'Cookies' and Nutcracker in Blue

Good morning all. It was a short weekend, but- I did manage to get some Christmas shopping done. Not much, a few small things for my other half. This is a record for me, I hate real-life shopping and will usually put it off till the last minute. It's online shopping all the way for me! I love coming home from work, stopping by our mailboxes and finding surprises there. It's like Christmas every time, lol!

Last week was kind of dry for me, not much going on in the creative department. I seemed to hit a wall and couldn't get much done. Everything was starting to get stale and nothing I usually do was inspiring me. I decided to try something different...

Somehow a Family Circle magazine ended up in my mailbox, I don't know if it was a freebie, wrong address or what, but I was flipping through it a couple of weeks ago and came across the recipe section. There were the most gorgeous snowflake cookies I had ever seen and I immediately went online to hunt down the fancy cookie cutters! I bought a bunch of them, snowflake junkie that I am, but this one particular set of 5 was amazing. There were three snowflake shapes in several sizes and two small triangular cutters for cutting out the insides in pretty patterns. (See them here.) I couldn't wait to make Christmas cookies, but it's still kind of early for parties and such, so I got to thinking...

What if I dig out all my old polymer clay gear and make some snowflake cookie ornaments to hold me over till I can make real cookies? Bingo! Out came the P.C. dedicated pasta machine, clay, and roller. I wanted to make them look like real sugar cookies, so I used a beige colored clay mixed with pearl white and translucent. In no time at all I rolled out some sheets of clay and started cutting. Popped them into the oven for half an hour and let them cool. I inked the edges of each ornament with Corduroy Distress ink to simulate the golden color they get from baking. Then I went to work with the Viva Decor Pearl Pen, lines, swirls, dots and glass glitter (looks like real sugar!), added some gold cord for hanging and voila! This project seemed to bash through the creative block! 

And finally yesterday, I was back to making cards. This gorgeous nutcracker from Waltzingmouse Stamps has been a long time coming. Doesn't he look proud!

He's gold embossed and Copic colored. Kept it simple with one color family. I decided to stick with the monochromatic color scheme for the papers too. Blue, white and gold. 

I made the plaid label layer using a plaid stamp from DRS Designs as well as one of the herringbone patterns from a WMS background set. I'm lovin' the plaid lately if you haven't noticed....


So, it's a pretty good start to the countdown till Christmas, no more dry spells please!!


Thanks for stopping by.


Stamps: WMS, DRS Desings
Ink: Versamark, Adirondack, Palette
Paper: PTI, pearl stripe from The Paper Temptress
Tools & Accessories: Spellbinders Nestabilities/Labels, Martha Stewart snowflake PATP, Filigree gold embossing powder, Stickles, Copics, PTI ribbon