Valentine's Day

Richard and I don't really celebrate Valentine's Day...but that doesn't mean others don't celebrate...this year, I decided to design some Valentine's Day cards for my co-workers.

And of course, I had to design a few special ones for my hockey players...

Hope you all had a wonderful Valentine's day for all those who celebrated!

2014 Christmas Cards

I love making different Christmas cards and even after making the "Selman" Christmas cards, I still had to make an extra batch of Christmas cards...

My mother asked for her own set of Christmas cards this year, so I designed this one for her. It's a windowed card with a floating 3D snowflake. The snowflakes were from Martha Stewart punches. The cover of the card was embossed with the Big Shot. There's also another snowflake attached by a brad on the inside.

For this set of Christmas cards, I just utilized the Christmas punches and embossing folders. Trying to get use to simple layering. I've always been guilty of over thinking my designs!

 This was a fun one...3D Christmas Tree...

Until I start working on the 2015 Christmas cards...have a great New Year everyone!

2014 Selman Christmas Cards

It's so hard to stay on top of blogging, but at least I started taking pictures of all the crafting I have been doing.

I always find it daunting to make a large amount of Christmas cards. I especially hate making a large amount of identical Christmas cards since I am hand making them. Kinda boring to make the same one a few dozen times. So, I discovered an alternative to producing a large amount of Christmas cards without redesigning each one, but still making each unique.

Using my lovely Silhouette Cameo, I designed a white Christmas window pane. We have "The Selman", "2014", a snowflake and last, but not least, Richard's favourite Canucks logo in each window pane. I mass produced the window pane. From there, I got to play around with different colour card bases and highlight coloured paper. Some of them I even embossed with Christmas designs using the Big Shot.

I was very happy with the results...same ideas for each, but each still very unique.

Organizing Embossing Folders

Who doesn't love embossing folders for their Sizzix Big Shot...the problems:
How do you keep it neat and organized?
How do you work with the embossing folders before embossing?

On Pinterest, everyone had amazing ideas on how to store embossing folders.

At the moment, my embossing folders are all nicely tucked away in their individual slots in an embossing folder organizer.

This gorgeous case takes care of all my embossing folders...and keeps all my embossing folders conveniently portable!

Now, I had to figure out what to do to have samples of my embossing folders readily on hand while I have my creative thinking hat on.

I loved the idea of swatches of the embossing folders, however it seems to limited. So I decided to make swatches of all my embossing folders onto regular paper AND clear acetate sheets .

The swatches of our embossing folder onto paper is standard that many have done on Pinterest. The acetate embossing folder swatches are my own favourite little idea because you can put it over any piece of paper to see how it would look before embossing the paper.

Hope this idea inspires others to come up with more ideas to share with others...