Card for a Wedding

This was such a neat card to make, and I used something I have never used before in a card - vellum.  I had one sheet of vellum... one, and you know how us crafters are... I am going to save this one sheet for something special... so this what that one project!  My husbands friend and his fiance were married last weekend.  My husband was in their wedding, and I needed to make a card for the newlyweds!  I decided to try something new, and while it's not perfect, I think it turned out alright!  :o)

The card base is cut from Wrap It up.  I cut the card base twice so I would have two layers of the front image, so that I could make a sandich out of the image.  I folded the vellum in half and in between the halves, I adhered (barely) the champagne layer of the cut.  That's tricky, because vellum shows everything doesn't it?  Once I adhered the vellum to the backside of the card image, I used my extra cut of the card and put it on it inside of the card so to hide the vellum and make it look like a vellum window card.  The congratulations was cut in red from the same cartridge, because their colors were red and white.  Added a bit of ribbon to the fold and done!  This was new for me and I like the way it turned out!  I hope my explanation wasn't too confusing.  The front of the card is basically a giant sandwich, with four layers, 5 if you include the champagne layer. 

Thank you for looking!  I hope you enjoy and as always, thank you for taking the time to look!

Mary

Happy St. Patrick's Day! For Another Challenge!

I had an absolute BLAST making this card...  seriously!  No sarcasm at all!

St. Patrick's Day is my favorite holiday.  I know I am pretty early in the season to be posting this, but I just had to.  So I was thinking to myself: "Self, what are you going to make for the latest challenge over at the Fantabuolous Cricut Blog?"  Link Here:  http://fantabulouscricut.blogspot.com/search?updated-max=2012-02-21T07:11:00-07:00

 I knew it was a matter of time before I had to make Patty's Day cards, and already had designed the cut outs on my Gypsy as far as size go for the Leprechaun off of the Simply Charmed Cartridge.  Then, like a bolt of lightening - it hit me!  "Self, instead of cutting out the rainbow cut and pot o gold, why don't you make the rainbow out of ribbon?!?!"  The ribbon counts as a fancy trim!  I think it does at least, and I am not a lacey ind of girl, so ribbon it is!  So, that's what I did!  I made two different versions, one landscape and one portrait, but I like the portrait one better! 

Thank you for looking! 
Have a great day!
Mary

Shaped Birthday Card - Another Challenge

The Challenge this week over at My Craft Spot is to make a Shaped Birthday Card.  Link here:  http://craftspotbykimberly.blogspot.com/2012/02/monday-challenge-45-birthday-shape.html

For this card, I wanted to think outside the box!  A shaped birthday card... my mind went to shaped cupcakes, cakes, balloons, party hats, etc...  So instead, I went to a Cartridge that I wouldn't normally use when thinking of a Birthday card, and decided to use one of those images.  The cartridge is my Christmas Cartridge on my Gypsy.  I used the Teddy Bear cut to make a shaped Birthday card for a little boy.  I used some paper that I have had around forever which looks like an old potato sack? And some basic Kraft Paper for the card base.  I welded the shadow cut of the Teddy bear together to make the basic shape and then cut the layers of the bear.  The sentiment is from two cartridges:  Sweet Treats and the Cindy Lou font for the word "baby."  I added a blue button for his eye.  Also, for a little interest I pop-dotted the areas just beside the cut lines of the bear so that some of those features would have a bit more dimension, and adhered the rest of the bear flat. 

I hope this works for the challenge this week, and it isn't the typical cartridge I would use for a Birthday card, so I am extra proud of myself for not going to my "obvious" carts!

Thank you for looking!

Mary

THANK YOU CARDS

I recently needed to make a couple of Thank You Cards!  So this was the design I came up with.  All the cuts are from DoodleCharms, except the Thank You which is from Wild Card.  That's my favorite "Thank You" sentiment - I haven't found another one I like as much as that one!  That is why I always use that one!

Thansk for looking!

Mary

3 MORE VALENTINE'S DAY CARDS

Honestly, I am sick of Valentine's Day, but I thought I would go ahead and post these, since I have taken pictures of them before it gets too out of season, you know what I mean? 

So the first one is made without any Cricut, just quilling!  Simple quilling, but fun to do!  I saw this adea somewhere, but don't remember where.  So my apologies if I am completely scraplifting someone else's ideas!  But I saw it a while ago and thought I would try to create my own!  I made candies!  I made quilled candies!  I hand cut the piece that the sentiment is on, and hand wrote the sentiment as well and added the quilled heart to it as well.  And added some ribbon.  Hope you like it!

For the sedonc card,  I decided to a small Cuttlebug folder that Ihad, okay two - one for the outside, one for the inside.  The postage stamp looking image on the front is one, and the inside one is a heart that I cut out the inside and around the outside. 

The third and final card was fun to make!  The truck is from Just Because, and the hearts are from Wild Card.  The inside says: Sending you a Truck Load of Love!"  How fun!

I hope you enjoy!  Thank you for taking the time to look!

Mary

"Fishing" You A Happy Valentines Day! For Another Challenge!

This is the Valentine I made for my husband, Drew to go along withthe challenge over at the Fantabulous Cricut Blog, "Fun with Puns."  Link up here:  http://fantabulouscricut.blogspot.com/2012/02/challenge-me-monday-98.html

An avid Bass Fisherman, I think he gets a kick out of me making fish-themed cards!  For this one, I used Wild Card for the Heart-shaped card, and Simply Charmed for the fish, and fishing rod.  I know it totally does NOT look like how a large mouth bass or small mouth bass is shaped, but, I tried to color it as such with my new water pens and ink pads as described in previous post.  He said I did a pretty good job on the coloring, so for that I am very proud! 

I used a silver gel pen to color in the the little circles on the heart and hand-wrote the sentiment. And instead of using the cut out fishing line that was part of the cuts provided with his image, I used embroiddary floss and string it through the eyelets on the fishing rod.  Tricky to do, hard not to rip the eyelets, but it worked!  :o)  I had to had something "fru-fru" because it is Valentine's Day afterall, so a little ribbon adhered with staples...  Fru-Fru, but still kind of manly, with the metal stamples.

Thank you for looking!
Mary

Girly Girl Card - for a Challenge - and for a dog

I am participating in a challenge over at the My Craft Spot blog.  The challenge this week is to make something girly.  Link up here:  http://craftspotbykimberly.blogspot.com/2012/02/monday-challenge-44-girly-girl-projects.html

So a situation came up where I had to make a Girly card, but not an ordinary girly card...
"Angel" is a white Bichon Frise, who belongs to two people I work with... or should I say that they belong to her.  A princess to the core, always wearing the cutest outfits, ribbons in her hair, matching collars to her various outfits,getting pampered, continuously loved, and has a love for all things pork.  :o)  hehe...  She has become our works' mascot in a way.  Everyone loves her, and loves on her whenever she comes in the building.  This past weekend, she has fell ill, and is in the doggy hospital.  Still unsure of exactly what is wrong, but she did have to go through a blood transfusion, which, really, isn't good.  But, I wanted to make a card for Angel and her owners who need a little love sent their way.  I was asked to send puppy prayers yesterday by Angel's dad, and that is exactly what the inside sentiment says, "sending puppy prayers your way."  I made this card for her last night, and thought you know what  this might qualify for the challenge over at My Craft Spot!!

I hope this qualifies as a girly-girl card, especially when Angel, is completely and totally a girly-girl!  The only cart used on this card was Paper Pups, but nonetheless, I think it is perfect!  I hope they like it!

Thanks for looking, and please send puppy prayers up for Angel!

Mary

May All Your Wishes Come True - Happy Birthday

Another post for today!  I made this card back in January for my nephew Brady's Birthday!  He loves football, and I think it is so sweet,that Brady sometimes wears Tom Brady's jersey... it has Brady's name on the back of it, although they are not really Pat's fans I don't think - it's just adorable that he gets a kick out of wearing a Football Jersey with his name on the back!  So, in keeping with the fact that he loves football, I decided to use my Wrap It Up Card tag to make him a card.  The card front is from wrap it up, and the I cut the tag shadow for the back of the card and used a brad to make it swivel open.  Inside the window I welded the sentiment from Sweet Treats and cut the layers of the sentiment.  Also on the front, I used a small alphabet stamp from Stampin'Up (just the X's and O's) and VersaMark ink to create the look of football plays around the framp of the card, then added some dash lines to make it look like they were actual plays - does that make sense and look ok?  On the inside I just layered some of the same color cardstock, and stamped Happy Birthday on the inside and I didn't take a ouicture of the top, but I wrote "Hope your Birthday is a TOUCHDOWN!"  I think it turned out pretty cute! 

Thank you for looking!

Mary

Cricut Insipred - Quilled Chocolate Cupcake

Inspired by one of the cuts on Sweet Treats, I decided to quill the cupcake instead of using a regular cut.  It was very time consuming, but I think it turned out pretty cute!  The frosting and the cherry are my favorite parts!  Sorry the pictures are a little blurry, I am not sure what was going on with my camera, but hopefully you can see what I was trying to do still.  The sentiment on the inside says "Hope your Birthday is as sweet as you are!"

Thanks for looking!
Mary

New stamp... and copics - eat your heart out!!!

I want to show my project first, and then go into details...

I recently acquired two stamps (in one set) from Archiver's using a gift card!  I forget who they are by as I do not have the packaging in front of me, but it is such a darling little set!  However, I did run into a few little issues.  Cleverly packaged, I did not notice that these stamps were not mounted... I mean, no wood, no cling, no nothing, and to be honest, by reading the package, it made me think that it was a clear acrylic stamps and all I had to do was use one of my blocks... boy was I wrong.  It was actually a stamp-stamp, like a wood mounted stamp that was just left out of the process of mounting to anything, you know that brown rubber, and that was it.  So, I wanted to try it out anyway, because I couldn't resist, and just laid it on a sheet of scrap paper, image sideuo, inked it, and then laid my paper over it and CAREFULLY pressed down to transfer the image onto cardstock.  You can see in between the two girls in this image, down by their socks where there is a little smudge of brown ink that I accidently got on there in the transfer.  The sentiment was a seperate stamp and I did the same technique and that didn't turn out so well... so must figure out a way to mount this sucker for easier use...  hmmm.... 

Anywhos, I also bought a 3-pack of water blending pens, with three different tips, large, medium and small.  I have lots of small stamp pads of a variety of colors and seeing this technique used a lot on youtube and such, I decided to try it out!  The pen looks similar to this...

This was the only picture I could find of something similar from the web... it's refillable, and allows you to blend colors together.  I would fill the pen with tap water, and then use it like a paint brush and "dip" it into the color stamp pad I wanted to use and blend the colors.  It's easy to make it a darker color, lighte or anything like that, And a package of 3 pens only cost about 3 bucks, and I can use ANY color stamp pad I have!  It's like having (from what I've seen) copic markers, but I can re-use the same same water pen over and over.  Just kee a scarp piece of paper to "brush" out the remaining color left on the tip and then go to your next color!  It's so wonderful!!!  and you never run out of "ink" in the pens because it is just water - you just re-fill it!  They are very easy to handle, and the variety of the thicknesses in the tips are great for everything from larger stamps to smaller stamps.  One thing I do wish I would have done is actually wait after stamping my image BEFORE I got so excited to try oput my new pens, because the ink on the stamped image wasn't quite dry yet, before I started in with more ink and water.  Note  to self - practice self control!  hehe!!

Anywho - I thought I'd share my latest venture in the world of crafting!!!  I tried something new - and I loved it!  Sorry for the long post, but wanted to share my entire experience and thoughts!

Mary

Video Game Controller Card

I have made a lot of projects lately, but haven't really had the time to post them, so, I am going to be playing catch-up for a while! 

I made this card for my nephew, Michael, for his Birthday.  The card was so simple to make, thanks to the card feature on the wrap it up cartridge!  I wanted to use more fun colors than what a game controller actually has, so I added a stiped pattern paper to liven it up a bit for all the layers.  THen used stamps from American Crafts for the sentiments. 

Thanks for looking!

Mary