It’s that time again to welcome you to Black Friday Freebie! I know many of you are just getting your papercrafting mojo together to make the most of your holiday creating time. After all, Christmas is less than a month away!

Which is why I love the simplicity of this pair of Candy Cane’s digi image! If you are looking to save time why not make a matching tag, bag and card? Mirkwood Designs has a wide assortment of templates that you can use “freely” to make custom cards, envelopes, and boxes, and I’ve even located some other box templates as inpsiration for you to use! Incorporate this image into three different projects and take the guesswork out of your creative equation. Just click on the image below … click on the enlarged image to copy – paste - save to your DZ Doodles digi folder!

Have a happy doodlecrafting day! Diane

Thursday, America celebrated the holiday of “elastic pants” (all day most likely), and hope everyone enjoyed the company of family and friends … and most are survivors, by now, of the Black Friday frenzy! I shop mostly online now (in the comfort of my home) because of my visual disabilities and can’t say whether or not that I miss the excitement of the day and it’s early morning hours like I use to - but, it does represent the official launch for Christmas shop-a-holics in the U.S.!

While cleaning the turkey remains up for left-overs, I dug out its “wishbone” … it’s ”tradition” in my family to clean it-let it dry out-spray paint it gold-embellish it with a red bow at the top and put it away for next years tree ornament. New Year’s Eve at midnight, we pull apart the present years wishbone after expressing new year wishes to one another as onlookers make bets on who’ll end up with the short side. Whoever pulls the wishbone from the tree first, after hearing someone out-of-the-blue yell ”go” (and they all make sure they know where it’s located and it sometimes tends to ”moves”) gets to pick the side they want for pulling. Onlookers get wishy-washy on who’s “side” their going to take - they tend to flipflop from side to side before we countdown and pull. It’s a lot of fun and something we all look forward to doing!

Enough about turkey’s and tradition. Getting back to my train-of-thought … let’s get busy discussing some digi image projects to papercraft for the Christmas festivities! This week I began creating projects using some of the images from the Christmastime category that you may want to consider using too. I know a lot of “froggy loving” people and just had to begin with these three merry fellows dressed in holiday attire, waiting for a glimpse of Santa! And you may look at them differently too, now that they are color illustrated! With their dreamy-eyed looks I couldn’t help but put this sentiment inside: “May your Christmas be as big as your dreams!”

Card Size: 5-1/4″ x 5-1/4″

Digital Image Size: 3-1/2″ x 3-1/2″ each and 3″ x 3″ smaller looks great too!

Pattern Paper: Christmas Collection: Reindeer Games by Adornit.

Punches: I find that these are some of Martha Stewart’s (MFG for EKSuccess Brands) ”gotta have” punches – LOOP, SNOWFALL, and PINE NEEDLES.  

Have a happy papercraft day! Diane

FYI: If interested in where you can purchase some of the projects shown on the site, visit my eBay auctions! Handmade cards>DZ DOODLES DIGI STAMPS

The beginning of December many of us will be purchasing planning calendars for the coming year. As you sit down, looking at the clean blank pages, your thought’s may be filled with hope and anticipation of all the good things 2010 will bring. You begin to write some goals for the new year in the front of the calendar. Along with the usual suspects – exercise more and eat healthy … write in, “Papercraft weekly!” It’s probably already happening due to your tinkering around with some project or another, but, create a more specific challenge for yourself. Write objectives to measure your progress because a good objective is clear, concrete, and measureable. Apply this to your goal of papercrafting weekly.

Challenge yourself to make a card, a scrapbook page, or stampcraft project every week for an entire year. Each project has to be unique and stylish, and don’t allow yourself to make a bunch of projects ahead and just write the date on each as the weeks pass. The project has to be made in the actual week and dated. Work on a weekly project, even if you’re sick or tired or grouchy or busy. Little do you know the challenges that lay ahead and where the idea of papercrafting every week will lead you.

As 2010 begins, the first few weeks will go smoothly. When you encounter your first bump in the road you’ll somehow manage to fulfill your weekly project assignment. By encountering this bump you’ll find out you can papercraft in adversity – if you make it a priority!

The months will role on as you make projects every week, no cheating, no repeating. Meeting your weekly papercraft requirement becomes easier as you go along and, surprisingly, you won’t run out of ideas. You’ll become attuned to looking for unusual sources of paper, stamps, and embellishments. You’ll put no material restraints on your weekly project, so you can never use “But I don’t have the right stuff” as an excuse. And working small, you don’t need a lot of materials! Another advantage of the small thing size is that you can make them quickly. Some weeks you’ll spend less than 30 minutes on a project and I’m sure you’ve waisted more than 30 minutes a day clicking through the TV channels.

If you decide to do weekly papercraft projects for a year (or monthly), it is important to focus on the actual weekly doeing, not making a perfect, beautiful morsel of life-changing artistic achievement. Not all of your projects will be great examples, but they are done! A simple project made in a particular week could be compared to one from the previous weeks project and you’ll think the previous weeks project is far superior, due to the complexity of its construction. You may think the simpler project “shouldn’t count”, but they all have to count, or none of them can count.

By engaging in weekly papercraft projects for 2010, you’ll grow in technique mastery, gained confidence in your creative choices, and begin to truly see all possibilities in every week!

Paper Crafts Connection recent article called, Goovin’ with the Go-To Gals … Tales from the Scrap Pile may be all that you need to begin your goal setting weekly papercrafting projects for 2010! And if you’re going to shop online this holiday season be sure to visit the Crop Stop store’s huge sale of up to 75% savings on select items of limited quantities!

You love your husband and family, so you throw kisses at them all week. You like your coffee, so you drink some all week long. You call yourself a papercrafter or stampcrafter, or scrapbooker, so you must make projects every week!

The postal service is geared up and scurrying around for the card to package shipping frenzy of the holidays and a lot of my card buyer’s have asked what is the best way to mail their layered and/or embellished project. I always instruct them on the best way. Use either a bubble wrap mailer which is now available in an assortment of sizes, or purchase a box of bubble wrap to cut pieces to the size of your card - most stores carry a small box of it now. You may need to create an envelope slightly larger than your card measurements to compensate for this additional ”bulk”  and it’s always good to make it using a lightweight cardstock. Address the front side and/or flap of the envelope. Lay the “bubble side” atop the card front and insert the card/bubble piece into the envelope with the backside of the card against the front of the envelope because the postal service generally does their machine bar coding only on this side – this will lessen the chances of it tearing and make mailing it less worrisome.

Have a Happy Thanksgiving Day! DZ Doodlers, Diane & Kim

Many countries and cultures have a celebration giving thanks for their harvest and good fortune. This Thursday is Thanksgiving Day for Americans and the countdown for turkey day festivities is in full swing. I’ve got my bird in the frig … thawing, all my spices needed from the cubboard, canned foods neatly stacked in a corner on the counter, and recipes all in order to begin digging in bright & early with all the preparations! This year I’m going to attempt to add Steamed Pudding to the dessert list.

I look foward to Thanksgiving Day because it’s a time to reflect on my many blessings. When my children were at home, decorating began with the tree after the Thanksgiving feast had been enjoyed. I still do this, but, I’m not completely Christmas-fied until the end of the month.

“Sharing The Holiday’s” digi image brings to mind the evening of Thanksgiving Day … with Christmas tunes blarring, the family would select their hot chocolate or spicey apple cider drink, or spiked eggnog, and we’d begin rummaging through boxes of decorations as if it were all new to us. We shared a lot of laughter and sometimes intense decision making went on as to what was going to go where this time around. The evening would end tucking the kids into to bed with the anticipation of seeing Santa on their minds.

The countdown for Freebie Friday images is also in full swing up to Friday, Dec. 18th! If your nervous about going digital then here’s some free digital stamps for you to try on a project. Soon you’ll find they are just as easy to use as rubber/acrylic stamps … digital stamps, or digi, are not limited to the number of times an image can be printed from your computer! Depending on your printers capabilities every image is created to print cleanly and evenly every time. You can reverse and resize, and even rotate images to fit your projects, for as many projects as you like! Heat seal your printed images with a hair dryer or heat gun to prevent printer ink from smearing prior to adding your favorite medium to create projects. Above are some idea projects already created using last Friday’s Freebie (available below).

Have a great papercraft day! Diane

Congratulations, Jennifer Scull!  You won our last color challenge.  Thanks for playing along with us.

Please email at clearlyinspired@gmail.com to let me know which image you want.

This week’s color challenge is hosted by Tammy Maynard, one of our Design Team Members.  She has chosen First Time Skater for her image below.  Her card is fabulous!

The colors for this week are purple, blue and white….This is a great winter color combination!

Just link your projects below to be put into the drawing for one free image.

With Fall temperatures getting chilly … it’s a great time to sip ‘A Cup of Cheer!’ Awaken your taste buds to the wonderful flavors of Fall spices, and do a little crafting while you’re inside. Please check Christmastime Category for ”Sharing The Holidays” image listing!

The Design Team will be off during the month of December to give them time to concentrate on the festivities of the holidays and spend time with their families. We have scads of images, including many more weekly released holiday images coming up, to use on all your holiday craft projects … so keep checking back, and know, that we always love to see what you create! Don’t forget to share and inspire!

Toodles from the doodler, Diane

Diane was at her drawing board again, so she has some new arrivals for us.  There are a great variety for the holidays.

Here are some of the cards created by the Design Team with some of the lastest images:

Corine Lambert

Reindeer 3

Tammy Maynard

I Want It All

Valerie Urtiaga

Here’s That Gift Elf-a-Tude

Barbara Staradumsky

Best Gift

Kim Burmeister

Dove In Flight

Peggy Russell

Cheers To You

Christy Dillman

A Candy Cane Bunch

Barbara Walker

When Pigs Fly – Gift Wish

Heather Higgins

Reindeer 2

Hope you enjoy the latest arrivals.

Toodles from Doodles!