Cricut Cardz Challenge #90

For this week's Cricut Cardz Challenge we're using any cartridge with a card feature.  There are over 50  cartridges with card features on them.  For my card I used Life's A Beach.  I'm not a big fan of boats, going on them that is.  I do however, love to see a sailboat gliding across the lake at the campground we're staying in on the shores of beautiful Lake Huron in Michigan.  I couldn't resist using this sight as the muse for my card this week.  Using a card feature is a quick and easy way to make a card when you need one in a hurry.  I simply used black cardstock to cut the card then placed a piece of water paper behind the opening.  I used the font on the Life's A Beach cartridge to cut my Sail Away letters.  They're cut at 1.25" from the same water paper.  It doesn't get much easier than this.  Other than gluing on the letters and adding the doodling/stitching with a white gel pen I didn't have anything else to do.  I thought you'd like to see the photo that inspired my card. 

This is pretty much the sight I've seen every day for the last couple of months.  I walk out the door of my camper and there's the beautiful water and our own sandy beach.  It's gorgeous and soon we'll be leaving with our camper to head south to warmer climates for the winter.  But we'll be back next spring because this is one of the best places in the world, I'm sure of it.

BBTB2 Heritage Tree-Blog Hop-Giveaway

Our fabulous DT sister, Julie, is our hostess for this week's BBTB2 challenge and Blog Hop.  You should have arrived here from Lori's blog.  If not, and you want to start at the beginning of the hop, click here.  Julie asked us to use this curly branched tree which is the first cut on the Heritage cartridge.  I may lose a few followers and my DT Sisters are going to know for sure that I'm crazy when I tell you how I came up with my card design.  I saw it in a dream.  Yes, I know it sounds crazy, but it's the truth.  It came to me in a dream, what can I say.  Many times when I'm trying to think of a design I will look for a sentiment first on a few quotation sites that I frequent.  When looking for tree quotes I came across the sentiment I've used here.  That night I went to bed and in the wee hours of the morning I had the dream about a card with a circle window in it with the apple showing to go along with the second half of the quote.  As soon as the picture was in my mind I woke up.  I immediately jumped out of bed, turned on my Gypsy and got the design down before I forgot the dream.  I have the world's worst memory.  And so a card was born.  How crazy is that?   I used the Plantin' Schoolbook cartridge for a rectangle sized at 4.25 x 11" and the circle cut from the front of the card.  To get the correct placement for the circle I sized the tree to 5" then placed it onto the the front of the card on my Gypsy mat.  From there I could see the branch that hung the lowest and centered it in the circle.  The apple is cut twice at .75".  I attached one apple to the tree branch and the other on the inside of the card.

My husband really like this card.  He loved the quote (which has an anonymous author) and thought it was a good one for our granddaughter that will be graduating next year.  Good thing he suggested that because I really didn't know what I was going to do with this card.  I thought it must be some sort of subliminal message for me since it came to me in a dream.  LOL

I'm so glad you could stop by today and your next stop on the hop will be Carri.  Wait until you see her tree creation.  I have some great blog candy for our hop.  It's the Cricut Lite Cupcake cartridge.  If you'd like to be in the running for this cartridge please make sure you are a follower of my blog and leave me a comment.  Let me take this moment to say thanks for following and I appreciate your comments so very much. 

Birthday Card for Paige using Mikala Ann from The Cutting Cafe

My granddaughter Paige is turning two this weekend.  I'm very excited because we will be traveling to be there for her birthday party.  This will be the first time we'll be leaving our camper since selling and moving from our home at the beginning of July.  We'll be driving to my daughter's house and staying there for four days.  I can't wait to spend time with my granddaughters Paige and Payton.   My husband and I are thoroughly enjoying living full time in our camper and being free of the responsibilities of a home.  But, we both agree it's a little disconcerting to not be attached to a home.  Not worrisome, just strange.  People will ask us where we're from in our travels and we laugh and say "we're homeless".  Of course, we explain that we sold our home and we're living full time in our RV.

I used this adorable image of Mikala Ann from The Cutting Cafe's Elisha Jean and Friends with Balloon printable stamp set.  She reminds me so much of little Paige.  I paper pieced her dress with red polka dot paper from Echo Park.  The balloon is also paper pieced.  I added the number 2 using my Cricut Plantin' Schoolbook cartridge.  Then I cut the frame with the Elegant Edges cartridge adding faux stitching with a white gel pen. 

The Cutting Cafe Ribbon Shaped Badges, Exciting News, Contest and a GIVEAWAY.

I have a jam packed post here today.  Let me start off with my exciting news.  I'll be designing again for The Cutting Cafe.  If you've never been to Regina's Cutting Cafe for printable images, you're in for a real treat.  Her printable sets are just the best.  I rarely design anything that doesn't include some sort of Cutting Cafe image or sentiment. I'm beyond giddy to be back on the design team with such talented ladies.  You can visit The Cutting Cafe store here and The Cutting Cafe Blog here.  I promise you'll find tons of inspiration.  While you're at the blog check out the contest for silhouette image's that Regina has going.  She's looking for card designs using silhouettes.  She has a printable stamp set that's perfect for the challenge called Fun with Silhouettes and you can see design team projects using the set here.

I've got a couple of quick projects to share today using The Cutting Cafe's Ribbon Shaped Card Set.  This is an awesome printable set.  It comes with 3 shaped cards, 3 printable ribbons (what I used for my projects) and 29 circle phrases.  Now let me just say, I wish I still had a classroom because I would be using this set even more for my students.  So if you're an elementary teacher, this set is a must have.  My first project is a little badge I made for my granddaughter Paige to wear at her 2nd birthday party this weekend.  For this project I cut the badge twice from pink cardstock.  The first cut is for my base, the second cut I removed the ribbon part and just used the circle.  I did this so I could add my pink tulle ruffle between layers.  Then I punched a glittery paper circle at 2 1/2" which was perfect to add under the printed sentiment.  I didn't want my granddaughter, Payton, to feel left out so I made her a badge, too, along with a special candy treat.  You can see them in the picture below.

For this project I just cut the badge once from DCWV All About Girls stack purple polka dot paper.  I punched another glittery paper circle at 2 1/2" to put under the sentiment.  This went together in minutes and I just added a butterfly button for embellishment.  I filled up a tube with Hershey dark chocolate kisses, yum yum.  I added a band of yellow cardstock, a Fiskar's punched edge border of glitter cardstock, then a strip of the purple polka.  The two tags were cut from my TBBM cartridge and printed with mini words from The Cutting Cafe's Valentine Day Mini Words set.   I added twine, yellow gingham ribbon and a purple flower button to finish the project off.  Thanks for stopping by today and to celebrate my return to The Cutting Cafe Design Team I'm going to have a little give away.  I'm going to give away the set I used for these projects.  Just leave me a comment and I'll have random.org pick a winner to receive this set on Friday.

BBTB2 Stamping Boutique

It's Monday and time for a new challenge at BBTB2.  This week we have a fabulous sponsor The Stamping Boutique.  It's always fun to deviate a little from the norm, as we usually just use Cricut cuts for our challenges.  Tracey was so generous to sponsor and allow us to design with a stamp from her fabulous Fall/Halloween collection.  I used the Halloween Journal stamp.  I was totally drawn to it because I love using circles in my designs.  Heather asked us to use any of the frames from the Happy Hauntings cartridge to highlight our stamp choice.  The frame I chose was perfect for this circular stamp.  I cut the frame at 5" and added some white gel doodle lines to it.  For the inside of my card I used the Happy Halloween sentiment from Wild Card.  Thanks so much for stopping by today and thank you so much for all the wonderful comments you leave me.  They are truly appreciated.  I hope you can join our challenge this week by using any of the frames from the Happy Hauntings cartridge.  Don't forget this must be a new creation and if you don't have Happy Hauntings you can use a frame cut from any other cartridge.

Cricut Cardz Challenge #88

Back to School time is here.  It's amazingly hard to believe that summer is almost over.  We have a Back to School theme this week at Cricut Cardz with a twist.  We're getting ready for the "three Rs" for back to school.  Our version of the three Rs is ribbon, rhinestones and using the color red.   I used the Locker Talk cartridge for this cute little backpack shaped card.   I used my Gypsy to weld the shadows of the cut together at the top and then cut it from red cardstock.  I used DCWV All About Girls stack for my patterned papers.  I added a little faux stitching with my MS sepia marker, added a few red rhinestones and a red gingham ribbon at the top.  I'll be sending this card to my granddaughter, Payton, to celebrate her first day of kindergarten in a few weeks.

BBTB2 Baseball

Another Monday, another BBTB2 challenge!  Our talented design sister, Karen, asked the DT to use the baseball cut from the Life's A Party cartridge.  I don't have this cartridge so I used the baseball from Paper Dolls for Everyday.  If you'd like to join our challenge this week with your new creation you can use a baseball from any cartridge.  I combined this cut with the cute little baseball chick from 3 Birds on Parade.  When Karen announced our challenge I immediately thought of my daughter Jill.  Jill was never interested in sports when she was a kid.  She has always been a girly girl.  This Spring she announced that she was going to start playing softball (at the age of 29) with her work team.  My husband and I just laughed.  Well, it seems I owe her an apology because she has become quite the star on the work softball team.  Who knew?  So I thought I'd send this cute little creation out to her in Raleigh, NC.  I must apologize for my very poor quality pic.  It is a rainy day here and my camper is very dark and shadowy inside.  I used my Wild Card cartridge to cut a circle shaped card.  I cut my baseball, ran it through my Cuttlebug (Japanese weave embossing folder, I think) then inked and chalked it a little and added it on top of the circle card.  Then I used my Sakura 3-D gel pen to add the stitching lines.  My cute little chick was cut at 3".  Of course, I had to use pink for my girly girl.  The polka dot paper is from Echo Park Dots and Stripes stack.  My sentiment was done on my computer.