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Oh What fun it is to..... build a puzzle (you thought I was going to say, "a one horse open sleigh", didn't you?). Here's my puzzle. With help from the the husband-elf over my shoulder - I think he had more fun. Math lesson: if two people took 8 minutes then it really is 16 minutes. I'm slow, but it was fun to do. (Note: the puzzle is greyed out because of the time clock pop up).

I was playing around yesterday with that multiple transparent frames which I made into several masks. This is two of the cat pictures I came up with - one is of the CF Spark cat I asked for and one is of my nephew's cat.

The filters used in this elfin experiment are as screenshot - user defined Filters.

As soon as I saw that this freebie was about cookies, a song came to mind. In Germany there is a nursery song about the Christmas bakery and every year there is a children's choir in one of the big shows on the telly that is singing it. Cristina, Anja and Doska will certainly know it. It is called: "In der Weihnachtsbäckerei" and for those who want to hear it, you can google it and get many hits. Carole thanks, I can't get it out of my head now and am singing/humming it for the last 2 days!🗣️ I even found a sticker about that bakery, it was on a white background but thanks to the blendmode hard light the white disappeared. I have the cookiescript 2 and have "baked" a couple of cookies with some sprinkles and glitter, put them on a plate with a doilie behind. The picture of the bakery shop I had in my stash and I used a mask to get rid of the ugly torn edges. And of course I used the freebie cookies for the text.

I got the printed book for my son-in-law yesterday. I am very happy with the result and the quality I got from Staples. Here is the "reveal".

I'm so sorry ladies... mine was around 4:40. But then I do jigsaw puzzles all the time. I have an app on my tablet for jigsaw puzzles and I try to do one every day. And, I do 500 piece puzzles during the holidays to help combat my seasonal depression. I just finished my 13th one since November 21.

Technically mine was too since two of us did it. We are "sistas-of-the-puzzle"!

I didnt take a snapshot of it, but my time was 16 minutes!

Presenting my very own Elfin magic .

This is something I have made for my family and FB friends. I have used images from Pixabay and CF and compiled them into one composition. Wishing you all a very Merry Christmas for 2023.

Wasn't sure if I would do something for this, but I got to playing this morning with that BAS Globe that was offered somewhere here last Christmas or the Christmas before. I made it a mask and then came up with this. Working with the magic wand wasn't cooperating at first, not sure why, but I extracted the shape of the placque and then filled it with a color similar to the placque background; used Arial Bold for the text and then effects>cutout with a fill color of yellow, and this is what I came up with (also changed the background color from red since it wouldn't go with this picture. The picture is of the manger scene at our church.

JUMPING UP AND DOWN!!!! Awwwwwwwwwwwwwwww It turned out so GREAT! I knew all your hard work would be awesome, but I could not wait to see how Staples turned out! It is truly magical!!!! It's amazing how REALLY GREAT this turned out! I especially like the glossy effect....and I think the size of the type turned out just right. It was well worth the wait. Love it, Cassel...JUST LOVE IT!!!!

I may save this one or the other one I posted for next year's Christmas countdown. Possibly by putting it to a vote. Thanks for all the loves, wows and likes.

Today would have been my late hubby Frank's, 83rd birthday, so I created this for him. He's pictured at an outdoor restaurant on the beach at Acapulco, our favorite getaway. The textured background paper is labeled "texture25" and I changed the color to match the photo using the Change to Target tool. The frame is from Marisa Lerin, the punch is cass-CornersA-999-13, and the font is Bremen.

ChristmasCard2. My favorite FulterForgeFreePack5, Carole's Alpha and SantaClaus' cap: )

The font is Brush Script MT. The graphics were downloads from C F. The Cookies Alpha is of course the Christmas Cookie Alpha from Cassel. The other Alpha is one I downloaded a long time ago from who knows where.

Used one the Corel freebies to showcase this gorgeous winter photo by Nadia Povalinska, a friend of Heather Cox Richarson, the history professor I read daily on Substack and no, I didn't use the Selective Color script.

I'm back on the Alphabet Soup (from a challenge or workshop in 2022!). I'm down to X.

I had already used the cookies for the Christmas challenge, so I used the cookies for a birthday, not intended as a card to print but to use as a digital image to wish a birthday, for example on Facebook or somewhere else. I'm not sure the shadows are okay, but I had fun all evening with making this. Cookie Monster and his party hat are from PNGwing, the balloons are freebies, but I can't remember where I got them The Alphas are from digidelights blogspot com

I've had this Christmas/Hanukkah cartoon for a while and don't know where it came from other than on the internet. The background is from the greenery in the art. Added a selection frame with inner bevel.

The doors etc in the center are from a photo I took yesterday with my new camera, standing in the the foyer of my church. The other elements are some I have saved over the years probable from C F as that is where a lot of them are from.

I found this gorgeous solstice background on Creative Fabrica in a bundle of twelve. It was hard to pick just one. The girls are from pngtree, I think. To create the "window" I combined a rectangular vector with an ellipse vector, magic wand selected on the outside, switched to a layer with a duplicate of the background, and deleted. Then I modified the selection with Select Selection Borders for the outline around the window. Added a little inner bevel on the text (Avenida LET font) and a drop shadow with 100% opacity and no blur. The singers got a smaller inner bevel just to give them a little depth. I kind of liked having the same background design in two different sizes. Any suggestions?

Happy Christmas: )/first IMHO/.

A suggestion and request for a masterclass on being creative using vector swashes, swirls, flourishes, dividers. For this decorative festive wordart I used several of the above vectors. To create the banner I used a flourish, duplicated it, mirrored, flipped, then added another decorative swirl in the same manner for extra curls on the banner. Using a vector I was able to easily created text following the path of the banner. I used a divider for the main stem of the mistletoe. added foliage which I took from a font monogram. The holly and berries, stars, snowflakes, ribboned bauble and date also came from font extras. Pen tool to hang the 2 decorations from the banner. I find it rewarding to be able to create my own. It is also much quicker than endless searching for something suitable online which would be in PNG format. Although I will scroll through some for inspiration. The beauty of using vectors is that you can use a 100 pixel size and resize it to 1000pixels plus whilst retaining it's clarity and sharpness. Using the pen tool you can also make adjustments to your liking. For those that didn't know or was curious to know, this is how I created the above festive wordart.

The Yule Ball is from the Harry Potter stories. I pieced together a bunch of different elements including a few touches from Particle Shop onto a background pic of the empty ballroom. The font is, appropriately, Harry P.

I put this page in November by mistake. I like the gold. I'm going to use this in some of next year's festive cards, as the greeting/verse on the inside page. It ill make for a novel layout. I will also be able change some of the wording, depending who the recipient of the card is going to be.

Welcome to December. Here is the December calendar featuring the Amur Leopard this time. Enjoy. I even used a little Out of Bounds on this one. I have posted a full size version on Facebook that will print 11"x8.5" I feature mine on my desktop. The leopard information is from the Beardsley Zoo in Connecticut, where they have successfully bred some new members of this endangered species. Edit: forgot to name the Amur Jaguar font - Sedalia and the journaling is Arial Narrow.