More Christmas Cards

Just wanted to share some more Christmas Cards I made this year.  This were made with a hodge podge of supplies I had on hand.  Dazzles from HOTP, cards from the Michael’s $1 bin, ribbon, my own white shimmer mist (mixed perfect pearls with water, alcohol, and a little white acrylic paint), etc.  I hope you like them!

These HOTP dazzles are so cute!  After I made these cards, I didn’t want to give them away.  LOL!
Merry Christmas!
Cat

Christmas Projects at The Little Blue House

The Little Blue House is our local paper crafting studio.  They have beautiful projects you can create every season and I wanted to share some of the neat things I made at the House this season.
A glittered and blinged up washer necklace.  I’m going to make more of these.  They were lots of fun, Simple and make a great gift.















A cute magnetic post it note holder.  Adorable right?

A lovely lollipop flower.

               

And many more little gifts. 

We also made a gorgeous Origami Christmas Tree Canvas. All with our own supply stash!

 

Here’s a couple of close ups

These projects were great fun to make. So support your local scrap store and sign up for one of their classes today!
Have a great holiday! 
Cat
Linky Parties

Merry Tags for Blocks

As promised, here’s a look at my Christmas blocks. 

I made these with the Cricut Alphabet font (love this font!) and Winter Frolic for the snowman and ornament shapes. These were so easy to make I was done in a few of hours. See my original altered blocks post for more information and a video tutorial on making the blocks.
I cut the letters in Real Dial Size to better control the size proportion to the ornament.  I also cut the shadows so that the letters would stand out.  Then I gave them some texture with an embossing folder. 
Here’s a look at a couple of close ups.











I kept it simple this time and only added glitter to the snowman.  
So simple and so cute.  These are the times I love my Cricut and love not having to hunt down images online.
Hopefully, my seasonal blocks inspired you this year.  I’m thinking of making a set for the new year and then cycling through the ones I already made this year come spring.
I have a couple more projects to share this season so stay tuned!

  Cat

Last Minute Christmas Cards

Hello! I’m back and I have some quick and easy Christmas card ideas you can make by this weekend! Yes you can do this!
One uses the Cricut, the second uses stamping and the third one uses stickers.
The first simple card idea involves the Cricut.

In order to make these cards fast it’s best to use premade blank cards. You can get them at Michaels with your 40% off coupon. 
First, find some holiday word art from any cartridge. Here I’m using Joys of the Season from the Wrap It Up cartridge.  Use fancy paper like foiled or glittered paper so it looks special.
Then find a background diecut and cut it so it fits your card.  (I used the Spring Holiday Cards cart for this background). Emboss it with an embossing folder.  Ink your embossed diecut and adhere it to your card.  You can pop dot it if you wish to create a 3D effect. 
Then add another background diecut for your word art and cut it to size.  I used  Spellbinders Nestabilities Labels One die for this one.
Add your word art and tie a little twine if you wish to add a cute embellishment. 
Now, you can leave it like this or mist it with some clear shimmer spray to give the entire card a little sparkle. And voila, you are done! 
The second card was created with one stamp and fancy foiled paper.

Cut your fancy patterned paper to fit card.  Trim with matching ric rac ribbon.  Stamp your image and you can either emboss or glitter it for a little shine.  Use a corner punch and that’s it!  Another quick and easy card.  Stamps are from $1 Micheals bin – ornaments and Close to My Heart –Joy. I’ve had these for a few years so I don’t know if they are still available.  The paper is from Hobby Lobby – I got these on clearance last year.  May still be around this year.
The final card is super simple also and uses stickers.

These cute stickers I picked up at Michael’s for 79 cents!   They are epoxy holographic stickers. How cute is this!  All I did here was cut a couple of pieces of paper and adhered them together and then wrapped the ribbon around it.  I created the knot on the ribbon before I adhered it to the card.
Then I used my 1 1/2 inch scalloped punch and my 1 inch round punch.  Layered the punches together and attached the stickers.  For the greeting I used two stamps.  A snowflake stamp with a light colored ink and then stamped the greeting over that.  No embossing or anything fancy.  These cards are done!
I hope these samples help you get those cards completed.  Remember to keep the cards simple and without too many 3D embellishments so they go through the mail intact.
Stay tuned as I’ll be posting my holiday tags in the next few days. Super simple and super cute also.
Cat
 

Mother’s Day Card and Envelope Faux Pas

Happy Sunday!  Hope you are enjoying the remainder of your weekend.  This weekend I went to two crops. How productive of me, right? Well, so-so productive anyway. I really didn’t plan very well for my crops so I just took some page kits and slapped them together.  I didn’t even have pictures for some of them and they all need some final touchups. (sigh!)

 

I don’t know if I’ll buy page kits ever again.  Don’t get me wrong, they are great designs and make for fast pages, but for me it‘s really hard to conform my pictures to the page kits. So, I usually end up changing the original intended design which really doesn’t save me much time. Maybe I’ll post a couple of them once I get the final touches done. Do you use any page kits? I would love to know how you work with them.

Ok, so now to my original topic – Mother’s Day Cards!  This year I used my Cricut & Gypsy (you don’t need the gypsy to create these cards) to design my card and I have to say I am really pleased with the results. 

Here is the first color way. 

 

The card itself and the flower were from Sentimentals; the topper base and shadow were from Spring Holiday Cards; the label from Tags, Bags, Boxes. Other supplies used were My Minds Eye paper, Stickles glitter, 3Birds letter rubons, Coredinations cardstock which I embossed with the Damask style Cuttlebug folder, misc cardstock, ribbon and pearls. 

Now, here’s a rookie mistake I made and I about kicked myself for it.  If anything else please remember this from this post: When you make a card on the Cricut, always – always cut the envelope (using the fit to page feature) first!! This way you know what size card you need to make. 

I was too busy trying to fit two cards on 12 x 12 mat that I didn’t even consider the envelope. So, now I had a card but the envelope that goes with it won’t work. Ugh!  Well, I had no choice but to make an envelope using the Martha Steward Scoreboard and I loved, loved,loved the results!

My card was approx. 5.12” x 5.5” and I tried the measurements for the 6X6 card listed on the board, but that was just too large.  And after some adjustments I was able to make the perfect envelope. 

Measurements used to create a square envelope for a 5.5 X 5.5 card:

1. Cardstock 10 x 10.
2.   Using the envelope triangle that comes with the board, score at 4 1/4 on all four sides.
3.  Fold and Ta Da! Perfect envelope. Simple right?

I also added holes (see below) to tie a ribbon through the flap. 

Here is the other color way. Card and envelope. The paper used for this one was Colorbok and letter stamps from Memory Makers. Everything else is pretty much the same as above.

I hope these gave you some last minute card ideas for your Mother’s Day Cards and keeps you from making silly mistakes like mine. It’s all good though. For me, it seems every mistake becomes an unexpected new technique.

I will be linking to some Sunday and Monday parties (see my Linky Parties page for a list).



Belated Happy Everything!!

Okay, so I missed wishing everyone Happy Holidays and Happy New Year. But I didn't forget to pop in and wish you a Happy Valentine's Day.

Valentine's Day is just around the corner. Are you ready for it? Did you get all the people you love a token? We're not big on Valentine's but I do love all the cute products and ideas that are available for this holiday. So, when I found some great digital art, I decided to make cards out of them.


Now, I'm not a big digital designer, but sometimes I love the ease of just printing and creating with none of the mess. I just used some glitter, an Anna Griffin border punch, some twine and scalloped scissors and voila! Simple and cute.

These adorable digital prints were downloaded from It's a Crafty Life and Eighteen25. Thanks for the great art ladies!

Next, a friend and I decided to try our hand at making some milk cartons without the Stamping Up Die. We found a bunch of video tutorials on YouTube and managed to create our own and design our own carrier. Here's my take on them.




Aren't these precious?! And no die needed! I am going to fill them up with some Valentine yummies for my sweetie. Once I get a chance, I will post a tutorial for these on ScrapaholicsQClub in the near future. So keep an eye out for that if you want to make your own for Easter, Mother's Day or whenever. I used Little Yellow Bicycle Paper for this one and a Martha Stewart heart punch.

Next, I leave you with a scrap page I just created. Yep, these pictures are from 2003, but hey are you all caught up on your scrapping?


Here's a close up of the glitter and foil effects on the paper.
The paper was DCWV autumn stack and the die cuts were purchased at Michaels. I've had them for a couple of years now so I don't remember what company made them. I created the collage on my computer with Foto Fusion. I love their collage program; it's super simple and quick to make great collages. I purchased their program about 5 years ago and I still love it.


Well, that's all I have for you today. Stay tuned next time when I show you how to weave a basket out of corn husks... HA! Soooo, not happening.

Stop by SQC and say hello sometime!

The Little Blue House - Scrapstashers Anonymous

I'm so excited to share my latest discovery. This wonderful little paper studio opened up right down the street from where I live and they have the most amazing classes! It's called The Little Blue House.

Yesterday I took my first class with them. It's called Scrapstashers Anonymous. Each month they show you a project you can make with your scraps. And what's totally fun is you don't know what you are making until you get there!

Anyway, it was a blast and the time went by too quickly. Once I got home I added the finishing touches and voila! I have this awesome wall art for December. So here's a look at what I made.

Mine came out a lot busier than some of my classmates (which were gorgeous, by the way) but I love it! I couldn't help add more and more and now I just love to stare at it all.

This was so much fun we signed up for the next's month's class. You have to check it out if you are in the area.

Happy Halloween!!

I hope everyone has a fun and safe Halloween! I wanted to stop in and share a couple of cards I made for Halloween this year.

Even though I don't have children to share in the Halloween fun, I still love to play with the fun images of the holiday. And so, I also made a little treat bag with my Cricut for a friend's daughter. I think it came out pretty cute and it took less than 1/2 hour to cut and put together.

Here's the front.

And this is the back.

For some reason this year it seemed like a long Halloween season. I don't know why, maybe because I started decorating for fall and creating Halloween projects in mid September. Then I volunteered for our neighborhood's Fall festival earlier this month or maybe it's because I read about so many other bloggers who've been preparing for the holiday also. Nonetheless, I've had fun and am now turning my sights to Christmas.

For November, we are having a fun handmade Christmas ornament contest/challenge at ScrapaholicsQClub. There is still time to join us if you'd like and you only need to make one handmade ornament for this simple challenge.

I'll try to stop in again soon and share some Christmas projects.

Happy Holidays!

I hope everyone is having a blessed and safe holiday. Stay warm.