Thankful for you

Hi friends!  I don't know about you, but I am super ready for the weekend!  I've been designated as the "drywall destroyer" in our basement this week, but I managed to sneak a little time in to craft too. 

I made this card with fall in mind, obviously.  The leaves are starting to turn here, I love it!  I started out with a brown card base and a piece of orange patterned paper from Recollections.  Then I layered some brown paper from DCWV over that (after wrapping some ribbon around it).

The leaf I chose was from Stretch your Imagination.  I went through a ton of cartridges looking at fall leaves.  It was kind of like Goldilocks- "this one's too plain, that one's too fancy" and then I found the one that was juuuuust right. It's the regular leaf, not the stretched one.

The sentiment is from Jaded Blossom's Thanksgiving Wishes stamp set.  I went through a ton of the brown paper scraps deciding between using my new gold embossing powder or my new gold ink.  I decided that for this card I liked the more dainty look of the ink rather than the embossing.  I'm still getting the hang of the heat embossing, and sometimes words are coming out looking kind of...chunky.

This card is being entered into the following challenges:
Bitten by the Bug 2- Fall leaves are falling (I don't have Art Philosophy)
Die Cuttin Divas- Use Brown
Simon Says Stamp- Wednesday Challenge, use a rubber or clear stamp

Jelly beans

I love the Jaded Blossom monthly challenges.  Possibly because they inspire me to make a treat or something other than a card, and possibly because I just love using their stamps.  :)  At any rate, this month their challenge is to do something Easter themed. 

I don't have any special treat bags, so I improvised and used a zipper lunch bag filled with jelly beans.  I cut the topper from the 8x8 Basics stack by Paper Studio and then punched along the border with a border stamp.  Next, I cut the basket from Stretch your Imagination at 3 inches.  Did you know there are no jelly bean Cricut cuts?  At least, I couldn't find any...so time to improvise again!  I used George and cut the ovals at 1/4 inch a bazillion times, then glued them all onto the basket so it would be filled with jelly beans!

The scalloped circle is from Elegant Edges- I cut it at 3 inches using the main image and the shadow.  I lightly inked around the edges of the shadow, and then stamped the Jelly Bean Prayer from Jaded Blossom's Simply Blessings stamp set.  I don't know if you can read it from the picture, but it goes through each color of jelly bean and what they stand for...just make sure you get a bag of classic jelly beans and not one of the fancy ones! 

so little cake

I had a little bit of free time this morning while Sophie was at the groomer getting beautified, so I thought I'd make a quick card for a couple of challenges going on this week.  

I am feeling a bit of the winter "blahs," so I decided to pull out my brightest cardstock for this card.  I cut the cake from Stretch your Imagination.  Just a head's up- the shadow feature cuts the candles separately for some reason, so I had to stick them on the back of the cake's shadow and in person you can slightly see the spot where they join, if you look carefully. 

I used some old paper, I think from one of Paper Studio's 6x12 stacks, as the background paper over gray cardstock.  I stamped the sentiments on the front from My Craft Spot's "Birthday Wishes" stamp set, and the inside has another stamp from that set that just says "Happy Birthday to you!"  This is one of my most used stamp sets, because I make so many birthday cards!

To finish it off, I punched a flower using a Fiskars punch and then put a pink gem in the middle.  In my head, this was going to be gender-neutral, but as I went along it ended up becoming more of a girl's card.  Oh well.

I'm entering this card into the following challenges:

My Craft Spot- Anything Goes 

Pile it On- Happy Funny Birthday   
Paper Crafting Journey- Anything Goes
Lexi's Creations- Anything Goes                                                           

                       

Pumpkin Man

I'm ready to get started working with a fall color scheme!  Halloween was fun to work on, but I think I'm ready to move on.  This card has a kraft base.  Then I cut a layer of off-white, then a layer of patterned paper from Paper Studio's All Seasons II stack.

The pumpkin man is from Stretch Your Imagination.  I cut the shadow at the same off-white as I used for the background.  Then I cut the blackout image in orange and the silhouette image in dark brown.

I put some light green ribbon across the top and three green buttons along the bottom to finish it off.

I'm entering this card into the following challenges:
Red Carpet Studio Challenges- Pumpkins and Halloween
Celebrate the Occasion- Fall
Fantabulous Cricut- Seeing Spots
Die Cuttin Divas- Anything Goes
The Play Date Cafe- Colors: Cinnamon/Squash/Vanilla/Sage

Singing bird

One of my very favorite challenge blogs is Pause, Dream, Enjoy.  I love that each challenge comes with a question that I can think about.  I came into the challenges half way through the year when I started doing challenges, but I'm hoping they continue in 2013 so I can do a full years worth of questions in some sort of mini book or something.  

This week's question is about whether we play any instruments.  I actually do/did play the piano.  I took lessons for a whopping 10 years in my youth, although I haven't touched even my keyboard since it got moved to the basement to make room for more craft supplies in my craft room.  However, a quick look at MyCutSearch told me that I don't have any of the cartridges that have pianos represented on them, so I had to go with my second favorite musical past time, singing.  I especially love to sing showtunes and Disney songs, much to the chagrin of my husband.  He shudders everytime I'm turning the TV around and see Aladdin on cable, let me tell you (not that it matters, because I own every Disney princess movie on DVD anyway.  And no, I have no children...they are mine).

I chose the singing bird from Stretch your Imagination.  I think it looks so cheerful, which is generally how I'm feeling when I'm busting out a showtune or two. I used hot pink cardstock for the card and this spunky blue and pink patterned paper that I have no idea who makes it because I won it from a prize pack.  I used the music notes that were cut both with the yellow and orange layers of the bird and colored them black with a Sharpie, to save paper.  Then I covered them with Black Diamond stickles to give them a little shine.  

I'm entering this into the following challenge:
Pause, Dream, Enjoy- music

Anniversary

We have two very important anniversaries in August: my parents and my brother-in-law/sister-in-law.  I made them each a card with cream backing and some paper from the wedding stack that I had bought for my wedding album.  I used this cut from Stretch Your Imagination.  I cut the shadow in dark gray, then I cut the main image in light gray.  You can just barely see it on the bottom of the glasses.  I cut the silhouette in light blue, the champagne in yellow, and the ribbon in dark blue.  The Cricut cut some weird little bubbles into the champagne, but it didn't work very well, so I covered them up with bling for bubbles.

I cut a strip in the light gray and stamped it with an AmyR stamp from the Wedding set.  There's a matching sentiment inside that says "A fabulous anniversary."  I forgot to take a picture of it.  Sorry that this picture is kind of dark; whenever I tried to get it in better light the colors came out looking weird for some reason and I thought that the darker light was actually a better representation of how it looks in person.

I am entering this in the following challenges:

DL Art- Wedding or Anniversary

Fantabulous Cricut- Wedded Bliss (wedding or anniversary)

Summer fun

It turns out I'm still in the mood for summery, bbq cards!  For this one, I used the same background paper as my last BBQ card.  I was thinking about picnics and the first thing that came to mind is ants stealing my food.  However, it turns out there aren't a lot of Cricut cartridges with ants on them, and of the ones that exist, I have none!  It was time to get a little creative.  For these little guys, I cut the caterpillars from Stretch Your Imagination at 1 inch and then trimmed off half of their bodies.  Don't they look like they're having fun stealing someone's watermelon?  That's how I picked the sentiment from Stampendous' "Everything Happy."  I added a little bling on the tag on either side of the sentiment.

The watermelon and the tag are also from Stretch Your Imagination.

I plan to enter this card in the following challenges:
Fantabulous Cricut- BBQ Time
Die Cuttin Divas- Summer Fruits and Veggies

I can hear the bells

One challenge I've given myself this summer is to not ALWAYS make cutesy cards.  There are still a few that sneak through, because I like them so much, but I want to stretch myself.  Luckily, Fantabulous Cricut had a bells challenge this week, and I only have two cartridges that have bells, and neither one is cutesy!

I decided to go with this bell from Stretch Your Imagination.  It would have been really easy to just use the main cut, but I was thinking about trying new things so I decided to go with the shadow and outline features. I really like how that worked.  I used some old leftover paper from a black and white pack I got years ago to do my wedding scrapbook as well as one of the borders.  Then I added a little blue bling at the top and decided that it was done.  I had originally stamped a tag from the same paper line to put up in that left corner, but it just wasn't working for me.  I realized that I have really no wedding sentiments, so I guess that means I'll have to buy a few more sets of stamps.  Oh, darn.

I'm entering this in
Fantabulous Cricut's Blue Bells challenge
Cardz TV's Anything Goes challenge

It's almost the big day

It's almost here.  The day women dread from the time they turn 25....my 30th birthday is in August!  Aaaaaahhhh!

I've been throwing around whether or not I want to have a birthday party, and since there were a couple of challenges that I wanted to try I thought I'd make a first attempt at an invitation. 

The 30 is cut from Doodletype, and I wanted it to fill up almost the entire page.  It's a big deal, after all!  Then I wanted to add the little grasshopper from Stretch Your Imagination because...well...I think he's cute and I've always wanted to use him for something.  But I wanted to make him festive, so I added the party hat from Doodlecharms, cut with the blackout feature.  He's cut at 1.5 inches, the hat is at .75.  I even used some old Doodlebug paper for the hat- it's a doodle fest in here!

I embossed some white paper with my Cuttlebug Seeing Spots folder, and it looked SO HARSH against the blue.  So I used some blue and purple ink and one of my makeup sponges, and just inked all over the page.  It was still pretty harsh, so I pulled out my Ek Success corner rounder (the medium one) and chomped away.  That helped a lot.  Then I added the little hop marks with a black gel pen, and it was done!

Since it's an invitation, I had to include all of the information!  I used Pink by Design stamps Party Time for the entire page.  It has mix-and-match sentiments for all sorts of invitations.  It's great!  I stamped it in the same purple ink that I used for inking the front of the card. 



I'm not sure why the picture came out so yellow?  It's really a piece of white cardstock
and purple writing in real life.  I think it has to do with the flash being on.

 I plan to enter this card into the following challenges:

Fantabulous Cricut- Don't bug me
My Craft Spot- Birthday- what's your age?

Christmas Countdown

It took me until after Christmas, but I finally finished my advent calendar! It will be all ready for next year.  I have so many Christmas cuts on various Cricut Cartridges, and it seemed like a fun project that could last through the holiday season (and boy, did it!)

The base of the calendar is a cookie sheet (a large size, I can't remember the dimensions exactly).  I used two sheets of paper from the Paper Studio All Seasons 2 pack for the background.  I wanted to make the background look kind of like a present, so I accented it with some burgundy paper, which was from my stash.  It was a slightly lighter color on the other side, which makes me think it may have come from the Provo Craft cardstock that was part of my Cricut Essentials pack, but I could be wrong.  My husband drilled two holes in the top and sanded them down to make them safe, and I strung two pieces of ribbon through to hang it up.  One ribbon is a sturdy, silver ribbon with sparkles.  I'm pretty sure it was left over from my wedding.  The other ribbon was some miscellaneous burgundy ribbon that I thought would add to the effect of it looking like a present.  True story: I originally bought that ribbon to make a bell to hang from our back door so that Sophie can ring it to let us know she needs to go outside.  I probably got it from Hobby Lobby.

Next came the Cricut-ing part.  As I said, I used many cartridges.  I broke the pictures down into two rows at a time so I can go through and tell you where I got them.  My cardstock is almost all from Paper Studio, with some of the Provo Craft thrown in here and there.  I varied the cut size between 2-3 inches, depending on the cartridge.  It took a little trial and error, and unfortunately I didn't think to write down the sizes.  

Days 24-22: Lights cut from Create a Critter

Day 21: Gingerbread house from Stretch Your Imagination, circle from Accent Essentials

Day 20: Sled from Stretch Your Imagination, circle from Accent Essentials

Day 19: Tree from Winter Frolic, circle from Accent Essentials

Day 18: Ornament from Winter Frolic

Day 17: Presents from Winter Frolic

Day 16: Holly from Stretch your Imagination

Day 15: Cup from Winter Frolic

Day 14: Mitten from Simply Charmed

Day 13: Reindeer from Create a Critter

Day 12: Bird (I think it's a partridge in a pear tree) from Winter Frolic, circle from Accent Essentials

Day 11: Snowman and Snowglobe from Doodlecharms

Day 10: Ornament from Winter Frolic

Day 9: Snowflake from Accent Essentials

Day 8: Hat from Simply Charmed

Day 7: Gingerbread man from Smiley Cards

Day 6: Penguin from Winter Frolic

Day 5: Stocking from Winter Frolic

Day 4: Candy cane from Simply Charmed

Day 3: Mouse from Winter Frolic

Day 2: Star from Winter Frolic

Day 1: Jesus from Winter Frolic

Then I wrote the day on them with gel pen, two-sided taped a magnet on the back, and it was done!

Can I take a second to talk about Day 7's Gingerbread Man?  I don't own a gypsy, and I only joined the world of Cricut about half a year ago, so I was sad to find out that I had orignally missed the boat on Smiley Cards.  I love the little images on there and the silly faces, and this Gingerbread Man was one of my favorites.  When Cricut Craft Room was released to the public and the ability to download digital cartridges was announced, I was so excited that I could finally have access to Smiley Cards!  Yeah, $50 (plus tax, FYI) is kind of expensive for a cartridge that you don't physically possess, and I won't be purchasing the digital cartridges willy-nilly, but I'm glad I went ahead and got this one. It's really easy to use- you just design the mat in Craft Room, click "Cut." hold the mat in place, and it loads and cuts in one fluid motion.  You can choose to cut only portions of your mat or the whole thing at once, depending on how you've loaded in your paper.  It was great and I highly recommend it for cartridges like this one, that are only available that way, or for ones that are retired or hard to find in stores.