Before You Take Your Pants Off...

I have a few friends in law enforcement.

Now that I think about it - they're all women, and they are all REALLY good at coloring. I'll come back to that some day and win a Nobel Prize for doing the research on that connection.

Until then, let me share some holiday advice with you.

One of these friends - we'll call her Alexandra, Queen of Police - told me that a LOT of people - like MOST people - die without their pants on.

And by pants I mean over AND under.

We asked her why this is, and she does not know the answer - but out there in the world right now - police are finding a half nekkid dead person.

So here's my caution to you over the holidays - since for whatever reason, people are more at risk of dying during this time of year (I blame cold weather)...

BEFORE YOU TAKE YOUR PANTS OFF IN THE NEXT FEW WEEKS, DO THE FOLLOWING:

• Check your surroundings - are there any large predators, like bears or lions hurtling towards you?
• Do you see a serial killer near you?
• Are you standing on the window ledge of the 13th floor of a tall building?
• Did you just drink drain cleaner?
• Did you eat at Taco Cabana recently?
• Look up - is there an anvil on a frayed rope hanging over your head?
• Are you driving towards a lake at 100 miles per hour, with the car doors locked?
• Are you on the Titanic?
• Have you just touched the filthy ordering Ipad in a steakhouse?
• Are you eating something that was made in China?
• Are you improperly using a Red Rider BB gun?
• Are you running with scissors?

If the answer to all of these questions is no, then you can probably take your pants off without embarassing your family. Unless you're WITH your family right now, in which case, please, do not take your pants off.

You're welcome.

I guess the only thing this doesn't really address is if the actual act of taking your pants off sometimes spontaneously kills you. I'll research that and get back with you. Until then, be safe.

I'm finally starting to get to play with my pre-order, and you know I went right for the fuzzy bear.

He's not wearing pants, so he probably won't be with us long.

 

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Bear Hugs comes in a bundle, with the matching framlelits, and I'll have an online class with both of these sets soon. The Koi watercolor I used is here. And speaking of coloring, if you need a Christmas present for yourself, the Derwent Inktense blocks are on CRAZY SALE right now.

I made a little video of the bear card for you - hope you enjoy it. With your pants on.




Loveyameanitdontdiehalfnekkidbye.

The Sky is My Ocean

"If you don't die of thirst, there are blessings in the desert. You can be pulled into limitlessness, which we all yearn for, or you can do the beauty of minutiae, the scrimshaw of tiny and precise. The sky is your ocean, and the crystal silence will uplift you like great gospel music, or Neil Young."

                                                  - Anne Lamott

I saw this quote on Facebook today and it exactly nailed my relationship with the high desert - especially the New Mexico high desert. That image of the sky as your ocean is so perfect. The allure of that deep blue may be universal - but as you know, I really don't like water in any form except as an ice cube. My ocean-loving relatives are horrified by this - but this makes sense to me - the sky is my ocean.

That's my squirrel moment before today's project. Ann Lamott has some great stuff. For some reason, in the last few years, a few books that are about the process of writing have been really appealing for me. Even though I find Stephen King to be way too crude - he's like a talented toddler that stops being a prodigy every now and then to talk about poop - his book On Writing - is spectacular. It's somewhat painful in the audio version, because he is the narrator, and he describes that terrible accident he was in in such a stark and terrifying way - it's a bit of a heartstopper, and you'll find yourself grieving with him for his pain and anger and lost time. But his advice on writing is extremely sound. Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird is also great if you enjoy these books about the writing process. She is funny, and the narrator was fantastic. That was one of those books I came across randomly, through a Facebook friend who started a book club group on it and I joined knowing nothing about the book in advance.

This is one of the great blessings of social media - that fast moving stream of cats and randomness contains a lot of things that are really charming and memorable and useful.

Guess it's one of those weeks. I have no idea how I found these adorable anime plushies on Deviant Art, but I fell down a rabbit hole, ended up on Allyson Dean's project and fell in love with those little guys.

The second I saw them, I knew exactly how to make a paper version. That's right - with the best die ever invented - the Curvy Keepsake Box framelits. My team knows how completely obsessed I am with this die, and I don't even DO 3D unless it's just amazing. And these are amazing.

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SQUEE!!!

How cute are those????

OMG I had so much fun making them.

Here's a little video of how they go together, and all the supplies are linked above.



Don't forget - my new online class is available - featuring 24 fun & unique color combos for the multi-step Picture Perfect stamp set.

Hope your lead-up to Christmas is peaceful and fun. Hard to believe it's just all a week away.

Loveyameanitbye.

From Russia With Love

It's amazing how, at the end of the day, all good things lead back to bacon.

Yes, even in papercrafting.

Yesterday, I was making my sample for my Virtual Stamp Night challenge at Splitcoast this weekend (come play!) and I had a bacon-related revelation.

You know how your paper warps when you do watercolor or embossing techniques? Well I usually glue my card together and then go slip it under the pile of magazines on my coffee table until it's dry and that flattens it out.

But then I realized - I have the perfect card flattening tool - and I don't have to dig through a pile of magazines to find my card after I use it.

It's a bacon press!

I've had this bacon press since 1990 - and I've actually never used it for bacon. The secret to good, flat bacon is to start with cold bacon in a cold pan. But it's so cute and heavy duty that I couldn't get rid of it.

And then today - it hit me like a lightning bolt - it's the PERFECT card press!

A few minutes under the bacon press and my card was perfectly flat! God bless bacon!

The VSN (Virtual Stamp Night at Splitcoast) theme this weekend is Around the World in 80 Days, and each challenge this weekend takes inspiration from a different country.

For my challenge, I chose Russia - specifically the Imperial Faberge Eggs. The story of Faberge is very intriguing, and the majority of the eggs made by the House of Faberge were made for the Romanovs to give to each other. It's a fascinating story for me, because it starts with a gifted French artist, goes through a horrid governmental overreach, and ends up with Aqua Net. Not even kidding. Read about it.

What's cool about Faberge is the uniqueness of those eggs - and how just the name Faberge calls that particular magic to mind.

So I chose my favorite Faberge egg as inspiration - it's a deep cobalt blue egg (currently owned by Prince Albert of Monaco) with ornate gold detail. It's stunning. So I used the First Sight stamp set (coming in the Occasions Mini January 4th) to emboss in gold, and then I spritzed it and added Turquoise, Violet and Ultramarine Brusho. I let it air dry so the color stayed vivid.

The ultramarine separates so that you see both blue and violet, which I love.

Speaking of color - my new online class is available now! It's a color combo study for the upcoming Picture Perfect stamp set - available January 4th. Here's a peek of one of the layering images in the set - I stamped out the four steps for this image.

This class shows you 24 total color combos - 5 combos for the hummingbird, taken from real bird photos, 1 hummingbird combo that give it a vintage, sepia look, 10 combos for the rose stamp, 5 for the starfish and 3 for the leaves.

These are unique combos you will be surprised by, and I also give alignment tips for this multi-step stamp set.

If you're a demonstrator and pre-ordered this set - you'll love this class for your own classes. If you are not a demonstrator - if you buy this set from me beginning January 4th - this class will be free with your purchase!

A little something for everyone.

Hope  you come play along with us for Virtual Stamp Night - the challenges are amazing.

Loveyameanitbye/

Tell Your Friend Veronica

Isn't it funny what comes to mind at the holidays? Just the mention of a particular holiday might make you crave a piece of pumpkin pie, or want to watch Die Hard - things that are as essential to the "season" as the actual holidays themselves in your own little world.

Well for me - I cannot even hear the first discussions about Hanukkah without singing the Hanukkah song. It's just a ritual. It makes me happy every time I hear it. Especially the part about Paul Newman and Goldie Hawn. :)

Anyway - I'm not Jewish, but we celebrated a lot of Jewish holidays at the Lutheran church I attended when I was growing up. Our pastor - who was a really great guy and also our next-door neighbor - wanted all the Sunday school kids to understand and respect the holidays and their intimate relationship with ours, so I remember him doing little Seders at Passover, where we sampled all the food, and studied where those rituals came from.

He explained Hanukkah to us, and the symbolism of the menorah and the dreidel, and we ate latkes - thank you Paster Otterstadt! Maybe he was very snacky all the time - now that I think about it we ATE a lot in Sunday school.

But even as a wee tot, what I remember about our Hanukkah studies was all the blue. I thought it was a much PRETTIER holiday than Christmas (which I'm sure would have horrified him), and to this day I look forward to this beautiful blue week.

Later, when I was studying Russian in college, I was thrilled to learn that Ded Moroz - Grandfather Frost - their Santa-ish character - wore ultramarine blue for the most part instead of red. 

The fact is it's a graphically fetching time of the year, in addition to being a meaningful time of celebration.

When I got my pre-order with the teeny birthday candle punch in it, my first thought was that this would make a spectacular Hanukkah card. So I made it.

I punched 18 candles - 9 yellow and 9 blue, and then cut the flames off the blue ones and glued them to the yellow ones.

To space them evenly, I cut a 1/4" strip of cardstock and put it between the candles as I was lining them up against the silver glimmer paper strip. Worked like a charm.

I'm still working on my Christmas cards - I'm giving myself a fuzzy deadline of this weekend to get them finished and in the mail since I don't have any classes this weekend. Then it will be time for the final spritzing of the fruitcakes and then the big event!

I have a great recipe for you too - I made these for my customer appreciation party this weekend - I had two cups of dried tart cherries left from the fruitcake production, so I made cherry oatmeal cookies and they were divine - perfect for those freaky raisin haters out there!

Martha's Cherry Oatmeal Cookies

1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature

1 cup dark-brown sugar

1/2 cup granulated sugar (there’s a small chance I accidentally used a cup - and they were great!)

2 large eggs

1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

2 cups old-fashioned rolled oats

2 cups dried sour cherries

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line baking sheets with parchment paper; set aside. (These do NOT work on a non-stick cookie sheet - parchment is a must) In a medium bowl, whisk the flour, cinnamon, salt, baking soda and baking powder; set aside.
2. Beat the butter and sugars until light and fluffy, 1 to 2 minutes in your mixer with a paddle attachment. Add the eggs and vanilla, and beat to incorporate. Add flour mixture to butter mixture, beating on low speed to combine. Stir in the oats and dried cherries.
3. Drop the dough onto prepared baking sheets, leaving 6 inches between cookies. Bake until edges are just turning brown, about 20 minutes. Cool 2 minutes on baking sheet, then remove to wire racks to cool completely.

Now tomorrow there will be a big sale - so don't miss out! It's the year-end sale and it runs from December 10th - January 4th. Shop here using host code KS94EJ7F and get a Christmas card from me! :)

LoveyameanitHappyHanukkahbye.

In a Blink...

Have you ever had what feels like a little psychic flash about something? Like you knew someone was going to call you, or you knew what was going to happen next in a certain situation?

I have.

And I'm not psychic.

But I have always been good at pattern recognition (or that's what I call it), and if you see enough of a certain pattern, that turns into a pretty good prediction tool. And in some cases, I believe, it has kept me safe from a variety of things.

I finally read a book - Blink - that makes all that make sense, and explains some of the reasons that things click in your head before you even have a conscious thought about something - it's really interesting.

One of the things he discusses in Blink is an algorithm developed at Cook County hospital for diagnosing chest pain - the somewhat (at the time) controversial Goldman Algorithm. It involved limiting the amount of information doctors based their diagnosis on to the answers to just three questions. This meant elimination the other information usually collected by doctors examining patients with chest pain - things like age, weight, other conditions, etc.

The facts were that if two of the three factors in the algorithm were present, the patient was at high cardiac risk, and if they were not present, the patient was not. The problem the algorithm solved was that a doctor's decision in the COMPLETELY overwhelmed Cook County hospital at the time to declare a patient at high risk and unnecessarily treat them, putting truly critical patients at risk, was influenced by things that didn't matter - like age, weight and other conditions. The statistics didn't lie. The less information the doctors used to refer patients to the next level of care, the more people who needed treatment got it, and fewer patients who didn't, didn't.

Too much information can most definitely be harmful to clear thought. A few months inside any university will teach you that.

And those little flashes of "intuition" you have are really based on your ability to recognize patterns and utilize some unconscious processing your brain is always doing for you - thanks brain! I highly recommend this book, and I was already a big fan of Gladwell - I loved the Tipping Point and Outliers too. The audio version of Blink is actually read by the author, which always makes for a better book.

So when I sat down to make kits for my customers for last night's customer appreciation Christmas Party, I deliberately stopped myself from overthinking the project.

I was creating a little snowman from these adorable miniature mason jars, (Tim Holtz has some different style ones that are a little larger here)and I initially planned to have a nose, buttons, etc. But I thought about what MAKES a snowman, and it's really the hat, so I eliminated a few details and focused on the hat and the scarf. I didn't want to cover up the word "love" on the jars. So cute.

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I made the hat by cutting a brim, by nesting the 2.75" and 2.5" circle die framelits to make a donut from Basic Black Cardstock. These make the PERFECT brim - no adhesive needed - it rests on the edge of the lid. Then I cut a 7" x 1.25" piece of Basic Black and adhered it to the jar lid by running a line of Tear & Tape around the jar lid and adding more where the cardstock overlapped.

Take the circle you cut out of the donut and adhere that to the top of the hat by running a thin line of Tombow Mono-Multi around the top and gently setting the circle on - let it dry, and then tie a bow around the hat with the 1/8" striped ribbon (this comes in a package with red and green striped ribbon.)

To make the scarf, I just twisted some pom pom trim around his neck - and POOF - a perfect, sweet snowman with just the right amount of detail

The jar is filled with individually wrapped Pep-O-Mint Life Savers (you can get a GIANT bag at Target for $8). I didn't want unwrapped candy in the jar because, germs, but I think those white butter mints would be cute too, or mini marshmallows and then you could put it with a packet of cocoa for a nice coworker or teacher gift.

The jars are teeny - just 3" tall, and 4" with the hat on.

We really had fun making these, and ended the night with a great White Elephant gift round and food, drink and merrymaking.

Hope you all had a good weekend too and got some crafting in. This is one of those glorious, cool Texas fall weekends we get to enjoy before the cedar pollen sets in, so the kitties are very happy about all the open windows. 

 Loveyameanitbye.

An Open Letter To My Chemistry Teacher(s)

I write this with a heavy heart, even thinking about the trauma that my high school chemistry courses induced.

My first chemistry teacher was actually the cheerleading coach. She was the only person who I'm quite confident knew less than I did, or do, know about chemistry. And I harbor no ill will there - chemistry is poorly presented at BEST in public school in general. No one should or could have been interested in it at my high school in the year (redacted.)

I remember vividly (as does my poor father) dissolving into giggles that got me kicked out of class at the WORDS molality and molarity. My children's book-soaked brain could do nothing but conjure up images of tiny moles with pointy faces doing ridiculous things when I heard these words and I could no longer concentrate.

My second chemistry teacher (how did I last that long??) made a long speech by (insert your favorite politician here) seem FASCINATING.

I didn't stand a chance.

And then - far too late in my life - came Walter White.

Walter White was the FIRST person in my life who made me appreciate chemistry. No - he made me LOVE chemistry. If only my class had featured dissolving a drug dealer in an inappropriate container one of the examples - I might have become a scientist.

Unbeknownst to me, the cheerleading coach and the drone, I actually had already been well versed in chemistry prior to meeting Walter White through my art supplies - alcohol and water, alkyds, properties of salt + pigment, yada yada - but to me those were practical matters needed for my projects - not scientific or academic pursuits.

So this weekend, as I donned about 400 pairs of latex gloves to do all the turkey prep and food prep for the holiday, I was in frequent contact with the box of gloves. (I never cook without gloves - my kitchen could double as a makeshift surgical unit.)

The box says that petroleum products can dissolve latex.

A light went off.

Kristina Werner had told me that the latex polish barrier she had painted on my fingers before she did her awesome manicure was like "masking fluid for nails."

I had a paintbrush that I had used to apply masking fluid for this card that was 100% gummed up. But I couldn't bring myself to throw it away.

Everyone tells you to designate a paintbrush for masking fluid, but that doesn't really make sense to me because they are so gummy and gross you don't want to use them again. So I refused to give up on this brush. Stubbornly. Against my better judgement.

I soaked it in various solvents I had around my house (Murphy's Oil Soap, Goo Gone) and nothing worked. I still couldn't throw the little guy out. He had served me well. He was a nice, straight edged shader. I sort of loved him.

But when I reached for the millionth glove during turkey prep and saw the warning, I thought of my sad, gummy brush, and I SQUIRRELED off my turkey task to grab the brush, a tsp of Vaseline and a red solo cup. Side note - this is why dinner is never ready at a time that is acceptable to less artistic types. You've been warned.

I made sure the brush was totally coated in Vaseline and put the cup in my closet and forgot about it. Until today.

It's alivvvveeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!

OMG ALL the gum is gone and it's like a brand new brush!!!!

THIS is practical chemistry, my people.

THIS is interesting.

THIS is the opposite of charts and books and long speeches with molarity, molality, Avogadro's number and other natterings.

THIS is something that makes sense to me.

Give me more of this.

PS - you need to wash it in Dawn (Vaseline's mortal enemy, so technically the friend of latex, right? Or am I confusing Shakespeare and some chemist?  ) after this to restore its fluff.

PPS - if you have a latex allergy and can't use Tombow Mono Multi (it does contain latex), then try the new Fine-Tip Glue Pen, which is latex-free.

That's my revelation for the week.

And entirely unrelated to that, a frosted watercolor card for you today.

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I colored this card on Periscope if you want to watch how it comes together - and the first scope got interrupted by a phone call, so it's broken into two parts.

Here's Part I.




Here's Part II.

Hope you had a good Thanksgiving!

I'm off to learn more practical chemistry so that I can have a storage unit filled with cash.

I am the Danger. At least as far as masking fluid is concerned.

Loveyameanitbye.

Thank You!

I just wanted to say thanks today.

Your comments, your cards for my card drives, and just your presence here makes me happy. I appreciate you so much, and today is the perfect day to thank you for being awesome.

I hope if you're celebrating Thanksgiving today that it's peaceful and fun and FILLED with pumpkin pie, and no prohibited items like oyster stuffing.

If you're not celebrating Thanksgiving today - please know that the rest of us are sleepy and full and confused, so don't take us too seriously today.

Friday - we plan to choose the #OptOutside campaign started by REI and spend the day hiking off that turkey, and then, for me, it will all be about those Christmas cards for the rest of the weekend.

Yesterday - since you know how I feel like Christmas needs to stifle itself until after Thanksgiving, I decided to take my leftover Brusho sheets from yesterday's project and cut them up with the Take a Bough die from Concord & 9th - it makes SUCH cute trees. I thought the Brusho sheets would make a GORGEOUS fall tree, and they did. I haven't seen a fall tree with this die yet - I hope I'm the first person to think of this! It was a happy accident born out of the UFO pile on my desk :).

I will say that the one time of year that I miss New York is in the fall. We don't get this color here.

 I took a 1/8th skewer and rubbed Soft Suede Ink all over it with a paper towel, and then put the tree together according to their instructions, except leaving off the large branches, because my skewer was pretty short.

Then I drilled a shallow 1/8th hole in my wood slice, and filled it with wood glue and held my skewer in there until it set.

Then I covered the slice with Mono Multi and added Flower Soft.

Now shortly after this photo was taken, my kittiot - Splotchy - was discovered eating the top of the tree.

He's in the doghouse. I repaired it and it's now up high on a shelf, safe from marauding beasts.

(I am, however, also thankful for my marauding beasts. I love them, despite their bouts of crazy brain. )

Thanksgiving is really my favorite holiday. I look forward to it every year.

Did you know that it was a woman who petitioned the powers that be (Lincoln) to establish an annual day of Thanksgiving in America? Her name was Sarah Josepha Hale - and I'm betting she was a woman who appreciated a good pumpkin pie. It didn't become official until 1941 - but Sarah - my pilgrim hat is off to you! Thanks for getting that ball rolling!

Thanks for stopping by today and always.

Loveyameanitbye.

#ShareHandmadeKindness Week 4 - Strangers (And a Visit With Alex)

Remember Alex from Costco?

If not - you can read about his story and the kind things you all did for him here.

Since this is week four of the Share Handmade Kindess campaign Jennifer McGuire has running, and the focus this week is being kind to strangers, I had an idea.

I thought I would go up to Costco and tell Alex welcome back and ask him to do something for me.

He was so excited to see me and after we got all the hugging done, he told me he treasures that box of cards you all sent him. He described them as "works of art." I'm sure they were. You are amazing humans. He said to be in such a social job, and then go home to sit and watch awful daytime TV with no one to talk to is not really anything he'd wish on anyone, and so you brightened those days - thank you so much. He's getting around great.

I went into the store and bought small Costco gift cards, and put them into the cards I got from Jennifer at the beginning of the campaign (she handmade those, by the way - beautiful hand-foiled cards with great messages). I asked Alex as he was greeting people today to find a few who looked like they could use a fun surprise for their shopping trip. Most people  are hurrying trying to get things done for their Thanksgiving meals (I saw lots of carts with turkeys in them), and Thanksgiving isn't an inexpensive meal, really - so I thought a gift card from a stranger might be a fun outcome of Jennifer's challenge this week.

He was thrilled to do it, and we sealed up the envelopes and he stuck them in his pocket for the fun day ahead. After a selfie, of course. 

This week's challenge really speaks to me for a lot of reasons. I have a little sign I painted with my favorite verse on it.

Be not forgetful to entertain strangers: for thereby some have entertained angels unawares. ~Hebrews 13:2*

The ability to do something kind for someone who doesn't know who you are multiplies the magic, I think. The random act of kindness in a drive through, for example. The Art Abandonment Project is a great example of this too - and many times people come to the group to post that they've found a piece of art just at a very low moment in their lives, and that it made a difference. Think how that must feel!

As a person who has rescued every sort of bedraggled feral animal possible all her life, I believe that being kind to people or animals who have no ability to thank you is one of the most rewarding ways to make a change in the world.

So please do something for a stranger this week. Do whatever it is you can do to make the circle of light around you a little bigger. There may be a shadow that needs you. :)

Today, I'm using them to wish some strangers a happy Thanksgiving.

I used Brusho on a full sheet of Fabriano hot press watercolor paper and then cut it down. Then I die cut leaves from white panels with the Leaflets Framelits and put a card together. Here are the fronts and the backs, which I stamped with the Hero Arts A Bit of Kindness stamp (25% of the profit from the sale of these stamps is donated to the Kind Campaign) :

And here is one on a car - I put them out in the parking lot of the place I get my hair cut since I had an appointment today. I like putting them on the driver window because I don't always notice things people leave under my windshield wipers :).

Loveyameanitbye.

*PS - I knew I had this verse on my blog somewhere so I did a search while composing this post. Oddly enough it was three years ago to the day as I'm writing this. The spirit of Thanksgiving past.

9 AM Is Not Too Late For Tacos, Brian

So I was talking to Brian King this morning while I was on my way to get the traditional Sunday breakfast tacos.

He was mortified that we were being so Bohemian as to have breakfast tacos at such a late and slothful hour, so I justified myself by telling him about the 8 million other Bohemians in line in front of me - nearly every one of them with a dog in their car. Seriously - everyone that I saw this morning had a dog in their car - everyone at the Starbucks drive through and everyone at the taco drive through and many cars in between.

I wondered out loud what kind of strange looks I'd get if I packed up the cats every Sunday morning and just started driving around town with them looking out the windows at people.

Why are dogs considered normal car companions and cats are not?

It seems discriminatory.

Although, in reality, a cat would never sit in a seat and look happily out the window at passersby. It would scream like its soul was being sucked out by Voldemort, poop, barf and then shoot onto the accelator or under the brake, killing us all.

Perhaps I have answered my own question.

Today I'm playing along with the Global Design Project - CASE The Designer challenge - and the designer is the decidedly un-Bohemian early riser himself. The inspiration project from Brian is this cutie:

As you know, I'm not a red and green Christmas person, and I love holiday designs with aquas and reds instead. So, since I was already braving the frigid 41 degree temps this morning, I decided to take inspiration from Brian's frosty theme, and his beautiful color combo to make my card.

I like trying to use the images in a new way - my rebellious streak - so I used the berry images to create an emboss resist snow in the background. Then using a ruler and my Versamarker, I created an echo of a window shape to frame the bird in, and embossed those as well. I sponged the entire background with Pool Party and then used my MISTI to stamp the bird body from Joyful Season - first in Real Red, and then in Cherry Cobbler - I like the mix. With a blender pen and Tangelo Twist, I created a beak, and I used the blender and Cherry Cobbler to draw in an eye and the darker area near the beak. I didn't want the outline image of this two step stamp to break up the softness of the overall card so I just left it off. But I did want him to have legs, because otherwise that would have just been awkward, so I masked my finished bird, and again with the MISTI, I stamped the legs from the outline stamp image onto the bird. The glimmer paper snowflake is from the retired snowflake card dies. And because I'm in denial about Cool Caribbean being retired, that's the card base.

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I think this would make a fun card for winter birthdays too.

This was really fun to do, and a  nice Sunday diversion before I dived into part one of the annual Alton Brown Fruitcake ritual. This is a million dollar recipe, both figuratively AND literally - these organic dried fruits are expensive little suckers and you use quite a bit of rum and brandy. The whole process takes from now until Christmas, at which point these exquisite little gifts are ready to package up and make people happy.

My grandfather on my mom's side made amazing holiday treats - notably rum balls, which is to this day one of my favorite recipes, and one I have yet to share outside our family, like our closely guarded cheesecake recipe. And he LOVED fruitcake. I did not share his love though, because at that time, fruitcake was made with those hideous, gummy fluorescent candied "fruits" that sit in those plastic containers at the store, boring their evil into you while you're trying to buy oranges. I was always repulsed by those red and green sort of bitter, gummy things - WAIT - maybe THAT is why red and green give me the twitchies at Christmas!

Anyway, I never bonded with it. Until I watched the show where Alton Brown made this free range fruitcake. It has real fruit in it - and real fruit that I liked, and not jellied or dyed anything. Add cake and rum and brandy spritzing for a month and I am a total fruitcake convert! It's seriously amazing. If I can be converted, anyone can.

I make three full batches so that I can divide them into mini loaf pans for a precious few gifts.

We are doing our traditional handmade or re-gift only Christmas again this year, so a few lucky people will be getting these amazing cakes! And I try to mail at least one to a faraway friend each year.

Speaking of faraway friends - all my faraway friends can now get my newest online class - featuring the Reason For the Season bundle. I have some fun, surprising designs with this set that can be used all year - not just at the holidays - so even if you're done with holiday cards, you won't want to miss this. AND, this punch matches a NEW adorable stamp set you'll see in the Occasions Mini, so it's a great value.

Here's what the bundle looks like. And if you purchase the bundle from me, the class is free :).

Please feel free to play along with this challenge - and if you share your card in the Splitcoast gallery, please use keywords GDP and GDP012.

And don't forget - the Online Extravaganza starts today - and it's a great sale - get the details here. If you use host code SWQG4DAV when you are shopping you will be entered into a drawing to win a stamp set from the upcoming Occasions Mini! All orders of $30 and over are eligible!

Then go make yourself some fruitcakes! You will not regret it!

Loveyameanitbye.