Crafty Elves' Countdown to Christmas - August 2019 Edition

Welcome to the August edition of Crafty Elves' Countdown to Christmas!  My friend Debra Davison and I decided we were going to create a Christmas card a week for the year so that come December all of our cards would be made and it has been awesome!  I've so been enjoying the chance to use some of the products I purchased during the season last year and love our monthly posts!  

For me, this month's post is all about elves! So without further ado:

I picked up this Elf'd set from Ellen Hutson after one of the first Coffee Lover's Hops I participated in.  It was a while ago... and this is the first I've used it.  It's not even available any more and I'm just NOW using it.  The good news is I just got the coordinating dies on clearance!  I don't know why I hadn't used it... I love it... that's why I bought it...lol!  So I'm very excited to be using it now.

I'm playing along at Simon Says Stamps Wednesday Challenge which is Clean & Simple.

I used the die for this guy and laid it on some Copic friendly cardstock and traced the outer edges with a very light cool Gray Copic... C0 I think.  Then I used C00, C0, and C1 and dotted around the outline using the darker color on the crevices and lighter as I moved outward.  Then I used some Alene's True Snow and dabbed it around with a paint brush.  Next I used some glittery clear stickles and dabbed it around.  And Voila!  Snow Angel!  I popped up that cute little elf right in the middle.

The snowflakes and sentiment banner are from Paper Smooches.

The sentiment is from Picket Fence Studios.

I used this embossing folder from Taylored Expressions.

Of course I had to have a cup or two for you!  I used the Holiday Cheer papers from Sunny Studio Stamps.  This one was fun!  And did you see how perfect that sentiment die is for one of these cards?

There is Elf right there in it!!  I added some mirror cardstock over the glitter on the "elf" area so it would stand out just a little bit more.

The Treat Yo-self Die is from Ellen Hutson (also not available any more...lol!)

The heart and mug are from MFT.

For this one I used the Sunny Studio Stamps paper and the awesome Letterboard Essentials Dies from Ellen Hutson and that Christmas Light Border is from Craftin Desert Divas.

And guess what I got since your last Crafty Elves visit:

I got my hands on one of these adorable Crafty Little Elf stamps from Unity Stamp Co.... you know... the namesake of our little monthly post!  

I'm playing along with a Mini Challenge at Unity Show & Tell Group which is Drips, Drops & Splatters and at Wow Embossing Powder Fans Group's Pearl Challenge.

Well... the splatters are obvious...lol... but some of those splatters are with some pearl white watercolor... hard to see, but it's in there!

I've also used:

Christmas Over/Again by Brutus Monroe for Unity Stamp Co.

Sending Love from Birch Press Design.

Nested Rectangles and Nested Deckle Rectangles from Rubbernecker Stamps.

Wow Gold and Wow Sparkling Snow Embossing Powders.

Merry Christmas Dies from MFT.

And finally... yeah... he's not an elf, but I love this Winter gnome from Picket Fence Studios A Gnome Winter Stamp Set:

Isn't he just so adorable??

For this one I also used the following items:

Cable Knit Embossing Folder and Snowflake embossing folder from Taylored Expressions.

Funky Flakes and Coffee Cup Fri Dies from CAS-ual Fridays.

Now it's time to announce the winner of some Happy Mail from last month's Crafty Elves post:

Lagene!  Please e-mail me at bzscrapper66 at gmail dot com with your mailing address!

We're doing it again... next month I'll choose someone from the comments on this post to win some Happy mail from me.

Thanks so much for stopping and come again soon!  Be sure to head on over to Debra's place and see what she's created for your viewing pleasure!

Challenge Me Monday #112

This week's Fantabulous Cricut Challenge was to create something for your Graduate.  My oldest graduated from college a couple weeks ago and we're celebrating this weekend.  My good friend and fellow consultant, Donna (check out her blog here), showed us this technique over the weekend with a flower card (that is beautiful...hopefully she's posted it on her blog).  I was trying to decide what to do for the card and this popped in my head... not as beautiful, but pretty cool.  The front of the card is cut along the bottom of the hat line which allows the sentiments and patterned paper to show along the bottom of the inside.  I used Art Philosophy to cut the Frame and the U R.  The stamp sets I used were You Did It and You Are.  Visit the Fantabulous Cricut Blog and see all the great posts to get inspired.

Challenge Me Monday #108

This week's challenge at the Fantabulous Cricut Challenge Blog was "On The Go".  Our project was to include a car, bike, train, plane, etc.  I used the Dotty papers again.  One of the papers has this great bicycle on it.  The cartridge I used was Art Philosophy for the banner, the decorative square and the letters "U R".  I used April's CTMH Stamp of the Month You Are for all the sentiments.  The colors are Lagoon, Sweet Leaf and Sunset.

More Dotty Fun

This layout of my son playing Broomball a few years ago was done with one of the Dotty For You papers. It was perfect for the layout and the Superhero rub-ons worked perfectly with it as well. I used my Art Philosophy alpha to cut out Corey's team name and trimmed off some of the letters to make it look more like the font on the rub-ons.

Fantabulous Cricut Challenge #99

Mine and Pat's 21st Anniversary is this coming Friday. Here is the card I made for him. I'm also entering it into the Fantabulous Cricut Challenge Blog's Challenge Me Monday #99. The challenge was simply to use fabric, lace, or other trims on your project. I used ribbon on mine. The Cricut cartridge I used was Sweethearts for all the pieces on the card.