Hope

 

Today I have a pop card that I'd like to share with you.  I love to create cards that are uplifting and encouraging.  However, creating a card to encourage someone with cancer is almost as difficult as creating a sympathy card.  Or at least it is for me.

 

For this card I used Everyday pop-up cards for the butterflies.  I don't mind telling you either that I had some difficulty figuring out the pop up for the interior.  I played around with it using scotch tape so I could position and re-position without ruining the card and once I basically had it figured out I permanently adhered it to the card.  It's still not "perfect" but it works.

I also chose to emboss the blue butterfly for the inside of my card.  To emboss it I used the ribbon texture plate from the Sizzix scrap pink kit.

 

 

The word 'hope' is from Home Decor and was coated with "bubblegum" glitter from Martha Stewart.

The ribbon used for the 'body' of the pink butterfly is from Stand and Salute and was also covered in "bubblegum" glitter.

 

The papers used for this card are from Me and My Big ideas.  It's one of their Mambi sheets specialty cardstock pads.

And now I'm off the enter my card into the following challenge:

 

Scrappy Moms Stamps - Cute as a Bug - ends March 7th

Autumn Decor

Happy Friday everyone and welcome back to another Cardz TV 3D challenge.  This week we are making a home décor project for Fall.

 

For my project this week I chose to make a basket in which to display my cinnamon scented pine cones.  While these things might be a pain having to pick up out of the yard they sure are pretty and nice once they get cleaned up and smell good. The basket is from the SVG Cuts file titled Caramel Apple Pie SVG Kit.

 

My sentiment of choice is from the Cardz TV Stamps set title Just Saying.  I keep finding myself drawn to this particular sentiment. 

 

I also used a couple of buttons and skittles in purple twilight for the center of my flowers.

 

And now that you have seen my project for this week please be sure to check out all of the wonderful creations our design team have created for you today.  Then be sure to create your own home décor project, link up and play along with us.

 

I can't wait to see what you create.

Race Day Memories

Last year I was bit by the 5K race bug and participated in my first ever mud and color runs.  My husband participated in the mud run with me and decided that running wasn't for him.  So now he sticks to lifting weights and being the photographer at any run I decide to participate in.

After several months though I finally made myself sit down and create shadow boxes of each event.  Just in time too because I will be participating in my first Spartan run next month, and that will kick off my year.  Not that there are that many races in which I'll compete but there are at least three: the Spartan, the Mud Run in May and the Color Run which will be in November.  Heck I might even find another one or two to squeeze in there somewhere.

But I digress.  This blog is about crafting and not my fitness journey.  (You can find that blog here.)

So for these shadow boxes I used two cartridges for three different cuts: 

I used the Track and Field (mini digital exclusive) for the runners in the top right of the two mud run shadow boxes.  In my husband's shadow box I cut off the "ribbon" part of the original cut and added some bakers twine to give it a little pop of color and texture.   Then for the "mud" splashes behind the runners I used the Home Décor cartridge.

For the color run shadow box I wanted to have the "splashes" of color like when they throw it on you as you go through the stations.  So using Home Décor I cut the same cut I used for the mud splashes but this time  I cut  it in two different sizes. The smaller ones I embossed with coordinating embossing powder/glitter from Stampendous.  I then pop dotted them on to the larger cuts and BAM, I got my pops of color. 

My husband had a great idea of hanging these on the wall in what is going to be our workout room (once our son moves out in a couple months).  This will also give me plenty of space to add more as I continue to run my races and maybe one day branch out to other fitness arenas......

Forever, You and Me

This is a card that I made some time ago.  My inspiration for the card came from a picture I saw of a bathroom scene complete with his and hers towels hanging on the wall. Isn't it great the things that kick our creative juices in to high gear?

For the front of my card I used:

Sweethearts - for the you & me cut

Every Day Paper Dolls - for the bathtub, bubbles and towels

Paper Pups - for the dog

George - for the "towel bar"

My "tiles" are 1" squares that I cut on my paper trimmer

For the inside of my card I used:

Home Decor - for the word Forever

Indie Art - for the lips

Unfortunately the lips don't show up very well in the picture, but they were cut from a shimmering card stock so as to give that appearance of lip gloss.

Butterfly Pop Up

A couple of years ago Sizzix came out with this really nice looking scalloped pop-up die.  However, I didn't want to spend the money on this particular die so I took the Cricut challenge to see if I could recreate it.  Surprisingly enough I was successful and this is the first card I made using this pop-up.

 

To create the pop-up design I used:

•  Accent Essentials for the scalloped circle cut at 6"
• George for the placement of cuts to create the pop outs/ups

For the other cuts on my card I used:

Home Decor for my flourishes (coming off the top and bottom of the scallop)

April Showers for the other butterflies, trees, worm and spring banner

I even decided to break out my Cuttlebug for this one and used the Cuttlebug for the blue and green butterflies - I have the cut and emboss butterfly set

Sparrow Sympathy Card

One of my friends just lost her husband to cancer this week and while trying to decide what I wanted to do for a sympathy card I came across the saying, "His eye is on the sparrow" along with a picture of a sparrow in a hand.  Of course that got me going and thus this card was born.

I used A Child's Year for the hand and Home Decor for the bird.

I love using this hand for things but I've really got to figure out how to make it look more dimensional and not so 'flat'.

Blistery Wind

.....well in a hot sorta way, but today's card is designed to help keep ya cool.  I created this one to play along in the BBTB2 challenge from last week where the challenge was to use the penguin with the umbrella cut from Jolly Holidays. 

For my card I cut the umbrella away from the penguin's hand so I could place it a little more like I wanted.  My idea was to make it look like it got caught up in the cold, blistery wind only my card wasn't large enough to quite grab the effect I wanted.  It still turned out pretty good though I think.

My "wind" was made using a flourish from the Home Decor cart.

Forever....

This week's Cricut Cardz Challenge was to create a wedding card using any colors and cartridges of our choosing.  I chose to use Home Decor and Stretch Your Imagination.

My hearts are cut at 1" and the scallop type oval was cut at 4" - both from Home Decor

The couple was cut at 3 3/4" with the top layer cut twice to provide the black and white.

Added a little bling in the form of silver metallic ribbon and a silver charm and viola.  Only 'problem' was that the photo didn't capture the colors and vibrancy of the card very well.

Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree

I was at Michael's this weekend and my mom was picking up some of these charger plates to paint on and I got to thinking I could do something with that myself.  Then today my Rock Princess cartridge arrived in the mail and I knew exactly what to do.

The circle background is cut from George at 8".

The Christmas tree is from Christmas Cheer and I stretched it so that it was taller but skinnier at 6 1/2".  The star is from PPDU.  I embossed the tree using one of my Christmas Sizzix plates and then 'painted' the embossed garland using Smooch in Christmas metallics.

The rocker girls were all cut at 4".

The verbiage is from Mickey font cut in vinyl at .85"

And there you have it.....an easy Home Decor project perfect for display or giving as a gift this holiday season.  Now I'm going to have to go back and get some more of those charger plates before they're all gone.

Just a Note

This week's Cricut Cardz Challenge was anything goes.  That's right.  Any theme.  Any cartridge/s.  Any color/s we want.  It's all fair game.

I chose to create a card of encouragement.  Actually, I had started designing this one on my Gypsy a while back and never finished it for some reason so this was the perfect time to get 'er done.  To make things even more exciting I found a new mat stack at Hobby Lobby this week.  It's called Faith by Paper Studio and I love the papers in this stack!

To create this card I used:

Gypsy Wanderings for the 'placard' cut at 5" and the note cut at 1 1/4"
Gypsy Font for the verbiage cut at 1 /4"
Home Decor for the bird cut at 3"

Now that your creative juices are flowing - come and play along with us.  Just create your card, click on the link above and follow the directions to link your card and be entered for a chance to win the October prize.

Bird Song - Friendship Card

I love the way that this card turned out with the colors and background paper combination.  It doesn't show up very well but the bird cage was painted with distressed paint and then lightly inked over to give it a slightly shabby chic kinda look.  But before I ramble on too much about techniques used I guess I should tell you that I've had this Sizzix die for a while.  In fact it's the first Tim Holtz die I purchased and yet I could never really figure out what I was going to use to accent it along the bottom or what bird cut I wanted to use.  I mean there's a bird on the die but I wanted something a little different. 

So this week I was creating another card and came across this bird cut on the Home Decor cart and thought it would be perfect.  Then I cut the birdcage out of grungeboard to give it some dimension and as I said painted it.  The silver balls and chain were  from a set that I picked up at Michael's on sale only the "rings" on the chain weren't big enough to use for dangles along the bottom of the cage so I opted to merely glue the balls themselves to the cage.

The inside sentiment for this card is a Chinese Proverb that says: A bird does not sing because it has an answer.  It sings because it has a song.

Dream

Today's card is a very simple one using the butterfly from Home Decor and the word "dream" from Graphically Speaking.  I made this cut months ago with another card in mind and then when I tried to commit it to the card I never liked the way it looked so I scrapped everything but the butterfly.

After months of trying to figure out what to do with my poor butterfly I found the perfect paper and sentiment.  So without further delay I give you dreams....

"The world needs dreamers and the world needs doers.  But above all, the world needs dreamers who do."  Sarah Ban Breathnach

Relay for Life Crafts

The Activities Director for our resort is the co-chair for our Relay for Life team and she asked me if I could create a few cards to be raffled off at the survivors luncheon.  She loved the walking ribbon card that I did a while back so i decided to re-create that one and decorate the inside with something simple.

Once I got those finished I decided to put together a gift basket as well using one of my sock cupcakes that she fell in love with as well.  I found the basket for just a couple dollars on sale at Michael's yesterday and knew it would be perfect for this.  I just love how it turned out and the card I made for the Cricut Cardz Challenge this week went with it perfectly.

What does disappoint me though is that none of the pictures of my cards did them justice.  Every one of them just washed all the colors out.  Don't ask me why the difference in those pics vs. the one of the basket but what's done is done.

Raining Hearts

This is a card that I created for dh for Valentine's Day and I chose this format as a project challenge for one of my card groups. I actually designed part of this card using my Gypsy and part of it using Design Studio. The reason for that was because I wanted to use the Gypsy font cartridge for the main heart and the only way to do that was to use my Gyspsy itself.

My other cuts are as follows:

Child's Year for the umbrella - cut 3x for the dimension and the handle

Every Day Paper Dolls for the monkey

Home Decor for my "raining" hearts

Color Challenged Valentine

For this week's Cricut Cardz DT Challenge we had to make a valentine using only the colors black, white, purple and green........Talk about a challenge all right! This was it for me.

At first it didn't hit me that pink was not a color option so my original design allowed for it. But when I went back to double check what I thought I saw wasn't there. So I scrapped the original idea and went back to the drawing board. Everything - and I mean EVERYTHING I started thinking of used a color that wasn't allowed.

Finally it hit me - why not just make a lovebirds theme and go for it? And that's how I came up with this one. The unfortunate part of that is that despite the several pictures I took none of them showed up the colors that well, and my daughter has drained the battery on her camera so this pic is as good as it gets. ::::SIGH::::

The inside sentiment for my card says, "Be Mine, Lovebird"

Christmas Decor House Project

This year I made a few of my Christmas presents and this is one that I did for my mom. Growing up I can only remember one time that we ever had a family picture taken and I wanted to capture that in a unique way for my mom.

My house was created off directions found at Scrapbooks, etc. but enlarged to suit my needs. By that I mean that my house stands over a foot tall and about 7 inches wide and it's made from foam core board.

For the inside of my house I used a 4x6 picture which was framed using Accent Essentials.

The word "memories" is from Home Decor and cut at 1" tall

My fireplace was cut from Joys of the Season at 4.25". I then traced the outline on a piece of foam core board, cut it out, adhered the fireplace layers and then adhered that to the back wall of the house.

My stockings are cut from Christmas Noel, Joys of the Season and Christmas Cheer - all at 1".

The candle on the fireplace is from Christmas Noel - cut at 1"

My puppy is from Sweethearts and is cut at 2"

My Christmas tree is my first attempt ever at creating a ribbon tree. Howeve, I cut the styrofoam cone in half so that I could set the tree flush on the wall so as not to take up all the floor space.

Pahl is my maiden name and is cut from Winter Woodland.

The snowy eaves are from Winter Woodland and were cut to fit the roof size needed. I then ran them through my Xyron and applied MS snow glitters.

New Home Congratulations - Card Challenge #24

Wendy asked me to create a card with Home Decor. She said:
I am new to the "Cricut world", and need a "Congratulations on your new home". I thought the Home Decor cart would be nice. I am not sure of the cuts. I am not very creative, which is why I love your blog!! Maybe the chandelier, for an old world look?
So after several scrapped designs I just decided to take the easy way out and use the chandelier by itself. Very simplistic I know.....but sometimes less is more.

The "Congratulations" are slide on alphas from the Paper Studio that I found on clearance at Hobby Lobby. I bought a couple packs figuring I'd use them on something and after months of hanging on the peg wall I finally found the perfect project.

Happier Home, Baby - Card Challenge #17

I'm getting closer to the completion of my first personal challenge and I've already decided what I'm going to do for my next one. But I'm waiting until I complete at least 20 of the cards from the first challenge before I post a new one.

For this card Lisa Scrappingpinklady said:

I would like to see you use the home decor cart. Cut to use the adorable bird cut with big tail feathers. Type of card A baby card.

Since I love this bird cut it wasn't hard to come up with a design. All cuts used are from Home decor with the exception of the nest which is from Zooballoo. And I wanted this card to be in all basic/single colors so I chose to go without a picture type background this time.

Grunge Halloween Card

I have never made a Halloween card before because I am not much of a Halloween person. My husband on the other hand loves Halloween and would decorate as much for it as we do Christmas if I was into it too.

Last year I won a RAK for the Cuttlebug Skulls embossing folder and this is the second time I have ever used it. Since the embossing folder was skulls of course I had to use a skull from Indie Art. Unable to decide which one to use I asked my daughter to make the decision and this was the end result.

Beautiful

Inspired by a picture I saw in Just Cards magazine this layout was a while in the making. I was drawn into the whole flower in the center as a focal point kind of thing. I had one flower that I knew I wanted to use because of its size and color. From there I tried several different "characters" and finally decided on this cute pup from the Paper Pups cartridge.

The scallop in the center of the flower is a chipboard piece.

The following cuts were used for this card:

Paper Pups: Pup - 3 " and the butterflies at 1"

Tags, Bags, Boxes & More: Tag at 1 1/4"

Home Decor - Beautiful at 1"

My background was embossed using the swirls folder. Because of the size I had to emboss from each end of the paper.

The inside sentiment says, "Beauty...is the shadow of God on the universe." - Gabriela Mistral, Desolacion