Presents Galore!!

Hello friends and Happy Tuesday to you all!  Are you having a wonderful holiday season so far?  I'm just loving it so much (not the 20 degree weather and winds though, lol)---it is a beautiful time of year!  The house is completely decorated inside and out and this week I'll do a bit of baking with Alexa!  Last night we went to Riley's band concert and then he has one more on Wed.--he's in the percussion section but his love is playing the drums.  In fact he asked Santa for a drum set for Christmas (oh my moley, help my ears if Santa brings that), LOL---but he's really gotten good and he enjoys it!  Other than making projects and going to band concerts this week is kinda easy breezy for us which I like!  I am planning on trying to get a few videos done this week and I have the carpet cleaners coming on Wed--it's a 4 time a year kinda thing when you have animals KWIM, lol!  They're just doing our basement and the kids bedrooms this time--most of our house is hardwoods.  I'm hoping to have our basement done in hardwood this coming spring---I'm tired of cleaning carpet all the time down there with boys running around (they play video games down there) and its the cats main area.  You know ho-hum house maintenance, LOL!

Anywho I have a LONG Slideshow of all our house decorations below for you to enjoy!  I hope they bring a smile to you today and you can think of how tired my arms are from lighting and decorating all those trees, hee hee!  (if you get my blog by email, you must come to the website to see slideshow):

Holiday Decorations Slideshow Pics! Click on the slideshow to see in large size and then you can also slow it down with the +/- buttons on the player!

NewsBitz:

-Only a few more days to enter my Charity Blog Candy Giveaway--its a great cause and there are fabulous prizes!  It will end Friday at midnight EST and winner will be announced this weekend!  Read all about it HERE!

-Holiday Special still going on thru Jan 4th for my online Copic Classes at the Color Me Creative Classroom---great deals and makes a great gift too!  Check it out HERE!

-My friend Teri has an AWESOME DEAL on COPICS at her store Stamps Alive! right now---BUY 10 Copics at $5.15 each and GET 4 MARKERS FREE!  If interested email her with your selections by this Friday at midnight (PST)!  Copic Swatchbooks are $4.95 too!

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Presents Galore!!

Today I have a fun card for you that is totally "ME"--lol!  I love anything black and white with elegant patterns like brocade or toile AND pop it with some hot pink and it's LOVE at first site!  I made this card with today's NEW Magnolia-licious Challenge Blog challenge in mind--it's to use mostly white either in your image or on your whole project!  Well I did a little of both along with some pops of color too!  I wanted to show how you can use this beautiful Magnolia "Secret Tilda" from Magnolia-licious for many occasions---this card would be perfect for Christmas, Birthdays and Valentie's Day (or any other celebration)!!

Isn't "Secret Tilda" a super cutie--I just love her!?  **And this Tilda comes in the MINI size too here ** I used last week's Friday Sketcher's Sketch for my layout and the patterned papers are all by My Minds Eye "Lush" collection. The black brocade paper is flocked so it's really pretty IRL!  I embossed the white paper on the background with a CB folder (hard to see) and the oval behind her with a different (lined) CB folder.  The black matting behind the oval is a Spellbinder's Nesties Label 6 (25% off )!  A ribbon tied with my Bow Easy wraps around and then I added a mix of paper flowers to the center of my bow.

TIP: The scroll like designs behind the matting was done with hot pink cs and a Marianne Designs frame die (see here)--I cut the ends off of 2 frames and added them around the oval.  I like to look at my dies and find different ways to use them and sometimes those frame dies have beautiful edges, so why not use them in a different way!  Gotta get your money's worth right!!

She's colored with Copics of course and I made her shirt white using my Cool Gray Copics (C9,C5,C3,C1,C00/RV17,RV10/YR24,E31,E50).  I use the grays to create the illusion of white--you only color the shadowed areas with your grays, in my case I used C3,C1,C00 to shadow the folds in her shirt.  Then I used the darker grays to create the look of black pants as well!  TIP: To create the hot pink accents I used RV17 as my darkest color and RV10 as my lightest--then I picked up color FROM the RV17 WITH the RV10 to create the middle color.  This technique is known as bridging and is a great way to get the middle color you need if you have a dark and a light color on hand!  I gave her present polka-dots with my white sharpie poster paint pen (extra fine tip) and added stickles to the bows and her lacey trims.

Hope you enjoyed this post today and I hope you'll pop on over to the Magnolia-licious Challenge Blog HERE to see the DT's awesome projects and join in on the fun too!  Have a great day and see ya here tomorrow!