Deck The Halls!

Hello wonderful friends and a Happy Tuesday to you!  I am typing this up the night before LITERALLY sitting in my fireplace in our family room as I'm freezing my bum off, lol!  We went to Alexa's last football game that she cheered at and it was 38 degrees, omgosh COLD I tell ya, brrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!  Me no likey any weather under 60 degrees, lol, and those metal bleachers were like glaciers I tell ya!  After her half-time dance I had to leave, I just couldn't stand it anymore.  I had my seat heaters on and my feet stuck up on the heat vents in our truck, LOL--I couldn't feel my toes anymore.  So I'm SLOWLY recovering from my trip to Antartica (hee hee) by sitting by the fireplace!  If this is my harbinger of winter I swear I'm going to turn into a goose so I can fly south for the winter, lmbo!  BLECH--and no I don't want to hear from any of you that actually like winter (you crazy), lol!  If spring could come RIGHT after Christmas that would ROCK I tell ya!

NewsBitz:

-Winner of my "Christmas Memories" Blog Candy is Sassy Cricut of Sassy-Scrappz!!  Congrats and please email for the candy details!  Thanks to everyone for leaving such awesome storage ideas, I got quite a few that I might use and I will email you for permission to use them and your name in our magazine soon!

-You have until this coming Sunday to email me or leave a comment on this post here with your favorite recipe for soup--cuz' I love me some soup!  One lucky person will win the NEW cookbook by the Southern Plate lady Christy (but you have to leave a recipe, lol)!!

-I'm still reading every night and I just finished Danielle Steele's "Legacy" book on my Kindle and it was FANTASTIC!  I'm not a huge fan of her work, some of her books I enjoyed but a lot tend to be the same ole same KWIM but this new one was really good.  I'm also reading a book called "At Home" by Bill Bryson that is about the history of our homes from the beginning--it is EXCELLENT for those whose brain's work like mine, lol!  I love lil' tidbits and facts like why do we only have salt & pepper and why we call it "room & board"!  Check it out--it is worth the read!  My other book I just started is a sequel by Raymond Khoury called "The Templar Salvation" (lovin' it)--the first book is called "The Last Templar" (if you liked Dan Brown's books you'll LOVE these)!

****************************************************

Deck the Halls!

Since it's the beginning of the month that means it's time for the Magnolia-licious DT Sketch Challenge!  This month our fabulous hostess is Barb Hardeman and she has challenged us to make SHAKER CARDS!  I love shaker cards but I hadn't made one in a bit so I was happy to dive in!  And I must admit I HAD WAYYYYY TO MUCH FUN making this card, hee hee!  Most of you know how much I love Christmas--I decorate our house with 10 (11 this year) Christmas trees including doing the outside up!  It is just my absolute fave time of the year!  SO making this card was like decorating a mini house for me, hee hee!  You can find all the details on this challenge and how to participate along with us at the Magnolia-licious Highlites Blog!

So my idea came along when I knew I was going to use the window from Magnolia to create a wintry scene--that transpired into a indoor/outdoor holiday scene!  So when you shake this card it creates a fun snowy scene outside the window! My stamps are all from Magnolia-licious!!  Diana does not have this window in stock yet but the Alota window HERE can be used in the same manner if you like!  The cute Tilda is called "Decorating Christmas Tree" and I just adore her--I only attached one of her feet with dimensionals so it really looks like one leg is sticking out a bit as she reaches up high to add the decoration.  I put diamond glaze and stickles on all the ornaments for sparkle and the tree branches got stickles as well.  The gold snowflake at the top of tree was a button but I cut off the shank on the back so it would lay flat!  The tree is from the Jingle Jangle 2008 Collection and Diana might be ordering some of these if you really, really want a tree like this let her know 'kay??!  And of course everything is colored with Copics of course :)

The Alota Window at Magnolia-licious is similar to the one I used!!  The shaker window was actually a long process but not hard to do--I drew/colored a forest and snowy hills first onto light gray cs with the snowy hills made of white cs.  Then I covered that scene with a transparency sheet so that when the card is shaken the snow wouldn't get stuck in the hills, lol!  Then I cut the paper from the window image after coloring and added a transparency behind it for the window panes.  Then I attached foam tape around the window frame on the backside, added my MS glitter snow inside and closed it all up.  The garland and window trim was made with Flower Soft "Vintage Christmas Mix"--for the garland I used the Flower Soft wires and added Tacky Glue to them then sprinkled/patted on the flower soft mix (I did this 3 times, waiting for the other layers to dry completely at first before adding more).  Then I was able to bend the wire and make a window garland.  I used PTI's thin gold ribbon to make mini bows for the end of each garland.

A side view so you can see the many layers of dimension on this card---it truly gives it a 3-D effect!

And then there is "Rufus" the Magnolia doggie--it wouldn't be a complete scene without a furbaby in it right? (afterwards I was thinking and I'm going to add this Magnolia "Cat" to the mix so it represents my 7 furbabies more, hee hee)  I used a sentiment from PTI's "Mixed Messages" and made a lil' sign for Rufus to hold in his cute mouth (his tongue got diamond glaze too).  Isn't he a cutie???

Hopefully I'll be doing this soon to my home, hee hee, BUT WITHOUT the snow!! I surely do love to DECK THE HALLS!!

Hope you enjoyed today's post and make sure to visit the Magnolia-licious Highlites Blog to see the DT's fabulous shaker card projects!!