You Put a Spell on Me

It is officially one week until Halloween and today the cards design team at Cardz TV has one last Halloween project to share with you.  This week's challenge is to create a Halloween scene. That's it - now imagine the possibilities..........

 

To create my Halloween scene, I used the Cricut cartridges Mini Monsters for the street light and sign and Autumn Celebration for my trick or treaters. 

 

For whatever reason my machine did not cut out the trick or treaters cleanly.  However, I didn't realize just how bad they cut until after I pieced my card together and took the picture.  When I was cropping and straightening the picture was when I noticed it and about cried.  Fortunately the idea popped in my head to use the street sign for my focal point and just blur the rest - and that is what I did.

 

The stamped sentiment on my sign I used one of the older stamp sets, Trick or Treat.  Since each plank of the sign was individually cut it was easy to stamp just one line of the stamp at a time in order to get the final result.

 

And there you have my take on this week's challenge.  Now be sure to check out the other great designs our team has for you this week.  Then create your own Halloween scene, link up and play along with us for your chance to win one of Mary's great stamp sets.

 

Challenge ends November 6th.

I'm also entering this into the following challenges:

Haunted Wishes at Jo's Scrap Shack - ends on October 31st

Thankful Thursdays at DL Art - ends November 5th

Haunted Mansion - Red Carpet Studios - ends November 1st

Love Letters

Today I'd like to share with you the project that I made for my husband's Valentine's Day gift.  I found these wonderful little 3 in x 4 in paper bags at Michael's and just knew I had to have them.  Especially since they were on sale 50% off.  I loved the idea that they had the space for journaling on the bag and thought they were the perfect size for making tags and hoped they wouldn't be too big to fit in one of the mailbox tins I had.  After discovering that they weren't too big off to work I went.

I used a variety of cartridges on this project including:

Going Places for the globe

Create a Critter 2 for the owl, phrases and bee

Handyman for the hammer and nails

Paper Dolls for the moon and stars, and the weights

Graphically Speaking for the smiley face

Suburbia for the fan

Indie Art for the dice

Wild Cards 2 for the boat

Mini Monsters for the monster

TBBM2 for the tags

This is a picture of the front of the tags

And this is the back of the tags.  As you can see I printed different sentiments to coincide with the graphic on the front of the tag.

Once they were all put together I matched them up with the paper bag that also had the sentiment written on it.

Then in to the mailbox all but 4 went.  Throughout this week I've left one tag in different hiding spots (truck, lunch bag, bowling shoes, shaker cup) for my husband to find at some point during his day.

For my mailbox - I cut a strip of 4 x 12 paper, wrapped it around the box (cutting out a spot for the flag).  I then traced and cut out the pieces for the front and back.  The stamped sentiment is from Cardz TV Stamps snail mail.

Tomorrow I will place the mailbox - along with a Mine Craft Creeper plush (he's a huge Mine Craft fan) I picked up - in the front seat of his truck.......

MIB Layout

It's been a few years since I've made a scrapbook layout.  But after our vacation to Disney and Universal Studios last month I have so many pictures to scrapbook and it's time to get with it.  With that being said this is my first layout.  While it turned out okay I can tell it's been a while.  Guess it's time to do like I used to and start looking for ideas before I create my next pages.

 

Thing about is that after my kids started "growing up" and became "too old" for the cartoon cartridges like an idiot I sold them.  And now I'm kicking myself in the butt for that decision.  I was fortunate enough to find SpongeBob on ebay though.  Now I just need to find a couple of my others and I'm golden.

 

In the meantime, I used Mini Monsters and Space Party for this layout.  I'd never used Space Party before and in fact just purchased the digital version from Cricut.com and I love it.  That alien is just too cute not to have access to.

 

Oh, if you have a layout that you've created lately be sure to go link up and play along with the current challenge over at Pause Dream Enjoy.  The challenge ends on June 23rd so be sure to link up before then.

Eyes For You

Happy Wednesday everyone and welcome back to another week of Cricut Cardz Challenges.  We took a bit of a holiday break but we are back and let me tell you, the ladies knocked today's challenge out of the park!  This week our theme is "A Banner Year" and the directive:  use any cartridge, theme and color - just be sure to use your Cricut. 

For my project I chose to make a Valentine using Mini Monsters and Christmas Cheer.  Since this cute little monster had several eyes he was the perfect specimen to accompany my sentiment.  Finding him was easy, but finding a banner that would work for what I needed was not.  I searched and searched and finally found this one on Christmas Cheer, thus proving that Christmas cartridges are not just for Christmas.  Oh, and that beautiful paper I used, that's from K&Company's KP Valentine.

So now that you've seen my take on this week's challenge be sure to check out all of the other wonderful designs our team created for you this week.  Then, after you've been amply inspired, create your own, link up and play along with us.  You have until Tuesday January 29th to do so.

I Want Candy......

.....candy corn that is.....it's time for a candylicious challenge brought to you from Pause Dream Enjoy.  This is such a fun and easy challenge this week so I know that you won't have any trouble being amply inspired and playing along with us.  All  you have to do is make a project using candy.......see I told you.  Easy.

For my card, I used Mini Monsters for my candy corn girl die cut at 1 12"

 

My rosette was created by cutting a strip 9" x 1 1/2" paper (Tim Coffey - I want candy).  After cutting the strip I punched down the full length with my Martha Stewart drippy goo punch.  I then laid this on my score board, scored at every other score line and folded the strip accordian style. Once complete I adhered the two ends together, pushed the center of the 'circle' down and adhered a small square to the center of the circle to hold it in place. (I did this on both sides)

 

On the inside of my card I adhered pieces of candy corn that I also cut from the I want candy paper.  And now that you've seen my project hop on over to Pause Dream Enjoy to check out all the other fabulous projects our DT created for you this week.  But first let me give you a few more details about this week's challenge.......

 

Starts: Friday, October 26th 12:00 am EST

Ends: Thursday, November 1st, Noon EST

Winner (chosen by random.org) Announced: Thursday, November 1st late afternoon

Our Sponsor this challenge is

Cardz TV Stamps

http://www.cardztvstamps.blogspot.com/

Prize: 1 Stamp Set of the Winner's Choice

Here is my CANDY-licious project...

YOUR PROJECT HERE

Enter your project below!

...

Witch's Parking - Cricut Cardz Challenge #44

This week's challenge over at Cricut Cardz Challenge was to create an S or Z fold card with a Halloween theme using and colors and cartridge/s of our choosing. 

The inspiration for this card came from a sign I saw at Michael's a couple weeks ago that said, "witch's parking only - all others will be toad".  To create this Halloween scene I used a variety of cartridges including:

A Child's Year - witches cut at 1 1/2"
Camp Out - sign scaled to 1/2" high
George - moon cut at 1 1/4"
Happy Hauntings - fence and ravens cut at 1"
Mini Monsters -  tree cut at 3" and toad scaled to .40" tall

PPDU - brooms scaled to .83" tall

Together all cuts were laid out on a 3" by 4 1/2" rectangle to create the scene.

And now it's your turn to play along.  Create your own Halloween themed S or Z fold card and upload it to Cricut Cardz Challenge for your chance to be entered into the grand prize drawing for October.

A Witch's Work....

....is never done.  Especially at Halloween.  That's the sentiment inside this card I created to play along in this week's Apron challenge over at bittenbythebug2.

For this one I used:

Mini Monsters for the witch cut at 5"
Happy Hauntings for the cauldron cut at 3 1/2" and embossed the kettle with one of the folders from my Sizzix Halloween set.  The bubbling over 'goo' was created with my Snow Writers pen which I painted over with two coats of Shimmerz paint in Evergreen.
And of course there's the apron cut from the From My Kitchen cart.  For this cut I worked with skewing the width to height ratio on my Gypsy so that it would fit my witch.

My background papers are from My Mind's Eye Halloween {Scary Sparkles} mat stack.  The top (orange) paper was inked using Distressed inks and then punched with the Martha Stewart Drippy Goo punch.

2011 CD Calendar - September & October

Yeah!  I am almost done with my current calendar project.  I just wish that our home remodeling was going as well.  It rained on us all weekend and because of that it left us in a holding pattern because we are at the point where we need to get the front door replaced but in order to do that we need to get the new deck built and even though we got the deck up we only managed to get four of the boards nailed down before the heaven's broke open.  Oh well, such is life and we'll get it done this evening I'm sure.  :o)

In the meantime though I was able to complete two more months of my calendar pages.  For these two I used:

Designer's Calendar for the names of the months
Graphically Speaking for the 'couple' reading the book
SYI for the tree
Punch for the leaves
A Child's Year for the trick or treaters
Mini Monsters for the fence which I also embossed with the script folder from cuttlebug and inked
Paper Dolls for the moon and stars

And I love the background papers I used for both of these but I am so sad because I'm almost out of them and can't find them anymore......

Happy Halloween & CCC #37

This week's Cricut Cardz Challenge was to create a card using only the colors blue, black, white, orange and yellow.  Try as I did I could not get myself away from Halloween mode - I mean really think about those colors.  What theme could be more perfect?

For this card I broke out a pack of mat paper I purchased on clearance last year at Michael's that was too cute to resist.  It's Halloween from Recollections - now this was only used for the outside of the card.  The inside paper was single sheet paper I found at either Michael's or AC Moore.

Since both papers had spider webs I decided to use that as my main focus and cut the spider webs from the Mini Monster's cart.  The web was then painted with a black metallic paint and covered with black glittery fibers.  I also painted the web on the inside of the card with black metallic paint but chose not to use the fibers.

My spiders are from Designer's Calendar.  The larger spiders I dabbed onto a light sandy colored ink pad and the smaller ones I painted with the black metallic paint.  I then used a red paint (the blue just didn't show up too well) for their eyes.

It's a Germy Get Well

This week's Cricut Cardz Challenge  (#35 for those keeping track) was to create a get well card using any cartridge we wanted.  The catch was that we could only use the colors blue, green, black and white. 

Well, anyone who knows me and/or follows my blog probably knows by now that I enjoy creating cards with "scenes" and lean towards the cutesy rather than the elegant/serious style.  So being limited to those colors I pondered the decision on what to do.  At this point all I knew was that I wanted to somehow create "germs" like you see in the comical advertisements and PSA's.  After some thinking and playing around this card is what I came up with.

The "germs"  are from Mini Monsters and were cut at 1 3/4" and were pop dotted to the card so as to appear like they were hovering above the bed. 

The bed and girl lying in it were created from Everyday Paper Dolls - cut at 3".  The blanket is a swatch of fabric that I tucked into the foot board and then adhered to the card using 3D glue dots to mimic the girl's body and then a line of glue at each edge.

I think that the next time I make this card though I'll need to make my "germs" just a wee bit smaller. 

Age Is In Your Mind

Wow!  I can't believe it's been three weeks since I've posted anything on my blog.  Things have been crazy busy around here once again with yet another child graduating and moving to Savannah for college.  Oh, and I've changed rooms again so my craft room is now in a different location in the house.  This will be my final move though - but I'll have to post about that later......

This week's Cricut Cardz Challenge was to use the card feature from any cartridge of our choosing.  Since I haven't had an opportunity to use my new Mini Monsters Cart yet I chose to use it for this challenge.  I also used George for the "callout".

Since this was the first card I've made in weeks it felt a little awkward and my brain wasn't firing on all cylinders but I love the way it turned out.  Needless to say, I'm going to have to play with this cart some more.  I even have some special wiggle eyes that I bought just for use with this cart so I'm excited to "get to it"...........