Happy Mother's Day cards

It's Monday, and you know what that means- time for a challenge at Pause, Dream, Enjoy Challenges!  Our theme this time is: Happy ________.  That's right, any project that has to do with happy anything will work!  I chose to make Happy Mother's Day cards for my mom and mother-in-law (and had to wait until after Mother's Day to post them!)

I made these cards using Wild Card, and cut the blackout of the scallop card at 5 inches.  I really wanted the base image of the scallop card, but after wasting a TON of yellow cardstock with it ripping or not cutting all the way through as I tried to adjust various settings, I just went with the blackout because it cut better.  I still think the card works.

The kraft circle and pink image were cut at 4 inches from Storybook.  I adhered them onto the card base and then put little pink pearls that I got from the dollar bin at Michaels in the center of each flower.  To finish off the card, I made bows from some off-white ribbon and glued them to the top of the card with glossy accents.

The inside of the card is stamped with sentiments from Joy's Life Everyday Occasions and Holiday Occasions.

 What kind of happy crafts do you want to make?  Check out some inspiration from the rest of the DT at Pause, Dream, Enjoy Challenges and then it's your turn!

I'm also entering these cards into the Fun Friday Mother's Day Challenge at Little Scrap Pieces.  

It's cold out there!

Today I have a nice card that is pretty representative of how many of us in the US are feeling right now!  I chose a baby blue card base and a piece of off-white paper to go over it.  I punched the edge with my Apron Lace punch by Fiskars, then I put on some of my snowflake ribbon.  

I cut the "BRRR" from the font on Wild Card- it's one of my favorites!  The B is at 2 inches and the R's are at 1.5 inches.  There is a lower case font on that cartridge, but out of context the r's looked kind of like n's, so I decided to go all capitols.  

I stamped the phrase "it's cold out there" and the snowflakes on the right side from my new "Winder Wonderland" stamp set from My Craft Spot in blue ink.  Then I blinged up the snowflakes with some small gems in the middle and the word "BRRR" with some Midnight Blue stickles.  If you look carefully, I was able to capture a little bit of the sparkle from the stickles this time!

This card is being entered in the following challenges:
Bitten by the Bug 2- Fontastic
Simply Create Too- Anything Goes

My Craft Spot- Bling it up    
Die Cuttin Divas- Edge Punch and Ribbon                                                                                                                                                        

The official Christmas card

Happy 2013!  While I'm recuperating from being awake after *gasp* 9:00 pm, I thought I'd let you in on what design I picked for our Christmas card this year.  We sat down with many of the Christmas themed cards I made over the course of the year and this is what I came up with:

I cut the card to fit my A2 envelopes on White Bazzill cardstock.  That's right, I buy the heavy duty stuff for the Christmas cards.  :)  Then I cut dark blue Bazzill and wrapped some silver ribbon from Michaels (it's the 360 brand).  I cut the Jesus and star from Winter Frolic with Bazzill cardstock.  The yellow and the silvery/off white color have shimmer to them, which looks very cool.  I drew Jesus' eyes and cheeks on with gel pen and I took his cheeks off using Cricut Craft Room.

The "Merry Christmas" banner is cut from Wild Card and stamped in blue ink with a stamp from My Creative Time's "Gift Card Sentiments."  I forgot to take a picture of the inside of the cards, but you can see the sentiment I used here:  Glory of Christ's Birth Stamp.  I stamped it in the same blue as I used on the front of the card.

Jaded Blossom December Challenge

This month, because it's their one year birthday, there's a special Crafter's Choice challenge going on at Jaded Blossom.  I happen to have just ordered four new stamp sets from them and to have *ahem* a few more on my wish list, so I wanted to try some of them out.  This one's going to be a little more picture heavy than most of my posts.

For this project, I made a gift box and six cards.  The gift box was cut from Wild Card at "Fit to Page," which just so happened to be 7 inches with a 12x12 mat.  I used some patterned paper from Paper Studio's "Happy Hootin' Holidays" stack, which I bought at Hobby Lobby to use in my December Daily/Christmas journal.  I cut the liner in green patterned paper from a K&Company pad that I bought at Michaels.   I can't seem to find it online, and I already threw away the evidence of my shopping spree the cover of the pad and all the embellishments (yes, I bought the entire line), but I will update this post if and when I figure it out.  I stamped the postage stamp and sentiment in brown from Jaded Blossom's "Santa Mail" and put it in the top corner.

Next we come to the cards.  Each card is 4 inches square, and the tag on the front is cut from Elegant Edges at 3.5 inches.  All of the twine is hand made.  Each card as a faux front that is 4x4 inches that I used to wrap the twine around, then adhered down to the real front of the card.  These first two cards were made with Jaded Blossom's "Christmas Wishes" stamp set.  I love it!

The wedding dress and sentiment on the grey card are from Jaded Blossom's "Wedding Wishes" set and the tree and sentiment are from their "Simple Sayings" set.

The tree and saying below are, again, from Jaded Blossom's "Simple Sayings" set and the pumpkin and sentiment are from Jaded Blossom's "Thanksgiving Wishes" set.  

Here's the final product, all ready to gift!  I adhered the back of the box together with some washi tape and it's all set!

Happy Grandparents' Day!

Did you know that today is Grandparents' Day?  That's what my calendar tells me.  I have only one Grandparent left, and she lives across the country, so I don't see her very often.  I thought I'd make her a card to say hi.

I cut this card from Elegant Edges.  The card was cut at 5 inches using kraft for the Shadow feature and pink for the actual cut.  I adhered two of the shadow together to make the card.  The little bird that was cut out of the bottom corner shows up again in the inside.  :)

The branch and the little blue birds are from Wild Card.  The branch was cut at about 1.5 inches, and the birds were cut at about 2 and 2.25 (I think, I have to start writing these things down!)  

Here's the inside of the card.  I stamped the "happy" with Joy's Life Everyday Occasions and the "Grandparents day" with Lawn Fawn Jessie's ABCs.

Some Pig

This card was inspired by a childhood favorite of mine.  Remember in Charlotte's Web, when Charlotte spun her web to say "Some Pig" to save Wilbur from being slaughtered by Farmer Zuckerman?  Now THAT'S friendship.

This card has cuts from three different Cricut cartridges.  I wish I had County Fair, because I totally would have put the pig from there on here as Wilbur.  The only pig I have is on Create a Critter, and it didn't fit with the card.  The spiderweb was cut from Wild Card at 4.5 inches.  I cut the words "Some Pig" from Lyrical Letters, using the Jack Sprat font.  They were cut at 1 inch.  I went over them with Frosted Lace Stickles.  I cut Charlotte from Doodlecharms at 2.5 inches.  I put some white cardstock behind her for her eyes and drew her a happy smile with a gel pen.  Then I made the string from the web to the spider by just cutting it out.

The patterned paper at the bottom is from All Seasons 2 by Paper Studio.  I added it at the end for a little bit of extra something.

I plan to enter this in the following challenges:
Creative Cutter Room- Friendship
DL. Art- Friends
Pause, Dream, Enjoy- On the Farm (cause Zuckerman's farm was the only concept I had of farms for a long time as a child)

Born on the Fourth of July

One of the things I've really liked about participating in challenges is that I make things that I wouldn't have made otherwise.  I doubt I would have ever made a Fourth of July card, but this was really fun!  I have this patriotic background paper from the All Seasons II pack, which was perfect.  The fireworks at the bottom and the box/firework at the top are from Wild Card.  I LOVE how Wild Card has all of these little images that you don't even think about if you don't check it regularly.  I used the box as a place to put a sentiment.  Since I don't have any patriotic themed sentiments, I used "celebrate" from Scripted Year.  It's a Pink by Design stamp.  I finished up with three little pearls on the bottom left side and it's all ready to go!

I plan to enter this in the following challenges:
More than Favors- Fourth of July
Scrappy Moms- Patriotic Pride
Simply Create Too- Country Where you Live
Bitten by the Bug 2- Patriotic
My Sheri Crafts- Patriotic

Mother's and Father's day 2012

One of my favorite things about crafting is surfing the internet and seeing the things that others have created, and being inspired by what they have done.  Seriously, many an evening is spent at my house with my husband renting some action movie and me sitting on the floor with the laptop, browsing google images or pinterest for hours.  Both my mother's day and father's day cards for this year were inspired this way.  (Like their birthdays, my parents and in-laws each got the same cards for their respective holidays.)

For Mother's Day, I was inspired by this card.  I love her idea of using Christmas cartridges for non-Christmas events.  Otherwise, my Winter Frolic cartridge will have to be dusted off every year when I make my Christmas cards and then never used for another whole year. 

For my version, I wanted to focus more on the pink.  I used a pink cardstock as the card and a pink patterned paper from KI Memories Classic stack.  I used my Tonic Studios corner chomper on the patterned paper.  The yellow ribbon is, I think, from American Crafts.  All of my ribbon is pretty much in jars and separated by color, and it isn't on it's spools.  But I know I bought a lot of American Crafts ribbon at some point, so it's a good chance.  The cut, like I said, is from Winter Frolic.  I left off the santa hat that the mom bird is supposed to wear, and I drew their eyes on with a Fiskars gel pen instead of using the cut.

I stamped the inside of the card with stamps from Joy's Life.  The "happy" comes from Joy's Everyday Occasions and the "Mothers" and "Day" are from Joy's Holiday Occasions.  I love these stamps because with just two sets, you have sentiments to cover every major event in life.  I LOVE mix and match stamps!

My Father's Day card was inspired by this one.  I have the Wild Card cartridge, and I should be using it all the time.  But I don't.  So I was searching around for ideas of how to use it practically.  Like the inspiration card, I used the Happy Father's Day sentiment from later in the handbook.  I like the cream background with the various colors of blue.

The sentiment on the inside, "Celebrate," is from Pink by Design's Scripted Year.  Perfect!

Congrats grad!

As difficult as it is for me to believe, my baby sister is going to be a proud graduate of Michigan State University this May.  I'm very proud of her, which is hard for me to say as a University of Michigan alum myself.  ;)

I wanted to make her a congratulations card, so I decided to challenge myself and pull out my Wild Cards cartridge.  I think it would have been really easy for me to make a card with 3 Birds on Parade using my usual A2 size template, but I want to get use out of this Wild Card cartridge.  It's full of great things!

I started by cutting the envelope- sorry, no pictures- at Fit to Page on my Expression.  It came out at 7 1/2 inches.  I used my bone folder to put it together and it was done!  I decided to cut my card just slightly smaller, at 7 1/4, to make sure there was no problem fitting in the envelope.  I cut the card in green, as it's the color I imagine that her cap will be.  I cut the tassel in white, after some detective work on the internet to find out what color tassel her school uses.  It's hard to see on the picture, but I made a little circle out of green stickles where the tassel connects to the hat.  It's not perfect, and I may go around it with a gel pen or something before the day comes.  I wish I had some brads- never fear, they're on my wish list!  I used my home-made green bakers twine to dress up the tassel a little.

Here's the inside of the card.  I used the "Class of" phrase that's on the same button as the graduation cap.  Then I cut the "2012" from the alphabet.  Word to the wise: If you're cutting a phrase, keep the size at the same as the card (here, 7 1/4) to get it to fit.  However, if you switch to the alphabet, it WILL cut the numbers 7 1/4 inches tall.  I switched to 2 inches.  The numbers still didn't come out the same size because I forgot to turn on Real Dial Size button.  I kind of think it looks cute though.

CONGRATULATIONS, GRAD!

A few cards

I've been working on and off on making some cards.  As I mentioned, part of the deal in getting a Cricut was to promise to make all of our birthday and Christmas cards from now until I die.  But I don't have a lot of the material that I feel I need to have to make really nice cards like I've been seeing in the tutorials on YouTube.  So they aren't quite as good as those.  Here's a sampling of what I've done so far.

This was my first card, for my husband's cousin, who also was the "ring girl" in our wedding.  It was her 11th birthday.  I used a premade blank card that I got from the dollar bin at Target and some ribbon that I believe came in a pack from Michaels.  The saying, dog, and present are from Paper Pups, which is one of my fav cartridges.  I thought it was a kind of lame card, compared to some I've seen, but it seemed to get the 11 year old stamp of approval.

This monster card is one I made for my sister.  She's starting her 4th year of college and applying for grad school, so I wanted to send her a little pick-me-up.  She likes monsters and ugly and weird things, so it was perfect.  I made it with my Wild Card cartridge.  I was disappointed to find out that my baby bug can't cut the envelopes for many of the cards, so I had to stick it in a plain old A2 sized envelope.  Most of the paper is from the Cricut cardstock that came in my Cricut Essentials kit, except for the pink paper which has been in my stash so long that I can only assume it's from my dollar tree days when I first started scrapbooking.

And last, but not least, this card was made for my sister-in-law, who just finished her first week of college.  Again, I used the Wild Card cartridge for this one.  I wish I could tell you where all of the paper is from.  I know the card itself is from the Cricut cardstock, but the rest was just pulled out of my scraps drawer.  Sorry!  I didn't try cutting an envelope, because I didn't want to waste paper after the moster envelope fiasco, so I cut the card to the size to fit in an A2 envelope and figured that will be the norm until I've used the baby bug enough to warrent getting an Expression.  :)