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

Sending Love at Christmas

I'm a little behind the 8 ball with a challenge that I was supposed to do for posting on Friday so to all of my DT sisters I apologize profusely.  The last two weeks have been so chaotic for our family with traveling for the holidays, getting sick while on vacation and coming home to even more sickness.  It's all been a whirlwind and we are ready for our lives to get back to their normal routines.

 

With all of that said, I'd like to share with you the card that I created for the Cardz TV Go to Galz Linky Party Challenge - Winter Wonderland.  I absolutely love these little penguins!

 

To create this card I used the following cartridges:

 

Zooballoo for the penguins and Winter Woodland for the hats.  The north sign is a Sizzix die.

 

The shimmering snow was created with a mixture of MS glitters:  Carabba Marble and Crystal Coarse.  After tearing my papers to create the layered ground I inked with a blue ink and then ran them through my Xyron, sprinkled the glitters on the paper and used my fingers to spread it around.

 

The stamped sentiment is from the Cardz TV "Very Merry" stamp set. 

 

 

 

This set has been a life saver for a couple of different projects this weekend.  Stay tuned for more details....

 

In the meantime, hop on over to Cardz TV, check out the other designs the Go To Galz created for you and while you're there be sure to purchase this wonderful stamp set.

 

Follow Your Rainbow

This week the Cardz TV Go To Challenge is all about seeing red.  That's right this week we are creating projects with red as the main color.  Sounds easy right?  Not for me.  I put this off as long as I could because I just couldn't wrap my head around using red as the main color if it wasn't about 'love'.  Crazy I know, but eventually I got it.

 

Funny thing is the whole concept for this card came in a flash.  I pulled out my patterned papers and started flipping through until I saw this paper with all the hearts.  Right there I knew what I was going to do.  I had no idea what I was going to use for a sentiment yet, but as I went through the new Cardz TV Stamps I found this one from the This 'n That collection.  How perfect is that?

 

My cut for this card is one of the Tim Holtz Sizzix dies.  This is my first time using this cut but he too works perfectly for this one.

 

Now that you've seen my project for this week be sure to check out all of the other wonderful designs our team has created for you this week.  Then create your own, link up and play along with us.

 

I can't wait to see what you create!

Buttons, Buttons, Buttons

 

Happy Friday everyone!  I am thrilled to announce that I have been invited to be a part of the Cardz TV Design Team and today is my first challenge as part of the team.   This week our challenge was to create a card and incorporate buttons.  At first I kind of scratched my head trying to figure out something I could do that I hadn't done yet.  It took a bit but I finally came up with this card.

 

My Palm Tree is a cut made using my Sizzix and the lizard is from the new Southwest cartridge.  I used sand paper for my beach to add a bit of texture to the card and as you can see my buttons are sitting up in the tree.

 

The stamp I chose for my card is from the Cardz TV "Simply Said" set.

 

And now that you've seen my take on this week's challenge hop on over and check out all of the other wonderful designs our team put together for you this week......you know you wanna. 

 

When you're done oohing and aahing, create your own card, link up and play along with us. 

 

I look forward to see what you create.

Quick & Easy Christmas Easel Card

My weekend was full of chaos as it was the start to our craft show season.  As always it began with the Oktoberfest and I'm here to tell you that it was an awesome start!  We stayed so busy this year that I hardly had a moment to sit.  And since we were so busy that means it's time to bust tail and get cracking for the next show in four weeks - especially since we got wiped out of a few things.

So as I sit to prepare for the next show, my posts will probably be a little eratic and for that I apologize.  Just know that I haven't forgotten about you.  ;o)

Today though I have a quick and easy card for you - what else would I create at the end of such an exhausting weekend?  lol

I haven't created an easel card in such a long time I actually had to refresh my memory on how to make one.  Then I simply used my Sizzix to cut this cute reindeer and his Santa outfit and then I found a bright, cheerful paper to use as his back drop.

See?  Told you it was quick and easy.

Have a great week everyone!

By the Glow of the Moon

Happy Tuesday everyone.  I'm back again with another Halloween card to share with you today.  This time I'm using a combination of Cricut and Sizzix cuts.  When I go through my creative slumps sometimes I'll just sit around and make various cuts and put them into a bucket for later creativity.  And since my computer was down over the weekend I pulled cuts from that bucket to create my projects that you'll see through out the week.

Now I know you're probably thinking that this card looks just like one I shared a week or two ago when Cricut did their CAC2 sneek peak - and you're right it is very similar.  But there are a couple of variations.  For this one I did use the CAC2 cartridge for the house cut.  However, the bat and the tree were cut using my Sizzix dies.  I absolutely love this spooky tree cut and thought it would be great with the house.

This time I also opted for a less cutesy background paper.  For this card I chose one from Pink Paiselee's Hocus Pocus line.  Oh and since I did have a ghost cut in my bucket I couldn't go without using it, and did so on the inside of my card.

The font that you see pictured is another of the sentiment downloads that I got from Paper Crafts.  They have several great ones to choose from so hurry on over to select one or all for your crafting pleasure today.

Christmas Card Holder - Altered Project

I've been working on this project for the past week and half and am now ready to share this fun project with you.  These card holders were inspired from a Holiday Cards & More magazine published by Papercrafts a couple years ago.  I've been searching for the holder so I could make my own and as luck would have it Hobby Lobby delivered a sale email to my inbox that just happened to have them featured!!!  You might be able to find them in the store but since the closest one to me is an hour away ordering them online was well worth the shipping costs.

So I started my project with this........

And after a couple coats of white acyrlic paint, I had this.....

After the inside and sides were dried, I turned the caddy upside down and painted the underneath.  Once that was dry I took them outside and sprayed them down with a sealant to help protect the paint.

The next step was finding the right papers for each of my caddies.  Once selected I measured the rectangular sides, cut the needed sizes and then traced the two ends onto the left over paper.  In all one 12" x 12" sheet of paper was all that was needed.  After inking the edges of the paper I used Scotch quick dry adhesive, I glued my papers in place, carefully trimmed any excess and then lightly sanded all edges.

Now for the fun.  Deciding what cuts I want to use to embellish my caddies!  I wanted to use cuts that would enhance the papers used.  While some were easy choices, others were not as easy as I anticipated.

All caddies of course have the same folder.  I cut these from Grapically Speaking and repurposed an actual manilla folder for the job.  After cutting the folders I ran each one through the printer and used the Christmas card font from dafont.com.

I then used the following cuts between the four caddies:

Teddy Bear Parade - Elf Teddy Bear (pictured above)

Christmas Solutions - Santa (after several attempts to cut his glasses I gave up)

Create a Critter 2 - Snowman

Christmas Cheer - Candies and Stocking

Oh, and that card you see in my caddy - here it is in full view.

I originally cut this little bear out for one of my caddies but with the antlers he was too tall.  So I combined him with this tree cut from one of my Sizzix dies.



I hope you enjoyed seeing my project and if you make some I'd love to see what you did so come back and tell me about it.....

Summer's Here

I didn't have time to play in my craft room this weekend since we spent a good bit of our weekend getting some many needed errands ran along with some gym and cycling time.  So since I wasn't able to create a new card to share with you I wanted to re-share one I made a couple of years ago.  Hope that's okay.

I love the Summer season because it means I get to spend more time outdoors and I am such an outdoors person.  I could lay on the yard swing and just sleep in the sun for hours if allowed.  Unfortunately though I don't go to the beach much because I live in a highly touristed area and just don't think it's worth "fighting" for a spot.  So I wait until it's off season and go then.  lol

But I digress.........

To create this great little pop up card I used a combination of my Sizzix dies and Cricut cartridges.  The pop-up chair is a Sizzix die.  Then I used:

Mickey & Friends for the Sun

Life's a Beach for the Seagull, lizard and flip flops

The beach towel is a piece of fabric I cut using my Sizzix "dress up bath clothes" die.
 
On the inside of the card I used sand paper for my beach "sand" - although it's not white like our beaches here in Florida.  One of these days I'm going to have to see if I can find some white sand paper.  In the meantime this will do tho.  And I love the look that the sandpaper gives when using it this way.
 
Do you have a summer card you'd like to share with me?  If so leave me a comment sharing a link to your card.  I'd love to see them.....

Get Well Card in 3D

Looking for yet another new fold style to try with your card making?  Why not give this one a try?  I found this one a while back over on  Nicole Kowalk's  blog Under the INKfluence.  At the bottom of her post she has a link for the directions which will download in a PDF format.  They're really easy to follow and I love how the card gives you endless possibilities for whatever creation you choose.

For mine I wanted to play around with some of my Sizzix dies......something I don't do often enough.  Guess it's just because I love my Cricut so much.  LOL  But I am going to have to take some time to make one of these using my Cricut so stay tuned to see what I come up with.

In the meantime have fun......

Last of the Onsies

Finally, finally, finally I have finished the last of all the onsie albums I needed to get made.  For the longest time I had an inspirational block but then I found the Cricut Lite cartridge 9 months and it was game on.  Not all of the pages for these albums used the new cartridge but it at least got me out of my funk.

And with that I wanted to share the new pages I made for these particular albums.

For the covers I used 9 months for the blocks and the heaven sent.

This cute little elephant is also from 9 months.

Now I know that the tubs are nothing new, but I found these great "bubbles" with the cutesy buttons at Michael's this past weekend and just had to redo these pages.

And finally, these cute rubber duckies were perfect for this new baby print I found.  The ducks and the hands are both from A Child's Year.

Purse Album

Happy Tuesday everyone!  Today I want to share a new album with you that I made using the booklet purse and pages die from Sizzix along with a couple of Cricut cartridges - Girl's Makeup Party, Graphically Speaking, Indie Art, Rock Princess and Accent Essentials.

This is a smaller album with the pages measuring only 2 x 3 inches at their largest so my cuts were small but they all cut rather well.

Starting with Rock Princess I cut the word 'diva' for the purse cover.

The shoes and word attitude were cut from Graphically Speaking.

The blow dryer, compact, lip gloss, and sleeping mask were cut from Girl's Makeup Party.

The lips - coated with a pink glitter - are from Indie Art.

Finally all of the mats are from Accent Essentials.

Graduation Congrats Pop-up

My oldest child is graduating from college soon and called the other day asking if I would please make her graduation announcements for her.  Well that of course prompted my newly found need/desire to purchase the Happy Graduation cartridge that was released a while back.  I mean up until now I didn't really feel the need to purchase this cartridge but I'm glad I did.

For my first project using this cartridge though I decided to do a Congrats card.  Now combine Happy Graduation with one of the wonderful Sizzix pop up dies and you get a great gift giving surprise.  I'd been drooling over this die as well but finally quit talking myself out of buying it.

So what do you think?

Forest Friends Pop up Birthday Surprise

I made this card for my mom whose birthday is today. 

For the outside of the card I used Campin Critters.  I cut the forest at 4 1/2". Cut the forest "floor" a second time out of sandpaper and embossed the tree tops.  The critters behind the trees were cut at 1" using the layers from those cuts and the fox was cut at 1 1/2".  I pop dotted the call out, little tree and the fox to add dimension.

The inside pop up was made using a now retired Sizzix die but it would be very easy to create this cut using your cricut if you have Design Studio or the Gypsy.  My critters on the inside were cut at 1 and 1 1/2".  The call out was created using two different ones from campin' critters welded together.  The song notes are from a punch (forgot to add those until everyone had signed the card - oops) and the embossed greeting is from a Sizzix folder.

Girlie Mini Onsie Album

My sister asked me to created a onsie album for her to give to a girlfriend that's due within the next couple of weeks and this is what I came up with.  Now before I get started on filling you in on all the deets I have to give credit to IslandV over at Scrap Innovations because she enabled me to create my first one and a couple of the pages I used in this one I scraplifted from her.  So if you haven't checked her blog out before you really should......

Once again I used my Sizzix onsie die for the pages.  Don't have Sizzix?  No problem....if you have the New Arrival cartridge that is.  Just use the onsie cut from New Arrival cut at 5.5 inches and you'll have the onsie base for all your pages.  Be sure to cut your pages from chipboard to give the album a sturdy base.

I also used A Child's Year, New Arrival, Baby Steps, and Accent Essentials for my other cuts.

For the first pages pictured I used Accent Essentials for the scalloped oval  -originally a circle that I skewed in Design Studio and cut at 3.5 x 2.5 inches. 

From Baby Steps I cut the bear at 2" and the baby's head (from the baby in the bathtub) at 1.5".  I cut two of the baby's head, flipping the second one and hiding all the facial features for the backside of the baby's head.  I then cut a piece of paper 3 x 2.5", used my corner rounding punch and ran it through my printer for the verbiage.  The blanket was made using a piece of double sided paper cut at 6.5 x 3" folded in half from the long side.  I then cut a slit from the top down on the front side, folded the edges back and glued along the side edges only. 

For the baby crib page I used Baby Steps and cut the crib at 2.5".  The mat I used was cut at 3 x 2.75".  I then glued the mat down and then adhered the crib on top of the mat gluing along the bottom and side edges only so that a picture could be slipped in.  (Next time I create this page I will pop dot it some for easier access though)

For the next set of pages I made the following cuts:

New Arrival - Stork, Baby, Bottles and Moon cuts all at 1.5"

Baby Steps - Little Girl cut at 1.5", words baby steps, highchair, food jars all cut at 2"

A Child's year for the mom holding a baby cut at 3"

Accent Essentials for the other mats cut at 3 x 2.5"

The Giraffe and baby bib are stickers that I found in my stash.

To put it all together I added 3/16" or 4.7mm eyelets and used 1" loose leaf binder rings.

Gift Bag & Card for Baby

I've been working on this project off and on since 6am this morning and finally finished it up.  About a week ago I won this wonderful Sizzix scoreboard die blog candy from Melissa and I have been dying to play with it.  Thankfully today was the day! 

Armed with my new Sizzix die, Zooballoo, Baby Steps and a couple of embellishments I created this baby bag and gift card holder.  I cut the bag out of chipboard and then came back and cut it from paper, making a second cut of just the flap for an accent piece. 

After adhering the paper to the chipboard I added a couple of white heart eyelets to the top so I could add a ribbon handle. 

For my gift card holder (2 3/4" x 3 1/2" folded) I cut some grass and a cloud from Zooballoo and the little girl clothesline from Baby Steps.    On the inside I cut a section from a vellum baby saying sheet I have, ran it through my Xyron and adhered to the top portion of the card.  For the gift card holder I created a "place card here" the same size as a standard gift card and added a couple of glue dots to hold the card in place.  Until it's time to add the card though I've left the protective cover on the glue dots - thus the little squares you see. 

Baby Onsie Mini Albums

I just finished these albums today after beginning on them a couple weeks ago and then setting them aside.  My poor brain just couldn't decide what it wanted to do for the embellishing and even though they are now complete I'm still not entirely sure about all the pages.  There are a couple that are my favorites though.....

For this project I cut the onsie out using the Sizzix Bigz XL Baby Onsie die.  It's a discontinued die, but I was able to find it at my local AC Moore which was great since I was able to use a 40% off coupon on the purchase price.  Each page was cut from chipboard and then back with paper from the Brenda Walton BW Small Wonders stack from K&Company.

For the picture mats I used cuts from Accent Essentials and George

Most of my other cuts are from New Arrival with the following exceptions

Baby in the Stroller is from Simply Charmed

 These pages with the stroller, feet, and crying baby are my favorites

Crying Baby is from Car Decals

The diaper pins were stickers from my stash.

For the covers I cut both "boy" and "girl" and will make those into stickers so that whoever receives the album will be able to tailor it to their baby's sex. 

The binder rings used are 1" book rings or loose leaf binder rings which can be found at an office supply store.  These size rings only allowed for a 6 page album so next time I'll need to increase the ring size.  The eyelets are 3/16" or 4.7mm which are the larger ones and allow for smooth movement of the rings as pages are flipped.