This is one of those easy-peasy ATCs: A pic of a staircase out of a magazine with stamped phrases on the steps. I added a button and some Distress Stickles. I think it looks neat and I love the colors.

Been incredibly busy around here. I hope to fill you in soon!

This beautiful guy (girl?) posed nicely for me, so I obliged by taking several pics of him.

I love his polka-dotted head!

And here's another Christmas card I did a week or so ago. Things have been hectic here, so there's only one.

I used some paper ribbon I found on sale at Hobby Lobby over white cardstock for the "ribbon" and put the bow on top. If you click on the pic to make it bigger, you'll see where I watermarked the red cardstock with the bow image to give it a little interest.

I've got a few more Christmas cards to do in order to get my monthly quota in, but this seems to be working much better than waiting until the last minute and rushing to get all of my cards done!

As a teenager, I once painted my bedrooms walls brown - and my parents let me! (That was the surprising part.) I loved that room.

It's no surprise that I like to use brown in my art. Paired with other colors, or even plain white as it is here, it can create depth and interest in any project.

Images from Judikins and The Angel Company.

This is the first tag I've made this year. I couldn't believe it, but it must be true, since I have no other photos of tags from this year.

So, without further ado, a tag for 2011:

Another Angel Company stamp (the sunflower) along with some Tim Holtz tape. The flourish is an old, old Stampin' Up! stamp. The background was made when I wiped up Distress Inks from another project off of my craft sheet. Instant background!

These cards are very CAS (Clean and Simple). I really dislike doing the same design more than once so I did the simplest design I could come up with, and I still struggled to finish these. I finally made myself get them done so I can move on!

In the background you can see that I started off with a slightly different design (with the same stamps) but changed my mind for the rest. Love that penguin!

I'm working on my next batch now, but once again I am struggling to do more than one or two cards of the same design. Do you make your own Christmas cards? If so, are they all the same design, or is each one a one-of-a-kind?

Anyway, I did a simple but heartfelt card.

I'm sure cats have a special place in heaven. Well, they probably wander everywhere, as cats do!

The background is watercolor paper with various inks and Distress Stains covering it. I also used some Wendy Vecchi stamps (click on the photo to make it bigger) that you might recognize - her leaf stamp and her "fly poop" stamp. (Gotta love her name for it!)

I like the texture that the watercolor paper offers, but it doesn't stamp well. Which is why that panel ended up as a background for this card rather than the original idea I had. Then I added the chipboard "Happiness" piece which I stained with Broken China Distress Stain. I do like the look of the background coming through the character. Found some brads to match and called it a card!

It is with great sadness that I must announce we are hanging up our wings. These past several years our industry has faced enormous challenges and as a result, we have seen many companies close their doors. We continued to hope we could see The Angel Company through this recession and back into prosperous days and we held onto this hope as long as we could.

One of the largest challenges affecting each of us is our industry not being able to support all of the direct sales companies in our field. Even in a healthy economy, we are a niche market trying to compete for a very limited number of distributors. As a small company, this has been a grueling challenge for us. Times are tough for everyone ~ in direct sales and retail environments.

I would like to thank each of you for being an customer and Angel these past 14 years. Indeed, it has been a pleasure to serve you.

The Angel Company

I'm sad to see them go. They were such a great company and the new catalog had some fabulous stamps. They will be missed.

'Nuff said.