BBTB2 Sweethearts Bless This Nest

Welcome to this month's BBTB2 blog hop. You should have arrived from Julie's blog, if not hop on back to the BBTB2 site to begin. Wasn't Julie's card adorable? I love that polka dot paper she used for her sentiment. It was my turn this week to choose the cartridge and cut. I wanted to make a housewarming card so I chose the Bless this Nest sentiment from the Sweethearts cartridge. I also used the bird nest and birds from the same cartridge. My birdhouse shaped card was made using my Gypsy and the Stretch Your Imagination cartridge. I cut the birdhouse using my 12 x 24" mat, an 18 x 18" piece of dp from EK Success and a 12 x 24" piece of green cardstock from Provo Craft's pastel stack. I trimmed my birdhouse roof with lace and added brown polka dot ribbon, a beige flower, brown button and two stickpins. Now wait 'til you see the beautiful card that our wonderful Enfys has created on your next stop. Please leave a comment for your chance to win my blog candy of K&Company products pictured below.

Cricut Cardz Challenge #26

Isn't this a fun little image from the new Just Because Cards cartridge? This week's challenge at Cricut Cardz is to use brads or eyelets. Now I have to tell you--I have a personal issue with using eyelets. A couple years ago I had the opportunity to redo my design studio. I decided I needed a larger work surface, so my husband let me go to Ikea and purchase new work tables to go around two sides of the room in an L-shape. I was so excited to get them and put them in. Just two days later I was making a card that was going to have eyelets. I got out my punch to make the holes and placed my paper on my Fiskars self-healing mat. The next thing I knew my hand slipped, the mat went flying and there was a huge hole punched in my brand new work table. :( I was just sick. I haven't been able to bring myself to punch a hole for an eyelet since, even though I bought a much safer punch to use. LOL So I used brads on my card for the centers of the bike wheels with fabric yo-yos underneath. I believe the brads are from K&Company, but I'm not sure. My background paper is from DCWV.
I thought this Albert Einstein quote was just the perfect sentiment to use. How true is this? The background paper on the inside of the card under the sentiment is Heidi Grace.

BBTB2 Forever Young Dress Form Challenge

Wow, these Mondays really roll around fast and it's time for a new BBTB2 challenge. Here's another cut I would never have used if our wonderful design team member Heather Bares hadn't picked it for our challenge this week. When I first looked at the cut on the Forever Young cartridge I thought, what am I going to do with this dress form. I had to think outside the box and my comfort zone for this. I figured since I was using such a unique image I would make a unique card also. I don't really know what this exact card design is called or where I first saw it but I wrote the directions down. All my DP is from Heidi Grace and it's double-sided. This card is made using a 5 1/4 x 12" piece of cardstock. It is scored at 2", 4", 8", and 10". At the 2" and 10" score marks you measure in 1 1/4" (from the long side) and cut a slit across the paper. Then it's just a matter of folding it. I hope you can see how it's folded from my pictures. The dress form is cut at 4 1/4" from brown cardstock, shadowed with green and the "shift" cut is done in pink. I thought it would be fun to fancy up the dress form so I added a piece of pink tulle, a little piece of rick rack at the waist and a pearl. The style tag is also cut from the Forever Young cartridge and can be found on page 29.

Cricut Cardz Challenge #25

Wednesday's are Cricut Cardz Challenge day and this week Mary asked the design team to make a card with a bird or butterfly using any cartridge. I chose to use a bird image cut from the Storybook cartridge. The black scalloped piece was cut from the Storybook cartridge using the scalloped square on pg. 30 and cutting it on a 12 x 12" piece of cardstock with the Fit to Page key on. Cutting it this way allows me to use the scallops for several cards. I also used my new Just Because Cards cartridge for the tiny front scallop on the card. It's the card on pg. 48. I just used one half of the card and mounted it onto a white cardstock base card. I'll save the other half to use for a second card. I used one of my favorite color combos for this card, pink and black. My dp is Asian Pear Blossom and Asian Cherry from Stemma that I picked up on my recent trip to Hawaii. I also used pink, black and white cardstock for this card. There is a piece of Heidi Grace pp from my scrap bin for the background and the tag. My bird is the robin cut at 4" from the Asian Pear (black) and shadowed with white then mounted with pop dots. I used the branch on pg. 38 of the Storybook manual with the Shorty/Holes key on, cut it from white cardstock and trimmed it up to fit behind the bird. Then I added the flower blossoms cut from the Asian Cherry paper. I added a lot of bling to this card using pink rhinestones on the bird, black rhinestones for the flower centers, a pearl for the bird's eye and some black Stickles on the branch. I also added a little doodling with black and white pens. My sentiment was done on my computer and mounted onto a tag from Tags, Bags, Boxes and More.

BBTB2 Ready 2 Rock/Cartridge Giveaway

Monday morning brings a new challenge at BBTB2. For this week's challenge the fantastic Enfys chose the Ready 2 Rock cut from Hannah Montana. I don't have this cartridge so I had to improvise. I have to admit, at first I was just going to opt out of the challenge since I didn't have the cartridge. But it goes against my grain to admit defeat, especially since I have Design Studio and a Gypsy. I figured I could come up with something and this is it. I used my Don Juan cartridge for the font and my Designer's Calendar for the number two then welded it all together. Granted, I could have cut each letter out individually, but what a pain to glue them all down. My dp is from DCWV Rustic stack and my base card is kraft cardstock. I cut the Ready 2 Rock from DCWV Glitter paper in green. The guitar is from the Stamping cartridge and I cut it at 1 1/2" from yellow glitter cardstock and shadowed it in black. Just simple embellishments (hemp cord, a yellow star button and one brown rhinestone) on this card because I thought it would be a perfect birthday card for a teen boy and I just happen to have a grandson with a birthday coming up. I decided last week that I needed to challenge myself to do more guy cards, so hear's one toward my goal. I will enter this card in the challenge at OCC for a masculine birthday card for a special someone in my life. Be sure you check back with the BBTB2 site on Wednesday for an exciting cartridge giveaway sponsored by Memory Miser.

Cricut Cardz Challenge #24

This week's challenge at Cricut Cardz is to use three circles. I cut mine with the Mini Monograms cartridge. This card is for my son and has to be mailed to Hawaii so that's means I have to keep the dimension to bare minimum. (I found this out the hard way and had several of my best designs ruined). My dp is all SEI. I admit I went with plain and simple. I had so many design ideas but then we had to make an unexpected trip home from our camper which messed up my time frame. I really enjoy making cards for woman, but gosh, I just don't enjoy making cards for guys. I really shouldn't complain, there are very few men in my life. I need to set some kind of goal to make a certain number of them a month, I think. My son loves nothing better than to sit and watch TV, hence the sentiment. It's from Inkadinkado.

BBTB2/Peggy Loves Vintage and Tag Challenge

It's Monday and that means it's time for a new challenge at BBTB2. We are so lucky this week to be working with fantastically beautiful images from Peggy Loves Vintage. I was so excited when I saw the little girl with the sand pail because a design came to mind instantly. Most of you know by now that my husband and I bought a fifth wheel (RV) for our retirement last year. Every summer we are camped on the shore of Lake Huron. Last year we brought our granddaughter, Payton, up for a few days and she had a blast at the lake. Her idea of building sandcastles was to fill up the bucket with sand, dump it over and then stomp on it. Now that she's a year older maybe we'll get a little more "building" out of her. We are so anxious for her to come up so I made this card for her. Along with the image we were assigned any tag cut from the first row of tags on the Tags, Bags, Boxes and More cartridge. I used the first tag in the row, the circle tag and cut it from DCWV Rustic paper pad at 4". All my DP came from that stack. After printing the image three times I cut the little girl out and did a little paper piecing and stacking for dimension. I used my Magic Matt to make a dark brown mat for the image to make it stand out. Then I cut a sandcastle from my Life's A Beach cartridge at 2". I mounted both images onto the triangle envelope with pop dots.
I used my computer to print my message on the tag. The tag has a precut slit that I used to slip a wide jute ribbon through then I tied a green grosgrain ribbon around it.

Cricut Cardz Challenge #23

Cricut Cardz Challenge this week is for a red card using any Cricut cartridge. I used the Celebrations cartridge for this card. I took advantage of this challenge to design a birthday card for my daughter-in-law who is celebrating a birthday this week. For this challenge I decided to use paper from a Christmas stack made by SEI. When I bought the stack I noticed that there were papers in it that could be used at other times of the year for other occasions. I love the blue and red color combo. The solid red at the top is Bazzill textured cardstock that I ran through the Cuttlebug lotus blossom folder then used a Fiskars border punch on the edge wrapped it around a white card base then folded it over to the front top edge. My sentiment is cut at 1 1/2" from the same red cardstock and shadowed with light blue cardstock. I kept my embellishments to just the ribbon and bow because this card is getting mailed to Hawaii.

BBTB2 Life's A Beach Leaf 1

Mahalo in Hawaiian means thank you. This is a card I made to send my son and daughter-in-law for graciously hosting us during our recent trip to Hawaii. We had a marvelous time and the weather was fantastic. It was so nice to be away from the cool weather in Michigan. I'm tellin' ya, retirement is the most wonderful thing. Last year when my husband and I retired we bought a brand new fifth wheel as our retirement present to ourselves. Designing cards is the perfect on the road hobby, as long as I can take my Cricut and supplies with me. LOL For our BBTB2 challenge this week we had to use the Leaf 1 cut from the Life's A Beach cartridge. This was the perfect cartridge for me to make this thank you card. I used a standard A2 card cut from kraft cardstock. I cut my leaf from shimmery green cardstock at 2" twice, so I could layer it with pop dots. I outlined my top leaf with my Sakura 3-D gel pen. My letters were cut at 1". I just love the bamboo look of the lettering on this cartridge. It reminds me of all the bamboo growing outside the window of a bed and breakfast we stayed at on the "big island" of Hawaii, right in the middle of a rain forest. It was unbelievable. For my background on this card I used a Tropical Elements self-stick journaling tag from Reminisce that I found in a wonderful scrapbook store in Hilo, Hawaii called Island Scrapbooking. Whenever we travel I look for a scrapbook store to pick up local papers and diecuts. I used Stickles to highlight the center of the flowers on the tag and added a shimmery green ribbon.