Hi Mom, are you reading this?

This is a super exciting post for me today because it will be the first time my mom will be able to read it  from the comfort of her own home! YUP! This Christmas my brother and I got our parents online and I'm so excited!

I talk to my parents frequently but sadly not as often as I blog so having them 'connected' will keep them up to date on my crazy life at the touch of a button! The best part is that they are embracing it and loving it and that just makes me so happy. They have my number and I have offered myself up as their 7x24 support! And lucky for them, they won't even have to pay a support maintenance fee! Pretty sweet deal!

Personal excitement aside, I do have a card today! I know I've been laying low for the past several days but I was kind of carded out! Early Christmas morning hubby asked if I had cards for the boys and I said NO, give them a boxed one! How sad is that? I made close to 95 Christmas cards this year but didn't even make one for hubs and the boys! They all laughed it off but I hope to rectify it next year! You might equate me to a plumber who has leaky faucets in his house! Get my drift?

In my colouring hiatus I was feeling a little scrappy and decided  to create a scene with Stamping Bella's Artsy House as the focal image.

This is how I did it!

I started by stamping Atrsy House on a couple different papers and pieced it together after sponging the edges with distress ink. Then I stamped lulu KETTO's heart clusters on red patterned paper and cut some of them out to create the 'smoke' out of the chimney. Ketto was used again and I stamped tripletree on a piece of subtle green patterned paper (actually the same paper as the foreground grass) with versamark and embossed it with clear EP, then coloured in the open leaves with a black water based marker. Why water based? Because I could be sloppy and get it on the embossed portions and then just wipe it off the excess with a damp paper towel and not worry about staining the embossed portion. The trees were stamped again with black versafine on the same brown DP used for the roof of the house and I cut and pieced the trees together.

The rolling edge of the foreground grass was cut freehand, the fence is a Martha Stewart punch and the hills were cut from some cosmo cricket paper. The blue patterned paper was from my scrap drawer and I have no idea where it came from! The clouds are a Papertrey die and the I just love you sentiment is Stamping Bella but I can't find the link so it may have come as a sentiment with an image. I've emailed Emily so when I find out exactly where it came from I'll update the link.

Finishing touches include liquid applique doused with glitter on the clouds, glossy accents on the windows and heart on the door and a product from JudiKins called Speckles to give some texture to the foreground grass.

That it is! I had a lot of fun doing this card and i felt like I was piecing a quilt...don't get me started on quilting though...that is whole other passion that I won't get into here!

Later, Linda.