So Long, And Thanks For All The Socks

My mom sent me some socks -- thick, warm, soft knee-length washable wool socks. As far as we're concerned that's pretty much the Holy Grail of sockness, especially at this time of year.

So I thought I should make her a sock-y thank-you card. Now, I don't have any sock stamps (note to self: acquire sock stamps), but I do have a Christmas set with a stocking in it, and that seemed close enough.

It also provided an opportunity to try out all the new blue inks in the Deep Sea queue got recently. I stamped with abandon! Well, okay, with some caution: I heat-set the ink between most of the layers.

Then, ta-da, I had an excuse to go buy some blue paper. Clearly the center needed blue, not turquoise!

I am very pleased with it.

I'm entering this thank-you card in the following challenges:

• The Cupboard Trilogy #6: Frosty Winter (frosty winter colors -- and who can resist warm socks in the cold winter?)
• Natalie and Amy: Winter Wishes (wintery colors and nice warm socks)
• Ladybug Crafts 4: Christmas or Winter (wintery colors and nice warm socks)
• Penny Black and More @ Allsorts: It's Your Choice

Supplies:

Bookmarks LV: Cinnamon Steam

I find that when my friend comes over to make bookmarks with me, I often end up making things out of her scraps. And they're things I'm really quite pleased with -- simple and not over-thought.

In this case, she was using a steam-patterned paper as a background for a dragon, and I trimmed the paper down around her stamping, leaving me with a few long skinny strips. Now, I don't have any long skinny dragon stamps (note to self: fix this), but I do have a teapot and a cup of tea with a wisp of steam coming out.

"What this scrap needs," I announced, "is tea."

So I stamped the teacup, went at the edges with ink and then with wet fingers, and when it was dry I glued the strip down on some nice pearlized paper... which was also a scrap from my friend's bookmark. Hey, if someone else is going to do the color-matching for me, I'm not going to complain!

(She also figured out what to put in the empty space... I think at least half the design credit here has to go to her!)

I'm entering this steamy bookmark into the following challenges:

• Loves Rubberstamps 29: Anything Goes (but not with a stamp carried by Loves)
• Stamp Your Life #1: Anything Goes (but not with a Stamp Your Life stamp)
• Great Impressions: Anything Goes (also not a Great Impressions stamp... I'm sensing a trend in my Anything Goes entries, are you?)
• Penny Black and More @ Allsorts: It's Your Choice (and, to keep up with the trend, it's not a Penny Black stamp either!)

Supplies:

Bookmarks XLVII: The Cat Who Came For Christmas

Kitty cats and ornaments and Christmas coziness: that's this bookmark.

I've photographed it on a page from Cleveland Amory's The Cat Who Came For Christmas. I've shamelessly stolen his title, as you may have noticed, but I feel obligated to say that the cat in the book is white, whereas the cat on the bookmark is brown-striped. And red, too, which isn't exactly natural but is Christmas.

I'm entering this festive feline bookmark into the following challenges:

• Penny Black and More @ Allsorts: Animal Magic
• Southern Girls Challenge #56: Animal Crackers
• The Crafty Pad Challenge #194: Christmas is Coming
• Willow Sketchie Challenge: Christmas in October
• ABC Christmas Challenge: U for Up To You
• DL.ART Thankful Thursday: Any Holiday from October through December (Christmas!)

Supplies:

Bookmarks XLVI: Grey, Red, and Black

I used to think there were two kinds of squirrels: grey squirrels, and red squirrels. Then I moved to Michigan, where there are also black squirrels. I'm still not totally used to it, and I've been here for more than five years. Black squirrels!

(There is also a quasi-fourth type of squirrel here, which I call "who dipped half that black squirrel in a bucket of bleach?" squirrels.)

The internet tells me that black squirrels are just melanistic (i.e. very dark) grey squirrels, and can have all sorts of weird mottling patterns, but still. Black squirrels! They're not less cool-looking for the knowledge.

So when I wanted to make a fallish bookmark with some scraps of acorny paper and my new Lawn Fawn Critters in the 'Burbs stamps, the squirrel (and the acorn) were the obvious choice, and doing squirrels in three colors was only a very small step from that. They're all stamped and embossed in gold, and then I colored them in with silver (for grey), copper (for red), and black (for black... you probably figured that out) and stamped and embossed some acorns in the same set of colors.

The background brown paper is a scrap I used to soak up spray from the craft mat a while ago and then set aside to dry. I love to do this, especially with bookmark-y sized scraps of plain paper; they go back into the paper box to become neat backgrounds for future projects (like this one). I'm pretty sure there's both gold and copper spray on here, although I can only swear to the copper. In the picture it looks like there's silver as well, but that's just the lighting.

I have some lovely novels starring squirrels that I should have used to photograph this bookmark on, but they're in a box -- oh, shoot, the Redwall books aren't boxed, I could have used one of them! Anyway, I ended up putting it on a page of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.

I'm entering this squirrely bookmark into the following challenges:

• Penny Black and More @ Allsorts: Animal Magic (squirrels!)
• The Crafty Pad Challenge #193: Use An Animal
• Inky Impressions Challenge 82: Fall or Halloween (clearly, I've chosen Fall here)
• Great Impressions October Challenge: Fall
• Joanna Sheen Challenge: Autumn Breeze

Supplies: (the acorn paper is from DCWV's Autumn Melody matstack)

Bookmarks XXXIII: Cold Outside

Why is it that I can weave jillions of technique, color, and material challenges together without much of a problem, but I always hit a snag with adding a dang sentiment? It can't really be this hard!

Well, I guess it can be legitimately difficult when I am making a Christmas-y/winter-y bookmark and I have no such sentiments.

I stamped -- and paper-pieced, a first for me -- a cute set of mittens for the bookmark, so I wanted a sentiment to go with them and sort of shade the whole creation towards the Christmas-y side of winter-y. Obviously there's nothing specific to Christmas about a pair of mittens, especially for folks in the southern hemisphere!

And that is why I have been singing Christmas carols all evening, ones about the cold. In the end I had a bit of a hard time deciding between "Baby, It's Cold Outside" and "Let It Snow" (from which I was going to use the phrase "all the way home I'll be warm"). On the one hand, four words are a lot easier to squeeze in than six. On the other hand, have you ever really listened to the lyrics for "Baby, It's Cold Outside"? It's actually kinda creepy. Hey there, dude, spiking your lady's drink to get her to stay is not cool.

Regardless, aesthetics won out and that's the sentiment I ended up using, but please understand that on my bookmark it means "so put on some mittens", and not anything else.

Listening to the meaning of lyrics is awful and I recommend you never do it.

Anyway, I spent about an hour writing this silly four-word phrase out -- in pen, in embossing pen and powder, on strips of washi tape, in capitals, in lowercase, in seventy-odd combinations of the above... and finally I realized that not ten feet away was a computer with a color printer and the ability to download fonts. This one's called "Frosty", and is by Ben Balvanz of Font-a-licious. It's licensed for personal use, just like most stamp images are -- although I doubt it has any kind of angel policy.

All of the shiny metal is silver, but there was this light, and it was yellow, see, so a bunch of it looks gold. Which is kinda cool, but not an accurate representation of the project.

Christmas Challenges asks that people do not post their sketches (even to credit them, I guess?), but instead link to the relevant post. So there you are; some challenges absolutely require you post their inspiration pics, and some absolutely require that you not do so. Both approaches make a certain amount of sense.

I'm entering this bookmark in the following challenges:

• Christmas Challenges #43: Sketch (I've turned the sketch sideways and moved the sentiment -- but since half the design team moved the sentiment, I figure that's okay.)
• The Stamp Spot: Purple, Stripes, and Metal (more metallic than real metal: silver origami paper, silver embossing powder, a little silver shimmer spritz, and smeared silver ink)
• The Crafty Bloggers Network Challenge #3: Purple (just a bit)
• My Mum's Craft Shop Challenge #76: Stars (at the top and bottom)
• Paper Playtime Challenge #84: PUNCHES + a sentiment (the stars at the top and the negative-image stars at the bottom are from a starry corner punch)
• Sparkles Christmas Challenge #20: Sparkle & Bling (sparkly embossing powder, silver embossing powder, silver shimmer spritz, rubbed some silver ink around...)
• Simon Says Stamp and Show: For the Love of Sparkle (see above list)
• Great Impressions: Sentimental Journey (I'm sorry, I don't own any Great Impressions stamps!)
• Penny Black and more @ Allsorts: Early Christmas Makes (not a Penny Black image, as I'm sure you can tell)
• Fashionista Challenge #7: Anything Goes CHRISTMAS
• Robyn's Fetish Challenge #126: Book Marks
• Simon Says Stamp: Anything Goes (no October Afternoon on this one)
• Ladybug Crafts: Anything Goes

I'm also linking it up to DL.ART's 1000-post Linky Party.

Supplies: