Santa's Sweet Shoppe Sketches!

Since being out of town & working on new release stuff, I have missed working on some of my favorite sketch challenges like Lauren's & Beate's to name a few.  So, Friday night I got my new Starving Artistamps Doodlefactory Collection of Santa's Sweet Shoppe and I was so excited to get them inky yesterday (Friday I had to do yucky stuff like my taxes, but that's o.k. at least I am not going to wait until the last minute like I usually do & get all frustrated because John wants them done now! I am caught up through Oct btw, and I feel so good about it!)

Back to the stamps; I just adore the images Irene illustrated for this set & the sentiments are so great too!  I love that Tracey is offering the sentiments for FREE ($11.95 value) when you get the set.  They are deeply etched red rubber & she sells the sheet as is - you just get the cling mount she sells in the store, slap it on & use your Tim Holtz' Tonic Scissors (what, you don't have them? well let me tell you they are a MUST if you cut your stamps like I do with SA & Gina K stamps).  Onto my cards - this first one uses Lauren's Saturday sketch - her sketches are always real fun, unstructured but in an organized way - really out of the box.  I know when I make a card from scratch I hardly think of using scraps of cardstock here & there, I tend to keep them bigger, but it's a great way to use your scraps instead of cutting a full sheet of cardstock up!  That's how I chose my colors, based on what I had as scraps just pulling from my file.  I used PTI's lemon tart for my base & stamped the star in gold metallic ink.  The silouette guys (gingerbread man, elf & reindeer stamped on my focal image in the other colors I used chocolate chip & real red and my card ws nearly done!  The red polkadot ribbon is Pure Luxury ribbon by Gina K.

I made this card in about 10 minutes and of all the cards I made yesterday using this set (7) this was John's 2nd favorite - I will show you the rest over this next week and be sure to tell you which is his favorite.   

Here is Gio (happy) did you know all the Doodlefactory characters have names?  I just love that feature of these stamps - I think it really makes them come to life for me!  I usually don't add the names to my cards but I thought it would be cute here since Gio the Gingerbread man is happy holding his big 'ol yummy candy cane & is wishing you a Merry Christmas!  This is Beate's Friday sketch, which was perfect for this image!  I stamped Gio on kraft cardstock & colored him with my pure color pencils and the candy cane was colored with red & white prismacolor pencils. The ribbon is from SU! Alpine ribbon originals, available in the current mini catalog (again using a scrap I had).  I actually made eyes on Gio (theycome bare, like his buttons so you have the option to color them in like I did, leave them alone or how about putting Googlie eyes?  I bet that would be great!)  note to self.  

Oh don't forget, if you'd like to get these new DF stamps, you can get 10% off your purchase by using code savetendb at checkout!  Tracey ships via Priority Mail so you will get them in 2-3 days and be stamping with these fun characters in no time!!  

I'll be back soon with more to share.  For now, I must work on my stamp club stuff for Thursday.