"Fish"ing you a Happy Birthday

I was playing around with the Animal Kingdom cartridge the other day and noticed that it had cutout for a fishbowl and fish. So I mulled around the idea of cutting them out or not.

Well as you can see I decided to do so and here is what I did with them....

I cut the fishbowl out of white cardstock and inked all the edges in blue. After cutting the fish, "water", and plant I put them all together and inked each piece as well. Once placed in the bowl I realized that something was missing......the little colored pebbles in the bottom of the bowl. So I smeared some glue along the bottom and sprinkled with Martha Stewart glitters in Peridot and Sunstone. Once the glitter was set I then applied a coating of Inkssential Glossy accent so that my fishbowl would have the finished look (and feel) of being a real fish bowl.

Problem is, the photo didn't let it all show through.....

Sweet Pea Baby Card

This was a quick card that I made this morning for part of the order that I am in process of completing. For this one I used the New Arrival cartridge and cut the baby and pod at 4" and Sweet Pea verbiage at 1".

The background paper is AnimalCrackers Ella Die Cut Flowers from Making Memories that I found at Michael's on their 8 for $1 clearance sale. Now I'm wishing that I had picked up more than just two pieces....I hate it when I do stuff like that. Oh well, live and learn right?

A Bad Day of Fishing...

I finally had enough reward points to cash in for a new cartridge and I decided on the Cricut Sampler and today it arrived in the mail. And how perfect that it includes a couple of fishing themed cuts. So I sat down tonight and created this card.

For this card I used:

Going Places: Man fishing cut at 3" and two sets of waves in different colors and inked cut at 2 1/4"

Pooh and Friends: Sun cut at 1 1/2"

Graphically Speaking: Fish were scaled down to less than 1"

For the background I gently brushed a white ink pad across the page with a 'sweeping' motion so as to create a cloud type affect.

The inside sentiments says: A bad day of fishing is better than a good day at work.

Sympathy Cards

Tonight my goal was to create a couple of sympathy cards. Something no one really ever wants to do. With that in mind I opened the document where I store various card sentiments I like and randomly selected two of them.

The first card says: When someone you love becomes a memory...The memory becomes a treasure. Treasure the memories and let them lift you up.

Thus this particular card was created using the memory lane sign from Graphically Speaking. However, I also wanted something that is representative of peace/comfort and so I added the butterfly from Happily Ever After.

The second card says: May God's love heal your sorrow and may His peace replace your heartache with warm and loving memories.

For this card I chose to use the tree from Happily Ever After since it reminds me of one of those oriental type trees with the flowers (sorry - I don't remember what they are called). Again I wanted something that represented peace/comfort and for this one I chose the bird from Indie Art (which is pop dotted for dimension) so that it would create an effect of serenly gliding in amongst the flowers on the tree.

Masculine Birthday Cards

Last night I decided to give making more masculine birthday cards a try and these are the two that came to mind. Both of these were created using Graphically Speaking.

Handle with Care has the arrows pop dotted to give it a little bit of a dimensional feel. The inside sentiment reads: Look at it this way - birthdays are good for you. Statistics show that people who have the most live the longest!

Rule #1's sentiment reads: Growing old is mandatory. Growing up is optional.

Mother's Day Card - Version Two

On the Cricut message boards was an "Ad inspired" challenge taken from the Target ads this week. The challenge included the ever popular circles but in shades of pink (a dark and a light) along with a sea green.

After seeing this challenge I decided to do a bit of a remake on the Mother's Day card that I posted a couple days ago. Not sure which one I like better...

What do you think?

Flying By......

Dh bought me the new Hello Kitty cartridge for Valentine's Day so tonight I decided to sit down and play around with it. After looking through the booklet and the various card sentiments that I have collected I knew exactly what I wanted to do first.

For this card I cut the image at 3 3/4", inked the edges and put it all together.

The inside sentiment says "...to say HI"

Mother's Day Card

This card was inspired by one that I saw in the August 2008 edition of Stamp It! Cards magazine.

To create this card the calendar was made in Excel with the columns at a 4.71 width. I then cut and pasted it into Word so that I could create the circle around the 10. The 'M' was cut from Pooh Font at 2.5".

The inside sentiment says, "In this world, you only get one Mother...and if you're really, really lucky, you get one like mine."

Happy Birthday Flower

Another simple card that I thought turned out well....

To create the flower I inserted a 3.5" x 3.5" text box into a MS Word document and typed "happy birthday" throughout the box. I then chose a paper that I wanted to cut my flower from and printed. I then cut out the text box and placed it on my cutting mat per placement in DS and cut the flower using Word Builders: Garden of Words. It is the blackout shape cut at 3"

The inside sentiment for this card says, "God made you special - now that's reason enough to celebrate"

Spending Time With You Card

Yet another card inspired by one of the sentiments from the post that was going around on the Cricut Message board a while back. However, I changed up the verbiage just a little bit to meet my needs.
For this card I used Graphically Speaking and Stretch Your Imagination. Very simple but effective - or so I thought.

The inside says, Spending time with you always lightens my heart and brightens my day.

Early Bird Card

"The early bird can have the worm...I'll see you around noon with a latte"

I love this phrase and if I remember correctly I got it off the post where we were all sharing card sentiments. on the Cricut Message Boards for cards. I've been trying to figure out how I wanted to interpret the phrase and this is what I came up with this morning.

For this card I used:
the Bird from Word Builders Garden of Words cut at 3"
the worm from Sesame Street cut at 1.25"
the tuft of grass from Zooballoo
the latte from Graphically Speaking cut at 3"
and "it does a body good" from Graphically Speaking

Free Standing Card With Tinkerbell & Hearts

I finally decided to try my hand with making one of the free standing cards that became so popular around October of last year. A tutorial for this card can be found on Splitcoast Stampers - just click here --> http://www.splitcoaststampers.com/resources/tutorials/freestandingpopupcard/d/

For my card I used the Tinkerbell and Happily Ever After cartridges.

Tinkerbell was cut at 3.5" and because the pieces for the eyes and mouth were so small I didn't even bother trying to cut them. Instead I used a toothpick and straight pin to paint those areas in. The hearts were cut at 1".
I apologize that the picture has a glare to it but because of the shimmer of the paper I was unable to get a crystal clear pic - with or without using the flash.

Love Delivered Here - Altered Mailbox

I finished this mailbox last night for my mother's valentine's day gift. Granted the picture of the front did not turn out as well as the side because of the shimmer from the papers used and the gloss on the heart, but you can still get the idea of what I did.

For this mailbox I used the bird from the Indie Art cartridge cut at 1 3/4" and the heart from Graphically Speaking cut at 1.5".

The heart has the words "Love Delivered Here" printed on it and was then covered with a thin layer of Glossy Accents to give it a slight shimmer and dimensional look.

Thanks in Many Languages

Tonight's card is a quick and simple one that I put together without the use of my Cricut or Cuttlebug.....Imagine that!

For this particular card I created a 2.5" x 6.5" text box in Microsoft Word and centered the phrase thank you in various languages throughout the box ending with English. I then printed this on a color of cardstock that would coordinate with the background paper I chose, inked, adhered to the card blank and then added a die cut that I picked up from local half off clearance scrapbook store.

The inside sentiment says: Saying thank and thinking, too, how very nice it was of you.

Told you simple and quick....

Altered Mailbox

Don't you just love it when you find a terrific deal? Target has these mailbox tins in their dollar bin and I decided to buy one of them and give my hand a try at altering my first tin.

Surprisingly this was very easy and took little to no time at all to complete. I found a website (sorry I don't remember what it was) that gave directions for doing this but I only glanced through it long enough to get the jist of what needed to be done size wise.

That said a 4"x12" piece of paper wraps around the body of the box allowing enough paper to overlap at the bottom of the box. Since the flag is not removable you will need to mark where it falls on the paper and use a circular paper punch (mine was 5/8") to cut an opening and then make a slit from the circle to the end of the paper. This will allow you to feed the paper around the flag as you adhere it to the box. For the flag, I created a 1"x.75" text box and typed in the recipient's name, printed, cut and adhered.

Admittedly I did not use my Cricut for this project and while it is for a Valentine's gift I wanted it to look more Spring than Valentines so that it could be used for times other than the Valentine's Day holiday.

Birthday Wishes

This card was inspired by a picture I saw in a card magazine that utilized one of the Sizzix butterfly die cuts. Of course I changed the layout and all around too, but I think this turned out pretty good.

For this I used the Butterfly 1 cut at 3" from the Tinkerbell cartridge and the words were created using Design Studio and Platin Schoolbook.

Golfers Birthday Card

I've had the Sports Mania cartridge for about a month now and bought it specifically for the golf cuts since dh is an avid golfer. Well today I finally broke it out and used it for a male birthday card that I wanted to sample.....

The inside says..... it's better if you don't keep score