I know many of us are sweating our butts off in the heat of the summer, but My Squirrel Squad is celebrating Christmas in July as our monthly theme and our randomly selected supply/technique is Acetate! You should have arrived here from the talented Boryana of Bory Crafts, and I’ll list the full lineup here so you can’t get lost on our short little hop.

• V Fairchild
• Anna Mahtani
• Lounon Riviere
• Marie Bingaman
• Boryana Yankova
• Karen Page – YOU ARE HERE

Sounds easy enough, right? Now the easy way out is to make a Christmas shaker card. But I wanted to set out to do something different… and I had in my head that I wanted to use the acetate to make a window. I’m having technical difficulties with my Silhouette, and I lack an actual window die, but in the spirit of the hop group I pulled out a frame die I got years ago and hadn’t ever used to sub as my window. And once I finished with 1 card, I had the idea of a similar but different card so you get not 1 but 2 cards from me today! Have a looksie:

Some of my good friends know that my house is gray, and the whole interior is gray, black and white. When trying to pick colors for my house and room cards, it was natural for me to stick with the same color combo! Both cards are stamped on the inside “From our home to yours”, which makes it even more fitting. Let’s start with the ‘outside looking in’ version.

SUPPLIES:

• MFT Jingle All The Way (Santa)
• MFT Happy Pawlidays (tree)
• Impression Obsession Brick CAC Background
• Pinkfresh Studios Christmas Florals Creative Stamping magazine freebie
• Taylored Expressions Picture Perfect – Vertical die
• The Paper Boutique Christmas die
• Prismacolor Pencils
• Acetate for window

This card is self explanatory, so I won’t bore you with the instructions. I am ridiculously happy that I collected so many background stamps as I used 3 different designs for these 2 cards! Here is another look with a close up of the inside scene:

Now for the ‘inside looking out’ card:

SUPPLIES:

• MFT Denim Background (carpet)
• MFT Linen Background (walls… 1 cut straight and 1 cut with the pattern on the diagonal)
• Inkadinkado Trees
• Taylored Expressions Picture Perfect – Vertical die
• MFT Hand Lettered Holiday (Christmas sentiment)
• Pink & Main Sentiment Strip dies
• Acetate
• Ink Blender brushes
• Elizabeth Crafts cool white glitter

This is 1 of those cards that is better in my head than what I could create with paper, but that said I was still pretty pleased with the outcome. I think this one is pretty self explanatory too. The window is really dimensional with lots of layers of the frame die to allow room for the glitter to move about like a shaker of snow. I also used a white gel pen to brighten the snow on the trees, then used a Quickie glue pen in places on the trees and the snow drifts I ink blended so the glitter would stick and make the snow shimmer. That’s really hard to see in the above picture but you can see it better here:

Here’s a quick peek at the insides too:

I have to apologize for the dramatic lighting for all of the above pics. Between the rain we’ve had all week and the glare on the acetate, I had to get creative for you to actually see the cards! My crafting assistant, Willow, was at my feet for most of the time but at 1 point she wanted to play along and help me stamp.

“Mama, can I make a card???” Truth be told, she was begging for some candy (just off screen on the left) as I was dipping pretty frequently into a carton of Whoppers malted milk balls. I add the full name for the benefit of my international friends as once a friend from Canada thought I was eating Burger King Whoppers while crafting. LOL!!! I still wonder how many she thought I ate in a single crafting session! 😄 Sadly Miss Willow can’t have Whoppers because of the chocolate. She can’t have burgers either!!! That’s it for me… I hope you liked the cards and if not hopefully the picture of my sweet Princess Willowbeez made you smile! For the record, she also goes by Willowmena when she has been naught and Willowbeezerz when she is being silly. Am I the only 1 with 40 names for each dog?!? Leave me a comment with some of the nicknames of your pets. And don’t forget to hop along to the fantabulous V of Passions and Distractions, if you didn’t start there already. Thanks for hopping along, as we appreciate it so much!!!