Dreidel Bears and Hanukkah Blog Candy

Happy Wednesday to you!
Today I have a Hanukkah card to share with you. Isn't this image cute?
It's a digital image from Hambo and you can find it right here.

To embellish my card I added some beautiful two-toned blue ribbon to each corner.
And some jewels around the scalloped edge. I tried a new technique for coloring the main panel. I colored the bears as usual with my Copic markers, but then took a blue Prismacolor pencil and colored a border around each bear. Then I blended it into the background with a blending stump and some odorless mineral spirits. I did the same thing with a black pencil along the bottom of the bears for a shadow effect.

When I had my card all finished, it still needed a little something. I decided to go back to my computer and print up the same image, only this time I enlarged it quite a bit and cropped out everything except the dreidel. I colored it, cut it out and attached it with dimensionals.

Now let's get to the BLOG CANDY part of this post!
I've had to make a few Hanukkah cards for design teams over the last couple of months, but sadly I have no one to give them to. That's where you come in! If you would like to have these three cards, leave me a comment on this post!

(Image by Pink Cat Studio)

(Image by Pink Cat Studio)

(Image by Hambo)

I'll leave this post here for a few days and choose a winner on Saturday!

Christmas Beagle

I hosted my annual holiday cookie swap over the weekend and made a mini prize package for the gal with the most festive holiday outfit. While checking out the $1 bin at Target a couple of weeks ago I stumbled upon these super cute Snoopy themed smores flavored hot cocoa packets. (say that five times fast)
Luckily my sister-in-law has the biggest Snoopy stamp collection in all the land, and I found a stamp that almost exactly matched the cocoa packet! What can I say? I'm an easy girl to please. I colored the image with my Copics and then used Sakura glaze pens on the lights so they were shiny. Then I punched out the images with my 3" circle punch and layered them on top of black cardstock cut with the Labels Three Nestability.

I decided to make a set of four, which I finished off with some thick red twill ribbon. I thought they'd be a cute little something for the winner to pass out to friends or co-workers.

And speaking of winners.....I'll be back tomorrow with a special card and a give away for all of my readers who celebrate Hanukkah!
See you then....

Shy Kiki La Rue

While perusing the blog world this weekend, I came across Jen's Saturday sketch. Have you ever tried one of Jen's sketches? They're great and perfect for getting those creative juices flowing when your mojo has gone missing. Here's what I came up with... This adorable image is by C C Designs and is called Shy Kiki La Rue.
I used Riding Hood red cardstock and patterns from SU's "Candy Lane" collection. The white panel was embossed with the Swiss Dots Cuttlebug folder. To add a little detail, I used a piercing tool around the edges of the circle panel.

And then finished it off with some red pearls along the top.

Hope you all had a great weekend. I'm off to Starbucks where I'm going to go buy a cup full of energy so I can finish my Christmas shopping today!

Friday Faves!

Here are my favorite picks from the web this week...

Glitzy Chocolate Puddings - chocolate & crushed butterfinger bars....need I say more?

These bottle scarves by Amy are totally adorable.

Check out this Copic hair coloring guide!

Love Love Love this robot card by Amy.

I MUST have this stamp set....

Check out this cool pinecone that Connie made out of die cut flowers.

And this just might be the cutest video EVER!
Click here to view it

Hope you enjoyed these links!
Have a super weekend!

Pink Cat Digital Release Day!

Is it possible that todays release from Pink Cat Studio could be even cuter than last week? I'll let you be the judge....
I went a little crazy this week and have five samples to share with you today.
First up is a bunny princess...
I used some pretty pastel papers from Memory Box for this one and then added a free sentiment that's available to all Pink Cat customers. You can check out all of them right here.

When I asked my husband if he had some fishing line that I could use on my card, he didn't even blink. He figured I probably needed it for whiskers....

Next up is Lily the Winter Princess...

Isn't she the sweetest?
I added Doodlebug Sugar Coating to her crown and the trim on her cape. Because we all know that a Winter Princess needs to be SPAR-KA-LAY! Then to finish it off, I added some pretty pink pearls.

Next up is Christmas Piggy...

The patterned paper is from the Eskimo Kisses line by BasicGrey. I added a pink button to the middle of my bow because it reminded me of a piggy nose.
Oink Oink!

Here are some little chicks decorating a Christmas cupcake...

Adorable right?
I added lots of jewels to the cupcake for a little holiday sparkle.

Can you handle any more cuteness?
My last sample uses Christmas chicks...

I just used this layout on a scrapbook page and thought it might make a cute card. The long panel in the middle was perfect for this image.

Okay okay, I'm all done. Now you can head over to PCS and get some of these beauties for yourself! Click here to go directly to the digi store.
Thanks for stopping by!
I'll be back tomorrow with my Friday Faves!

Hambo Hump Day

Happy Wednesday!
After our annual trip up to Apple Hill, I was inspired to create this little number...All of the images are by Hambo (apple basket #3708, thanks #0244)
The apple basket and single apple image come as a set of two. To finish it off, I added some big ol' fat ribbon by Stampin Up.
Be sure to stop by the Hambo blog tomorrow for your chance to bid in the "One & Done" auction!

And the countdown begins

December 1st is a HUGE day in the Bruckler household. That's the day that we start our annual countdown to Christmas. Each year I make some sort of chart for the kids to flip over every day, where there's an activity listed for us to do as a family. I make sure to include lots of activities that don't cost money and that don't require us to leave the house.

If you're a fan of Kelly Lunceford, then you'll notice that her blog banner inspired my design this year.

I decided to make a giant banner that hangs in the kitchen over looking the downstairs living room. The letters were cut out on my Cricut using the largest setting with the "George" font. I used my Round Tab Punch to create a hinge on the back of each accordion folded flower. Each day one lucky munchkin will get to flip over the number and read what the daily activity will be.

Some activities that have been on our chart in the past include:
Decorate our Christmas tree
Go to the movies
Drive around and look at Christmas lights
Make hot cocoa
Make S'mores

Bring fudge to the neighbors
Mail our Christmas cards
Go ice skating
Leave a note under someones pillow tonight

Bake cookies for Santa
Call Grandma & Grandpa
Go out for dinner
Watch "A Christmas Story " (a family favorite!)

Make a card for Santa & Mrs. Claus
Look through our 2009 scrapbook
Have pancakes for dinner
Here's a close up of one the tags.

They measure 4 x 6 and then I marked 2" up from the bottom and cut up from each corner. Or, if you're really lucky like me, a friend will cut them all out for you while you're folding accordion flowers. Thanks Wanda! For the accordion flowers, I cut patterned paper 1 1/2" by 12" and scored every half inch. Then I attached a 1 3/8" circle to both sides to hold it securely, and added a number to the front.

All of the patterned papers for this project are from the new Christmas collection called "Eskimo Kisses" by BasicGrey. Once all the tags were done, I attached them to some beautiful cranberry velvet ribbon. To finish it off, I stitched buttons in between each tag.

Well that's it for me today. I finally finished the 2nd Twilight book and I'm off to see the movie!
Until tomorrow....

A little anime

So is everyone still stuffed from Thanksgiving?
Yeah....me too.
I used a couple of vegetarian recipes from The Pioneer Woman and they were DELICIOUS! And since my family was still eating left-overs all weekend, that meant more time for Mom to stamp!

Here's one of the cards I came up with... My friend let me borrow a couple of new stamps that she got from Sugar Nellie. You can see the other card I made here. Since I used so many colors on the first card, I decided to make this card look completely different.
I colored the main image with my grey Copics and just a hint of pink on her cheeks and the bow in her hair. I dug around in my black and white scrap bin (yes....I have my scraps organized by color) and was thrilled to find a small piece of patterned paper from an old collection by Love, Elsie. I thought it worked perfectly for the whole "anime" look that I was going for.

To finish it off, I did some hand stitching around the border and added some thick felt ribbon by Creative Imaginations and layered on a cute patterned ribbon on top.

This isn't my usual style, but I was really happy with how it came out. Sometimes it's hard to step out of your comfort zone, but give it a try sometime. You may surprise yourself!

A Black Friday surprise from the Pink Cat

Okay I lied. I wasn't going to post until Monday, but a little birdie told me about this great deal and I had to share it with you!

Want to know how you can get this adorable digital image for FREE?? All you have to do is go to the Pink Cat Studio website and spend $3 on rubber or digital images. Yes, a whopping three bucks and this little sugar plum fairy is all yours!

Isn't she sweet?

Have a super weekend!

Just poppin in to let you know that I'll be taking a mini break for the rest of this week. It's Thanksgiving week, my kiddos are out of school and I've got alot of things to pack into just a few days. For those of you in the US, I wish you and your families a Happy Thanksgiving. And for those of you brave enough to venture out on Black Friday....you're crazy, but best of luck!
I'll be back on Monday.
Hugs,