Hello Stampers!
Today I am sharing a video on how to make this special Valentine card for the special person in your life. This one is for my husband…lucky guy! 🙂
What makes this Valentine so unique is it comes in a box, and when you remove the lid, the card pops up out of the box.
Adorable! And it is really easy to make.
I hope you enjoy your visit today! Until next time…
Happy Stamping!
Hello Stampers!
Hope all of you are doing well and are almost ready for Christmas! I am mostly ready. All of my gifts are wrapped and most of my Christmas food shopping is done. I am a first generation Italian, so we always do a version of the Feast of the Seven Fishes on Christmas Eve. We usually have deep-fried smelts and pasta with calamari for dinner. I’ve never prepared seven fishes. The most we usually have are four, but this year only three. My third fish is cold shrimp cocktail as part of our appetizer.
Another traditional food we have on Christmas Eve is a soup made of chestnuts and garbonzo beans. Christmas Eve is a day of fasting from meat for Italian Catholics so that is one reason why we always have fish. My mother was always very strict about adhering to this No-Meat rule. But I’ve bent the rules a little and serve our traditional Christmas day antipasto on Christmas Eve, because that is when ALL of our family is gathered. I do the antipasto again on Christmas day, but on a smaller scale. What does my antipasto consist of? Well let’s see…there are usually two to three different kinds of cheese; blue, fontinella, and sharp provolone. There is sliced salami, pepperoni, and prosciutto. There are black olives, green olives, wrinkled black olives (Greek Olives) and sometimes smoked salmon and anchovies. After the antipasto and soup, when the third course rolls around, people are usually too full and I have tons of pasta left over!
It is a great feast, but a lot of work to prepare. I will begin on December 23rd when I clean the calamari (squid) and begin making the meatless sauce for our pasta. We will also begin to prepare the antipasto platters. My son has promised he will come to help. On the 24th he will arrive early so we can begin deep-frying the fish. He is my biggest helper in getting ready for Christmas Eve dinner. It usually takes several hours. On the 24th I will also prepare the soup. Family will begin to arrive around 4:00 p.m. By 5:00 p.m. we will begin dinner. I used to try to do a sit-down dinner with real china for 14 adults, but this year I’ve decided the only real dishes we will use are wine glasses. It doesn’t taste right in a plastic cup. The rest is paper and plastic and will be buffet style this year!
What is traditional in your family for Christmas?
Enough about food! If you are like me, there is always that one last-minute gift that you need to get ready. I’m going to share a few of my last-minute gifts with you that will only take 15 minutes max to get ready.
The first is another bar of soap. Back on July 11th I shared a video called Decorator Bath Soap and Box or something like that. In the video I mentioned that it would be neat to decorate a bar of soap for Christmas. That is just what I did! I chose a bar of Ivory soap because of its color; white. A good color for Christmas. The link for the pattern for the soap box is here.
My second last-minute gift is a tree ornament that uses up all of my 3/8″ Glitter Ribbon Combo Pack plus the Pool Party 3/8″ Glitter Ribbon from this year’s Occasions Catalog. Unfortunately, the Pool Party ribbon is retired. It was easy to make. Just take the top off the ornament, and start feeding the ribbon…all three at once…into the ornament. Replace the top, tie a bow and your are done!
My last last-minute gift is a gift that I got started a few months ago. My husband and I made our own Limoncello (pronounced limon-chello) from a recipe I got from friends in Italy when I visited in 2006. It has taken me this long to try it! I tasted it while I was there and it was delicious. If you are not familiar with it, Limoncello is made from the zest of lemons, pure alcohol and a sugary syrup. It is traditionally made in Southern Italy, especially around the Gulf of Naples. It is served ice-cold by the shot glass. You wouldn’t want to drink more than that at one sitting. There are many recipes and I got this one from our friends that live about an hour northeast of Rome. I made tags for the bottles that I plan on giving to several people.
And…if you are interested…here is the Limoncello recipe! You can email me for the translation! 🙂
I hope you enjoyed your visit today. Until next time…
Happy Stamping!
Hey Stampers!
I have another video tutorial for you today. You can tell that I am still getting over a cold that I got last week. I spent three days on the couch last week and even took a nap on my bed one day. I never do that! Fortunately, I am feeling a lot better but there is still a little congestion.
I got the inspiration for this card and box on Pintrist. I have to admit that I would have never thought of using the Floral Phrases Thinlits and the Botanical Builders Framelits dies for Christmas cards. But I REALLY like the way these turned out. As I mention in the video, the card is decorated exactly as you would the box. So I only go over creating and decorating the box in this video.
I hope to have another Christmas gift video for you in the near future.
Before I forget, check the very bottom of this post to see this month’s special offer from Stampin’ Up! Ooooooo…you are gonna love it!
Hope you enjoy!
Until next time…
Happy Stamping!
Printable PDF tutorial is here.
Hello Stampers!
I hope everyone is doing well. We are having a BEAUTIFUL autumn here in Colorado Springs. The weather is warm and the colors are magnificent. They along with the colors on the Paisley & Petals Specialty Designer Series Paper have inspired me for the cards I am sharing today.
I’ve been working on this set of three tutorials for these three Fall cards for about a week and thought it was time to share it with all of you. I’ve used two of my favorite stamp sets; Paisleys & Posies and Vintage Leaves.
Just a minor editing note: I forgot to flip the third video so you wouldn’t have to watch me work upside down. 🙁 I realized this AFTER I deleted my raw footage. Sorry. If that bothers you, you could always do a little yoga and stand on your head while you watch. 🙂
As always, there is a printable tutorial for you to download at the end of this post. I hope you enjoy watching and making these cards as much as I did.
Here is the link for the printable tutorial!
Until next time…
Happy Stamping!
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