Hang In There!

     Welcome to Imagine Monday! Today we could use the Imagine, Expression 2 or CCR, I chose to use the Imagine More Cards and the Snapshot Texture cartridges for the Imagine. Just make sure when you're done that you be sure to check back at My Cricut Craft Room and see what the other team members have to show you for their creative and fun projects.
     For now, sit back, relax and I'll show you how I to used the pattern papers  to make my project for today.

     I first printed out this great background paper. The Imagine comes with a built in cart Imagine More with some great shapes. If you scroll to the end you can print a 5x7 swatch that is printed to the proportionate size. I layered this on a piece of glossy card stock.

     As you can see I added some stitching with silver thread.

     I always pull my stitching to the back so there are no threads hanging around.

     I used the Ornamental Iron cart to cut out this "gate" . The image is on the last row, 5th from the left @ 4.75" with the shadow feature. I also did some distressing with Pumice Stone and Black Soot inks. I bet you are wondering what that little hole is for.

     Well a hanger of course! I cut the gate to go with the shadow out of black/charcoal card stock. I also used a Zig pen and silver embossing pen to add some more details. The hole was for this brad to hang a Tim Holtz hanger!

      I love this stamp by Pink By Design. I got to color with my Copic Markers (R22,R24, R27 and R29.) but I made a real bad mistake. While inking the edges I smudged some ink on the design after I had it all colored! I hate when that happens. So after my stickles dried I came up with a solution, why not add a pink ribbon!

     Voila I think it works. Shh, we are the only ones that know what lies beneath!

     After adding a few rhinestones, my sentiment from Pink By Design and some stickles on the lace, its time to hang it up!!!

     Be sure to come back tomorrow, I have a matching bag to show you! Now head back over to My Cricut Classroom. By the way, you won't want to miss all the excitement happening over there. Erica is opening her new store Jan.24th (and we all know how great her prices are!). So be sure to check out her store tab on the blog! Hope you have fun shopping!!!
     

Merry Christmas, Tag #11

     I only wish this season I had more time to try out these awesome techniques Tim Holtz showed for the 12 Tags of Christmas...2011. Although I only had time to complete 4 I know I will continue to try some of the other tags and the great projects he shared.
     This tag by far is my favorite. I always loved this angel image yet for some reason I just hadn't found the right project. I started with Art Philosophy cartridge by ProvoCraft and cut the tag @ 6.25". The background is so easy to make. I used cream glossy card stock and some alcohol inks. The Salt Boat Blue and Stream alcohol inks go together perfectly.
     Next I used a piece of craft plastic and stamped this beautiful sentiment: The most precious Gift of Christmas arrived in a very small bundle with no bow." You have to use Stazon ink or one that can be used on slick surfaces.

     The stars are really cool to make. Unfortunately I only had Shrinky Dink material in white. Tim had used the clear one and the effects are so stunning. Don't worry, I will be getting some to try the other techniques.Any way I like how these stars turned out. First, when working with shrinky dink material you need to cut your images 3x the size you want the shrunken article to be. I cut my stars from "Tis The Season" cartridge @ 2.25", 2.50", 2.75" and 3". this yields finished stars at 1" or less. Here's the fun part. You need to heat UTEE, Ultra Thick Embossing Enamel in a melting pot. Ranger sells these and they are great. All you do is heat the utee, drop your shrinky dink material in the pot and watch it shrivel and squirm! Once it flattens out (in seconds really) gently remove from pot with tweezers and place on a craft mat or another non stick surface to cool. It really is that easy. I finished it off with some Creative Charms rhinestones and also used a gold detail heat embossing to the horn and halo. Add a bow and you are done. Whew, I can't wait to try some more tags.

Love Always Album

     Surprise I made something not nautical, beach, ocean or water related, lol! I've been working on this for a while ( I am soooo slow). Anyways here are the details.
     First I started with Spellbinders Creative Pages by Donna Salazar.This is cut out of Corrugated card board by Zutter. I used Donna Salazar's technique with a combo of paint and embossing powder to create this great background.
     I also made this fabric flower out of satin and added some stickles to the petals. The small flowers are premade out of mulberry paper but, of course they needed some bling. I had just got some of Donna Salazars Fairy Dust. Wow, does this ever sparkle!
     I dug into my stash and found this great ribbon and also a roll of this flower ribbon.

     I can't remember which paper stack I used but some of the smaller pieces are from DCWV girls stack. More satin ribbon but this has a nice picot edge. I also have a nice pack of these pearl flowers from Recollections. The circle on the left is Spellbinders Grand Nestabilities scalloped circle.

     Isn't this paper cool? I love the silver foil effect. I had some silver card stock left over from a previous project so I made a pocket to hold my tag.
     The tag is a shipping tag that I spritzed with glimmer Mist and added a quote from Donna's crafty Chronicle: "A journet is best measured in friends rather than miles.I added this by using Liquid laminate by Beacon. The cute butterfly brad is from a Creative Charms value pack. I also had some rub ons that I had hanging around and used them throughout the book. This one says "I am going your way".

    
          I love to add a little interactive play to my albums and this one is no exception. Here you find a pocket that another tag is hidden in. Again I used Creative Charms, this time a felt flower. The tag inside is so cute. It has a shoe, pearls, shopping bag and purse on the left hand corner.

     This is the back side. Love all those girly things! The right hand side has a picture of a tube of lipstick.
     That's it for now guys. As always thanks for stopping by. ( I hope you enjoyed your visit!).
     BTW, this album is currently for sale in my etsy shop.http://www.etsy.com/listing/79254242/love-always-album

Blooming Garden

     I was playing around with some scrap card stock and thought this would make a cute centerpiece for the children's table for Easter. I really used a lot of recyclables on this one!
     First I started out with some card board dividers that separates cans. I just evened these pieces off to form a strip. You can make it as long as you want.

     In order to have some stability as well as flexibility, I taped some 18 gauge wire to one side before covering it with card stock.

     On the right you can see the taped wire for the floral base prior to covering it. Look at all those flowers. Hmm, is that tissue paper? Wrong!!  I was making a project with clear plastic and the sheets were separated with this waxed paper. It is so intriguing because it has a sort of texture like linen. I used Tim Holtz Alteration Floral dies but you can use any die cuts. I particularly like the floral cuts on the cricut cartridges. There are so many to chose from! After they were all cut I used Rangers Inkabilites Floral Brights and just had fun smooching all the colors. Then I mixed up all the colors and stacked them up. The centers feature a beautiful jeweled brad by Creative Charms.
     I used gypsy Wanderings to cut the stem @ 5" with the shadow feature on. I cut the stem and a piece of chip board ( using the heavy cutting blade) and actually cut a second set out of card stock but this time I flipped the design so I could cover the front and back of the chip board. Before adhering these together I added some more wire to the center of the stem to make it a little more sturdy however you could always use 2 pieces of chip board stems.
     This is my favorite part: decorating. As my husband always says "it's all a matter of preparation". I pulled out more of the blooming garden set from Creative Charms and decided this project would be so cute with these felt butterfly embellishments. I decided to wrap the base with some more wire but I think a nice springy sheer ribbon would also be pretty. The Flowers were adhered with some pop dots and, after slipping the "stems" into the wire I used a few glue dots to keep them in place.
     This takes up very little room and will be adorable with little Easter baskets at each place setting. The kids are going to love it!
     

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

     We had our St. Patrick's Day meal a day early since I have to work tomorrow. The menu was: corned beef, cabbage, potatoes, carrots, a new Irish bread recipe ( it was so good, thanks Trish!) and lime jello for dessert. I love the red brisket rather than the gray. I realized years ago that if you add 5 peppercorns and 2 garlic cloves to the water you never have a salty corned beef and it just pulls apart. Yummm!

     The challenge at Just Us Girls this week was to try a new technique: acrylic smash! There is a great tutorial at Splitcoaststampers.com. I also combined this with a challenge on the circut circle blog where you had to show your green.
     I chose to cut the acrylic piece using my Imagine and the image is one preloaded on the machine. The white card stock is cut with the same 3" image. For my "smash" part I used an adirondack gold dabber and the stamp is from studio G stamped in forest green StazOn ink.
     The plaid background paper is from DCWV Nana's Nursery Baby Boy. I wanted a soft green so the image of the shamrocks would stand out. The gold shamrocks are cut using the Celebrate With A Flourish cartridge @ 1.5".  I love this shiny gold it's a scrap I had left over (I think from a Christmas project).
     The sentiment is also from the studio G stamp set that I backed with green card stock cut using a spellbinders die. Of course I had to use some ribbon and the beautiful gradient jewels from Creative Charms.

     The inside says "Everyone is Irish for a day". Originally I was going to use these shamrocks on the front but I decided to go with the gold instead so I thought, what the heck, I'll put these on the inside, lol. Hope you all enjoy being Irish for the day. Top 'O the Day to ya!!!

With Sympathy Card

     Unfortunately I have the need to make several sympathy cards this week. One co-worker lost her Dad and a friends daughter in law lost her mom. It's always difficult to know what to say as well as making a card that may be somewhat uplifting.
     The usual color scheme seems to be blue, lavender, cream or something serene. However in both the families I am sending these to, the passing of their loved one is a mixed blessing. Therefore I chose to go with something that is elegant, simple and use some brighter colors.
     The paper is somewhat of a damask looking pattern from DCVW "The Mango Frost" mat stack. It has an embossed texture with the hint of glitter. This is the standard 5.50" X 4.25" card that is layered with white card stock on a dark apricot card stock from Provo Craft. The border strip uses a Fiskar punch that mimics the background paper.
     Since this is a simple card with clean lines I used the Spellbinders Labels two and a rub on from My Favorite Things for the outside sentiment. I really love the embellishments from Creative Charms. The soft blue flower and the gradient gems are from this company. I also cut a small flower from one of my nestabilities by Spellbinders.The blue grosgrain ribbon was a left over scrap. (I love when this happens!).

New Year New Challenge

     What a season this has been. Christmas, 6 birthdays and a baby shower! It was wonderful having the whole family around to celebrate all these events including my son, DIL and 2 of the grandchildren from Florida  as well as my daughter and SIL from HI. It's been a while since all 5 of the kids plus the 8 grandchildren have spent Christmas with us so it was wonderful.

Now that the decorations are down and the house is quiet I am back to creating (which I love). Of course the best way to start off the year is with a good challenge and I love what Color Throwdown 123 had in store. Kristen offered free digital paper and I was just blown away by the colors. I had one last birthday card to complete so this paper was perfect.
     I decided to use the Japanese lantern stamp by Inkadinkado.It just added so much to the paper. I used Tim Holtz forest moss for the ink color and it matched the paper perfectly. I just love when that happens, lol. I also used a M's stamp for the HB greeting and cut with the Spellbinders oval  in 2 sizes and used popdots to "pop" the sentiment.
     Of course no card is complete without some bling. I just love Creative Charms bling. The gradient jewels are so sparkly!
     Part of the challenge was to include a finished inside as well as a lined envelope. I always love to do this , it just seems to complete the look. The patterned paper Kristen designed was perfect for

 cutting out certain elements. I did choose to leave the inside blank as I have a long message convey.
     Happy New Year my friends, I have some great projects to share with you this year. 

Read The Manual, Dummy!

   Okay I had a duh moment. I liked my Imagine but was having some trouble. The main thing was I could not seem to get a good shadow with my cuts ( rather no shadow) . It didn't seem to matter whether I used an Imagine cart or one of my older carts. I was going to call the company today but thought, hum, why don't I read the manual? What a great idea!!!
   Here's what I learned: true size is like real dial size so if you size with this everything does not cut to proportion in other words you have to use relative which sizes everything accordingly. What an amazing thing it is to READ how to do this, lol.
   A lot of people have asked can you use your older carts and color with the Imagine; the answer is YES.

 

Praying Hands

   Sometimes we just need to take a step back and take a moment for reflection. I had bought this stamp a while ago and finally got up the nerve to try my copic markers (they are alcohol based) so I needed to practice a bit. I really love the texture of this paper too. It's from a spring pad I got on sale at Walmart and it is awesome to work with. It has a really nice sheen to it as well. The gradient jewels came from creative charms and they were in the boy set but they went perfect with this project. I think with the holidays coming I might keep this card in front of me to remind me to breathe!