~Flower Power

This week's message board challenge is all about FLOWERS!  Flowers are easier than bling ;-)
I had two cards in mind and couldn't choose, so I did them both.  One is spring inspired, the other fall.

For the spring card,  I started with green and peach colors (hard to tell here).  I cut a frame from peach and overlayed it on a green dotted pattern paper and stamped the sentiment at the bottom.  The wheelbarrow was cut twice from two different shades of brown and inked to give it some depth.  It was cut at 1.8" from Walk in My Garden.  The flower were cut using deep green cardstock, the same peach as the frame and  a touch of yellow for the flower centers.  The flowers were also inked and the whole thing pop dotted over the frame.

For the fall card, I chose a simple sunflower from Stretch Your Imagination, cut at 4.5".  I chopped up some Raffia and hot glued it to the bottom of the card.  A simple stamp on a piece of washi tape layered under the flower completed this card.  I hand trimmed the raffia after the glue cooled.  The pattern paper background is from the new DCWV 6x6 Pumpkin Patch.  Love the papers in this pack!
Thanks for stopping by!

~Bling Challenge

Those of you who know me well, know that I am definitely not a girly girl, so naturally that carries over into my craft life.  I'm not much on bling.  I LOVE looking at other people's sparkly projects, but even though I have TONS of stickles and glitter and gems, I rarely use them.   Last week's message board challenge forced me outside my box.  This is NOT a fancy card, but I used some gems for Christmas lights on my tree and silver shimmer paper for by card base.  There is also white stickles on the edges of the tree.

The tree is cut from Paper Doll Dress Up at 4", the star from Joys of the Season at 2" and the sentiment from Hannah Montana at .5"  Thanks for stopping by!

~Vinyl Car Decal

While running errands over the weekend, David and I saw a really cool car decal that I decided I just HAD to try to replicate with my Cricut.  I mean really, I collect all these cartridges for what?? LOL
Anyway I worked on this over a couple of evenings piecing things together from different cartridges.  My first design actually used a horse's head with skewed ovals to make longer ears, but then I remembered I had Pooh & Friends!  Eeyore to the rescue!

This was also one of my first serious attempts at using the Cricut Craftroom. I needed the bigger screen for this. 

I started with a horseshoe from County Fair at 5" and flipped it upside down.  To this I welded  a leaf that I found on Sophie, stretching it just a bit.  I next stretched and skewed and flipped a capital "S" from Art Nouveau for the tail.  These 3 pieces were welded together.  I tried to weld the base head of Eeyore to this, but I lost all the detail (even grouped), so I ended up laying the head manually when I applied it to the car.  Eeyore's head is cut at 3.5" from Pooh and Friends and I reversed the image.  I used the base image, hiding most of the inner lines, the face mask, muzzle, ear lining and mouth from this cut.  The text was cut from Sesame Street Font at .708". 

Vinyl color used
Black - base head cut, tail layer
Grey - Body, face mask
White printable - muzzle - colored peach with copics
White - eyes
Pink - ear lining and mouth
Lime Green - text

Once I had everything cut, I assembled all the head pieces.  For the tail layer, I trimmed the top of the backward S before applying over the base body tail.  I trimmed the bottom of the horseshoe into "hooves" , trimmed the neck off a little and then layered the head over the body. Finally I added the text to the donkey butt!  I lifted this all as a solid piece and adhered to my back windshield.  Now David wants one too, but I've got to wait for my vinyl order to get here.  If anyone would like the CCR file, let me know and thanks for stopping by!

~Happy Harvest - A color challenge

The weekend challenge on the Circle message board this weekend is to use any two or more of the following colors in a project.  I didn't have a specific idea to work on so I just started browsing through my papers looking for fall colors and then decided on  a theme.

Not sure who would actually SEND a Happy Harvest card, but I do like the way it looks.  ;-)
I used Autumn Celebrations for the pumpkins at 1.25 and 1" .  The Happy Harvest phrase was cut from Simply Scarecrows at 1.5".  The hay cart is an accessory on Pop Up Neighborhood, so I had to do a little hand trimming on this because I wanted full wheels.  Actually what I wanted was a hay stack and I could not find one on any of the cartridges.  I also didn't feel like hand cutting one, so when my search found the hay wagon, I decided to go with it.  It is cut at 2.6"  I added a scrap of burlap to the card front that I had left over from a Welcome Back to School wreath.   

I hope you enjoyed my little piece of fall and agree I met the challenge.  Thanks for stopping by!

~Man cards are tough!

My husband's dear old country doctor is retiring.  He's almost 85 and has worked part time for years, but I really don't think he wanted to retire.  He even still did hospital rounds.

Anyway, hubby wanted to give his Dr. a handmade Thank You card for all those wonderful years he was under his care.  It's simple, but effective I think.  I always have a tough time with "Man Cards".  The EKG is from Dr. Checkup cut at 2".  The Thank You phrase is from Cindy Loo at 1".  Thanks for stopping by!

~Happy Grandparent's Day!

And what a perfect opportunity to break out my brand new Create a Friend cartridge!  I knew I could get a grandma out of one of those characters, and I DID!  This card was for my granddaughter to give to her great-grandma.

I started with the teacher cut and made the dress a little longer, added a color and added the hair from the Princess, but layered it and modified the bun.  Then I added a purse and a parasol and set her over a starburst, which I hand cut..  I think she looks cool!  I did a lot of hand cutting and doodling and sewing on this and I had fun making it.

Besides Create a Friend, I used 6 other cartridges as follows:

Art Philosophy - the half oval at the bottom of the card.
Create a Critter - #1
3 Birds on Parade - parasol
Cricut Everyday - glasses, hand trimmed
Cricut Alphabet - grandma
Kate's ABC - purse

Thanks for stopping by!

~Flower Child

You really have to watch her.  Even though she has her own kid-size scissors, she kept taking my utility scissors out of the kitchen drawer for "crafting".  Then they would disappear.  So I hid them.  Then I catch her out in my front flower bed snipping off all my white flowers with her Uncle's LEFT handed scissors!  When asked WHY she wanted to cut all my flowers, she replied (quite seriously), "Don't worry Nana.  It's just like clipping your nails."   This child!

I used papers & embellies from Teresa Collins, MME & Heidi Swapp on this LO.  The title was cut at 1.5" from Lyrical Letters (Loopdeloo font).

Thanks for stopping by!

~Back to School Challenge

Last post for today!  I promise!  I will be caught up after this.  The weekend challenge this weekend was to create a back to school project.  Well, since I hadn't yet done the layout for Tacoah's first day of Kindergarten from LAST year, I figured I would do TWO layouts.  These weekend challenges are really kicking my butt into gear, and that's a GOOD thing!

Ok, for the Kindergarten layout, I used the Lite Recess cart to create the layered apple embellishment at 2.5" for the base layer.  I adjusted each of the upper layers down a little bit and used book paper to create the "inside" of the apple.  The School phrase was also cut from Recess at 1.5".   The First Day of School cut was in my stash, but pretty sure I cut this from Imagine More.  It was from one of the Imagine carts anyway.  Here, I hid the School in the phase with some patterned paper, so that I could add the School phrase to the bottom.  The little eyeballs in the O's were waste I found in my hole punch.

And here is Back to School for Grade 1.  Here the cricut cuts are the School Bus tag from Autumn Celebrations cut at 3" and the Back to School phrase from Simply Charmed at 2".   I really like the colors and patterns on this one.  For both of these layouts, the focal pictures were taken while waiting for the school bus to arrive.  Incidentally, that t-shirt she is wearing for her first day of Grade 1 is a vinyl kitty from Brooklyn Iron-On that I made over the summer.  ;-)  Thanks for stopping by!

~Staying Neutral - like Switzerland

There is an on-going conflict on the Cricut Circle message board.  When we received our new Circle cartridge - CHARMED - the gauntlet was thrown down.  Teddy Bears on one side and Piggies on the other.  Everyone was challenged  to make a project using one of these cuts from Charmed, or any other cut you liked.  I decided to play it safe and stay neutral with this one.  Besides, with Halloween coming up and Tacoah already bugging me about decorations, I decided that I really liked and wanted to use the SPOOKY cuts.  So instead of teddies and piggies, I have spiders, ghosts and pumpkins!

Tacoah's Halloween banner:

 

 

The letters in the banner were cut at 4.5" using a 5x7 Martha Stewart Holiday's paper back.   I did two cuts of each "critter" reversing one so they look the same on both sides.  The spider was cut at 2.1" and google eyes were added. The ghost was cut at 3"  and coated with white glitter glue and glossy accents.  The pumpkin was cut at 1.5" using an orange patterned paper.  After I took the original pictures, I went back and added a little black cat the the B and the E that I cut from Chic & Scary at 1.5" and added red gems for the eyes.  I strung the letters using back tulle.  The two outside spiders are suspended from the banner using coiled black pipe cleaners.  The rest of the characters are suspended using a boa-like black yarn.  Right now this is hanging across the stair rails in my front hallway.  I think I will be sick of looking at it by the time Halloween gets here. The things we do for our grandchildren.  ;-)  Thanks for stopping by!

~How many nuts are you?

The weekend challenge that inspired this card was to create a project, card, etc. for a celebration or party.  For some reason, I had squirrels on the brain that day.  I think it was because they were irritating me by eating all the seed out of the bird feeder.  ;-)

Anyway, I digress.  The card is really not a card, but an oversized tag for a birthday.  I used the acorn tag from Close to My Heart - Art Philosophy at 6".  I then cut two solid tags at 6.25 and 6.5 to layer it.  The squirrel was cut from Folk Art Festival at 3".   I pieced together the phrase from many different carts as follows:

How - Lyrical letters at just over 1"
many - Opposites Attract at 1"
Nuts/You - Just Because Cards at 1.5"
Are - Just Because Cards at .5"
? - Chalkboard Fonts at 1"

A little ink, a little ribbons and voila!  I will save this birthday card for a special someone having a special day who may or may not be driving me "nuts".  Haha!  Thanks for stopping by!

~Smile

The weekend challenge that produced this card was a picture that was posted of a poppy field that we were to use as inspiration for a project.  David saw the Wizard of Oz when he looked at the picture and while I could "see" that I really wasn't interested in doing a Wizard project, although I've seen some really cute Dorothy's done with the Teddy Bears on Parade cartridge.

I focused on the poppies themselves and some of the colors on the picture.  I wanted to try to use the negative space from a cut and I also wanted to use my new Home Décor Vinyl Wall Art cartridge.  Although I have yet to make anything vinyl with it, these poppies sure make a great card!  Another one for my card stash!  The poppy group was cut at 4".  The Smile phrase was cut from Create a Critter at .75".  I curled the inside of the poppies for a little dimension and instead of dealing with the teeny tiny pistals, I used glitter glue for the center of the flowers.  Thanks for stopping by!

~A summer mini album - or - Sun Part II

This is another project that was already in the works when the "use the Sun" challenge was posted.  I had this fabulous paper and knew that I wanted to try making a mini album using the Close to my Heart - Artiste cartridge.  I cut all the pieces at 4.25" tall.  The inside pages were each cut twice to give me more surface for MORE pictures.  I love to make these mini's of Tacoah so I can give them to my mother-in-law.  They don't get to see each other often, so she really enjoys having these little albums and showing them to visitors who stop by.

The sun on the front of the album was printed and cut using my Imagine and the Imagine More cartridge at 2.5".  I cut the face twice and pop dotted the face off the main sun and also pop dotted the sun off the page.  I have been trying to use my Imagine more, so I take every opportunity to use those wonderful cartridges.

Once I finish this, I will post some of the interior pages.  Thanks for stopping by!

~Ok - who stole my summer?

Seriously!  If you know where it is, please bring it back!

I've also noticed there hasn't been much activity here since July.  I have been crafty, I've just not taken the time to post anything on my blog.  There have been a bunch of challenges on the Cricut message board that I've participated in.  Some are weekend challenges with different themes and then there is a running pig vs. teddy bear challenge (don't ask) for our new Circle cart - Charmed.

So without further adieu, here is the first of the weekend challenges. The challenge was to do a project (card, layout, décor) that used the sun somewhere in it.  I made the following card.

The background card with the soak up the sun phrase is one of those Project Life type cards.  This batch was made by Recollections (I think).   The sunbathing beauty was cut at 2.5" inches from Fun in the Sun light and I used actual sandpaper for the sand.  I added a little bit of washi tape just because.  I'll put this in my card stash and send it to someone who is "blue" over the winter.   Thanks for stopping by!