Cool Thank You

Christmas has come and gone for another year.  Yesterday was a whirlwind of presents, family and food!  Now it's time for the thank you notes.

I designed these for Miss E to give to her special friends who are so kind to her. 

I have a hard time making multiples - there is always a tweak or change to something!  The penguins are from Create a Critter.  (This cut also makes a great wall vinyl - we made some for Miss E and her friends last Spring.  They loved it!)  The card is a small one - just 3 3/4 X 3 3/4.  This size is too small for US mail when placed in a 4X4 envelopes but we plan on handing them out so it's not a problem.  The flower on the penguin's head is one I made from the Cricut project cartridge Flower Shoppe.  The flowers are so easy to make.  I watched a tutorial on Creations with Christina's blog and was creating as I watched! (Thanks Christina for making it so easy!)

 I put a dot of Liquid Pearls in the middle of this flower. 

The stamp is PTI Fillable Frames #5 stamped with Fresh Snow (PTI). 

Patterned paper is Echo Park Be Mine and the ribbon is from Michaels. 

Thanks for looking and have a great week!

Cindy

Old School Meets New School

A recent challenge was to use old scrappy products to make a project. 

So out came the old stencils, fancy scissors and brads to make this card!  The base is stamped with PTI Stitches and Swirls in Aqua mist.  I love the subtle pattern it makes.  The lace is colored using the aqua mist stamp pad and some water to mix in the color. 

The tag... let's just say I am so thankful for my Cricut because cutting out a handtraced stencil tag isn't as fun as it sounds!  The tag is stamped with the same Stitches and Swirls stamp from PTI in Fresh Snow (don't you just love the name Fresh Snow?).  The brads in the corners are dotted with Pearls.  It gives the brads a little touch of class.  The letters are silver stick ons - easy peasy. 

Lessons learned from this card:

• Using the fancy scissors on PTI's heavyweight paper is a disaster waiting to happen.  The ends of my tag were chewed up right away because the scissors couldn't cut through the paper.  The tag ended up being smaller than I wanted because I had to trim off all the chewed up mess.  Still got some fancy cuts in by cutting the bottom edge of the card...
• Pearl dots take time to dry.  If you're impatient like me, you'll end up bumping the dot while trying to finish up without leaving time for the pearl to dry, getting it all over your hand and you'll have to redot.  Ugh.

Overall a simple, sweet card using old school products.  If it's all the same to you, though, I think I'll stick with my Cricut... :)

Smiles,
Cindy

Tis the Season

Happy Holidays!

The past few weeks have been crazy around here:  Christmas parties, getting Miss E ready with teacher gifts, exhibiting at a craft show with my sister.  You name it and it was probably on my to do list! 

One of the fun crafty projects for the holidays was making these nugget tins.  I sold a bunch at the Craft Show and then made some more for a special order and for teacher gifts.  These are such fun to make and each one was a little different.  It makes me smile to see how each one takes on its own personality (Pumpkin Spice & Denine - I hope it makes you smile too!)

This Snowman cutie  & sentiment is from Unity Stamps.  I colored with Copics and let his personality shine through!  Tucked inside the tin are 12 individually wrapped Hershey Nuggets.  A perfect gift for a teacher, friend or bus driver!

Sorry for the glare on this one.  I {LOVE} the 12 Days of Christmas paper line from MME that I used on this tin!  I used a PTI stamp set for the sentiment and added some Stickles to make the bulbs glow.

And this one used PTI stamp sets for a fun retro feel with the big bulb lights. 

Thanks for taking a look today and hope your weekend is great!

Cindy

World Card Making Day - Part 2!

Two posts in two days - a new record! 

These are two of my projects from yesterday. 

This little owl just screams Lily Pulitzer to me.  Don't you think?  The paper is from MME Ooh La La and I lo-lo-love it!  

This is more MME  - So Sophie - Graceful.  I like the fall colors - used some MM Halloween trim on the card and a few gold blings on the side.   I had to add something to the side for balance because I didn't center my stamp - as my friend Carmen says, "usted esta distraido."  I think being told you're absentminded sounds much better in Spanish!

I had great plans to get more of my October birthday cards ready but the day slipped away as Sundays do.  I did get my blog layout and look updated and put a plug for Tastefully Simple on it too!

Hope you have a great week - and who knows - maybe there is another post tomorrow!

Cindy

World Card Making Day

Today is World Card Making Day and I'm spending the afternoon in my office/craft room creating! 

It's been a while since the last post so here are some of the cards I've been working on.

A challenge entry for Crop Chocolate...

Happy Birthday to my Mom...

A fun card for my son, Jordan...

Another challenge entry for Crop Chocolate...

Happy Birthday to my Sister...

And a get well card for a dear friend who is battling cancer...

 

Hope you enjoy looking!

 

Cindy

Spooktacular Project!

I've been seeing so many cool subway art projects on Pinterest, and I thought, "How hard can this be?"  So I pulled out Cricut Design Studio and Happy Hauntings and came up with this spooktacular project!

I used a 12X12 canvas and painted it a pumpkiny orange color.  At first I wanted it to look very brush strokey (is that a word?) on the edges but then the paint started going on too heavy on one side so I decided to cover to the edges and just let some white shine through in the middle to give a little more depth.

Then I used Design Studio to place the predesigned phrases in place.  It's kind of like putting a puzzle together when you try to figure out what fits where.  Filled in some blank spots with the spider and raven.

I used black indoor vinyl from Expressions Vinyl for the cut.  Weeding (getting all the unwanted pieces off the mat) takes quite a while so be sure to allow time (and patience!) to get it done.  I also used transfer tape since I designed it in Design Studio exactly how I wanted it to lay out on the page.  (Yes, I may have wasted some vinyl by not smooshing it all together but I have a hard time keeping things in a straight line so it was worth it...) 

Wouldn't it be cool to do a canvas like this painted black with a silver spider web?  Hmmm....

Have a great week!

Cindy

Weekend Projects

We planned to visit Monticello today but threats of rain changed our minds.  Instead we stayed at home and I had a chance to work on a few more cards (I very effectively ignored all the other weekend chores that were calling to me...). 

Plus I started some rock candy (does that count as cooking?) Saw it on a blog and had to give it a try for Miss E.  Made cinnamon, orange, wintergreen, cotton candy and plain.  I think I went a little overboard on the cinnamon - might need a fire extinguisher for that one!  I discovered that we truly only have ONE (yes ONE!) clothes pin in our whole house.  How does that happen?  So we had to get creative on how to suspend the sticks in the sugar solution (the sticks can't touch the bottom, sides or each other - bad things happen if they touch).  Hubby found stryofoamy stuff that I could push the sticks into (he's so resourceful!).

Back to the cards...

The stamps are from PTI.  I picked this up on E-bay and got it for about half of what it costs new (whoo hoo - love a bargain)!  The flower petals are stamped individually to make the flower and then colored with Copics.  The frames are cut on the Elegant Edges cart (it's a major go-to cart for me).  Bada bing bada bang and it's a card!

 I did go back and put black stitching on the pink frame to add a little more definition to it. 


My second card was made from paper from Bo-Bunny that just happened to show up in the mail today!

 Sentiment is from Verve Stamps. Bird and branch are PTI. The card needed a little more color so I put 'berries' on the branches. 

Isn't this quote so true?

So now I'm trying to figure out what I want to do next.  I need to make a get well soon card and I would like to try out my Toy Story cart.  (Those aliens are speaking to me...)

Stay tuned!
Cindy

Mojo Monday #202

Had fun playing with this one! 

Have a great weekend,

Cindy

Mojo Monday #191

Happy Tuesday!

Sunny Spring seems to have taken a slight detour to allow rainy Spring to visit this week.  I'm hopeful that the weather will clear up enough before the weekend so that we can pick strawberries this weekend.  It's time for fresh strawberries and to fill the freezer with fresh strawberry jam - yum!

This week's Mojo Monday came together quickly for me.  I used Togetherness paper from Cosmo Cricket along with my new favorite cartridge, Elegant Edges, and Create A Critter.  Elegant Edges is awesome - so many cuts perfect for albums, borders, combining into unique cards... It's been fun playing with this cart (and I found it on sale at Joann - how could I say no?) 

Stamp is Verve and ribbon is MME Lush.

Thanks for looking!

Have a great week,

Cindy

Mojo Monday Entry #190

Happy Tuesday!

This week feels like it should have been Friday about eight days ago...  Ever had one of those weeks?

I decided to do another Mojo Monday design this week.  It really adds discipline to your projects when you follow the design guidelines.  I find myself wanting to wander but it's good practice to see and use good design elements...

Isn't she the cutest little thing?   Downloaded her as a digi stamp from Bugaboo Stamps.  The folks at Bugaboo have a half price deal going on this month and TONS of great images!  www.bugaboostamps.com   Of course I used my Copics to color her.  Used 7 different papers (I think that's a personal best!).  The flower is a mix of Forever Young Cricut Cart and Storybook.  Mini Monograms was used for the frames around the pretty purple girl.

I have some new paper pads on the way and can't wait to get into some summery colors (i have some more summertime bugaboo digis I can't wait to use!)

Hope you're having a great week,
Cindy 

Happy Mother's Day!

Happy Mother's Day Moms! 

So today I decided to celebrate National Scrapbooking Day by making cards.  It's interesting how what you plan and what you end up with sometimes aren't the same.  Guess that's really how life works too!

This card was supposed to look completely different but a case of not following the 'cut once measure twice' rule required me to be more resourceful in how to incorporate one of the papers into the card. 

Isn't she just the cutest thing?  Her name is Isabella and I purchased her at Bugaboo digi stamps along with a bunch of other adorable stamps.  She is colored with Copic markers - I love, love, love Copic markers!  The sentiment and baker's twine is from PTI.  Paper is a mixture - grab bag from Taylored Expressions, DCWV Nana's Kitchen and the yellow dot paper source is highly classified (that means I have already forgotten where I pulled it from!).

I'll be posting a Mother's Day card made for my Mom tomorrow (so she won't get a sneak peak tonight!) and some drawings Miss Emma made to use as digi stamps.

Have a great weekend!
Cindy



Mojo Monday Entry

Welcome back!  Got some creative time last night and decided to participate in the Mojo Monday Week 189 challenge.  A few hours (and interruptions) later, here's what I came up with. 

 Isn't it nice to lose track of time doing something you love? 

Here's what I used:

• PTI Stamp & Buttons
• Cricut Cartridges (Indie Art, Martha Stewart Cake Holiday and Elegant, Preserves)
• BoBunny Paper
• Sizzix Paper
• Bakers Twine

I learned some lessons from this project:

• Just because you have a lot of carts doesn't mean that you have to use more than one or two carts when cutting out design elements.  It really adds a lot of time to your project when you use a lot of different cartridges!
• Less can be more.  I put bling on the butterfly then had to carefully scrape it off because it was too fancy for that calm little butterfly!
• Think about what order the card goes together BEFORE gluing down the first layer.  The bakers twine?  It goes UNDER the bottom layer!  Guess when I figured that out?  You guessed it - AFTER I glued down all the other layers!

Now the big question:  Will I remember what I learned for my next project? :)

Have a great week,
Cindy

Welcome!

Welcome to my blog!  This is a spot to share crafting projects and inspirations with others who enjoy paper crafting. 

Spent some time today enjoying the beautiful spring weather.  Our yard is full of great photo opportunities!

Our pink dogwood is in full bloom and  finally taking off after the second year...

the ferns are slowly unfurling into the warm spring air....

and the tulips look lit from within! 


This afternoon I made a couple cards using MME paper, ribbbon andPTI and Verve Stamps.  Used the Cricut Storybook cartridge too.  So many good shapes perfect for stamping on that cartridge!

Looking forward to sharing more ideas with you!

Have a great week!

Cindy