Birthday Card for an 'Outdoor Man!'

Saturday was National Scrapbooking Day and I spent most of the day 'playing' in my Craft Room, browsing the 'net and visiting Craft Warehouse.  A perfect 'me' day!
My Cricut Circle sisters coordinated 2 days of challenges, tutorials and sharing and fun!  I learned so, so, much.

One of the first challenges was to make a project for a guy and you can see Diane's fabulous wallet mini here.

Awe inspiring and jaw dropping!  I love this Good Ol' Sports Graphic 45 stack and have a project to share with you later,  made with this paper pack.

I was able to combine this challenge with a project that was on my to - do list and again the card was inspired by one on Pinterest that used Stampin' Up products.  I used 'Animal Antics' for the background scene but replaced the trees with less cartoonish, more realistic cuts.  The elk and wolf come from 'Outdoor Man.'

This was a fun card to make and the BEST part was that when DH saw it he asked me to make one exactly like it for his friend's birthday in June.  He specified the exact same colors and papers.  Aghhh!  My hope is that he won't remember the exact same colors and papers by the time June rolls around and I can tweak it a little!

Happy Birthday, Jon!  Thanks for visiting with me today.  : )  Christine

Cinco de Mayo Pinata Treats

Where did April go?  Here in my little corner of the PNW,  April seemed to be a continuation of Winter with cool temperatures and lots of rain.  Yesterday, with May right around the corner, the Clerk of the Weather assigned us a glorious 75 degree day!   We celebrated by taking Cocoa and Sam walking on the dyke trail and then consuming a Hagen Daz ice cream in the Bi Mart parking lot.  Yeah!

May means lots of birthdays, Mother's Day, National Scrapbooking Day, and ... the next set of treats for the OHM children.  I chose this fun little pinata cut from Ole and cut it twice.  My on - line friend,  Scrapalette, from the Cricut MB taught us how to make any cut into a container by adding a U shaped strip between the two cuts.  Easy peasy lemon squeezy! (Thanks, Scrapalette!)   I added mini Kit Kats to the pinatas.  So cute, quick and easy!   Thanks for visiting with me today. : ) Christine

Baby Boy Card

I have been extra - specially busy with Grandma duties!  How wonderful is that? One of the great features of Design Space is that I can play around with lots of images and design projects with one eye on a sleeping Master J. or on 2 busily playing young ladies!  So I have plenty of projects ready to cut and just need to get on with it! 

The challenge over at Bitten By The Bug 2 this week is to include a bird on a project but the DT did such a fantastic job of all the popular bird cuts and I wanted something different.  A few years ago, I had to stop myself buying the Sentimentals cart just for this one image of a bird carrying an envelope in its beak.  Perfect! ( And free on my HSN subscription!)  

The cut is very simple with just two layers, so I needed to add dimension and interest in the background.  I love this daisy overlay and it cut beautifully.  The sentiment was written with the Explore.  Love, love, love this feature of the Explore.

Back to my Grandma duties!   Thanks for visiting with me today.  : ) Christine

Trekkie Alert and Pinterest Party

Narelle, The Non Crafty Crafter has a wonderful blog full of the most useful information for Cricut-eers.  This week she is holding her very first Pinterest Party.  The idea is to pick a project that has been pinned on Pinterest, use the pin to inspire or, as in my case, totally scraplift and then post your project on Narelle's blog.

I have been intrigued with this pin from The Weekend Stamper for some time. 

Star Trek Christmas Card

She made the Enterprise from punches and helpfully provided a picture of the pieces she used.  All I had to do was recreate the punched pieces as closely as possible in Design Space and then cut them out and piece them together.   I wrote "Boldly Go" using a font from George and Basic Shapes. Fun!

Hop on over to Narelle's blog and see what other crafters have recreated.   Thanks for visiting with me today.  : ) Christine

Secret Garden

I was at my very first CK Scrapbooking Convention on Saturday.  It took considerable restraint... but I was a good girl and only bought paper ('Cause I need more paper! LOL!) including the Graphic 45 Secret Garden stack.  The card I had made for my DD's birthday went into my stash, and I plugged in the Explore and got busy with the Anna Griffin Make and Take Butterfly card.  I love that you can modify the design or enjoy the design just as it comes.  I popped up the butterflies on two layers of foam dots for lots of dimension and wrote the word 'Celebrate' with a Recollections glitter pen inserted in the Explore.

When our DD was little, DH read "The Secret Garden" to her at bedtime and it remains one of her favorite books to this day.  So when she opened her card it brought back many happy memories.  : )

The little gift bag is an SVGCuts file imported into the Explore.  The bottom layer of the butterfly was cut in vellum.   It's SO easy cut different materials with the Ex.  (I am going to try a felt flower on a headband for G next!) The bag is fastened with a rhinestone brad.

Thanks for visiting with me today. : ) Christine     Happy Birthday KJ!  LYM 

Another Card - in - a - Box!

This one is a Lori Whitlock SVG file.  I just love the scallops on the sides.  I added a few extra pop ups and lots of gold stickles.

 S had a hard time figuring out how to pop it open and Grandpa had to help.  I was secretly much impressed that he knew how to do this as I think he looks at my 'stuff' and just says, "Lovely!" or "He'll like that!" without paying much attention.  Guess I was wrong!  LOL!

Thanks for visiting with me today!   Happy Birthday sweet Sophia!   : ) 

Spring Break!

And although I no longer HAVE Spring Break, we celebrated retirement by coming to the beach this week!  Here's a view from the RV of the ocean and Cocoa and Sam enjoying the sunshine.  Bliss!

I brought along my latest box of goodies from Simon Says Stamp and enjoyed the challenge of making the sample cards with the few things I brought along in the RV.   I can see me getting a lot of use from this stamp set.  It's so much fun! 

Time to light the BBQ!  Thanks for visiting with me today!  : ) Christine