Holiday Craft Projects

Just a quick post with photos of the holiday craft projects I've made this month for the Ranger blog. It's been a whirlwind of fun and creativity with the Ranger team. I've gotten so much inspiration from everyone who has participated. Now on to finish baking holiday cookies and lots of wrapping!

Holiday happenings

Such a wonderful, busy time of the year. Thanksgiving was a blur, spent last weekend decorating and crafting for the Christmas season. This weekend I helped mom and dad trim their Christmas tree, worked on cards and more holiday crafting. To see some quick, easy and great ornament crafting ideas using Ranger Memory Glass and Frames, see the holiday video on the Ranger website this month. And check out the Ranger blog each day for more holiday projects and inspiration! I made this ornament with lots of embossing powder and Stickles glitter glue, such fun.

New video about Liquid Pearls

Check out this month's Rangerink.com video on Liquid Pearls! It was a lot of fun to put together. Hope you get some good ideas for creating holiday cards and crafts.

Grounds for Sculpture - exploring

Earlier this month I went to explore Grounds for Sculpture with my parents. We spent a couple of hours wandering through the garden rooms discovering the wide variety of sculptures around each corner, path or tree-lined walkway. Then we walked through the woods, over a bridge with a pond and waterfall to Rats restaurant. There we sat outside by the water with a gorgeous view and enjoyed a tasty lunch. All in all a terrific day spent with my two very special parents celebrating their wedding anniversary of 61 years.

Distress Stains Craft Video at Summer CHA

It's been a whirlwind couple of months with the Ranger team working hard to get ready for the Summer Craft & Hobby tradeshow. The show was exciting as usual and the Ranger booth had many creative new products to show off-Claudine Hellmuth Studio Paints, new Surfaces to ink and paint, Perfect Pearl Mists in 12 new vibrant colors, new Distress Stains and more!

Here's a fun video I did for Craft Critique. This was during our Innovations presentation for the top 20 new products for the show. Here I'm demonstrating Tim's new Distress Stain in Picket Fence white -- a new unique, opaque formula. Love to use Picket Frence to mute the other 37 colors of Distress Stain or change the color of decorative scrapbook papers by whitewashing it.

Collage Box Collaboration

Working at Ranger means having the opportunity to create projects for the website, blog, tradeshows and sales opportunities. I wanted to do a masculine home decor type project for a Father's Day blog post. So I started out collaging this box and was running low on time to finish, so Patti Behan offered to help and then Debbie Tlach added the finishing touches with her creative ideas -- so wala - a project that we all enjoyed collaborating on together! Check out project instructions on the Ranger website.

creative chaos

Somehow whenever the creative crafting bug hits, I start out with a nice big clean, empty table and then end up with about 6 inches of space to work in by time the project is done!

Archival Ink Project

Ranger has launched new Archival Ink colors just in time for summer crafting! Check out the quick card I made for the website feature this month. Why did I use Archival Ink? The big deal about them is that they are waterproof, so coloring with them won't muddy your artwork.

Creativity in abundance

I've been thinking a lot lately about what really encompasses creativity. I find myself always feeling pressure if I don't regularly get in the studio and do some artwork. Webster's dictionary defines creativity as creative ability; artistic or intellectual inventiveness. When I think about inventiveness, that opens up a lot wider view of creative endeavors that we all are a part of everyday. Creativity in writing, decision-making, learning, solving problems and having fun. So, on that note, I'm going to show my now wider view of creativity here. This is my birthday cake. I asked my mom to make a chocolate velvet cake we used to always get as kids. I hadn't had that cake in 20 years. She obliged and we enjoyed every bite. Making a cake from scratch with lots of layers and special icings, now that is creative and filled with love!

Happy Birthday Mom & Dad

Even though it was a drizzly, gray day, we had a blast celebrating my parents birthdays! Mom turned 81 and Dad 83 on May 15. We went to Braveheart's Scottish Pub in Hellertown, PA. I had the salmon, which was awesome! All of us had a blast - Mom, Dad, Billy, my brother Bob and his wife Laurie, and my nephew Christopher.