2019 brought about a chance to do some custom pieces for people, including 2 sets of wedding invitations, gift tags for a clothing shop, wedding shower invitations, thank you cards, wine tags, and wine Christmas cards. These are some of my favourite custom pieces from this year:

Floral Bliss Wedding Invitations

MountainTots Collaboration

My Cup of Tea

Plantable Paper:

Plantable Simple Things

Daisies

Layered Stamps:

Baby Banner

Stencil:

It Is Christmas In The Heart...

Die Cut Scenes:

Mountain Baby

Happy 2nd Birthday

I really worked on my picture taking skills this year to better showcase my cards. I have tried to have more of a consistent background (my white distressed crate from Kootenay Crate), take photos in natural light, and stage them with items to make the card stand out. I developed a watermark that I put on all of my photos and have come to utilize Instagram more when sharing my cards. Here are a couple of my favourite stagings this year:

Namaste

Sending A Warm Hello

Painted Tags

Bonus Picks:


This year marks 5 years of participating in Plastic Free July. This post contains a collection of changes I have made over the years to lead a more waste-free, healthy lifestyle.

I almost forgot to post my last Christmas card that I made this year! I got these beautiful sprigs from The Greetery and couldn't wait to see them arranged in the mason jar I already had. I created a green Christmas hue behind the arrangement with some pine needles distress oxide ink and layered it all onto a Nordic die with a navy card base.

I was asked a little while ago to make some wine themed Christmas cards to sell at a local wine making shop called Kootenay Wine Works. I made some tags earlier as well that were similar to some I made this fall. I am loving this fun Christmas wine sentiment from Two Lips Stamps and used it for my cards and tags. For the card, I painted a wash of iced spruce distress oxide ink over a snowy stencil from The Greetery. I stamped the wine bottle and sentiment in archival black ink and then used my Tombow markers to create a watercolour look.




Here are the tags that I made:

I finally had a chance to play along with Tracey McNeeley's 25 Days of Christmas Tags! I have loved waking up each morning to check out that day's inspiration. I was very inspired back on Day 11 with Studio Katia designer, Liliya Rystar, with her white and gold tag on kraft. Here is my version:

I have enjoyed making applesauce for years, but I am so happy to make it for my two-year old son now, who thoroughly enjoys it! Making applesauce is really quite simple and does not take a lot of time, especially if you do it in small batches. You get the best taste when you mix varieties of apples. I like to do about 10 pounds of apples at a time and process it in a water bath to make it shelf stable. This recipe uses no added sugar (because apples are tasty enough!) so I can feel good about giving it to my son to enjoy when he needs a healthy snack.

It is Christmas in the heart that puts Christmas in the air 

- W.T. Ellis

Isn't that a beautiful sentiment? I thought it fit perfectly with this gorgeous layered tree from The Greetery set amidst a snowy background. I used my new blender brush from Studio Katia with this stencil and cannot believe the difference and the ease with which I am able to create such a beautiful background! I even had to add a touch of white to my inside for my sentiment :).

This quote from The Grinch is one of my favourites and seems to ring more true for me each year. I love to make tags with this stamp set, but I thought I would also make up some cards with it, too. I decided to use the beautiful stencils from The Greetery to surround the words and thought I would create a gingham design for my envelope. I used Evergreen Bough distress oxide ink for both the card and the envelope. I used the new blending brushes from Studio Katia and cannot believe the difference they make!

I couldn't help but be inspired during the latest Studio Katia release! This half striped cover die is so fun to play with! I was especially inspired by design team member, Ilda, to cut the stripes out twice so that they spanned the entire card. I decided that a silver and gold combo might look especially nice and love how it turned out! These cards and more will be available this Thursday, November 21 at Lane & Meadow! Come check out their Very Merry Christmas Party from 5-8pm!

Here is a card I recreated similar to one I designed last fall. You can view my original version here. For this card I decided to do a sentiment inside the card and use a plaid banner along with the navy. Instead of popping up the beer image I decided to keep it flat amidst a blue hue. I coloured the beer mug with my Tombow markers this time and used some distress watercolour paper.

As I have mentioned, I was greatly inspired by the styles of the highly talented Dawn McVey and Heather Nichols during The Greetery release at the beginning of October. I couldn't help but try out my own version with this set and recreate the stunning photo by Dawn. I decided to make these in sets of 5, so my last version is in the photo below. I reached my goal for having 100 Christmas cards ready for the Kimberley Makers Market this weekend!



Christmas Card Count: 82 + 20 = 102

It's the Fall/Winter 2019 Coffee Lovers Blog Hop and I managed to fit in time for a card amidst all of my Christmas market prep! I coloured up these pumpkin spice lattes awhile ago when we were in Vancouver. It was pretty handy to have them all ready to go! I inked up a flappable envelope stencil from The Greetery to create a gingham pattern with some ground espresso ink. While I am not a coffee fan, I absolutely love coffee stamps and making coffee cards! I used The Paper Players layout to create this card and thought about adding a sentiment to the bottom once it was all assembled but thought it would be too busy with all the words in the background from the amazing Echo Park papers. Check out the closeup of the coffee sayings. "Pour Some Sugar On Me - Coffee" is definitely my favourite, what's yours?

I wanted to make some cards with these poinsettias from The Greetery that did not necessarily need to be used for Christmas. I kept the sentiments to just "warm wishes" and "just for you". I also wanted to try out the poinsettia envelope stencil to pair with these cards. I couldn't decide which colour I liked best - aged mahogany or festive berries!

Here is my first set of cards that I made using the beautiful poinsettia arrangement from The Greetery. I used a bunch of coordinating Close To My Heart colours to achieve this beautiful layered look. I couldn't help but try out this colour combination used by the talented Heather Nichols during the release on the lovely toffee cardstock from Taylored Expressions.


Christmas Card Count: 74 + 8 = 82

Can you tell how much I am loving this paper collection yet?! I decided to make up some simple Christmas cards to add to my stash with this gorgeous paper and a stamp set from the Close To My Heart holiday catalogue. I am linking up with the "anything goes" challenge over at Heart2Heart.


Christmas Card Count: 64 + 10 = 74

It's my baby's 2nd birthday today! I wanted to make him a special birthday card so I pulled out some of my Lawn Fawn favourites. My goal was to create a scene similar to our yard. Harvey gets very excited these days watching the deer in our yard. We have some beautiful poplar trees all over our yard amidst a mountain view so I tried to recreate that with these Lawn Fawn die cuts. I'm pretty happy with how this card turned out :).

Here is the birthday invitation I designed this year for my son's 2nd birthday. I really wanted this picture to take place outside but the light that day really threw off these colours and editing does not seem to help! Oh well, I still love how the invitation turned out :). I have learned that it is much more practical for me to enjoy making one elaborate invitation and take a picture to send out to everyone to invite.

Halloween does not have to be an event riddled with tons of waste. Here are a few ways that you can go green this Halloween.

Costumes

Candy

Candy can be one of the most wasteful components of Halloween with all of the tiny wrappers that are often non-recyclable. Consider buying candy in bulk at places like Bulk Barn if you are giving to family and friends. Here, you can bring in your own reusable containers. Another option could be bringing your own containers to your local chocolate shoppe to save on the packaging. For younger children, you could even skip the candy altogether and go for a Halloween themed book. Below are a couple of options through affiliate Amazon links.

Trick-or-Treat Bags + Baskets

 

Some stores, like Save On Foods, are even offering reusable Halloween bags with grocery purchases this month. These can be used for trick-or-treating and then as grocery bags during the rest of the year. Other options include using a pillowcase or making your own fabric bag.