Spring Banner

The challenge at my local Craft Warehouse this month was to create a Spring Banner using 3 assorted chipboard banner pieces and a piece of lovely double sided paper.  My idea was to combine the chipboard pieces to make a cartoon-y bird and perch it on top the banner.  It would be sooo cute, I thought.

And then I found this pretty green paper from My Mind's Eye, and used it to cut banner shapes from Pretty Pennants.  I designed cartoon-y pots of flowers from Walk in my Garden to add to the pennants but ughhh, they did not work.  (Has that ever happened to you?) 

Back I went to Design Space and sigh, one more time, I pulled up Art Nouveau.   Just the flowers I was envisaging!  So no cute cartoon-y bird, no cartoon-y flowers and no challenge!  Ah well, there's always next month's challenge and I just loved looking at the banners the other crafters created.  Wow!  Here's my banner:-

Lots of green here with a pop of yellow, red, blue and purple.  The butterflies on the end medallions were printed on my printer then cut on my Explore.  This is such a time saver with teeny cuts like the butterflies.

I am linking my banner with  challenge # 246 at the Fantabulous Cricut Challenge Blog
and the Green Linky party at Craftin' Desert Divas.   You HAVE to pop over to these two sites and take a look at the inspiration from their Design Teams!

I also entering my banner in the Decorate to Celebrate 3D challenge # 95.  Oh my!   What wonderful projects over there!

Thanks for visiting with me today.  : )  Christine

And Beautiful Birds!

The Explore has had a workout today and yesterday cutting and printing Hello Kitty pictures for our DGDs to color!  They needed the handbook to refer to as they colored so I was very glad that Design Space imports EVERYTHING on to the canvas rather than the hunt and find method I used with my dear old Gypsy girl.

They always leave us refreshed in spirit and yes, I will admit it, exhausted when they go home but they also re-open our eyes to our surroundings.  So, the footings for the new shop building are in and the builder sprayed the corners with orange paint, and I mean it was the orangiest orange you have ever seen!  Naturally some of the paint landed on the ground around the corners and coated some pieces of gravel.  Well, you would have thought the DGDs had found gold pieces when they spotted those orange rocks!  They carefully collected every piece and arranged them and re-arranged them on the deck in a pretty (and extraordinarily vibrant!) pattern.  Oh to recognize the treasure of painted rocks.

I completed my Art Nouveau decor pieces this evening and they look very pretty on the wall.

I love the swan - so peaceful.

And the heron that was the inspiration for the pieces.

Although I can't put up summer wallpaper as Loius XIV did at Versailles, at least I have some summer decor to enjoy between July 5th and the Fall apple and leaves 'stuff!'
Thanks for visiting with me today.  : ) Christine

Beautiful Bugs

Last year I used the Cricut cart "Art Nouveau" to create a summer time canvas wall decor piece.  (Love, love, love this cart!)  Browsing the blogs that I follow, I came across a post by Paula at Craft with Bee in which she created a gorgeous piece of wall art for her bathroom featuring the heron from "Art Nouveau."  This inspired me to make smaller pieces to complement the canvas I made last year.

I planned to make a series of birds from the cart, including the heron and the humming bird and a series of bugs including my favorite Cricut bee.  Since the challenge at BBTB2 this week is to include a bee on a project, I started with the bugs! 

Since I only had ONE piece of weathered barn cardstock, I pulled out my Imagine and printed this grey birch looking pattern from the "Snapshot: Nature" cart.   I used the base shadow box cut that came with the alphabet cuts from 3D Cuts and lined it with grey paper from the DCWV Shimmer stack.

I mounted my bugs on a doily cut from Artiste inked with TH Antique Linen.  I also used some TH rub ons in an attempt to make the pieces look more like specimens rather than art nouveau.  Hmmm.  Not sure that worked!

Here are the pieces:-

And mounted on the wall:-

Here's a close up of the moth:-

Thanks for visiting with me today.  Time to get some yard work done before it gets too hot.  : ) Christine

Mother's Day Card

Here's the first of my Mother's Day cards.  I usually make two - one for my DD and one for my DDIL.  (I will buy a posy of flowers for DD # 2 in memory of our angel GC)

The family traditionally has brunch at DH's Golf Club and the DGDs salivate over the menu in the weeks prior to the occasion and make plans to eat all their favorites.  Lovely!

I tried my hand at a trifold shutter card at Christmas following a pattern from SVGCuts.  This time I imported the file into Design Space and used the Explore to cut the pieces.  The roses were cut from Art Nouveau and the sentiment  phrase comes from Florals Embellished.  I used the Explore to write the outline of the phrase and then colored it in with glitter pens. The paper is from Graphic 45, of course.

The challenge over at BBTB2 this week is... Mother's Day!

I am also linking my card with Challenge Number 210 at FCCB.

To all you Moms, Grandmas and Aunties out there -  Happy Mother's Day!

Thanks for visiting with me today.  : ) Christine

Easter is coming!

What a busy few days!  My sister is here from BC and we have shopped, shopped, and shopped some more!   As we relaxed over a cup of tea yesterday, I showed her the new Design Space software and together we designed this Easter card.  It was fun!

One of the things that I loved about the Gypsy was welding shapes into window cards and I wondered if I could do this with Design Space.  Yes!   Easy peasy lemon squeezy!   And it is much easier to see that the shapes have successfully melded into one piece on the larger screen. 

The daffodils are from Art Nouveau and I chose them so that I could link 'our' card with the Spring Flowers challenge at Bitten By the Bug 2 here. 

Here is the welded card shape:-

And the completed card.   It really is such a pretty, pastel yellow but the shimmery surface made it hard to photograph.

Thanks for visiting with me today.  I really appreciate your comments and interest in my blog.  Thank you!  Lastly, a special shout - out to a friend in Chilliwack!

'Charmed' is in the house!

My new Cricut Circle cartridge 'Charmed' arrived in the cutest little box!   There's been quite a buzz on the Circle board about this cartridge and here is my contribution to the chatter. 

Don't you love the bright colors of these Back-to-School notebooks?  The initials are embossed and the charms tied on with black CTMH hemp.  They are not going to last 2 minutes, (LOL!) but next time the girls come over we'll redo them with shrink plastic.   Fun!   

Thanks for visiting with me today and have a great Labor Day weekend.  :) Christine

Now that Summer is almost over...

We've had a busy few weeks chez nous with a camping trip to Fort Langley in B.C. and all the beans, peas and zucchini in the garden deciding to ripen at once!  I am not freezing another bean until next year - the deer can have whatever's left!

I have made many of the holiday subway art collages from the Cricut 'Word Collage' cartridge but there are chunks of time when I have nothing appropriate to hang in the spot over the mantle.  So I set out to make something for Fall, but got sidetracked by the floral images on 'Art Nouveau.'  (This is what happens when I leave 'stuff' out instead of putting it away!)

So although Summer is almost over (!!!!) I have this wall art to remind me of it's glory!  Thanks for visiting today.  : )    Christine