Fa la, la, la and snowmen

I love holiday music and always have to get new music to listen at the studio. This year, my favorite holiday albums are the Indigo Girls, Holly Happy Days and Annie Lennox, A Christmas Cornucopia.  If you like a Capella, the group Straight No Chasers has a nice album titled Holiday Spirits.

Every December we get so busy that we forget to take photos of projects we are working on and we never seem to have time to update the blog  in a timely manner. Bummer we didn't take photos of the holiday cookie baking extravaganza! Too busy baking and tasting cookies! But here some quick holiday-ish pics that we did remember to snap.

 We love Snowmen! Here are some of our cuts and tags we printed with handset type on handmade snow paper! The paper has mica in it so it looks like glinting snow.

We used the Vintage Snowmen Wrapping paper to decorate gable boxes and the vintage look is also great for cards!

Holiday Cards!

More cards!

Who says Red and Green are the winter holiday colors? How about Orange?

 After Cool Fitness colors are orange & blue. Guess what color their Christmas tree light were? Yes. Orange and Blue! Their orange, blue and silver invites were cool!

Next year we need to take the advice on this card--Simplify the Holidays!

Tis' the Season!

December has gone by in a flurry! Although not the snowy type of flurries here; it was 80 degrees last week! Because the weather was so nice, I made paper outside for a couple days.

Right under our orange tree. That led to another project.

Picking the oranges. They are totally juicy and yummy!

 Oh, yes, the cotton and recycled box handmade papers came out yummy as well!

Cobbler's New Shoes

You know the story about the Cobbler's kids never having new shoes....well that is kinda like us. When we had the shop open to the public, we went through business cards by the bazillions. Seriously, we would order them 1000's at time--people constantly picked them up even though we are not sure what they did with them. Anyhoo, this weekend when Gary and I were in the midst of transferring 48 cases of type from a double wide cabinet to two single cabinets (talk about a marital bonding experience--ha, ha! I'll do a separate post about that and how much work it was!) we agreed that we should finally letterpress cards for us.

So when Mike popped in today, he asked how he could help us prepare for the printer's fair. I told him I needed to get some business cards done--all I had decided so far was that I wanted to use handmade paper, Packard type and we needed a background. Mike suggested this lovely old ATF ornament and I started mixing ink like a crazy gal.
My scan of the card is not doing it justice. It is printed on a lovely pale blue handmade paper with the ornament in a summer green ink and the lettering in deep blue ink. While we love photo polymer plates, we've been trying to use stuff we have in the studio. Kinda like cooking with stuff in your cupboard! Gary was surprised when he saw the cards tonight and really liked the way the they turned out unlike the last time I surprised him by painting the outside door lime green. (sometimes you have to get those crazy ideas out before you can get a better color--the door is now a lovely grey-green)