May 17th Daily Project

Ever notice how you never have a birthday card or sympathy card when you need one. Well, it just so happens that I needed one a while back, so I decided to make a spare to keep on hand for the next "emergency". This is a very simple card that used only two cartridges Art Philosophy for the leafy branch and Wild Card for the saying.




Recipe:
Pattern Paper:  Dreamin'
Cardstock:  Pacifica, Cocoa, Goldrush
Cartridges:
 Art Philosophy, leafy branch
Wild Card, With Sympathy

Mother's Day Challenge

Today's challenge over at Exploring Cricut is all about Mother's Day.  We were asked to create a layout, card or other paper craft about Mother's Day.  So here's my take on the day.

As most everyone knows I'm not a mother and will never be one (except to Ella), but I am an honorary member of the Commas,Christian Mommas. We get together once a month for Ladies night out so I decided to use this wonderful group of ladies as my inspiration for Mother's Day. (My Mom gets tired of having her picture taken).  I started out creating the candy bar favors for my group and for these I used the flowers under Banner 1 and Banner 6 on the Art Philosophy cartridges.  The tag came from the new Tags, Bags, and Boxes 2 cartridges under the takeout Box2.  I stamped Happy Mother's Day using a stamp set from CTMH and on the back I put "You're worth a 100 Grand".

I had to use these pictures for the layout of course since I didn't want to take a lot of pictures at the restaurant.  Now on to the layout!
The layout uses paper from the Lucy paper line from CTMH which is very femine.  It is one of my favorites, but I'm a pink and green girl.  I cut 2" circles using George and Basic Shapes out of Grey cardstock and one of the pattern papers to use as accents.  Also used as some accents are the "zip" strips that are included at the top of the pattern papers now.  The font used for Happy Mother's Day is the new Type Candy font and I can easily see this becoming one of my new favorites.

Next I added flowers to the gray circles.  I used flower 4 and flower 10 from Florals Embellished.  I used a jewel/sparkle in the center of the flower.  I thought the top corner seemed a little empty so I found some flower ribbon from my stash that I thought looked really similar to the design I was trying to come up with.

Thanks for taking the time to view my project for this week.  I hope you have fun playing along with us for this challenge, and for all you mothers out there.  Happy Mother's Day!!
Receipe:
Art Philosophy
Banner 1 (page 68) 4" using Font feature
Banner 6 (page 69) 4.25" and 5" using Font-shift feature
Tags Bags Boxes 2
Tkout Box2 (page 53) 3" using Tag feature
George and Basic Shapes
Q-shift (page 108) 2"
Type Candy Regular font 1.59"  "Happy Mother's Day" welded using Gypsy
Florals Embellished
Flower 10 (page 30) 2.04" all layers
Flower 4 (page 24) 1.89" all layers

May 3rd Daily Project

Welcome back to my blog! This is a card that I used for a card class, but never posted. I used Art Philosophy for all the cuts that were made, which were the brown circle, blue scalloped circle, and the pattern paper frame in the background. The paper used is from the Pemberly line from CTMH and the stamp set that was used was Card Word Puzzle, also from CTMH.

Recipe:
Pemberly pattern paper CTMH
Cardstock/inks:  Outdoor Denim, Desert Sand, Colonial White
Embossing Powder: Outdoor Denim
Card Word Puzzle Stamp Set CTMH
Art Philosophy

It's a Box

Ok, this challenge was, well, a challenge. This weeks challenge was to make a project of a box, container or something with a box on it. I didn't read it real carefully at first or I would have realized this wasn't that hard. I'm blonde and have to make things difficult. I saw this idea in my catalog and thought it would be really cute for this project with some modifications. I loved the purse that was featured in the Close to my Heart Spring/Summer catalog, but their version was much smaller. This is my first attempt at this type of "purse" so I'm not sure it turned out exactly as I was hoping. I know there were some snags when I was putting it together, and even the "clasp" isn't the way I had planned for it to be.

Recipe:
Pink cardstock is from the Cricut 12x24 pastel set
pear CTMH: border and clasp
white daisy CTMH: border
rhinestone button
buttons
paper flowers
sparkles
bitty sparkles
leaves: A Garden (A 1119) CTMH

Cuts
Purse: 10.08" Art Philosophy (Have to use the 12x24 mat)
border: 1.47" Art Philosophy
latch: 1.94" Art Philosophy

Challenge Project: Spring

This challenge was right up my alley. I love the colors that Diane gave us to work with this week. The challenge was to create a layout, card, or other paper craft using a spring theme and we were limited to using the colors pink, blue, green, purple, yellow, orange, and white. Here is my take on this weeks challenge. I hope you'll play along with us this week for this awesome challenge!

I decided to make an Easter card for a dear friend that lives down in Sterrite. (I'm sure I misspelled that. So glad I have it written down in my address book). I started with a white base and stamped the saying "happy easter to my peeps," across the base in different colors. I then cut out three eggs from the Art Philosophy cartridge at 2.5". I stamped different "flower" type designs from the Miracle stamp set. Then using the My Peeps set again I stamped three bunnies on the pink cardstock and cut them out. (these are so cute, they aren't actually bunnies, they are actually peeps - you know the marshmallow candy that's awesome as a kid and gross as an adult). Using the new stitching ruler from ctmh, I punch holes to do a zigzag stitch then cut out the top of the egg using these holes as guides. The peeps are adhered to the back of the eggs as well as the tops and then using pop dots I popped up the yellow and green egg to make it look more realistic.

Hope you enjoyed my project for this challenge. I can't wait to see what you come up with!

Food Frenzy Challenge

Hi all! Today's challenge is to create a card, layout, or other paper craft using a food shape from one of the many wonderful cartridges. For this challenge there were so many possibilities, but my brother's birthday was this past Wednesday so I decided to take care of two things at one time and create a birthday card. I've always struggled creating cards for men since I love all things girly, but here is my take on the challenge.

The card base is 5.5x4.25 and is white
Pattern paper is from CTMH national scrapbooking kit.
Cardstock: colonial white, desert sand, smoothie
ribbon: chocolate and colonial white striped
Cartridges and cuts
Sweet Shop: the cake was cut at 3"
Art Philosophy: the tag was cut at 1.5"
Stamp: Card Chatter - Birthday (CTMH D1475) in desert sand

Thanks for taking the time to view my project. Can't wait to see what you come up with!

Sweets Challenge

Welcome everyone to another great challenge from Exploring Cricut. For this challenge we could make a card, layout, or other paper craft using candies, sweets, love, hearts, etc. It doesn't have to be limited to Valentine's day.
Once again I decided to make a card. I started with a white base that 5.5x5.5. I cut a piece of heart paper from the Sweetheart line 5.25x5.25.
My cricut cuts are:
Desert sand: flower pot 4.66x8.65 using Everyday Pop-Up Cards
pear: leaves 2" using Celebrate with Flourish
Smoothie and Baby Pink: hearts 1" using Baby Steps

White Daisy: 2" tag from Art Philosophy

To make things interesting I spritzed the leaves with limolicious and Emerals Smootch and the hearts with cherry ice, pink sprinkles, and vanilla shimmer.
For anyone who hasn't worked with the smootch spritz or similar products they are super easy and the effect you get is worth the drying time. Pick your favorite color or the color that will work best with your project. Shake the tube well since the fun part settles to the bottom. Hold the tube about 6 inches from your project and spritz.

Spritz a little for a cool look or spritz a lot for a more complete coverage. The leaves really turned out the best. As you can see the spritzed leaves are a new color with tons of shading.

For the hearts, after I had spritzed them with the smootch and let them dry, I stamped them with sayings from an old Close to my Heart stamp set to make them into "Conversation Hearts". I adhered ribbon to my flower pot and tied a pretty bow for the tag. The ribbon is just a seasonal ribbon I found at Wal-Mart. Once the flower pot was adhered to the card I started to layer the hearts and leaves to make it look as close to a plant as possible. I have to admit the final product turned out tons better than I thought it would!


I then cut the tag and adhered it to a piece of tulip cardstock. I then stamped the saying with a phrase from the Pair-a-Phrase set in chocolate ink.

Tree Challenge

Today's challenge at Exploring Cricut was to create a card, layout, or paper craft using a tree from any cartridge. I decided to create a Christmas layout (single page for a frame). My tree came from the Art Philosophy cartridge as well as the font.

For this project I used the Believe paper, and the Holiday Wishes stamp set.

The upper portion of the layout has 6 strips of paper alternating between the plaid and the stripe. These are cut at 1.5x3. I then cut out "Merry Christmas" using the font on Art Philosophy. The size was 2".

The bottom portion of this layout has a plaid piece that is cut at 5.5x11; the stripe piece is cut at 6x11.5. The photo is 5x7. After cutting the tree using the Art Philosophy cartridge I stamped it using the Holiday Wishes stamp set with topiary ink. I used Diamond stickles for the green leaves and Candy Cane stickles for the red birds.

This was a very simply stated layout and very easy to complete.

Exploring Cricut Daily Project: O Christmas Tree!

For my project this week I decided to try my luck with a design I had seen on another card by Jen Rubio. She created a Christmas tree out of 4 hearts. It looked complicated so I wasn't sure it would turn out, but here it is and I'm pretty pleased overall. Still a few kinks to work out before it's sendable.

I started with a base of 5.5 x 4.25, then layered topiary cardstock and the plaid from the Believe line (both CTMH). I then cut 3 hearts from the Art Philosophy cartridge (now my all time fav) at 2"and 1 heart at 1". I stamped each with a stamp from the set "Mad About You" (CTMH) with topiary ink (I think it makes the perfect Christmas green). I cut a small brown (chocolate - CTMH) piece for the trunk, added some sparkles, a little puffy snow on the edges of the tree and almost finished.

To finish it off and give it an outdoorsy feel I cut 1 circle at 2.25" and cut it in half and 1 circle at 1.5" and cut it in half also and then layered to make snowdrifts. These circles are also from the Art Philosophy cartridge.

What I thought was going to be a complicated card turn out to be not so hard after all.
Happy Crafting All!!!

Exploring Cricut Challenge #3

The challenge over at Exploring Cricut this week is to use leaves and an acorn from any cartridge. They do need to be in Fall colors. For my project I used the leaves and acorn from the Art Philosophy cartridge.

The card base is 5.5 x 4.25
The blue leaves paper(CTMH) is 5.25 x 4
Chocolate cardstock (CTMH) 3.25 x 2.25
Colonial White cardstock (CTMH) 3 x 2
The 3 orange strips are .75 x 3
Embellishments: opaques, chocolate/colonial white grosgrain (CTMH)

The acorn was stamped with chocolate ink using the 2nd generation technique. The leaves have the awesome texture because of the way they were stamped. I inked the entire stamp with Sunflower ink (which is a yellow), then used a tissue to dab on some goldrush ink, to finish it off I used autumn terracota with another tissue to dab the ink just on the edges. This technique gives you a lot of bang for just a little bit of extra effort. Hope you enjoy my card! Don't forget to post your project to the Exploring Cricut blog. I always look forward to seeing everyone's ideas!!!