A Skylanders Themed Pop-up Card

So my niece's newest passion is Skylanders.  For her last birthday she received the new Skylanders Giants starter pack.  I always try to go with suggested gifts, as I am always happy with a sure thing.  So Skylanders it was and that meant a themed pop-up card to match.  

Now one of the nice things about doing a product themed card, is that there is tons of art online that you can print out.  Look for a high pixel count and watch the amount you enlarge the images.  In this case I went right to the downloadable images on the official website.  I am fairly sure that  using these images for a one off card, especially one that comes attached to a couple of the official products is ok.

Now in Skylanders, as far as I, an adult who does not play the game, can tell, the characters move around between islands, which hang in the sky, completing tasks and collecting treasure.  So my card is supposed to be one of these islands.  I've stuck on a couple of houses, which are made using one continuous piece of paper.  They are connected and form one v-fold mechanism.  I used a stamp from Local King Rubber Stamps to create the wood texture and one of their dies to cut the window and door elements.  A few old Prima paper flowers and Perfectly Pearls finish off the cute little window boxes.  Parallel fold mechanisms off of the valley folds of the glued down fronts of the houses hold up some rocks and and the mushroom character.

My niece enjoyed the card, the Skylanders much, much more.  Oh well, I had a blast making this.  I think it turned out very cute.

Tim Holtz Silhouette Die Card and Ornaments

When I first saw these cute dies, I thought I have got to have these.  They will work perfectly with family history themed scrapbook pages.  So I put my name on a list and then they came in and I brought them home and thought now what?  I want to use these little darlings now and not just put them away for some unknown nebulous later.

Fortunately, my mother-in-law's birthday was coming and I thought what the heck.  I used the dies to cut white artboard, which is a real favourite of mine.  Rather than the grey or brown chipboard we all know and love the white artboard is .... well, white.  This means you can use it as it is or colour it without worrying about how the underlying colour will change the outcome.  But, as soon as I popped one of the diecuts out of the die, CAMEO, popped into my head.  It looks just like a cameo.  Well, after that both the card and the two ornaments were easy.  I cut the ornaments out of black chipboard (you can also buy artboard in black).  The silhouettes on the ornaments were then covered in a few coats of UTEE.  Excuse the sparkles, all my embossing powders have some level of sparkle after a while.  Some ribbon and a gilding pen were all that was needed to finish these heirloom look ornaments.  Paper is a great way to get in on some of the current Christmas colour trends without spending a whole lot of money.  Have you seen some of the black and white trees this year?  These would be perfect.

The card was basically the same idea, without the UTEE.  I framed the black cardstock in gold mirror paper and then put the whole thing on some Basic Gray paper from my stash layered over black velvet paper.  A lovely elegant card for a lovely elegant lady.

A Shawl or How I Didn't have quite enough on my plate yet.

Every year my husband's company throws a lovely Holiday party.  Everyone dresses up and the season is ushered in in elegant style.  Usually there is much wringing of hands and gnashing of teeth on my part as I try to put together an appropriate outfit.  This year I bought a dress in the spring that I knew would be perfect, so that was taken care of a long time ago.  Shoes, which are my biggest challenge (blame really crappy feet), got knocked off the list at Ron White's Outlet Store closing sale.  I managed to update my dressy handbag rather easily.  All that was left to be done was a wrap.  My dress is navy blue lace and a black "pashmina" just doesn't look right.  So, in the midst of classes starting back up (lot's of latin translating) and my irrational need for a historically (sorta) correct Tudor outfit, I thought yes, what I really need to do at this particular point in time is to knit a lace shawl.  Something, I might add, that I have never done before.  The lace shawl part, not the knitting.

Check out all the knitty details at my project page over at Ravelry.





Yep, it's being blocked in the basement.

The pattern came from the All Knitted Lace blog.  I wasn't sure how easy this would be to complete in the 2 months I had given myself to do it, but I finished 1 1/2 weeks early.  I made a few mistakes, but the open lacy pattern is forgiving if you are not a perfectionist.  I have learned that perfection and finished can sometimes be mutually exclusive outcomes, so I always go for finished.  I can't wait to wear this.

Addendum:

Ooooh I loved wearing this!!!  So light yet warm and it went perfectly with my outfit!