Birthday Card with a Faux Stacked Diamond Die

You know, it does take an awful lot of self control not to spend over my crafting budget every month!  For instance, the Simon Says Stamp Blog recently featured THE coolest diamond stacked die.  I could really see myself using that die as a background accent for cards, page titles, wall decor pieces etc, etc.  But when you add in taxes and shipping - I just could not justify ordering it. So, I fired up the Cricut, found an image of a lattice of diamonds on the CTMH Artiste cart and duplicated, welded, attached and played with it until I got something kinda sorta like the SSS die.  And here's the first card I made with it for my friend M's birthday.

I love the clean look of this card and I think the spray of flowers from Heartfelt Creations added just the right focal point.  Lovin' it! 

The inside sentiment comes from the Anna Griffin Garden Cards and Embellishments cart. Here's a closer look at the Cricut stacked diamonds.   I glued three pieces together to add dimension.

I am linking my card to the Birthday card challenge at BBTB2 here and the Something New challenge at the FCC blog here.

It's so nice to be able to just 'play' after the Christmas scurry to get things finished and before Valentine's Day cranks into high gear.  : )   Thanks for visiting with me today.  Christine

Edited to add DS file number:  https://design.cricut.com/#/design/79991108 
Have fun!
 

An Attempt at an Eclipse Card

The challenge at BBTB2 a couple of weeks ago was to incorporate a word into the design of your project and I was inspired to try an eclipse card.  Plus, I have so much Christmas designer paper that my storage drawers won't shut and I really need to use some of it up!

The cards I have seen on Pinterest use a short word like 'Noel' or 'Joy' because they are created with steel letter dies and need to be cut in a straight line and have no repeating letters.  However, since I was using my Cricut, I did not have these limits.  I chose to cut 'Ho Ho Ho' and decided to use the Art Deco font.  I simply sliced the words from the 5.25 x 4.0 designer paper rectangle, duplicated the letters in red twice and cut a red 5.5 x 4.25 mat and that's it!

Next I glued the designer paper mat to the red backing mat, then stacked and glued the Ho Ho Ho's together making sure the designer paper was on the top.  I added strips of foam tape to the back of the letters and matching the design, I glued them back in the designer paper mat.  Lastly I added the insides of the O's.

 You can see how the letters are stacked here.  I added a silhouette of Santa and his sleigh from the Christmas cart, and added a Santa from A Quilted Christmas inside.

The stamped sentiment comes from Sunny Studio.  The magic of this card comes as you move it about and the words pop out at you.  Really kinda cool!  Quick and easy too!

Of course, by the time I'd finished playing with my card design, the challenge was over.  : )  Good job there's a new one every week!   Thanks for visiting today.  : )  Christine

Finally, Halloween!

I hope everyone had a Happy Halloween!  We had lots of Trick or Treaters including several very cool inflatable costumes.  All our neighbors were out enjoying pizza and watching the over-excited little ones in the cul de sac running about and working off their sugar highs!

Here's a last few Halloweenie things to share before I get seriously into Thanksgiving...

SVG Cuts Candy Gang bags for the neighbor kids. 

By the time the older kids arrived, we were handing out spider rings and Tootsie Rolls : )  The mummy was my favorite because he was so delightfully inky!  I made these for my DGDs.

Tim Holtz Village dies Haunted Houses.  Love, love, love the versatility of these dies.

These little matchbox treats were for the shelter children.  I cut the boxes and wraps by hand and the decorations came from Mini Monsters, Create a Critter 2, Happy Hauntings, Charmed, Smiley Cards and Hello Kitty.

The boxes are just big enough to hold 3 nuggets and the Hello Kitty bat was their hands down favorite! 

Thanks for visiting with me today!   : )  Christine

A Little Batty

A quick post to share the bat wall decor I made for my DGD using the Holiday One Cut Gallery image set available in DS.  

Backing the cut with different colors of glitter paper results in very a different look and feel.  I really, really liked the neon green, but DH reminded me that I needed to cut a moon and stars for the outside and did I want green stars?  Sigh!   Purple looks spooky too and orange, fabulous!  Maybe I should just cut several of them with different glitter backings and group them together in a decor piece.  Oh yeah! Sounds like a plan to me.  : )

Thanks for visiting with me today and putting up with my ramblings!   : )  Christine

A Little Pick Up

Flicking through my stash of SVGCuts Christmas files, I came across a pick up truck box card and immediately thought of a friend's up coming birthday AND this week's Road Trip challenge at BBTB2. Don't you just love it when things come together like that?

Mary's file comes with a Christmas tree in the bed of the truck, but that was easy enough to trim away and replace with this cute sentiment patch from Just Because Cards. 

I added his age on the back of the truck - which I won't share with you! LOL -  and stamped Happy Birthday on the banner.  Honestly, it took me longer to choose the font for the birthday numbers than it took to put the whole thing together.  I finally settled on the Cricut font Southwest because of its simplicity. 

The truck body is cut with a shiny black paper that I have been hoarding forever and I left the edges free of inking to give the truck a little definition.  I added white gems for the headlights and red gems for the tail lights and called it done.  I think a red version of the truck complete with tree would be a great Christmas card for Master J.  Maybe add Santa driving it?  Hmmm!

Thanks for visiting with me on a rainy PNW day : )  Christine.

Pumpkin One Cut Wall Decor

We had a lovely visit from my sister this week and we shopped, walked Cocoa and Katie, shopped, dined out, and shopped some more.  : )   In snatches of down time, I worked on designing Halloween projects for my DGDs and Master J.  I made the Sizzix/Tim Holtz spooky houses for the girls last year so this year decided to go with some kind of wall decor.

 Cricut has just released some amazing One Cut Holiday projects including a pumpkin shaped piece and a bat shaped piece that are just perfect for the girls.  After I cut them,  I decided that I needed to emphasize the pumpkin and bat shapes by adding an outer layer to the cut.

Here's the finished pumpkin piece:-

The bats come from Happy Hauntings,  Chic and Scary,  Artbooking,  and Classroom October and November.  The "boo" cut comes from Holiday Cakes.  I cut the piece in orange card stock and backed it with black glitter card stock.  It's one of those cuts where you see something new every time you look at it!

Now to finish the bat project!   Thanks for visiting with me today.  : )  Christine

I am linking my project with the Great Pumpkin Challenge at BBTB2
and with Challenge #311 at FCCB, and also with the Pumpkin challenge, at Pause, Dream, Enjoy Challenge blog.  Lots of pumpkin inspiration here!

Fall Twist and Pop Card

Yes, I know this is SO last year, but with all the packing and moving I couldn't ever find time to try one of these ingenious interactive cards.  And I'm hooked!

I'm kinda past Fall cards and into Halloween but I did want to participate in the BBTB2 Autumn challenge this week so I checked my Pinterest Techniques board and rediscovered the Twist and Pop card. 

I followed the tutorial on Splitcoast Stampers and was just so intrigued with the mechanism.  Cool!  The leaves are from CTMH Artiste and the font I used for the word 'Fall' is Liberty Regular.  The sweet little sentiment stamp comes from Sunny Studio. 

Because I can't just follow directions and be done, I tried and tried and tried to figure out how to make the card open horizontally, rather than vertically.  It was a fail, but DH is convinced he can make a mechanism that will do this so stay tuned!  (However, if you know of a link to someone who has already figured this out, let me know and I'll present him with a fait accompli! LOL)   Thanks for visiting with me today.  : )  Christine