We have been busy stamping and scrapping all year and before we take a week off, we are going to show you what we have been creating for our friends and families.

Hoping you will find a last minute inspiration for a card.

by Jolene Johnston

by Jaine Drake

by Els Brigé

by Agata Pfister

gift card holder by Sue Sykes

card and details by Wendy Morris

cards by Linda Abadie

by Marsha Valk

by Janet Zeppa

by Isolde Pyncket

We wish you and your families a peaceful and very merry Christmas and a happy and crafty 2012. Keep stamping!

Best wishes from the myStamp BOX team,

Thanks for joining me at the 12th and final day of our 12 Days of Christmas.  I have a 12 frame photo display to share today.

On both pictures you see our daughter. The bottom picture was taken last year, while she was posing in front of the tree. On the top photo she was  trying to open her present two years ago . I used two stamp sets on my display. For the big Merry Christmas sentiment I did some white embossing with the Royal Flush alphabet stamps. All the other stamped elements are from the HoHoHo set, which I simply adore.

I hope you enjoyed our 12 days of Christmas and found some inspiration for your own (holiday) crafting. Thanks for joining us!

On the 8th day of Christmas my true love gave to me………yes I am singing! LOL!

Okay I will get to the crafting in stead. I decided to make some gift tags using some little tags from our product partner Canvas Corp. They are just the right size to put on my Christmas gifts.

I stamped the little stars from Deck the Halls with Versamark and heat embossed, and then my sentiments were stamped using the Ho Ho Ho set.

I think they turned out so cute!!

Welcome to day 4 of our 12 days of Christmas and for my day I’ve chosen to make four tags featuring the adorable Santa Image from the  Hohoho stamp set.  It may be Christmas but I still managed to sneak in my favourite turquise colour using embossing powder on the snowflakes (Let it Snow ).  I used Rusty Hinge Distress ink and Santa Baby spray ink on the background along with the embossed snowflakes.  A touch of red at the top and bottom and dear old Santa coloured with Promarkers.

Happy 4th day of Christmas everyone.

One of the best times of the year is the time leading up to Christmas, when we get to light candles, bake cookies and keep many secrets. As a kid I always have had an advent calendar, made by my grandmother. It was mostly filled with sweets.

Our boys still enjoy their calendars and don’t seem to outgrow them. For this advent I made a family calendar which will be hanging in the kitchen. For every day between today and December 24th, we will be adding one mini ornament to the Christmas tree, until it is fully decorated.

For the tree I chose different colour card stock, cut it into organic shapes and assembled the tree. I stamped it with zipper and zigzag stamps from “Repeat after Me” in brown, then smeared brown and green inks and white acrylic paint all over the tree. I punched 24 holes and added 24 gold brads which will be holding the ornaments.

The background was cut from a piece of gardening burlap and stamped with white snowflakes (“Let it Snow”) and acrylic paint. I added green and white acrylic paints and the word “advent” at the bottom.

For the ornaments I chose a selection of our Christmas stamps from several stamp sets and used brown ink on shrink plastic. The images were cut out, hole punched and shrunk. A small wire was added and they were ready to be hung!

The whole project took about 3 hours from start to finish.

Come and see the fully decorated tree on December 24th on our blog!

Until then enjoy our 12 DAYS OF CHRISTMAS projects coming up in the next days! We will have some very decorative and festive ideas in stock for you!

Happy Stamping,

Love,

I had a lot of fun putting this Santa together. To add to the magic of this character I put some Distress Stickles to his beard and hair, which unfortunately don’t show up very well in this picture.

How cute is this reindeer, ha? I just love it! I’ll definitely be using this one on a lot of my cards this year. I couldn’t resist adding a red gem to his nose. I stamped the reindeer onto the patterned paper first, and then started building layer after layer.

And last but not least, Santa’s sleigh all geared up. In case you were wondering about it, the bells of the reindeer and of the sleigh are also paper pieced. All papers are from Prima’s North Country 6×6 paper stack.

Now it’s your turn!  If you make something with paper piecing, link your creation up, so we can come and take a look at it.

Check out these bookmarks I created using the Deck the Halls and Ho Ho Ho stamp set.

Love the Santa in the Ho Ho Ho set.  He is so easy to color in and glitter up.  I even used some old fashion snow that sparkles for his beard.

Here is a close up.

Love this simple design using the Ho Ho Ho word stamp and star from the Deck The Halls set.

Thanks it for me everyone!  Have a super day and a wonderful holiday.  Enjoy!

Kristen here with a beautiful and vintage inspired tag set for you.

Since I have the honor of being day 3, I thought I would make a set of three tags for you.

First, the stamp set I have used on my cards is the  HoHoHo set.

This set is very versatile,  I bet you would never have thought to use it to make these vintage looking tags.

I have mixed two collections of paper- using Graphic 45 and Making Memories Noel collections. I also added in some embellishments such as seam binding, buttons, twine, glittered chipboard from K&Co,  pearls and velvet holly leaves.

I hand cut a Christmas tree and popped it up, along with adding a hand drawn stitch line around the paper. I also punch some scallops and added them to the sides. Along the bottom I added my Christmasy HoHoHo stamp in a tea dye color, and cut out and pop dotted the stamped saying.

Next I created this second tag, mostly using strips of paper, then I added a scallop piece of kraft circle, topped with some more paper.  With that I tied a large double bow with my seam binding ribbon and topped that with a button. I added the deer and glittered tree to the card as well. Again,  in tea dye color ink, I stamped the words Jingle Bells onto a strip and put it across the tag, I added two little cream color pearls as well.

Lastly I made this Twas the Night tag, again, still using the HoHoHo set, and some tea dye color ink, I stamped the sentiment and cut it out. I layered several strips of patterned paper ( all of this paper was scraps!) and I  hand drew on some stitching on the word block. I popped it up and put it on my tag. I then made an accordion with paper, and glued on a glittered ornament topped with some crinkled seam binding and a matching button. I also added a star chipboard towards the bottom of the tag.

I hope you have enjoyed my christmas tags, I wish you all a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!!

Can you tell that we are slowly getting into the Christmas spirit? If you are working on your cards, check out our great Christmas stamp sets. These are great for layouts, cards and tags!

card by Kristen Swain

cards by Stephanie Ackermann

layout by Allison Cope

card by Cari Locken

layout by Maryfrances Fabbri

cards by Agata Pfister

Window decoration by Jaine Drake

tag by Melissa Wright

card by Jolene Johnston

tag by Eva Pizarro

Have a wonderful (american) Thanksgiving weekend, enjoy your family and friends!

Next week (Dec 1st) we will start our 12 days of Christmas showcase with 12 different Christmas projects. Lots of inspiration and great ideas to look forward to!

Happy stamping!

I created this card, reusing some canvas from a tote bag that I no longer needed.  I cut the canvas into a rectangle, then pulled some of the threads on the sides to frame out the print. Then I inked my stamp up really well with Staz-On ink, and stamped it in the center. I used the HOHOHO Stamp set . I then took some sharpie markers and colored in the santa. Red for his suit, black for his gloves, boots and belt, and pink for his face.

I also stamped the words HOHOHO stamped onto a scrap piece of paper. I cut three mats out of Echo Park Christmas papers, and layered them. I then added some twine wrapped around the image and mats, and added it all to my card blank. I added a few Pebbles Candy Dots to finish my card.

This is just the basic start of a card, you could add petalsoft or fabric paint, glitter, puff paint and more to really dress up your stamped images.

Now, for the challenge!!   Since Christmas is so near, I challenge you to create with red. pink and white.  See what you can come up with in that candy cane color scheme!

First off, don’t forget about the wonderful Blog Show going on with Core’dinations this week! Check out Monday’s post for some awesome inspiration and a give-a-way

I don’t know about you but when I am making cards, I am always working on the front first and placing my sentiment on the outside. Today I want to challenge you to put your sentiment on the inside.

Here is the inside of my card with the sentiment stamp…Of course I am using my FAVORITE Holiday stamp, HO HO HO…

Here is a little challenge for you all.  Now, anyone with a little girl can take this one of super quick.  Create a layout using the image below as a color inspiration.  Check out my take on the challenge and then link us to yours in your post.  Have fun and Enjoy!!

Here is my layout using the following myStamp Box stamps,  HO HO HO.

I also used some KiKi Art paper and Helmar Scrapdot adhezive and tape runner.  Both of these fabulous companies are product sponsors for myStamp Box….how fun!

Here is a close up of the dimension I got from the scrapdots and also the fun grey lines paper that worked so well with my color inspiration.  I cut the word stamps apart from the stamp set and created a jumble of Christmas words and then stamped my background…they work AWESOME!

Enjoy the challenge everyone…I look forward to checking out what you come up with.  Have a super day!

Are you enjoying your summer?  Well, I am and I was organizing my stamps the other day and came across my Ho Ho Ho stamps and I got all sentimental when I realized how much I used these over and over last Christmas so I had to put them to work!

Don’t limit yourself to just layouts and cards when it comes to stamping! Take them off the page and bring them to life with a fun gift for a friend. You could easily make this into a gift card holder for a birthday or any other holiday.

Here is a close-up so you can see the stamp tucked in there….

Make sure you grab yours in the store now to get ready for your Holiday…it’ll be here before you know it!

Have a great weekend!!!

Well wasn’t this a month for spectacular projects & ideas. I know I was seriously inspired!!!!! Today I thought I would show you what I created for everyone around me this year for the holidays. A perfect hostess gift…say for a New Year’s party, or a birthday, or in the photos I will show you a teacher’s gift.

Here’s what you can do:

Buy a cute little jar, I like these ones that have a nice closure, a quaint size. You can usually pick these up at a dollar store, or in this case the Superstore. I took Staz On Ink and the myStampBOX, Let It Snow… set and stamped all over the image. I also put the Kaisercraft bling in a few of the snowflake centers. Just for an added touch. Then I created tags by spraying the with glimmer mist, drawing a little doodling around the edges and then putting stamped out images on the tag, raising them with pop dots. I used myStampBOX, Santa’s Tags &  HOHOHO. LOVE this set. seriously! I coloured in the images with copic markers.

So do you want the yummy body scrub recipe?

2 cups sea salt, kosher salt, or white sugar. Salt will be slightly more abrasive than sugar. (I actually prefer 1 cup coarse salt, 1 cup sugar)
1 cup sweet almond oil. Grapeseed and olive oil are also excellent choices for oils. 10-30 drops of cosmetic-grade and/or high quality essential oils of your choice. Lavender is suitable for most skin types. A covered, plastic container for mixing and storage.

Now you can keep reinventing this recipe to suit your needs. For the holidays, I crushed real peppermints in red & green and put them in the scrub. they will melt in hot water, but they smell glorious. I used spearmint essential oil instead of peppermint cause it is a little subtler, and not as strong. More recipe ideas are gingerbread flavour, cinnamon, etc.

Another recipe I LOVE, is to switch out the white sugar for the rich dark brown sugar, cut open chai tea bags and put in the mix (about 6-8 tea bags) then use vanilla essential oils. (this is a recipe my friend Kara made for me and it is sooo yummy in the tub.

This would be fun for a wedding shower, to do pedicures, making your own scrubs, and as you can see, with all the different myStampBOX stamps, you can decorate the jars appropriately. This really gives the handmade touch.

Have fun ladies, and lock yourself in the bathroom, with your new scrubs and ENJOY!

Happy New Year.

smiles & best wishes,

Here’s to creating realistic resolutions…have you thought about those yet?

Leica

Using my HoHoHo myStampBOX stamps, I created a countdown to Christmas wall hanging that I’ll be able to use year after year. Each countdown number comes on its own cardstock square and hangs on the button with a piece of twine. Need a last minute gift idea for someone? Try whipping one of these up for that special someone!

Supplies: myStampBOX Stamps, Maya Road Chipboard Album Cover, Scenic Route Papers, Stampin’ Up Cardstock, Memento Ink, Copic Markers, American Crafts Button

Hope you and you family have a wonderful holiday season!
Happy Stamping!
Cherie

1.        Start with any paper bag – my favorites are the small white bags.  They measure 4 x 8 when you start.  Fold in half and crease.  Then stitch three sides of the bag –keeping the top open and creating a pocket with the bottom flap:

2.       Pull the bobbin threads through to one side of the bag and tape in the middle:

3.       Decorate the inside of the bag.  Place one piece of paper from the top and tuck into the pocket.  Using a circle punch to make your patterned paper mimic the paper bag.  A pocket is created in the top of the bag .  If desired, you can a pull-out card here. Your gift card will fit in pocket.

4.        Finish decorating card – both front and back.  For my Santa, I layered patterned paper and used cotton balls for his beard and hat tassle!

It is comment # 6 by Bev “such pretty colouring.. and fab detailing… awesome idea.” Congratulations and a big thanks to you and all participants who made the complete round and enjoyed our party projects. Bev, you will receive a “Let it Snow…” stamp set, just e-mail me at bettina@mystampbox.com and let me have your address information. Enjoy stamping with it and make sure to share your creations with us!

And now over to Kim, who is our guest designer for December.

Kim will share a variety of projects done with the HoHoHo stamp set. Thank you so much for being with us Kim! It’s great to have a look at your beautiful style and unique projects.

“Hi, I am Kim Holmes. Scrapbooking is both my obsession and my therapy and I can’t imagine my life without this creative outlet. I am fairly new to stamping, but adding stamps to my art is becoming an addiction for me! I love to steal away up to my scrap space and create for hours on end! When the mojo starts flowing, it is so hard to get me away from all my wonderful supplies. I have been married to my best friend for almost 23 years and we have 7 kids, 4 of which are still at home. I am never at a loss for photo opportunities or subjects and life is always exciting! My family is very supportive of my art and hobbies, and I love the satisfaction I get when I see them pick up one of their photo albums. It melts my heart!  I have been scrapping for about 9 years but became intrigued with the online aspect of scrapping about 3 years ago. I love the instant connection that you find between folks that share this hobby – I always tease that I love my computer because all my friends live there! One of my favorite things to do is attend that annual trade show, CHA. To be surrounded by people that love this hobby as much as I do and all that wonderful product is truly heaven on earth to me!”

“I am so excited to be December’s Guest Designer and to get a chance to work with the fabulous stamps at myStamp BOX, especially Christmas ones!I t was so much fun to work with the fabulous stamps in the HoHoHo stamps set:

For my layout, I stamped the reindeer on my favorite kraft cardstock with black ink. They looked so cute with their glittered bell collars and noses!  Santa and his sleigh were stamped and layered our of patterned paper and white cardstock.  I love the way that added dimension and character to my layout!”

“For my card, I created another Santa by layering products and added him to my card of hanging ornaments.  I love to stitch on my creations as well as add dimension-dots for extra pop!”

“My stocking stuffer is all about the candy or should I say, Reindeer Poo!  Malted Milk Balls are the perfect choice for this fun gag type gift!  Stamp the reindeer on craft cardstock with black ink and add some Stickles for fun accents!”

“Next Monday I will show you how to create a gift card holder from a paper bag – a great last minute project!”

I always keep my holiday papers from last year along with my holiday scraps to use for the bag toppers.

I then stamped the images I wanted from the HO HO HO stamp set and used my water color pencils to color them in.  I usually make a couple for samples and then hand the kids the color pencils and let them go to work.  It’s a great Saturday project with the kids and when your making 50+ treat bags it makes it go by faster.

Once the images are colored in cut them out and adhere them to the bag toppers add a little fun saying like HO HO HO or Jingle Bells etc and staple them to the top of the filled candy bag.

The kids just love them and the teachers always think they are cute.  Plus it gets rid of that Holiday stash you have.

Thanks for looking

Elisa K

My Stamp Box Designer

As we approach the Holidays, I can’t resist a super cute Holiday stamp set like the HoHoHo set I am showing today.

When I saw these cute little reindeers, I knew I had to stamp them like they were all lined up ready for Santa’s Sleigh. I found this great die-cut candy box that was perfect for some Hershey’s Kisses {I live an hour from there so I have to give them a shout out when I can!} and it was long enough for me to be able to line up the reindeer.

Here are a few different shots. Since it was long, I took a few different angles:

I added sequins for their red noses. I know there is only one Rudolph but they were just too darn cute!

Thanks, I hope you enjoyed this!
ellen

And I don’t mean Halloween masks…. the holidays are here, but for me I am in full Christmas mode.

I’m down at the Creative Festival teaching this weekend… did a card class today, and have a Mini Album class tomorrow.. both classes feature some of the fantastic myStampBox stamps!

For class we used the HoHoHo set, and a mask.. so that the reindeer appears to be peeking out from behind Santa.

I of course coloured it in using my Copics.. the red #’s are R29, R 35, R 37 & R 39. To make the mask, stamp Santa on a spare piece of cardstock, cut him out and set aside.

Next stamp him where you would like on the card (in my case I used the top note die from Stampin’ Up! ). Once he is stamped, place the mask exactly over top of him. Get out the reindeer, ink him up and position him to the right of Santa where you want him and stamp. Part of him will be on the cardstock, and part will be on the mask. This gives the effect of layering… and I love it!

Now, colour in all your pieces, add stickles and stick everything down. I used my Copics to colour the small Prima flower the exact coordinating shade of red that I needed, since I only had pink around. This works exceptionally well for coordinating your embellishments with your coloured image.

That’s all for today, stop by the Canadian Scrapbooker Booth #224, we’re doing a cute make n’ take on Saturday with the HOHOHO set…..and some CHOCOLATE!