Okay, so I didn’t really go anywhere, but I took a few weeks off from this place.  Life got pretty full between holiday stuff, the kids’ school commitments, and a bushel of illnesses that washed through the house.  And when I say a bushel, I mean a UTI we couldn’t kill, two waves of the stomach flu and a fever that no one could explain that lasted for a week (and three of them happened to just the middle child).  Ugh.  And if you are wondering, yes, I did spend a large amount of my time aways, cloroxing my entire house.

And then there was the kids being off school, which I love, but it doesn’t make a lot of extra time.  Christmas was wonderful, and I have all kinds of new toys to play with at my art table.  Oh the fun of exploration.

The other thing lately is a lot of the card crafting challenges I enjoy working with have taken a break for the holidays and will pick back up with the new year.  Yeah.  A new year to do new things.  (And I won’t lie to you, I am rather happy to move on from Holiday Cards.  It seems the only thing I have focused on lately, so I am excited to branch out.)

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So I mentioned that a lot of challenges are taking a break these few weeks around Christmas, well, the group over at Color Throw Down, didn’t take off for the holidays, they just loosened the paramaters of their challenge and extended the time frame for it.  Here they are asking for any christmas creation in any colors.  So much for looking forward to non-holiday cards.

Well, actually I need a bunch of holiday thank you cards to send people who did nice things for us, so a couple more xmas themed cards won’t hurt anyone.

Here I decided to recreate one of my favorite cards of the season, the eggnog xmas tree.  Here is the original card…

Now I knew I didn’t really need the Christmas sentiment, and I wanted to change things up a bit, so off I went.  I taped out a triangle for a tree, and stamped out my eggnog glasses from Paper Smooches Let’s celebrate stamp set, and colored them in using my EB1 and EB2 Spectrum Noir markers.  I added the little holly stamp from some random pack of stamps and colored them.

Now Santa was really good to me this year (or at least my husband), and got me the only thing really on my wish list, a Sizzix Big Shot Cutting/Embossing Machine.  (If you are wondering I’m in love with it.)  So I knew I had to use my new toy.  I cut out a banner (so much fancier, and easier then doing it by hand), and blended in some Distress Pine Needles ink.  I stamped out the sentiment from the Let’s Celebrate stamp pack, added a few brads and Distressed the edges with the same pine needle ink.  Yes, I love this card almost as much as the original, but then again who doesn’t love eggnog.

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The other challenge I participated in today, was my one of my favorites, Friday Mashup.  They have moved on from the Santa holidays and moved onto the vision of next year.  Today, they are asking for us to mash-up the colors Black, Silver, and Gold as well as a New Year theme.  Fun, right?

So in all this time of not having a die cutting machine, the one things I’ve always longed to do, is cut out multiple sentiments, and stack them to make a delicate, raised sentiment.

So I knew that was going to be where I started with for this card.  Luckily, the big guy (my husband, not santa) got me a few dies to go with my machine, including a ‘celebrate’ die cut from My Favorite Things.  For giggles I cut out a few more squiggles from a Sizzix die pack glittery gold paper (I am amazed at how well this thin flimsy paper cut in the Big Shot).  I pulled out my Paper Smooches Let’s Celebrate stamp pack and loaded up the solid champagne glass with gold pigment ink.  After all

what says New Years more than champagne.  I added the bubbles with silver pigment ink and called it a day. I wish I could photography how sparkly the card is, but I think I managed to capture a glimpse of its shin.

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So if I forgot to wish my one reader a Merry Christmas, here it is, and I hope your holidays were filled with love and joy, family and friends.  As we look to the next year, here’s hoping all your dreams are bright.   Remember a new year allows the possibly for anything.  Here is hoping we know how to reach for it.