Paper Cutz #82 Color Challenge

I was a little skeptical (okay, more than a little) when I got Mary's DT challenge for this week at Paper Cutz.  It's a color challenge using black, white, red, blue and yellow.  I saw those colors and thought, what the heck am I going to do with those colors.  I really had to put my thinking cap on since these aren't colors I would normally use together.  But then it just came to me...black and yellow...a bee.  I didn't have any stamp images of a bee (not unusual, I don't have that many stamps) so I looked at my Cricut cartridges and low and behold, my new Birthday Bash cartridge had a bee image on it.  I love polka dots so decided to use some polka dot papers I found in my scrap bin.  I started with white cardstock and made a standard A2 card, added a black mat, and a red polka dot mat.  I cut my bee at 3.5".  The sentiment came from the same cartridge.

Pop Up Card

Well, I decided to try my hand at a free standing pop up card today.  I've been wanting to design one and The Cuttlebug Spot is having a pop up card challenge.  I needed to start making some birthday cards for all the family birthdays we have in April.  All four of my daughters were born in the month of April.  Don't know how that happened...well I do know how it happened...but, nevermind!!!  I found the directions on how to make the card here on Split Coast Stampers.  They have an enormous resource library if you're ever looking for a specific design, it's the place to go.  I used black cardstock for my base and ran it through my Cuttlebug Swiss Dots folder.  My dp is from Stemma, called Asian Cherry.  I actually picked it up from a scrapbooking store in Hawaii on a trip last year.  I love pink and black together.  This card folds flat and fits in an A2 card size envelope.

I cut a few of the blossoms from the paper, matted them on pink and added them to the stand of the card along with a pink ribbon.  The photo above shows what the card looks like folded down.  I used a 1" and 1 1/4" circle punch to make the little tab at the top for the brad and the ribbons to go on.  I just cut each circle in half, glued them together, added a flower from the dp and punched a small whole for the brad to go through.  This brad has a little loop attached to it so I could run the rick rack and the ribbon through it.  This card was much easier to put together than I anticipated so I will definitely make more.  My sentiment is Penny Black stamped with pink chalk ink.  I added Stickles to the center of each flower but it sure doesn't show up in this photo.  If we could ever get a sunny day around here I sure could get better pics.  I'm going to enter this card into the following challenges:

• Cuttlebug Spot - Pop Up Card
• Top Tip Tuesday - Inserts and Bling It On

17th Birthday Card

I used to sit down and do challenges all the time, but since I started designing for so many wonderful blogs I don't do it much anymore.  Today I decided to look a few up and enter a card since I needed to make a birthday card for my granddaughter's 17th birthday coming up in March.  Here are the challenges that I'll enter:

• Jitterbuggin-Birthday with Rick Rack
• For Fun-Birthday
• Fantabulous Cricut-Embossing
• Digi Doodle Shop - Anything Goes
• Paper Crafting Journey - Anything Goes
• Totally Paper Crafts - Do It With Digi
• Party Time Tuesdays - Anything Goes
• Crazy 4 Challenges - Use A Die Cut
• Delicious Doodles - Glitz and Glam
• Cute Card Thursday - Shiny, Happy Cards
• Paper Play - Add Shine
• Res Q - A Happy, Bright card
• Simply Create - Bright
• Mojo Monday- Sketck

I made an A6 card, used the sketch from Mojo Monday and used my new DCWV Celebration stack for glitz, glam and shine.  My circle sentiment is a digi from The Cutting Cafe.  I used my Cricut Mini Monograms cartridge for my scalloped circle and my Cuttlebug Birthday embossing folder.  I added red rick rack and stickles to the birthday candles.  Notice there are seventeen of them.  The shiny PARTY letters that I added to the banner have been in my stash forever.  I think it turned out bright, happy and FUN.

Cricut Cardz Challenge #58

Well, here we are settled into another winter.  What image reminds us of winter more than a snowman.  The challenge this week at Cricut Cardz is to make a card using any snowman image for any occasion using any colors and any cartridge.  I needed a birthday card for my father-in-law so I decided to use this happy snowman from the Smiley Cards cartridge. This is my first card I've made using this cartridge that ProvoCraft offered to Gypsy owners.  It has some really cute images on it and they're all fun and cheerful looking.  The base card is 5 1/4" square also cut from Smiley Cards and the snowman is cut at 4".  I like the card because it has a cute little scallop at the bottom.  All the papers are scraps from my scrap bin. You'll see what a great job I'm doing of using those scraps if you look at my last post and see I've used the same patterned paper.  I didn't realize I'd even done that until I was checking this post last night.  If I had realized it, I never would have made two cards from the same paper to post just days apart.  Oh well, too late now.  I keep using those scraps, but it never looks like I even make a dent in them.  Does anyone else have this problem, or is it just me?  I hope you can join us at Cricut Cardz this week with a snowman card of your own.  There are so many to choose from on lots of different cartridges.  Thanks for stopping by.