12 Days of Crafting with TCP - Christmas Placecards

Hello friends! Today I'm back for another day of The Cat’s Pajamas 12 Days of Crafting!  I thought it would be fun and festive to create place cards for our Christmas table.  For us, Christmas Eve after Church is all about our extended family, but Christmas Day is our family of 5, plus significant others if they are around.

So, I created a set of place cards that will match our dinnerware and the ever cute and retro set Give A Little from the November Release.  

I began by printing the whole digi set on Copic XPress it paper, and colouring the images up with Copics in colours that would coordinate with what we had.  Then I trimmed out each image, die cut some sparkly snowflakes from a retired TCP die, and started to assemble simple folded place cards (2”x 3 1/4”) from cardstock. I ink-blended the edges of the cardstock to get a little more depth of colour.  

I tried to pick the image that matched something about the person, so since my husband is my honey, he gets our favourite bear PJ.  

Next up, for our son who grew up milling through the presents to see how many he had, it’s Poochie the pup.  On each place card I have some mirrored holeless sequins and their name written in white gel pen.  

Now for our other son it’s Poochie surrounded by presents and stuffies.  

Next, for our daughter, it’s Sprinkles the Cat on a candy cane. 

And finally, one for me.  And since I’m the shortest in the family, I get the ornament holding penguin.  

They make a sweet little set ready for Christmas Day!  Hope you’ve enjoyed the tour!  

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12 Days of Crafting with TCP - Christmas Placecards

Stitching Saturday - Almost Hockey Season

 

Celebrating my brother’s Birthday this weekend and decided to use a card I stitched up this week, where I must have subconsciously used our hockey team’s colours.  This is perfect beacause he’s a big hockey fan.  I used Spellbinder’s Large Stitched Background and made a fun geometric pattern of my own.  

To accent I’ve added some copper in the sequins and foiled sentiment from Spellbinders Mini Everyday Sentiments.  

Just about 5 weeks till hockey season starts!  Hoping for a cup run this year!  Thanks for joining me today!  

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Stitching Saturday - Almost Hockey Season

Hippo Birthday to Our Baby

I’ve been blogging for probably about 15 years so, for those of you who have followed me for a long time, you know we have 3 kids who are now all adults.  Our BABY just turned 20, and we celebrated him last week.  After all these years his favourite colour is still yellow, so I created this cute slimline design for him using MFT’s Picture Perfect Party Animals stamp set.  He does his Mama’s heart good by loving all my artistic endeavours, so it was fun to see that he enjoyed this card.  He’s still a kid at heart which I love.  

Colouring on these cute faces is done with Copics and coloured pencils (just adding in the details and extra shading), as well as a few white gel pen highlights.  

For the background of the card I used a retired MFT Stencil and Distress inks, the circle motif ties in nicely with the balloons and enamel dot accents.  

They’re fun aren’t they?  

 

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Hippo Birthday to Our Baby

My Girl’s Bookstore

From the time our daughter was tiny she had a love for books.  As a baby I’d sit her down with little board books and she’s spend lots of time paging through them (upside down!).  Now she’s an adult and we swap books back and forth all the time and talk books, covers, plots and favourite authors regularly.  When she saw some of the cute things I was creating with Concord & 9th’s adorable Pop-Up Shoppes she asked if I’d create a bookstore for her she could frame on her display wall.  It was such a fun assignment!  

I created this precious spot with Concord & 9th’s new Window Shope Pop-Up Base Dies and the Book Shoppe Bundle, along with the bricks from Flower Shoppe Stamp Set to create this dreamy little book shop scene.  

I coordinated the colours to what she has in her room and had a blast making all the little details for this design!  The bookstore window is lined with clear acetate, and the door is lined with vellum so those windows have the feel of real glass.  

Little touches of gold cardstock accent the book spines (how cute!), the lamp stand, door hardware and plant pots inside and out front.  It adds just the right touch of shine.  

I added some fun details to the snake plants with copic markers so they look more realistic, and that adorable bike is ready to take home a stack of books in the basket.  It has the tiniest details that are perfection!  

I’m headed to the bookstore today to pick up a newly released book from one of my favourite authors!  Sigh bookstores!  They make my heart happy.  

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My Girl’s Bookstore

Roadtrips and Moustachios with TCP!

Hello!  I’m back today with more of the May Release from The Cat’s Pajamas, and today I’m bringing you a pair of masculine designs that are great for the Summer season from the May Release.    

To start off today, I’m bringing an card that is a nod to the start of the Summer for me!  Each year when our kids were school-age we’d take off for our Summer Road Trip the day after school was done, usually a 16 h drive to my husband’s home town and visit family there.  We’d leave before the crack of dawn and enjoy celebrated traditions each trip like banana bread for the breakfast to listening to Adventures in Odyssey to keep us all entertained.  Still treasured memories for our family. 

So, this TCP set is so nostalgic for me!  I used the new Travelin’ Man digi set, printing it on Copic XPress It paper and colouring with Copics.  Check out all his luggage!  

 

I’ve trimmed the image out, placed it on a retired TCP frame, and then added the “road” with the new SVG Cutting File Summer Borders, and then the sentiment from the new Summer Sayings Digi.  With a cute turn arrow from a retired TCP die set.  

Now I Mustache you .....

To enjoy this new Hipster set!  It is SO darn cute!  Combining it with the new Aye, Eye, I set,  I’ve created a fun CAS signboard card for the moustachiod man in your life!  I cut out all the moustaches and popped some up on the main image to give it some fun dimension.  A tiny bit of Copic colouring to add some red pop, and paired it all with the new Black and White Spring digital papers.  

Here’s another peek at a bit of the dimension.  It makes for an adorable clean and graphic card!  

And here is a look at all the new May Release Items I used today, hope you enjoyed the inspiration!

 

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Roadtrips and Moustachios with TCP!

Have Yourselfie A Happy Birthday

Hello All!  I’m popping back in with a card I made for my brother’s Birthday this week.  We celebrated with him last night in an outdoor family get-together.  These are times when we all miss my Mom, because she was such a good “celebrator”.  But, we are also grateful to be able to still celebrate.  

So I made him this bright and bold card with the adorable newer set BB Picture Perfect Party Animals from MFT Stamps.  These polaroid style selfie pics are really cute, and I played along with MFT’s Color Challenge this month.  It helps jump-start my creativity when I’ve not created much to play along in some challenges.  

We’ve got a fun gorilla and lion party-ing it up with some celebration banners (County Fair Dies from The Cat’s Pajamas) and then some sequins to give it some party sparkle.  The background paper is MFT’s Party Patterns.  

Colouring is all done with Copics (Gorilla - E71, E74, E77, E79, W2, W5, W7, R14, R17, R29, Y13, Y17, Y38) and Lion (Y32, Y35, E97, E99 and R14, R17, R29, Y13, Y17, Y38).  

See you later this week with an ALL NEW and amazing Power Poppy Release!  

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Have Yourselfie A Happy Birthday

Flowers and Updates

Hi Everyone, it’s been awhile. I’ll explain more at the end of the post, but for now I’ll share about this pretty little design using the Hellebores Digital Stamp Set from Power Poppy. In this version I’ve used the image without the vase attached to it because I love the focus on the little arrangement of flowers.

I’ve coloured these flowers up lots of different ways in the past, but I’m not sure if I’ve tried this version with a combination of light yellow-green and pink. For today I’ve coloured with Copics and added in some prismacolour pencils for the background and a bit of the definition.

I’ve framed it up with some pretty paper, a cute layout and some dies. The sequins take on different light depending on which way you turn the card, but it picks up the greens and pinks when you lay it down (below).

Only a bit of twine bow to add some extra green and finish the design.

Now onto the personal update. As some of you know, so very unexpectedly, my beautiful Mama passed away a month ago. This has been heartbreaking to me and to our family as she was such a vibrant part of all of our lives. The same day my Mom died, my Dad had a heart-attack and spent three weeks in the hospital. That pretty much rocked us, and a lot has changed in our life since then. We had a very small Celebration of her life, with masks and social distancing, and we’ve upended our everyday life and moved in with my Dad for the summer to give him some stability as we all discern what’s next. It’s been a very hard month, added onto 2 very hard years with the loss of both of my husband’s parents last fall, and my husband's illnesses and hospitalizations with fungal pneumonia and cancer. We’ve had a lot to process and have had to deal with a lot of heavy layers.

All that to say, I don’t know about creating right now. Sometimes I feel like it and have space (though a simple card seems to take me days), and sometimes I’m just not up to it. So, for right now, I’ll create when I can, and when my heart is in it, and hope you pop in to see me when you can. Creating has been a place of peace and encouragement to me all these years, and I trust that it will be again.

We trust there is healing on the other side of this, but it’s timing and progress is not predictable. I know that if you’ve walked through grief you fully understand this. I’m going to let it take as long as it takes, and hope I emerge from it stronger, more compassionate, deeper and more hopeful. I trusting in the Lord to do that.

Blessings to all of you!

For more inspiration be sure to visit:
Stacy
Lisa

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Flowers and Updates

The Weight of Heavy Things

Hello friends.  

Putting my heart on the page for you to read as we wind down 2019. 

Earlier this year, one of my favourite local artists, Crystal Drieger posted a picture of this painting she had just done.  The moment I saw it I gasped.  Something about it visually spoke to me in a deep way.    I love her work.  It can be both whimsical and realistic in a way that inspires me.  But this piece in particular felt like it symbolized 2019 for us.  As you can see, it depicts a coming thunderstorm on the prairies with vivid colours, texture, movement, power and peacefulness.  And though I couldn’t buy the original, I asked her right away if she’d be doing prints.  This month I bought a print which will be lovingly displayed in our home.  

Our year has been relentless.   I’ve not said a lot about it, but it feels a bit cathartic to write it down now.   At Christmas a year ago, my husband could not shake a brutally deep cough he had, and developed a fever.  I suspected he had pneumonia, which doctors initially thought as well, but when he continued to worsen, they hospitalized him and we waited weeks to learn he had a much more serious fungal pneumonia that required a heavy duty anti-fungal drug and treatment for at least a year to recover from. He was in the hospital for a month and off of work for 2 more months.  We had excellent care, but I juggled days at the hospital, and home with the kids and work trying to keep everything moving.  We experienced a great deal of love and support from our family, friends and Church that was so encouraging and helpful.  

Fast forward a few months, and the Doctor who is treating my husband's fungal pneumonia, can’t explain why some of his blood results are dipping.  She diligently researches and consults with other Doctors, and eventually lets us know she thinks the cancer my husband was treated for 12 years ago is back.  Tests confirm this.  Hairy Cell Leukemia has returned.  A big blessing is that this cancer is very treatable and it is also likely the reason he contracted the fungal pnemonia in the first place.  It causes a lowered immune system.  So, this fall, my husband had treatment October through the end of November.  Again, we were surround by prayers and support from such amazing people in our lives.  Our faith in Jesus powerfully sustains us in the deepest places.  The demands have been pretty heavy, he needed to be hospitialized again during part of treatment and there was a lot of up and down. He has been on medical leave from work since October and I’ve been juggling all of the extra pieces once again.  

My husband's last day of treatment was also his Birthday.  At our treatment centre they have a tradition that you ring the Bell of Hope to celebrate your last treatment.  Unknown to him,  I had planned for many of our friends to surprise him for the bell ringing to celebrate his recovery.  

As he was just beginning his last treatment we got the phone call that his Dad had just passed away.  We were heartbroken.  He had fought dementia for a number of years, and now he was gone.  Though we rang the bell of hope, we cancelled our celebration party, and gathered our family to head to ND for the funeral, which my husband did, as we are both pastors.  It was a day filled with sadness and joy, tears and celebration all rolled together.  

Just a week after Dad’s funeral, my husband’s mom became ill and within a few weeks her health became grave.  Less than four weeks after Dad passed away, Mom also breathed her last on earth.  There was no way we could have seen this coming.  So, even as I write we will be back in North Dakota with family to say goodbye and celebrate her life.  

That’s a lot.  Maybe you can relate to it too because of storms in your own life.  

Throughout it all, we have felt very carried by God.  We’ve been very supported and loved.  We are learning and growing even in the midst of this, and even as we grieve.  We are even closer as a family, and closer to our friends.  However, I have begun to realize that 2019 has taken a great deal out of all of us.  All of these events have held heavy weight and we need to pay attention to that.  I have not cared for myself well this past year, as I’ve spent most of it caring for my husband and children.  So, I’m going to be taking some time away to pay attention to the weight of what 2019 has been, and how I’m being called to live because of it in the years I’m blessed with ahead.  

I’ve asked for a leave of absence from my design teams and they’ve graciously given that to me (they are such good women - so thank you Marcy and Alma).  My creative spirit has left me, and I want the Lord to restore it, along with many other things in the weeks ahead.  

That lovely painting shows the dark storm coming; but it also shows light and vibrant green in the center of the field, which will be further watered by that approaching storm.  Letting God water me and restore me and bring growth is what I’ll be investing in over the next weeks.  

Look forward to all that this will bring when I catch up with you again.  With love and blessing.  

Christine

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The Weight of Heavy Things

Our 25th Anniversary Vow Renewal!

A few weeks ago, my husband and I celebrated our 25 Wedding Anniversary!  We can’t believe how quickly the time has gone.  We both felt like it was a significant time to mark and to celebrate.  We’ve weathered a lot in the past year with him recovering from a severe fungal pneumonia, and all the other wild and wonderful things we’ve experienced in 25 years, so for this Anniversary, we decided to renew our Wedding Vows to each other before God, and our friends and family.  

For the invitation, I took this spectacular design from Power Poppy, Hummingbird Paradise, and used the design without the hummingbird in the center.  Because it's a digital design, I was able to stretch it a bit taller to form a 4 3/4 x 6 3/4 inch image to fit two onto a standard piece of XPress It Blending cardstock.  I left the middle open to be able to hand letter in the details, and then the back of the design held the event information (not pictured).   The above version is the colour copy that Marcy allowed me to do so I could print 50 of them.  Colour copying is great, but it just doesn’t capture the true colour as you illustrated it, especially the background, so I hand touched up each invite (I know, crazy!) with Copics as well.  This floral framed style invite is similar to the original wedding invitations we had 25 years ago.  But I do think this version is much prettier :)  

Here are the originals I coloured up before copying.  It was a significant amount of markers, so I didn’t list them,  but I’ll show you some of the close ups of the image.  

All those flowers together make for one beautiful frame.  As you already know, I’m crazy about flowers, and vivid colours so this was exactly what I was looking for.  Two versions of the lettering are shown,  nothing fancy, just a little Signo Multiliner.  

Would you like to see some pictures of our celebration?  We held it at our Church, in the upstairs Chapel.  Originally we got married in our college Chapel, so this was also a nod to our original wedding.  I LOVE the beams we have in the chapel, it’s such a lovely location and feels like a holy space.  The stained glass is from the original Church building exterior wall before we renovated.  We salvaged the special wall, as it was created by a special artisan from overseas.  It’s got a unique 1950’s style.  

These pictures are all courtesy of my beautiful friend Clara at Clara Cecelia Photography.  She is an extremely gifted professional photographer.  She captured so much of what the day meant for us, the people, the flowers, the emotions, our friends and family.  My brother-in-law read our Scripture from our wedding.  

"I thank my God every time I remember you. In all my prayers for all of you, I always pray with joy because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now, being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.  And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousnessthat comes through Jesus Christ—to the glory and praise of God.”  Phillipians 1:3 - 6, 9 - 11 NIV.  

We bought all the flowers at Costco and filled them in with flowers from my own garden, including peonies that were from my Grandma’s plant, now transplanted at our home.  My sister-in-law who was visiting from the States did the floral arranging.  

We started with worship with our favourite worship band, which is also our small group.  People we love a lot :)  Two of the songs we did are favourites of ours,  Build My Life, and Rescuer.  

We said our original vows, and then also wrote new vows to each other.  It was incredibly meaningful to both of us.  25 years into this, we know the challenges and joys of what it means to walk out love as a verb to each other.  Never easy, but we never do it alone, and we rely on the Lord’s help to live it out.  I know what love for my husband looks like far deeper now, than when we first started this journey together.  

Our dear friend Sharon, who served with us on staff at our Church until she retired, did our re-marrying.  

Our kids blessed us by sharing what our marriage has meant to them.  And we asked all our guests to commit to holding us to our vows and how we walk them out, and to pray over us.  It was deeply meaningful to us, and everything we had hoped for.  Simple, but full of significance and full of celebration.  

Afterward we celebrated with an ICE CREAM PARTY!  

LOTS of toppings!

Our boys and our nephew did the disshing out.  They had fun.  Three varieties of ice cream, vanilla, Dutch chocolate and Birthday Party (which they re-named wedding party)!

A few shots of our family there.  

My side of the family with my parents, and my brother and sister in law and kids, and our three kids.   

And my husband’s brother who visited from the States for the occasion, sis-in-law and 5 of their kids.  

Joy, friends, family, faith, counting all our blessings together.  Thanks for sharing a little bit of it with us!  

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Our 25th Anniversary Vow Renewal!