Sunshine And Smiles Card

     Happy Tuesday!!! Oh, that means its my day to post as a member of My Cricut Craft Room. Today Erica asked us to make a card to read with a child as part of National Young Readers Day. I love how she always has great themes to chose from. My card is designed using the Imagine cartridge Greeting Cards Inside & Out.
Let's take a look:

 

     Isn't this just the greatest card for a young reader? This image is on page 21 of the handbook and 4.25". It comes out as a square card but I wanted a 4.25" x 5.50" but I just couldn't get it that size so I decided to go with it as the top of the card . I used the layers so I could have the thumb separate because I wanted to raise it up. You know, a giant thumbs up!!! Sometimes I just crack myself up.

     I used some white card stock I had hanging around and cut it slightly bigger to give it a matted effect. Before I glued it I added some twine by The Twinery to the outside edge. Then I glued it to a bright yellow card stock.

     I also had some "brads" by Candi to all four corners. I love how well these match my background card.

Since I wanted this to really show what an awesome job the young reader did, I thought they would get a kick out of  a little movement for the thumb, so.....

I put it on a wobble!!!! I am addicted to these things!!! Not only can they read the words but they can congratulate themselves by having a moving thumb! Here's another view:

     This was a super quick card to make especially with the Imagine since you can print and cut at the same time. I am so thankful I bought this machine when I did since they will no longer be making it. It was so sad when I heard this since I am using my Imagine almost exclusively rather than my other Cricut machines.
     Anyways, Erica has a great cause called Sunshine and Smiles. People make cards to hand out to the kids in the hospital. The cards are not supposed to be Get Well types, but rather cards of encouragement and I thought these were perfect since there are older kids as well as young ones. I will be sending 10 of these out to Erica as my small part for her cause.
     Well that's it for today. Be sure to head back over to My Cricut Craft Room and see what fabulous cards my DT sisters have to show you. I hope you all have a fabulous week.

 

A Banner Christmas Tree

     I have another great project for you today using the Cricut Craft Room! I really love using this program offered by Provo Craft. One of the great Craft Room Exclusives is Banners. I have used this for tags on layouts and now I made a Christmas card with banners on my Christmas Tree! The entire card was made in the CCR. Here's what I designed:

     Sorry the lighting was not so good when I photographed this but I was so excited to share,lol. First I started with the Christmas tree in the CCR Basics. This is free in the Cricut Craft Room and has many great shapes to choose from, especially if you want to make a quick card. I added this to my mat @ 4" and then opened my Banners cart. I was able to rotate, move and size the 2 banners to where I would place them on my tree and then welded them together. This made it easy for my to know exactly where I would place my additional banners that I was going to ink. Once I knew the exact size of the banners, I copied and pasted them to another area on my mat.

     I just have to say something about a wonderful feature of the CCR. If you place everything on the same mat, when you hit GO Cut, you will notice on the left hand side of the mat you can choose to print, cut or print and cut. This is so versatile especially since I have the Imagine and sometimes want to only print and sometimes only cut. You can also decide if you want to cut all the images on the mat at the same time or separately. Since I knew I would do this all at once I placed my images accordingly.

     I inked the edges of the banner with Brilliance Galaxy Gold while it was still on the mat and also stamped the sentiments with Colorbox Chalk: Lipstick Red. Now all I had to do was add some liquid pearls in Ruby Red and also some stickles in Christmas Red.How do you like my star behind the tree? I had used a piece of scrap paper that had this design on it so, I went with the flow and added some icicle stickles to add a little sparkle! I also added some Candi "brads" in the corners.This was probably the quickest card I have ever done!

     Now I have a surprise for you. Here it is TaDa........

FREE Cricut Craft Room Help Guide!

This is the 78 Page Cricut Craft Room Help Guide.....

When you open Cricut Craft Room now there is a GREAT video that pops up and welcomes you to Craft Room. If you have ever been intimidated by the idea of Craft Room…. NOW is your chance. There is a 4 minute video that welcomes you to Craft Room and will help you get aquainted and NOT intimidated by Craft Room!
It really is great, no matter what your computer skill level is. Please take the first step and try Craft Room if you have not taken that step yet. I have done a few Ustream tutorials to help with Craft Room, but no one can do it better than Provo-Craft themselves! Here is the welcome screen now when you go to Cricut Craft Room.
Here is the link to ALL of the Craft Room tutorials that Cricut has made! *Erica
This guide came from www.cricut.com and was assembled by
Erica’s Craft Room™ My Cricut Craft Room™
and Affordable Crafting Concepts™ Copyright 2009-2012

Visit the blog for 6-10 Cricut made projects each weekday.
http://mycricutcraftroom.blogspot.com

     This is a fantastic way to jump into the CCR. I hope you will give it a try. You will amaze yourself at all you can create. Happy Crafting, Mary.

Let's Play Street Hockey!

     Welcome back to another WYEGW!!! In case you are new to this concept let me explain. The design team creates a project using the feature keys on the left hand side of your handbook. We cannot use the main images. This is a fabulous way to explore the "hidden" images that you may have overlooked and to find images that can be incorporated in your projects. Today I decided to make a lay out. I usually am a card maker but I really want to challenge myself more and these pictures were too good to store away, lol.
     While my daughter Joelle and her husband Mark had a much needed weekend away to attend a wedding, I (AKA Mema) had the pleasure of watching their 3 little boys. The oldest had a baseball game one day and a semifinal for street hockey the next day. I forgot my camera for the ball game but made sure I had it on hand for the hockey game.

     You are reading that correctly, Ben got his 1st goal which helped them win this round. The chipboard piece "This is where the story begins" was a wonderful surprise from Erica with my last order and it just was perfect in every way: color, sentiment and shape. (Thank you Erica!!!!).  The title was cut from Alphalicious @ .75" using the short stack font as well as short stack shadow and my background paper is from DCWV The Guy Stack.

     There is a great image of hockey sticks in Everyday Paper Dolls on page 55 under the Accessories 2. I cut these @ 5" but hide the puck on my gypsy. They use a ball for street hockey not a puck, who knew, lol. I used a red Candi for the ball and it is over a pop dot. I used some distress emboss and clear embossing powder to give the hockey sticks some shine. Finally I added some liquid pearls to add some detail to the sticks. Did you know erica has a web store? Did you know she has great prices? Did you also know she carries the supplies I used on here? Well, if you would like you should check out her store here: http://www.shop.ericascraftroom.com/.
     Of course if you use Everyday paper Dolls you have to use a paper doll, don't you? I found this hockey/football helmet also on page 55 but the helmet is under Headwear>shift and the grill face plate is on Accessories 2>shift. I used Pink By Design stamps for the face (yup the princess set) and used my white glaze pen to add a sparkle to his eyes.

     I love how this came out. I also used the clear embossing powder on the helmet as well. The face plate is cut from silver card stock and they all were cut @ 5".

     This lay out would not be complete without a goal net since Ben was up close and personal with it, lol. I believe I also cut this @ 5" as well. I did cut this 2x, once out of burgundy color and the other of a metal gray card stock. After I matted all the pics, I used an extra layered mat to do some journalling. This helmet was a Pink By Design stamp from the set: Sports Fanatic. This set has the hockey sticks as well if you do not have EDPD.
     I hope you all have a wonderful rest of "Hump" day and be sure you head back over to Erica's Room http://mycricutcraftroom.blogspot.com/ and see what the rest of the team has for you.
     

A Remote Birthday

                   It's another creative day @ My Cricut Craft Room. I hope you are all enjoying this wonderful spring time weather. Today we could either use our Imagine machines or the Letter U. I used the Imagine cart JT to create the background paper on this card.

     I don't know about you but my husband is always walking around with a tv remote in his hand. He doesn't so much watch a single program in its entirety but rather surfs from station to station. (Swamp people, Pawn Brokers, History Channel, Discovery Channel in addition to House Hunters, Cooking Shows and endless sports commentaries, lol). I swear he has attention deficit since nothing holds his attention for too long. But, I digress. Here are the details on my card:

     As I said I used my JT cart to create the background. This went perfectly with my remote. You can find this pattern paper on page 42. I selected a square 3 3/4" x 5" and flood filled the rectangle with the pattern. I backed it with red card stock and rounded the corners on both before I adhered them together. 

     I noticed that CCR is coming out with a similar remote but I made mine with the Fathers' Day cart and cut it @ 4" and all layers. I used a silver, cream and dark gray card stock to cut my various layers. I wanted to make this as realistic as possible so I had to hand write in the "vol.", "Ch" "DVR" and #'s. As luck would have it, Erica had sent me some "goodies" that included Sakura Black and White Glaze pens and they were perfect for writing on this glossy surface. Erica is great like that. She is always sending us free "stuff" to play with. It's almost like getting crafty products for Christmas, lol.

     I needed to add some buttons to the remote (if there are no buttons to push then he wouldn't have any fun!). I used some liquid pearls in Key Lime and Ruby Red for the stop and go buttons. I even added some Candi (faux brads) in gold, red and green.

     The stamp is from Pink By Design "age is only a #" and I used black embossing powder to add some texture. I also cut a small rectangle in red and wrapped it with some black and white twine from the Twinery again for a pop of color and to add some more texture.
     The finally step was to add a Wobble to the back of the remote. Hey he needs to have some action!!!      All of the supplies to make this card are available in Erica's Store .  It's  true: the liquid pearls, Candi, twine, stamps, embossing powder, card stock and Provo Craft Cricut cartridges are all in there.She is having a fabulous sale for the month of May. I would love for you to stop by and tell her Mary inspired you to shop there.

Please use the code 33 for 33% off your orderworks on everything not already marked down except Cricut and Cuttlebug products.

     Be sure to pop back over to Erica's Blog and see what the rest of the Design Team create just for you.

Until next week, Hugs to all of you~Mary

Thank You Card

     Good morning ladies. I hope you all had a wonderful and productive weekend, I know I did. Mondays at My Cricut Craft Room the Design Team shows you projects made with either The Imagine, E2 or CCR. This week I used the CCR and my Imagine to create this simple Thank You card.

     I used the new Greeting Cards Inside Out cartridge for the Imagine. The base is from My Minds Eye "Out & About" premade cards. I bought this pack several years ago and hadn't found a project to use them on until now.

     I used the image on page 25 and opened it in the CCR. I chose the ribbon @ 5.25 wide so it would automatically fit on my 5.5" base and sized the circle Thanks @ 2"" high. This way I was able to center the image where I wanted it on the "ribbon" and then welded the two together.Let me show you how I did this:

     The top image is the preset with the Thank you circle on the end. When I selected this one I clicked on the edit group and at the top chose to not weld. This separated my two images. Now I was able to change the size of the ribbon and circle as well as the color. I was then able to place the circle where I wanted it. You could also rotate the circle  180 degrees if you wanted to place the image vertically rather than horizontally.

Once I had my 2 images centered where I wanted them I just welded them together.

     Now I just grabbed a doily I had hanging around but thought the new image was rather lost so I used the scalloped circle on the Image and filled with the same color but sized it @ 2.5". After a little inking I just glued everything together and tried out some Candi bling I just got in. These little gems are awesome! Believe it or not they are made of paper which makes them really light so easier on the postage but they truly are beautiful. You can purchase them through Erica @ http://www.shop.ericascraftroom.com/

     Well that's it for today. Be sure to checkout what the rest of the Design Team has to show you over at: 

 http://mycricutcraftroom.blogspot.com/. I hope you have a great week.