It's amazing to me that our nephew turns 50 today! I remember well when he was born. After using the Ellen Hutson "HB2U" stamp for an earlier masculine card, I decide to give it another try using some different stamps in the set as well as different colors of Concord&9th papers.

The stars came from an old Simon Says set that arrived as part of Card Kit called "All Boy." I'm being more proactive about going through my stamp sets looking for smaller stamps that might work well with another set. I like these a lot. 

It's impossible to tell from the photographs, but I added just a touch of glitter to the tiny opening in each heart.

A favorite add-on to Photoshop Elements will no longer work with my computer. I recently got a new laptop when there wasn't enough memory to update to the latest operating system. It's a sneaky way to force you to upgrade even when you weren't planning to. It's proven to be worthwhile since my old laptop's battery ran way down during one of my Zoom/GoogleMeet meetings. This one barely notices. At any rate, I'm giving the RadLab replacement a trial run. It has more features, but has to be used (to the best of my knowledge) as a separate editing tool. I have mixed feelings about it, but it does streamline the editing process, and uses many of the same filters I was used to. I have a week to use it before purchasing, so I have some time to play around before making a decision.

We're head home from Wisconsin today. The virus is so rampant we considered driving straight through, but there's also the weather to contend with. It appeared two days ago we'd miss the snow, but it looks now that from eastern Pennsylvania to home might be a bit snowy. We'd rather not drive that in the dark, so we'll split the trip up into two parts. I had an email chat with a friend today, and admitted my Covid fatigue was increasing. She replied that she's now in Covid despair. I'm not quite there yet, but I do understand where she's coming from.

Each year when we're lucky enough to travel to celebrate Christmas with Sarah and her family, we're also able to celebrate with Caleb and Hannah when they celebrate their joint birthdays. And today was the day! It started early with (requested) scavenger hunts. Caleb asked for a challenging hunt, and his coded clues were definitely that. Hannah had photographic clues, and was very quick to identify the details in the photo to lead her to the next clue.

After lunch their good friend, Evie, and her parents arrived for cake and ice cream. It was a Harry Potter cake (another request). The 10 candles on the left are for Caleb, and the five on the right for Hannah.

Caleb is a huge fan of Super Heroes (and Harry Potter). The older Papertrey Ink set "Zappy Birthday" seemed like a good fit for his birthday card.

The coordinating paper pad, "Comic Strip" was the perfect background to which I added a variety of die cuts and stamped sentiments. Some of the die cuts were layered for dimensional, some adhered with dimensional tape, and I added a bit of  white glitter paper for the lightening bolt.

 The inside sentiment came from another older Papertrey Ink set. (Can't remember the name of the set; it's now retired.)

"Birthday Buds" by My Favorite Things has always been one of my favorite sets, so I pulled it out again to make a mini slimline card for Hannah.

I die cut the mini Polaroid frames by Mama Elephant, and added three of the cute animals colored with Copic markers.  The sentiments on each frame are from Papertrey Ink's "Birthday Balloons" and the patterned paper is also from Papertrey Ink. Six tiny stars were the last addition. 

The inside of her card features the hedgehog from the set with the very appropriate five candles with a greeting from The Greetery's "Sentiment Suite: Birthday."

It's been pretty dreary here, but luckily no significant snow as yet. Our trip home will be determined as much by the weather reports as anything else so I'm hoping there's nothing BIG on the way!

I always need to take a break from holiday crafting to make birthday cards for my brother and brother-in-law whose birthdays are just a week apart. Today is my brother's birthday. My mom always held off any Christmas decorating or celebrating until his birthday was over. I, of course, pay no attention to that at all! As I often do, I made two identical cards, using a new Ellen Hutson stamp, "HB2U," that arrived as a freebie during one of her recent sales.

It's clearly a CAS design and definitely hits the "masculine" factor, but with different colors and a few embellishments, the design could easily be adapted for a woman. The inks and the papers are all from Concord & 9th–Dove, Stardust, and Midnight.

I used my favorite layering dies from Gina K's Master Layout #1 to cut the layers for the card. 

I'll definitely be revisiting this design by trying out some different color combinations!

Back to holiday crafting for a few more days. I have all the international cards in the mail, but the domestic ones have yet to leave the house.

It's been a busy weekend. In addition to Thanksgiving which we celebrated at Tracy's mom's, we also celebrated Ella's 7th birthday. Ella invited two of her friends and two of Skylar's friends to join them and the rest of the family for a petting zoo party. Ella has only attended one birthday party since the pandemic started, and her friend also had a petting zoo. She immediately knew what she wanted for her party. The two women who brought the animals to the party (celebrated in the garage), were wonderful, helping all of us hold, pet, enjoy, and learn about a nice variety of animals. Here's a collage of a few of them.

Ella petting the goat, the cutest hedgehog, Skylar with the boa
The girls checking out the armadillo, a chinchilla (the softest fur ever), Ella holding a bunny
Skylar with the fox, a prairie dog, one of two long-haired bunnies

And here's the birthday girl, all decked out for the big event! Ella is our glitter girl. Her mask was covered in sequins. 

Knowing that, I made my first infinity shaker card, filled with glitter and sequins. 

Thanksgiving was also lovely. We celebrated at Tracy's mom's for the first time. She's no longer able to negotiate stairs, and my sister-in-law's home has many steps to get into her house. There were eleven of us, and as always, the food was delicious and far too plentiful. I took zero photos—not the first time I've neglected to get my phone out at a family gathering.

I also have a couple of Christmas cards to share. I shared these on Instagram a week or so ago, but blog writing has fallen to the wayside with all the activities, Christmas card making, tutoring, and trying to organize and decorate for next holiday. Early this month, I enrolled in the Online Card Class: Holiday Cards 2021 even though I knew I'd be in Wisconsin for the first week of it. I watched all the videos, and once I got home I worked on some of the techniques. The infinity shaker card was also featured in the class. 

The lesson for these cards was taught by Jennifer McGuire who challenged us to make our own patterned paper using strips of cardstock. I opted to use strips of striped patterned paper from Sunny Studios, and I'm pleased with the way they turned out. I used a Christmas card die from Papertrey Ink and got 2 cards for each cut as you'll see below.

After die cutting the opening for the striped Christmas tree, I was left with the tree itself. I decided to use a gold metallic oval to create gold "ornaments."

I also used tips from the card class to make multiples of both of these, ending up with 12 Christmas cards for my stash. This week looks to be another busy one. I'm almost done with the Christmas cards, but nearly all of them still need inside sentiments. Hoping to get the international cards in the mail later this week. Sometimes it takes 2-3 weeks for them to arrive. It's hard to believe December is just two days away!

It's Halloween, and I can't think of a better place to be than with grandchildren who are SO excited about going Trick or Treating! Sarah and her family moved to a fabulous neighborhood with lots of kids. Both Caleb and Hannah have good friends just down the street. I've shared a couple of Halloween cards here and here, but made five more for the grandchildren. We gave the three girls their cards and Halloween gifts before we left.

I made four different cards, creating two of the same for Hannah and Ella. It's thanks to my crafty friends that I had a huge pile of die cuts to choose from when it came time to create the cards.

Aside from the sentiments the cards are just the same—Royal Purple (Simon Says) cardstock splattered with silver metallic paint and layered onto a cardbase of Orange Zest (PTI). The silver glitter paper is several years old and came from a cute shop in Milwaukee. I used a clear glitter pen to add glitter to the cats which you can see better here. The cat and the moon are from PTI's "Boo Black Cat" set. 

I also wanted all the cards to have some kind of interactive feature. The cats have a wobbler behind them. Try as I might, I never got a very good photo, but when Ella opened her card at home she "wobbled" the card, and I got a better photo,

Next up is Maddy's shaker card. 

I started by ink blending the Pretty Pink Posh "Spider Web" stencil on Bristol paper. I die cut the letters with the Pinkfresh Studio "Adore" alphabet, backing it with acetate and filling it with a variety of sequins and tiny stars.

I found the cute spider sticker from "la petites" at Hobby Lobby. 

Skylar's card was a spinner card. I made this one twice trying to get the spinner to work effectively. I now know what kind of thread I need to make it work even better than it did. 

Putting a greeting inside the card proved to be tricky, too, since I didn't want it to show through the opening for the spinner piece. In the end, it worked out really well. The ghosts are die cuts from Poppy Stamps and the greeting from The Stamp Market's "Halloween" set. The patterned paper is from an old 6X6 pad by American Craft. 

Last, but not least, is Caleb's card which I thought would appeal to a nine year old boy.

The center ghoul on the card is mounted on the card with a large Wobbler like the black cat  cards above, There's a narrow strip of patterned paper from the same paper pad behind the three ghouls from Papertrey Ink's "Grins and Ghouls." 

I found the perfect sentiment in an old Papertrey Ink Make-it Market kit, "Halloween Pin-ups" which was die cut with an Essential Oval by Ellen Hutson. A slightly larger oval from My Favorite Things "Black and White Stripes" served as a mat.

Yesterday, one set of neighbors arrived to carve pumpkins on the back porch so we have a set of jack-o-lanterns to decorate the front porch tonight. It's going to be a chilly evening for Trick 0r Treating, but thankfully, it's not raining or snowing!

Hope you have a great Hallow's Eve!