Winter Holiday Cards

So, I've been trying to make our winter holiday cards for the last few years. I try to make a "simple" design in the hopes I get them done quick, but gluing these together took a while so they weren't as simple as I'd wanted. lol

This year I also wanted to stick to using only my stash, which meant that I had to find enough cardstock of each color to make the cut top layer, and another layer for one of the mats. Fortunately, I found enough cool blues and purples to make these. A few of these colors may be non-traditional but hey... I managed to not buy a thing! :)  I still need to do something with the insides, probably a stamped sentiment. But at least I got 40 of these done and I can finish up the stamping this weekend.

These cards were created by welding snowflakes and a sentiment from several cartridges into a rectangle frame that I sized to fit a card that would fit into a regular size #10 business envelope. See below for the cartridges used!

Cricut Info and other supplies used:
Designed by Michele Donner-Ramsey

Cricut machines:  Expression and Gypsy
Cartridges used:  A Child's Year, Cake Basics, Christmas, Country Life (Sentiment), Art Philosophy, Joys of the Season, MS Seasonal Cake Art, Plantin
Supplies: white and colored cardstock, adhesive

Birthday time!

My son's birthday is November 1st. :)  We're having his birthday party today! Since we're having it at a pizza place, I did not make a huge pile of decorations or anything, but I did make the invites and some masks for the kids. My son chose a hard theme to decorate for... and I was lazy. LOL

Here are the invites:

My son wanted a wolf theme for the party. There's a story here:  When I was pregnant, two of my good friends were also pregnant. We were talking names one day and one of them said "if it's a boy, we're naming him Aidan Wolf" and the other friend said, "What a coincidence, we're naming ours Frederick Wolfgang".  So I said, "wait a minute! I want in on that! I'll put wolf somewhere in my son's name!"  So we all did! Kevin James Wolff is part of the wolf pack of boys born in 2006. ;)  Anyway, my son thinks it's cool and wanted a wolf themed party.  He told me the imagery he wanted as part of the theme and I made the invites accordingly! The card base is from Cricut Wild Cards and the wolf portion is from Pumpkin Carvings. :)

I also made the kids some masks to wear.

I made two each of all the masks, the cats are the only ones that are different from each other though. These were made from the Cricut digital image set Animal Masks.

And guess what! Everything was made using my stash. :)

Tailor Made card

Hello all!  I decided to make a card today. There were a couple challenges I wanted to complete so this is the result. :)  The challenges I wanted to do were Enfy's August "girly card" challenge over at Going Buggy.  I used the card sketch challenge over at Stuck On U Sketches!

I used MME Lush papers, Cosmo Cricket mini alphas, French Manor for the dress form, seam binding ribbon dyed with Antique Linen Distress Stain, a blue ribbon, some pearls, a Tim Holtz embossing folder, and Billionaire for the welded words "tailor made". The card is 5x7, as I wanted plenty of room for everything.

I left the inside blank so it could be used for anything; a romantic card or a card for a best friend. :)

Thanks for looking!

Done challenges!!!

I cropped with my peeps on Saturday! and oh-my-goodness, I did a bunch of challenges!

I wanted to use some inspiration to get me going, so I hit up a few websites for sketches and challenges, and that's mostly what I worked on all day!  The first one I have above is the Stuck On U Sketches blog sketch challenge found here. I had the Echo Park mini theme and used that for several pages including this one.

This layout was completed for the Sketch N Scrap sketch challenge found here.  Again, used the EP mini theme papers. But for this one, I had some white seam binding ribbon, and I wanted it to be navy instead. I didn't have navy ink or even navy mist. I had two blues that were more shades of cobalt, and a charcoal color mist.  So I scrunched the seam binding ribbon into a zip baggie, dampened it with water from my mini mister, then misted it with the two blues and the charcoal mist. That was sufficient to make my own "navy" colored ribbon, that actually looks a little like it's been tie-dyed. Pretty neat.

Here's the last layout I did for a challenge, and also the last layout I did with the EP mini theme. I used up some of the remaining ribbon that I misted as well. This was inspired by the My Creative Sketches blog sketch challenge found here. The little arrow is pointing at a beaver we saw swimming, and rather than put a big picture with a tiny tiny subject on the layout, I decided to use the beaver picture as an embellishment instead. :)

My last challenge project is for Stuck on U Sketches all new card sketch challenge found here! I used a kraft cardstock base and stamped it with a Hero Arts stamp I've never used before. Then I threw some scraps on there. ha! the center element is a chalkboard sticker from American Crafts. My chalk writing stinks. I wish I could have written that better. lol

THANKS! for stopping by. :)

Thank you cards #4

Oooh I love love love this new punch around the page punch! My new favorite! Too bad I don't own it! LOL... the punch belongs to the store I work at. But still, it's a lovely punch.
I love the simplicity of this card. I could make a bunch of these, happily, to send out.

Thanks for stopping by!

Thank you cards #3

This one was a little more complicated. I saw an elegant and beautiful card last year and was inspired to do something similar, but was going purely on memory!  The light green is embossed below, then I embossed another piece of the green. I swiped both pieces with versamark ink, then cut out some of the branches to layer over the bottom layer of leaves.  I pushed too hard on my "merci" stamp. Grrr.
This was a cuttlebug embossing folder by the way, and one I wished embossed deeper.

Thank you cards #2

This is a SUPER simple card. Cut the hearts on my cricut though if you have a punch of the right size, that would work too. Some string, pop dots and a stamp. All done! :)

Thank you cards #1

I know most of us are still thinking of the coming holidays, but I'm thinking of the after the holidays! All those thank yous that will need to be said. :)  So here's a first thank you card of the season. Fairly simple... the embossing is a sizzix embossing folder. I love both cuttlebug and sizzix embossing folders, but the sizzix ones emboss really deep! I love that.

Thanks for looking!

30 Days of Creativity - Day 14 10-minute-card

How to make a card in 10 minutes:
Choose scraps leftover from a kit
pick a challenge that technically ends in 15 minutes
Throw something together FAST

LOL... yeah I got it done today, but today ends in 30 seconds! So here it is!

The Challenge blog this is for is Inspirational Card Sketches!

30 Days of Creativity - Day 2 Believe card

Well, here I was, home ALL DAY. And did I scrap at all? Not till 9pm, when I realized I needed to make something for the 30 day challenge. My excuse is that I am sick. Came down with a cold this weekend and pretty much spent all day laying about, feeling sorry for myself.  I am glad I got myself up to make even this simple card though. I do wish I'd made it last month as it is from scraps from last month's kit club from my LSS.

Here's hoping tomorrow I'm feeling more like real scrappin.

Thanks for looking!

More fun projects!

I got the newest kit for Scrapaganza's in-store kit club (Scrappinista Scrapbook Club) and had a blast desigining with it! My Little Yellow Bicycle's Boardwalk line - full of sunshine, beachy water and wonderful texture!  And I really mean texture... the papers have a fun fabric-y feel to them. The die-cut borders are canvas, and all the embellishments have interesting dimension and texture.  Here are my projects:

SeaWorld

I like working with themed papers, it allows me to dig into my stash of photos and get pictures scrapped!

Beach Babes?

I love this photo and I'm not ashamed to share it! Besides, this was 23 yrs ago. LOL

Photo Op

My mom lives in Florida while I live in Iowa, and neither of us can afford to visit each other often, so every photo of her and my son is a treasure to me.

Whenever I'm assigned to work with a kit, I set a personal goal to use up everything I can. I also like to make cards from the scraps but I'm also looking at ideas for gift-giving as well. A few months ago I was at Capadia's blog and discovered this post about making a folder for holding notecards made with a single sheet of cardstock. AWESOME! I love things like this and the folder comes out looking so professionally done. It's a keeper and several people on my gift list will be getting little folder boxes of cards this year!

Thank you for stopping by! Your comments are always appreciated and read! so if you have a question, feel free to ask. And please visit Capadia's blog to see that card folder, and all her other awesome work!

Some new stuff!

Well my i-rock is on it's way soon! (see previous post) so I can't wait to use it!

I thought I'd update with some more stuff I've done for Scrapaganza. I've been a busy little bee there but soon hope to get some time to participate in challenges on blogs and stuff. 


I just designed the make-n-takes for Scrapaganza's Day of Creativity on Saturday the 3rd. If you live in/near the Quad Cities, Day of Creativity happens every first saturday of the month and includes a free card make-n-take, a $4.99 project (the July 4th banner this time) and a $9.99 2 page spread.

Here are a couple more Get Your Scrap On make-n-takes that we have at Scrapaganza. Thanks to local scrapper Sandy for letting me "borrow" pictures of her girls, as I wanted to make these pretty pages but had no appropriate photos! :)

Thanks for looking! Don't give up on me, I am getting back in my groove again after being away from my blog! :D :D

ICS #51 - Thank You Card

I felt like going back to a simpler card style this week. I also had a bunch of scraps left over from my Gypsy Spot layout. My son was playing with my Martha Stewart butterfly punch and some of the scraps, and I thought I'd do a card with butterflies, layering them in the same way I did with the previous scrapbook page. I had another leftover frame which was perfect for stamping the sentiment.

My son proclaimed that he too wanted to make a card, so he made this little card for his grandma. :)  (I inked it and stapled the ribbon, but he did everything else.)

I have to say that's one good thing about daycare, they've gotten my son more interested in crafting than I could, so now I'm able to get him to do stuff with me more... which lets me scrap more! hahaha!

Thanks for looking!

ICS #50 - Elegant Valentine

 

This week I thought I'd try out my new Love Struck cartridge for the sketch over at Inspirational  Card Sketches. I went with an elegant theme since I needed to do something with these Reminisce papers. The fancy heart was cut with the cartridge, and I fussy cut the corners from one of the papers. It was very simple to do but I like how it turned out.

Thanks for looking!

ICS #49 - Speedy scrap Valentine

Hello all!  This week's sketch at Inspirational Card Sketches practically made itself!

I was at my local scrappy store, taking my monthly kit class. After I finished the projects for the class, I looked at my scraps and realized I had just enough to whip something together for a card. The only card design I could think of to do though was the ICS sketch, which I had been looking at before I left home for the LSS.  Well I think I put this card together at record speed!! (less than 15 mins!) The sketch seemed perfect for my remaining scraps, which were mostly the cardstock journal cards and embellishments that goes with the Pink Paislee Cupid line (an AWESOME line of papers btw).

Now, when I was cutting the brown mat, I didn't cut it the right size initially, so there I am, slicing a tiny bit off each side till I get it the size I want. As I am putting the card together I'm looking at these really thin strips of brown cardstock. I pick them up and they feel a little like tiny twigs. So I tie them into the ribbon as a dimensional embellishment! Talk about using up scraps people! LOL

Hope you enjoy, thanks for looking!

ICS #48 Grazie

 

I just love Graphic 45 papers. When I saw the Renaissance line I had to buy a whole pad. For this week's Inspirational Card Sketch challenge #48, I was in the mood for these papers!  I sure hope you hop over to ICS and give this week's challenge a shot!

Thanks for looking!

BACK!!! And Gypsy Spot

Wow, what a holiday few weeks that was!  It started with a winter storm that kept us from visiting family, went into a week of me being sick sick sick with a sinus infection, ear infection and pink eye!!! I recovered just enough to make it to the two all-day crops I was signed up for on the 1st and 2nd. It took me a few days to recover from the "me days" I took to recover from the holiday! LOL

Happy 2010!!! From me and the Gypsy Spot!

Our challenge this week at the Gypsy Spot is to make a New Year's card. Rather than welding the numbers, I welded a shape (the bird) to the card base. This is all Gypsy Font, and I use K & Company, and Bazzill cardstock. I didn't embellish much more because the bird paper is already glittered. :)

Here is the inside, where you can see the shapes welded.

Thanks for looking!

Local class for Mickey & Friends Layout/card

If you live in or near the Quad Cities, and have wanted to learn how to use the Cricut cartridges that have paper piecing, I will be doing a class at the local store in Davenport using the cartridge Mickey & Friends. Give Scrapaganza a call to sign up! Class is $20 and you bring your cricut, the Mickey & Friends cartridge and some other basic supplies (they will give you a list at the store) and Scrapaganza will provide the paper kit! I will be teaching how to cut and piece the characters together while at the same time, you'll be making this fun layout and card!

You will be able to personalize the layout, it does not have to be for a birthday, it can be for a disney vacation or Disney on Ice or whatever!  Here's the card you will also make:

 

 

The card is pretty generic but if you want to change "hot dog" you can! 

Hope to see some local folks there!

ICS #44 - Word Tree card

Sometimes I think Dawn is psychic, she always has a sketch up for the inspiration that I am currently working on, which makes it so easy to create with her sketches! I hope you'll play along with this sketch at Inspirational Card Sketches!

The design is simple, but the execution was not! LOL... The word tree idea came from a posting somewhere, I think on the cricut message boards, where someone posted a picture of a word tree made from text and printable. I thought "wouldn't it be cool to weld the words together on my gypsy, and cut it out on my cricut".

The welding was fine, but my first choices of fonts on a couple words weren't quite the best, and my test cut didn't work well. I ended up cutting this thing 3 times, ajdusting fonts and welds till it finally came out right. I still had to use my craft knife a couple places and it is such a delicate cut (it's less than 5 inches tall) that I had to be very careful not to damage it.

I used more BG Eskimo Kisses papers, Bazzill cardstock, a Foof a La clear button with paper glued to the back, DMC floss, and some generic ribbon. The cricut cartridges I used are: Ashlyn's Alphabet, Base Camp, Zooballoo, Winter Woodland, Hanna Montana font, Cuttin' Up, Opposites Attract, and a rectangle from George.

I think this cut would look great on a layout, since cutting it bigger would mean it is less delicate and the details of the words would show better. So, since I'm sharing the .gypsy cut file for this, I went ahead and made multiple pages on the cut file, and on each page is a different size of the cut. The cuts are NOT grouped! so if you want to move them, you'll need to group it, move it, then ungroup it before cutting or the welds won't work. But there's the size I cut for this card, a medium size and one that is a full page tall.  You can download the cut file for the Gypsy here.

Thanks for looking!

ICS #43 - Snow Globe

I knew exactly what I wanted to do the instant I saw the sketch for this week's Inspirational Card Sketches!

I had seen a snow globe "shaker box" type card somewhere weeks ago and knew I wanted to try one. Then I saw the snowglobe cut on the Christmas Cheer cricut cartridge and that decided me. The penguin also came from the Christmas Cheer cart... isn't he cute? the snow is MS glitter. I wish now I'd had something coarser... turns out I did, at home (I was at a crop when I made this). I used more Eskimo Kisses papers from BG. I plan to use them up on cards this year! lol   Here's the inside of the card. The "globe" only has the "snow" in it, so that the penguin is also inside. I like that he's pulling double duty.

The stamped sentiment is Inkadinkadoo I think. There's some stickles on the front and inside as well.  Oh, the penguin's scarf is from Everyday Paperdolls cart. I thought he looked a little chilly and needed a scarf.

However, I especially want to note that I was in the mood to test my cricut when I was making this card. I save the acetate packaging from a lot of the stuff I buy, including the packaging that carts come in. So when I decided to make this shaker box, I grabbed a couple peices of transparency from cart packaging that I'd saved, and stuck them to a cricut mat and used the deep cut blade at the highest pressure, depth 5 and low speed. My cricut cut these transparencies like a charm! perfect circles! I just had to rub a little of the mat adhesive off them before using them.

My 3 year old son said this is his favorite card. "Kevin love snow gob mama".  And looked at me expectantly. He believes if he tells me how much he loves something, I will give it to him. LOL!

Thanks for looking!