3/23/2012

CTV Spring Blog Hop

Welcome to the CTV Spring Blog Hop  Create a card or craft project for Spring or Easter. Use any colors you'd like. The blog hop will  run from Saturday, March 24th at 12:01 AM EST to midnight EST on Sunday, March 25th with the blog candy winner announced on the following Monday, March 26th. Mary will be giving 2 sets of CTV stamps of the winners choice for blog candy.
My project is a Easter Prayer Book titled "Easter Blessings". The design of this booklet is similar to my Christmas Tag Card and is very, very simple to make. Click here to see the basic instructions. The modifications I made were: the height of the prayer book is 5.5" and I only chose to add four pages so the width is 10.5" before folding. There are only two sets of mountain/valley folds for the pages. This booklet is A2 size when completed.
Here is the cover.
Here is the inside cover and page 1.
Here are pages 2 and 3* the center of the booklet.
Here is page 4 and the inside of the back cover.
Here are pics of the booklet opened showing the front and the back:
Here are the Bible scripture pages. These were made from the CTV Stamp set Easter Blessings (I also you this stamp set on the cover):

 Here are closeups of the Easter blessings:


Because I wanted the focus to be on the blessings ans scriptures, I kept the embellishments to a minimum only using two crosses (one is a silver charm and the other is a silver applique), some small floral stickers, and a small piece of twine I colored with a Sharpie to resemble baker's twine. The scriptures are stamped on tags I cut using Spellbinders dies.  They are matted on lilac card stock I ran through the Cuttlebug using a "Lace" folder.  The booklet cover's mat was also ran through another embossing folder. 
I hope you enjoyed looking at my projects.  If you have any questions or even just a little time, please leave me a comment.  I'd love to here from you.
Next is the very talented Karen; her project is just awesome so go take a look. If you need to go back, got lost, or just want to skip around here's the blog hop list in order:
Janis - http://www.pausedreamenjoy.blogspot.com/

3/21/2012

I received this awesome Blog Award from Carole over at  http://huffandpuffscrap.blogspot.com/   It is such an honor .  "Liebster" is German for "Dearest.  The award is a Share the Love Arrangement, given to inspirational bloggers with less than 200 followers.  

 I am so thrilled that Carole selected me as one of her five recipients.  It is often difficult to keep your spirits up  when no one visits or leaves comments.  I know I try to always leave comments, but I know visitors are busy.  So when I get a comment I feel like someone in the world thought I was special enough to spend some of their time to let me know they visited.  Now, dear Carole took the time to give me an award that encourages and inspires me to look for people I also feel need to be noticed.  These five bloggers are people who inspire me with their talents and their artistry.I am so happy they are part of the crafting blog world. 



This is a list of Crafter's have have chosen to give this award to:

Wishing everyone the best of everything on everyday!

3/17/2012

St. Patrick's Day Recipe Cards

If you are looking for the  CTV Challenge #7  please click here.

Hope everyone is having a great day of GREEN!!
I wanted to make some new pages for my Holidays Cookbook for St. Patrick's Day. Ichose one of our favorite recipes, Cheesy Potato Soup except I modified the title to "Pot O Gold Soup" just for the Irish!!!

The pages are each 6" squares. Here's a picture of the set:

And here they are as individual pages.

I used my Cricut and Paper Doll Dress Up to cut the sharmrocks (@1.25") and pot of gold (@5.25"); and "soup" and the oval's shadow were cut from From My Kitchen (@1.5").  I used my Gypsy to weld Pot o Gold using the font on A Child's Year.  

I hope you enjoyed my project. If you haven't thought of scrapbooking your recipes, I hope I inspired you to try one out. For more inspiration on recipe pages try one of these sites:

Cookbookinhttp://www.livebinders.com/play/play_or_edit?id=55073 great source of sample pages

Happy Saint Pattie's Day!
Sue

3/15/2012

CTV Challenge #7


Create a card for any occasion, using the sketch below. You can use any colors you'd like, and substtute the flowers and ribbon with any embellishment you'd like. You can also turn the sketch to go any direction you'd like. We haven't done a sketch before for a challenge and Mary will be giving a set of stamps to the challenge winner, so I hope you have fun it.



Here is my Easter card:


My card is 6" by 5.5" and made from white card stock.  I used the Cricut cartridge Easter 2010 to cut the cross (both the back and front layers) at 3.5" high.  The mats are three colors, ivory pearl, silver, and lilac ribbed metallic.  The flowers, pearls and ribbon are ivory.






This stamp is from Mary's new set "Easter Blessings".  
I hope you have some fun with this sketch!  I know I did.
Thanks for stopping by,
Sue

2/29/2012

Hey Cupcake

Here is a card I made with a variation of Gina K's recessed image technique.  I followed the video, but chose not to put pop dots behind the frame for this particular card.  This was a fun technique to try, and I encourage you to check it out.  The cupcake image is from Inkadinkado's Cupcake Cling Set.  The "Hey Cupcake" is from CTV stamp set "Sweet Talk".  The cuttlebug folder is one from the "Lace" set.  The papers and ribbons were from my stash.  I have generic markers.  So far the inside is blank.  This will go in my "cards in waiting" stack.  

2/27/2012

Quilt Block Cards Modernized

I'm a real fan of quilts; I just love the shapes, textures and hand stitching within these works of art.  I recently found a blog that put a modern twist on quilt squares.  I did some research from the blog article and visited the site featuring designs from Block Party: The Modern Quilting Bee (BOOK) and found three patterns I wanted to adapt to card designs.  Here they are:

For the first card, I made  a 5" square white card base. I started the quilt with a 5" by 5" square of the cross stitched roses. I cut 1/2 inch wide strips of three patterns and used the fourth patter (a stripe) for the two triangles.  The five papers I used for the quilt design came from DCWV 8"x8" The Crafty Stack.

For the second card I used a 6.5" by 5" white card base.   I cut 1/2" strips of three colors and wove them following the quilt pattern and  glued them down on a 6" by 4.5" white mat.  I layered that on a 6.25" by 4.75" red mat .  This is my favorite of the three patterns.  I like the open corner for stamping or embellishing.  The four papers from the DCWV Indian Summer Mat Pack. 
I varied the third block pattern two ways.  I kept the colored strips at an even width and also turned the design 90 degrees.   I used another 6.5" by 5" white card for the base. I cut 1/2" strips alternated with 1/4" craft paper strips gluing them on a 6" by 4.5" white mat, and layering it on a  I layered that on a 6.25" by 4.75" tan mat. The papers on this card are from DCWV Far East Stack.

Converting quilt block patterns into card sketches opens a whole new set of design tools.  I've made other quilt pattern cards, but the piecing time often takes the fun out of card making for me.  These modern squares new designs that are easier to piece, and yet still give beauty to card topper.  The would make good backgrounds for embellishments and labels.  Making sets of them and putting them together would make an interesting scrapbook page background.  (I must try this sometime, I am SO FAR BEHIND in my scrapbooking :(.  Using paper stacks to pick papers, makes color matching very easy for quilting.   Part of the patterns on the first card are from a sheet of borders. Other types of cuts like layering border punch strips or strips of ribbons would also be a fun twist on this pattern.  Also, experimenting with stitching, embossing or stamping to add a quilt pattern might also be challenging.

Thanks for stopping by.
Sue

2/24/2012

Welcome to the CTV Challenge#6 "Anything Goes".  Mary is awarding two stamp sets of choice to the winner of the challenge.  The design team is having a blast with all different types of projects and stamp sets. So, get ready to have fun and in the words of Paulette Jarvey  "come play with us."

I chose to make a set of cards as a gift to a friend.  I love working with puns,  and Mary's Garden Greeting  Stamp Set  just let the door wide open for me to come up with four cards playing on words.  I kept the designs simple yet bright and colorful and kept the embellishments to a minimum so the greetings are the focal points.  Since this set of cards is a gift, the insides are left blank for personal messages.   Here's a group pic. You can click on any picture for a larger image.
All finished cards measure 5" by 6.5" and are cut from white card stock.  Design details are listed with each card image set.  Measurements are given down further in the post. Please let me know if you have any questions.

Apple of My Eye:

The apples and basket were cut from the Doodlecharms cartridge.  The background paper is red card stock and the green check and apple design paper were from my stash.  The "twine" is crochet cotton died with a Sharpie marker.






In a Jam?



The jar is cut from Doodlecharms, the spoon is cut from From My Kitchen, the berries and the two labels are from Preserves.  You can not see it  in the pictures, but there is a clear transparency sheet as the top layer of the jar.  All these papers are from my stash as well as the ribbon.







What a Pear!


The pears are cut from Preserves, the palm tree and the chairs are from Life is a Beach.  I used the scalloped-scallop punch from EK Success for the border of the sand.  The face stamps are from Peachy Keen and the papers and embellishments are from my stash.





Love in Bloom


The turtles are from Walk in My Garden.  I welded them together using my Gypsy.  The heart is from Doodlecharms.  The ground "border" is from A Child's Year (under icon with shift 8th image I welded three together).  Papers and embellishments are from my stash.




Card cuts:
For Apple of My Eye I cut the bushel basket and it's braces and handle at 1.83 " high.  I cut the apples and  apple blackouts at 1.15" high.  I used my Gypsy to hide the apple and highlight on one set so the stems would cut separately.  They are small enough that you could just cut them by hand.  There are 4 small gold brads that fit into the holes in the braces.  I chose to cut one green apple and the rest red just for color interest. I used a white gel pen to color the highlight cuts on the apples and to add some dots to the leaves.  The red mat layer is 6.25" by 4.75".  The green check layer is 6" by 4.5" and the apple patterned paper is 2.75" by 4.5"

For In a Jam?  I cut the fruit jar (from gray card stock) and two of the jar blackouts (one red dot card stock, and one clear transparency) at 4" high.  I only used the lid part of the jar of the gray cut out.  I used Zip Dry glue to attach the transparency to the red dot card stock.  Mary has a similar project with a video here.  The strawberries, the additional berry and the leaves were cut from Preserves at 1.52".  The jar label is from Preserves, cut #49.  I cut a plaid one at 2.11" high and a light green one at 1.89" high.   The spoon is from From My Kitchen as is cut at 2.11" high.  I cut two of them and glued them together to get more dimension.  The plaid background mat is 6.25" by 4.75"

For What a Pear! I cut the very first image on the Preserves cartridge at 2.64".  I cut two pears and two centers flipping one of each so the leaves would be on opposite sides. Since there is not a blackout feature on this cartridge, I hid all the details of these images except the outline.  The chairs are cut at 2.41" and the palm tree at 4.65" from the Life is a Beach Cartridge.  The sky background mat is 6.25" by 4.75" and the sand is 6.25" by 1.75" after the border was cut off.

For Love in Bloom I cut the "ground" border at .85" high, welded three together and welded a 2.5" rectangle from George and Basic Shapes .  I wanted a border with flowers, but I didn't have any to fit the need.  A simple rectangle with some flower shapes glued behind it would also work.  The heart is cut at 1.08" high and the turtles plus the turtle shells are cut at 1.97" high.  Rounding to the nearest half inch would also work for anyone  who doesn't have a Gypsy.  The tulips are buttons I found at Jo Anns.  I sponged the blue background for the sky with Ranger Distress Tumbled Glass.  The googly eyes are from Michaels and I love the eyelashes.  I used larger ones that normal to add humor to the card.  The yellow background mat is 6.25" by 4.75", the sky mat is 6" by 4.5" and the ground is 6" by 2.75" (to the top of of the daffodils) after the border was cut off.

People always ask me how I come up with combining many cartridges to get an image.  I think having the Gypsy and now the Cricut Craft Room enables you to have access to all the cartridges at once without going through all the booklets individually making browsing easier.  The Gypsy search feature or My Cut Search has also helped to find images.  However, I spend time to just browsing my cartridges for images that are "hidden" such as on the icon button, or parts of of images.  Sometimes, I have my Gypsy with me while I watch TV and I scroll through cartridges during commercials.   Another idea, type in a cartridge title (i.e. Cricut Life is a Beach) and the word "cuts" in Google and search for images.  You'll be surprised at what other crafters create!  Ideas are everywhere you just need time to look.  Happy crafting!
Sue