiday joy!

The best part of taking time off since hubby always takes off a whole week was spending time together and NO WORKING, LOL!  I got to read bunches and I enjoyed some really good books so if you are looking for a few good reads I'll list what I read below:

-At over 1000 pages Ken Follett's "Fall of Giants" is overwhelming (but on Kindle you don't know how thick it is, lol) but it was EXCELLENT!  So gripping and well written and I love a good historical novel mixed with fictional and non-fictional characters.  I read it in 3 days and it was really, really good!

-Another good book is new by Kate Morton called "The Distant Hours"--historical, mystery & suspense, melancholy and romantic all mixed together always makes her books worth reading.  Really good as well.

-Also great reads are Mermaids in the Basement by Michael Lee West, 1022 Evergreen Place by Debbie Macomber, Russian Winter by Daphne Kalotay and A Secret Kept by Tatiana De Rosnay.

Christmas Eve Slide Show:


Christmas Day Slide Show:



 NewsBitz:

-My Holiday Special on all online copic classes at the Color Me Creative Classroom is still ongoing until Jan. 4th!  Check out the deals on the main page HERE!

-My next traveling copic classes will be in Nashville and LA later this month(sign ups are on-going)!  If you want details visit my site www.cmcroad.com!  Nashville Class hotel location will be announced this coming week!

-I will post my winner of the holiday blog candy tomorrow for you all!!

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New Year, New Beginnings!!

Well its been a full 6 months since my term as a Dirty Girl/Dirty Dozen DT member for Splitcoast Stampers so I get to start sharing some of those projects with you this year.  We have to wait 6 months before we can share our work so it's only been on the SCS Fan Club gallery.  And I have a TON of projects to share so it's nice to have a backpile of projects to use during the year, LOL!  I'm crafting today but I haven't been in my craftroom since before Xmas (yikes)!  This is one of my favorite cards that I had done and to me butterflies signify new beginnings, new life experiences and new goals--perfect for the New Year!

This card uses a beautiful butterfly image from a gorgeous Gina K set from last year called "Hope is Faith".  Gina K created this set to raise funds for the disaster in Haiti last year---although I don't think any proceeds go to charity any longer you can still purchase the set HERE!

I love to create WOW cards---white on white with bright pops of color!  I used lots of texture to really make the layers on this card pop more.  The dry embossing was all done with CB Embossing folders (swiss dots, textile texture) and then I used my oval nestabilities for the main image cut-outs.  Three matching rhinestones at the top and a bow made with my bow easy finish it off.  Oh yeah, I got a NEW SB Grand Caliber machine and some of those awesome new Grand Dies and it is freaking AWESOME!  I cannot wait to share a project with you this week done with those new bigger dies--I LOVE THEM!

I used one of the main butterfly images from the stamp set and colored it with copics and then cut it out.  Then I added 2 layers of Diamond Glaze on top of the butterfly to make it shiny and stiff (let each layer of glaze dry before you add another).  Once the glaze dried I added stardust stickles to the top of parts of the butterfly for pretty sparkle THEN sprayed the entire butterfly with Smooch Spritz (vanilla) for more subtle sparkle.  Because the glaze gives the image some depth and strength, I was able to bend the wings to make it look realistic and then put it on the card front with Scor-Tape.  Ta-Da!  A pretty card for someone special in your life!

So Happy New Year to you and here's to NEW Beginnings, NEW Life experiences, NEW Goals and a wonderful year for us all!