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Sunday, January 30, 2011

Sending You Sprinkles of Fun!

This is another Valentine's Day card I made. I'm also entering it in this week's Scrappy Mom's Terrific Tuesday Challenge, which we is to use the Sweethearts cartridge. I don't have that cart, but I do know it has an umbrella on it, so I used my Create a Critter cart for the umbrella. The "Sending You Sprinkles of Fun" sentiment is from the Scrappy Mom's Sweet Something stamp set.

The bottom part of the card is actually my favorite. What I did was use a bunch of strips of patterned paper that I had left over from some of my other Valentines cards and adhered them to a 2" inch piece of white cardstock. I then trimmed the edges and adhered it to the bottom of the card.

I can't take credit for the idea. I actually saw it on Kristina Werner's blog. She did this same technique on a acrapbook layout, but I thought it worked well for a card.

Great way to use up the end pieces of paper that we trim when making mats for cards or pictures!

Enjoy!

Saturday, January 29, 2011

Something Yummy



So in addition to making Valentine's Day cards, I need to start making more cards to have on hand. This week, we had not one, but two snow days, so I was able to make a couple of projects. I made this cute strawberry card, using a stamp from my Fruit & Veggie Puns from My Pink Stamper. The strawberries are from Doodlecharms. Robyn also did a challenge this week for her Imagine Pink Wednesdayto make something "yummy." And around here, there's nothing as yummy as a bowl of fresh picked strawberries in the summer!
By the way, don't you just love that paper in the background. It's the Circa 1934 collection from Cosmo Cricket. I bought it a couple of weeks ago and can't wait to use it to make a special gift for my BFF.
Enjoy!

Puppy Love

I've been trying to finish up some of my Valentine's Day cards this week so I can get them in the mail. I made this one for my nephew, Kail. I'm also going to enter it into this week's Challenge Me Monday at the Fantabulous Cricut Challenge, which is to use a neglected cartridge and also, the Cricut Cardz Challenge, which is to make a Valentine's Day card for a child.

So as for the neglected cartridge part, I pretty much use all of my cartridges I have expect one, Paper Pups. In fact, I've never used it. It was one of the carts that came with my expression when I got it this summer. As for the cut itself, it's not the dog...which is from Doodlecharms, it's actually, the Love at the bottom.

The cut is the card feature on page 125. My whole concept was to do a "Puppy Love" card since they have three dogs. Unfortunately, after looking through the cartridge, I really wasn't a fan of any of the dogs, but I did like the card cut from page 125 which had the word "love" cut out on the side. I thought there would be enough room for me to add the puppy from Doodlecharms, but when I cut the card out on Paper Pups, there wasn't enough room on the left. So instead, I just cut around the "Love." I'm sure it would be easier to understand if I would have taken pictures as I was working, but I didn't. :)

Enjoy!






Sunday, January 23, 2011

Love Stamp Card



Here's another Valentine's Day card. This one uses paper from the Martha Stewart Holiday Mat Stack. I had been looking for Valentine's Day themed paper, but really didn't want to buy a huge paper pack. I saw this small pack at Michaels and knew it was exactly what I needed. For just $4, there's enough paper for me to make my cards and not have a ton left over.


The stamp in the center is from the $1 bin at Michaels too.


I also used my brand new EK Success Bracket Edger Punch which I think is adorable. I saw it on another blog and thought is was really different from a lot of the other punches I've seen. I think this card has a little bit more of an elegant feel to it and think I will send it to my Mom.

Finally...My First Layout


Well I finally did it, I made my first scrapbook layout! Granted, that cute little baby you see is now 11-years old! LOL. But it's a start.

To be honest, I've been working on two different layouts. This one is from the day my son, Brady, was born and the day we brought him home from the hospital.


I think it's going to take me couple of layouts until I start to feel more comfortable with what I'm doing. I kept this one pretty simple and actually used a kit for most of it. I still want to add two tags, one at the top with his birth information and then one in that space at the bottom to put some personal thoughts.

The "hello" at the top is actually from the Wild Card cartridge. I wanted the word to be welded, but since I don't have a Gypsy, I went to Cricut Search.com to see if it was on any of the cartridges I owned. I just typed in hello and it brought up every cart that had the word along with the page you can find it on in your booklet...very helpful.



Saturday, January 15, 2011

My Pink Stamper Blog Hop

Friday night, Robyn over my My Pink Stamper held a blog hop with her new design team. To "shake things up a little", she added a twist to the hop. At each stop, you received a word, which then formed into a sentence with a special challenge.



I recently got the Doodlecharms cartridge and knew I wanted to use the mailbox for a Valentine's Day card. Then last week I found this cute patterned paper from Creative Imaginations and thought the two paired together really well. I added the "What's Up" stamp from Robyn's Punnylicious stamp set.

So, not only was I able to make my card today, but I can also add it into Robyn's hop.

I also wanted to include a little tip I learned from another one of my favorite blogs,
Kristina Werner. It has to do with my bow, which honestly I don't normally do. But she does this cool thing when making bows that you want to go all around the card.

What you do is cut a small slit in the folded side of the card and slide your ribbon through. It holds the ribbon in place while you make your bow and then you can also slide a gift card behind the ribbon on the inside.

Have a great night!

Friday, January 14, 2011

Birthday Card for Reese


So have you ever had one of those cards that no matter what you do, it just doesn't look right? That was this card for me. I like it now, but getting to this point was a real pain in the you know where! LOL.

The card is for my best friend's daughter, Reese. She's turning five this month and loooves elephants. She also loves to craft and the last time I went to visit, I took along my expression and we spent the whole weekend making cards.


I'm also going to enter this card in the Scrappy Mom's Stamps Terrific Tuesday Challenge. The sentiment I put on the inside is from their Sweet Somethings stamp set.

Happy Birthday Reese!

Valentines Treat Bag

I have been hard at work this week working on several projects, including my first scrapbook layout....yeah! It should hopefully be done by tomorrow. I also have some challenge entries I wanted to do including this one for More Than Favors: Wacky Wednesday Challenge.

This week's challenge was to make a treat bag.





I made this cute little valentines bag using an 8 x 11 sheet of pink card stock. The paper is cut at 4 x 11, so you can make two bags from a sheet of paper. Holding the paper lengthwise, you score it at 1" and 6". The 1" inch fold makes the top flap and the 6" fold should be at the bottom.

I decorated it with a piece of patterned paper and then cut two frames from Accent Essentials using the shift key. The larger frame is in a fuchsia colored paper and the smaller frame is just white card stock.

The hearts are cut from Plantin Schoolbook. I feel like I have been using this cartridge a lot lately, but it was one of the first carts I used since it came with my Expression. For basic shapes, it's definitely my "go-to" cartridge.

I then added a button and some twine and a cute little sentiment.



This is what it looks like on the inside. There is supposed to be a bag of Pop Rocks here, but you'll have to ask my 11-year old what happened to it! (LOL) Some Swiss Miss will have to do for now :)


I added another piece of patterned paper and you could also put some white card stock on top to write a message.


I'll be hopping along on the Pink Stamper Blog Hop tonight, but may try to post another one of my challenge projects tonight too.


See Ya!

Sunday, January 9, 2011

My Creative Time -Throwback Thursday Challenge

I haven't entered a challenge in awhile so I thought I would jump back into the swing of things with Emma's Throwback Thursday Challenge over at My Creative Time. The challenge was "viewers choice." The only guidelines are you have to use an older cartridge and have a heart incorporated somewhere into your design.

I had a bunch of ideas running through my head, but eventually decided to keep it simple. I used Plantin Schoolbook to cut out nine hearts in two types of patterned paper and then one blue color. The hearts themselves are cut at 1 1/4 inches.

I inked the edges on all of the hearts with a hot pink stamp I had from the $1 bin at Michaels. I then added sentiments on four of the hearts. Two of the sayings are from the Friends and Family stamp set from My Pink Stamper and the "sweet" stamp is from her Fruit and Veggie Puns set. The "sassy" on the blue heart is actually half of a "sweet & sassy" stamp from Scrappy Moms.

Tomorrow I'm off to attempt my first scrapbook layout. Keep your fingers crossed for me. :)

Monday, January 3, 2011


I'm sitting here at work killing time before a board meeting and thought I would post a picture of one of the cards I made to include in some of my card sets I gave out at Christmas. I've been wanting to do a card with birdhouses and knew there were some on my Stretch Your Imagination cartridge. I never use it and thought I would give it a whirl.

Two of the birdhouses are the same image, just cut at a different size. The long, skinny, birdhouse is made using the shift button on the birdhouse cut. The butterfly is actually cut from the backside of the base layer paper that I used, which is a DCWV designer series pack.

The sentiment in the top right corner is kinda hard to read (sorry about that...bad lighting) but it says, "Specially for You" and is from the Scrappy Mom's Stamp set, Sweet Somethings.

Despite being put together on the fly, I thought it came out really cute.