Thursday, February 28, 2013

The Return of No Cricut Thursday

Hello to everyone! Today marks the return of No Cricut Thursday. Don't get me wrong, I love my cutting machines (Cricut and Silhouette), but it is also fun to create without these tools and explore other ways to make your project come alive. I have so much fun using stamps, stickers, embossing, decorative tapes and more. No Cricut Thursday is actually a little bit like a challenge to me to use all these wonderful things (therefore allowing me to buy more and more of them!!)
Today I have a pretty card featuring one of the stamps in the Pink By Design Stamp of the Month set from January. It is called You Are My Happy and has amazing sentiments on it.
I selected this paper from the DCWV Peachy Keen stack (such pretty pinks, oranges and more). I layered it onto a dark gray and added a lighter gray layer with a button form my stash. Next came the wonderful stamp I had selected.
This is a set I know I will use often for projects. I am very pleased with the way the card came out, especially how the white ink I used for my note looked on the dark gray paper. It has been a long time since I created without a machine and I am glad I did.
Today is the last day of the Month of Letters (mail a piece of mail everyday in February . I am so glad I  took part in this challenge. Not only did I enjoy creating cards to send, but I made some new pen-pals and reconnected with some old ones. FANTASTIC! Hope your month was amazing as well. Bring on March!

Tuesday, February 26, 2013

Go Gators!

Good day all! Hope you are having a nice start to your week and hope you are ready for a new Die Cuttin' Divas challenge. This week we are working with a fun tic-tac-toe board. Just pick your three and create your project.  I made this layout from my daughter's last day of Kindergarten.
I selected my 3 in a row off the board: "Use buttons" , "3 patterned papers", & "embossing"
For my 3 patterned papers I selected the different green patterns from The Paper Studio Basic stack. I'll be honest, I love the patterns and colors, but do not always have success cutting this paper in my machine so it is great for the base of layouts.
Next, came the fun gator off the Create A Critter cartridge. My daughter's school mascot is the gator so this cut will get used a lot the next few year, I'm thinking. For the letters, I choose Varsity Letters and embossed them with the fun Croc Texture embossing folder from The Paper Studio.
The 3 buttons were stitched on and secured in the back and we were all set. I could not believe the fun cupcake display when I found it at the store on her last day of school. What a perfect way to celebrate her first year as a gator and kick off our summer!

Now, please head over to Die Cuttin' Divas to see the other fun projects the Design Team has created and try your hand at this fun tic tac toe challenge

Monday, February 25, 2013

2013 Notebook

I have filled up the notebook that I use to track my cart and stamp use so I needed to start a new one.  That meant I had to cover a new one as well. This time I went really simple and thought I would share it with you this Monday morning. (I have a feeling I might add to this as the year goes???  What do you think?
 
What I used for this:
- George & Basic Shapes large circle
- Creative Memories Circle Cutter for circle ring and smaller circle.
- Ashlyn's Alphabet letters cut out of circle using my Gypsy
- Pink By Design Love 2 Create stamp set

Sunday, February 24, 2013

Heart Sick: Belated Birthday

I can not believe I forgot to get a card ready for my brother-in-law for his 40th birthday. I felt just awful about it. I made him a belated card using my new treat Teddy Bear Parade.
My brother-in-law is a doctor so I selected this scrubbed-up bear and the heart chart to send my apologies for missing his big day.  These bears really go together so well and are just super super cute.
On the inside I stamped "Happy BeLATEd Birthday" off the Pink By Design Animated Greetings set.
I am actually happy with the results, considering I was a little rushed because I wanted to get it in the mail ASAP. Happy Sunday all!

Friday, February 22, 2013

How does your garden Grow?

Happy Friday everyone. I hope you are all gearing up for a fun and/or relaxing weekend. Today I have a card I made this week for 3 different challenges I enjoy being part of.
The first challenge/link up party is for All That Stickles. This week the color of the week is Fruit Punch,which is one of my favorite colors in the  collection. I decided to add it to this card in between some fun decorative tapes that matched up pretty well with this fun color. I thought it made a good base for my card.
Next, I selected this flower (called the button flower in the cart booklet) off the Walk in My Garden cartridge. I liked the fun look of it especially when I added some embossing and wide patterned tape to the center part of it. This week at My Craft Spot, the challenge is to add flowers so I got a chance to play along with them as well.
I also added a cute sentiment stamp from the Pink By Design Life's A Garden set, which felt right because the Ink It Pink challenge over at Pink BY Design is called In the Garden!  The final card was sent off to a new friend as part of The Month of Letters challenge. I have not missed a day all month an am getting and sending some fun greetings. Happy Friday all.

Thursday, February 21, 2013

FORE!

Happy Thursday everyone. Today is my special posting day for Cricut FANactics. This wonderful blog came to be when the Cricut Circle blog shut down and each day of the month a different Cricut Lover is in charge. The blog offers 2 challenges a month, fun tips and Cricut advice as well as amazing inspiration for projects. I hope you will join in the fun and visit this great blog.
Currently, the blog is asking the Designers to focus on some different areas of request and one of those is masculine cards. I know a lot of people struggle with these and so do I. For the next few months I am going to try my best to pull out some good inspiration for these cards. Let's face  it the men in our loves deserve great handmade cards! The one above was made using the All Sports and Graphically Speaking carts.
Please check out all my details and pictures at the Cricut FANatics site and leave some love here or there or both!

Tuesday, February 19, 2013

Grin & Bear It!

My sister is having a baby!!!!! I have know for quite awhile, but she has gone through a few ups and downs with pregnancy over the years so there was no announcing anything for quite a while.  Now she is doing well, but not the most comfortable. That made this card for her perfect.

It also is perfect for this week's Die Cuttin' Diva Challenge:  Use a polar bear. My polar bear was cut from Animal Kingdom and placed on a round card with a polka dot embossed ring, cut with my Art Philosophy cart. The saying was also cut with Art Philosophy.
The other diva's have made some fun cards using different polar bears...which have made me want more cartridges. Please pop over to Die Cuttin Divas to see everything created and join in the fun.
Happy Tuesday!

Sunday, February 17, 2013

Wobble Wobble

I decided it was time to get my hands on some of those fun action wobbles people use on their projects and I am soooooo excited that I did. I present my first action wobble card!
This card was mailed to he wonderful Quilt Frog as part of the Month of Letters Challenge that is giving me many reasons to create fun cards. She already received this card so I can share it now. I started by adding a little decorative tape and embossed circle to the card base.
Next, I choose this fun cheerleader bird from 3 Birds on Parade (a cart I so need to use more often) I cut all the layers and placed them together after adding a little more pin dot embossing to my pom poms.
Action Wobbles are super easy to use so after I stamped a simple "Chirp Chirp" from Pink By Design's Animated Greetings set I placed my cheery bird on the card and tested her out.
I am in love with wobbles now! I look forward to making more fun cards with these. Here is a peak at the inside of my card  with some more decorative tape and embossing.
I am enjoying a 3-day weekend and spending a little time in my craft space making more cards to send out the rest of this month. Maybe one is coming our way soon? Lucky for me, this first wobble card meets the goals of this week's Action Wobble Challenge: Stamp It! so I will be linking up o my first try!

Saturday, February 16, 2013

Our Place

One of the best inside activities for my husband and daughter on a really hot day (or really cold one as well) is fort building. We have a large c-shaped sofa perfect for a large play space under piles of blankets, sheets and towels. They spend a large part of the morning planning and preparing their fort and the rest of the day playing underneath.
All the papers for this layout are from DCWV's Green Stack. I love the texture of this paper stack.

"Our Place" seemed like the perfect title for this layout as it really does become a special place just for them (I get invited in at times). I cut the letters using a stretched out Base Camp Shadow font.

For the journaling tag I cut a slider/nameplate using Fabulous Finds. I added it to the page using some braiding cord.

Thanks for stopping by to visit with me today. I hope you are having a good start to your weekend. As always I would love to hear your thoughts about my project.

Thursday, February 14, 2013

My Prince Valentine

Happy Valentine's Day!
I hope everyone is sharing the love today! I love this day! It is not for the whole romantic thing at all, just the idea of telling people you care about them is such a great feeling. I still wish I got to come home from school with bag of cartoon wishes from friends in my class. 
This is the simple, yet fun Valentine I made for my husband. We are very big Disney fans and I always joke with my husband that he is my prince so this felt just right for him.
I have been collecting Disney themed fonts for all sorts of projects and decided to just print out the names of the Disney princes using those (I have listed the names below in case you are looking for one) instead of cutting them out. I choose different colors for each one.
I layered the names onto a chevron pattern piece and some navy paper before adding the gold crown from Paper Doll Dress Up. On the inside I placed another crown over the "you" cut with Cursive 101. I think he will really enjoy this one.  Have a wonderful day!

Fonts for Disney Princes:
Storybook - Ferdinand, Edwardian Script - Charming, Cloister Black - Philip, Alegrian - Eric, Bell MT - Beast, Aladdin font for Aladdin, Mulan - Li Shang, Princess and the Frog - Naveen, Tangled - Flynn
(I mixed up fonts for Ferdinand and Philip when matching their movies) All fonts are options for free downloading. 

Tuesday, February 12, 2013

Owl B Yours

Happy Tuesday all. If it is Tuesday that means a new challenge at Die Cuttin' Divas. Today, for Valentine's week the challenge is to use white and...pink, red or purple (or all). This is the card I made for my daughter who is in love with the new Create A Critter 2 cartridge.
I decided to make a round card for this and use the fun cut out circle card on the original Wild Card cart. I filled in my circle with some fun purple polka dots.
 Next came this cute owl (my daughter gave me a huge hint on which one to use) cut with the heart wings. I cut her rather large to fill the space and put some Cotton Candy Stickles on her wings.I also cut the sentiment "Owl, be yours" from the Create A Critter 2 cart, but I put the extra hearts from it on the front with some purple Stickles.
For the inside, I repeated my purple polka dots and placed the rest of the sentiment I had cut out. I added the pink ribbon and mailed it to my house form work. Sophie loves getting mail and with the Month of Letters challenge mailing it to her form school was one of the best smiles of my day.
Hope you will join us in the challenge this week. Stop over and see what the other Die Cuttin' Diva designer's have made and join in. Our sponsor for the next 2 weeks is Purple Cows.
Other fun challenges & Link Ups:
Link Up Tuesday with Sarah Hamar Designs
Bitten By the Bug 2: heart or cupid
Red Carpet Studio: Where the Heart Is
My Craft Spot:For my Sweetheart
Fantabulous Cricut: Be My Valentine

Sunday, February 10, 2013

Teacher Animal Valentines Part 3

Finished!!!  I have finished all my Valentine treats for my co-workers. This year I went with an animal pun theme and have had so much fun creating these fun bags. I have already shared 4 of my treat toppers (the ones I finished first), but yesterday I finished the last four sets.
Most of these toppers were made with Create A Critter 2 a cart I know many have fallen in love with. To start with I selected the squirrel and owl pages in the Valentine's section of the booklet.  I loved both of these cute animal twists.  I love how the nuts look with embossed hearts on them.
For the next set, I used 3 Birds on Parade. The very first page of the cart has a simple bird and the saying, "your tweet". These little birds were so sweet with an added Designer's calendar heart decked out in Xmas Red Stickles (All That Stickles color of the week so link up). I also repeated the embossed hearts on the tags.
The final set goes back to Create A Critter 2 and this cute butterfly. I printed the fun saying, "You Make My Heart Flutter" and added the butterflies on top.
96 wonderful treat bags to share with the amazing people I work with everyday. Funny that some of them still do not know who does this each year...my little secret!  Happy Valentine's WEEK!!


Saturday, February 9, 2013

Butterflies and Superheros

My daughter likes to make her Valentine's each year for classmates and teachers. She has done sticker collages and fuzzy monsters in the past. I have been collecting Valentine ideas on Pinterest so we went to look for what she wanted and she selected Superheros and Butterflies, two fun ones and we created our own from those ideas. I am sure you have seen these if searching for ideas.
For our butterflies, I choose to create my own rather than use the cute printable found at Skip to My Lou. I cut the butterflies off the Paisley cartridge and chopped off their heads and antennae so our Tootsie Pops would fit.
Sophie stamped on all the small circles we cut using George and Basic shapes. She used a bunch of hearts and xoxo stamps from Pink By Design and My Creative Time. She was a mess when she was done, but it was fun. After signing her name to the back, she glued all the dots onto the wings and we pushed the treats into the slits.
For the superheros we stayed pretty true to the patterns. I cut the cape shapes off the Paper Doll Dress Up Cartridge and chopped off the top edge.
Then I printed out the fun printable we found at Less Ordinary Designs. Sophie helped me cut the circles using a Creative Memories circle cutter.
She will finishing gluing on all the cape designs on today, but we have 2 to show off already. She is super excited to pass these out at school on Thursday! I just love helping her with them each year..so fun to share craft time. Happy weekend to all!