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!!!

Harry Potter Birthday Banner

Cricut Expression 2 Blogger Bundle

Return To Bermuda

     Another challenge, yeah! The Cricut Circle Blog has both weekly and monthly challenges. The monthly challenge is the one where I submitted the "I Love Candy" shirt. The weekly challenge required you to use Baby ( Brads, Aqua, Butterfly and You). They were right with this challenge to require you to use a picture of yourself. We are the ones who take the pics but rarely do a layout of our self. I chose a picture of our trip to Bermuda back in 1999. We had gone there for our honeymoon so returned 25yrs. later with our youngest who was 11 years old at the time.
     I started with this beautiful paper by K&Company, Que Sera fera stack. This is such a beautiful aqua color and goes well with my pic.I also love this paper from Recollections I got @ M's. It's a colored core and is sand able! All my flowers were cut from Tim Holtz floral die but embossed with various cuttlebug folders and inked with distressed inks by Ranger. The centers have either rhinestone brads or mini picture type brads. If you look close the bottom center flower has a butterfly on it!
     You also needed to use cuts from your cricut so I went back to my library and pulled out one of my favorite carts Base Camp. I cut all the letters @ 1" and used the blackout, shadow and regular features. The frame was cut using Lacy Labels @ 4". I used some natural raffia so I could hang the words Bermuda on it.
     My journal ling tag is cut from Spellbinders Labels but the journal ling tag was stamped with Donna Salazar" new tag. Can I just say how awesome her stamps are? They are lightweight and stamp beautifully.

     I finished this off by adding glossy accents on the red flower for dimension and painted some petal areas with Creative Inspirations Garnet paint. The butterfly is also K&Company. I was going to make my own but the colors in this were perfect. The above picture is shot at an angle to give you an idea of the details on this LO. I really have to start doing more layouts.

Congrats, You're Engaged!

     Whoot whoot! My friends daughter got engaged over the holidays and I am finally getting around to making a card. Why not pair it with a challenge? As a member of the cricut circle ( we are an exclusive group, lol) I have a chance to win the latest new product from Provo Craft: Yudu card shop! This is a fabulous new machine that lets you silk screen your designs on cards. It's perfect for invitations and all other 5x7 cards. In order to have a chance to win this you had to mail your card to Jinger Adams @ Provo Craft and have it received by Jan. 18th. I think I made it because I mailed it today Priority mail and they should receive it Tuesday.
     The best part of this is that they will pick 2 winners to receive this new product @ the launch on HSN January 20th. They might even display some of the entries so wish me luck.
     The above card is my entry. You had to use Anna Griffins paper. Isn't this just gorgeous! Next you had the option of several cricut cartridges which will also be featured on the show. I used Don Juan for the frame and hand. The arrow was cut using Home Decor.
     I chose to make this an easel card because it exemplifies what a girl does when she receives her ring, constantly raises her hand and gazes at it, lol! This card was a blast to embellish! All the die cuts were inked with Ranger Distress inks. I added a piece of silver roping around the ring finger and added bling from Creative Charms for the rock! I didn't want it to look like a hand just hanging there so I gave her a pearl bracelet and a lace "cuff". 
     One of my new favorite tools are the script letters from JustRite stamps. This allows me the freedom to spell out exactly what I want to say. How cool is that! I used this to say "on your engagement".
The frame and background were embossed with cuttlebug folders swirls and textile. The label was also cut with the oval cuttlebug die. I also used the negative piece to add a frame to the tag. A little bit of sheer ribbon and it was done.
     Hope you enjoyed my latest project and wish me luck!!                  

Creativity Begins Here!

    This months challenge for the Circle members was to make something expressing your love of creating, this is what I came up with.
    I had wanted to make something for my craft room and like many of you, I have an abundance of supplies. Sometimes I forget all the neat products I own so I decided to make a wall plaque to use as a creative jumping off point.
    First I used some wall vinyl and made the word "Creativity" using gypsy font cut at 4". This is such a beautiful font with intricate detail in the fonts (so creative, lol). Then I used my gypsy to weld the words "begins here" using "Opposites Attract" @ height of 2.25.
   Now for my Creative Board. Where do I begin? First I used a 12"x12" piece of printed paper and adhered that to same size chipboard that was painted on the back side. I then made a glimmer mist using Distress Inks and Perfect Pearls. Once it was dry I distressed the edges with my Distrezz It All and inked the edges then punched the top edge with my Bind It All.
The creative ideas was cut also with Gypsy Font using both shadow and upright feature. I used both solid card stock and print and reversed them for top and bottom of board.
The dress form was cut @ 3.50" with the French Manor cartridge. For this cut I used Grunge Paper by Tim Holtz and used his black dabber paint . I finished the "dress" with a small prima flower and small rhinestone. It is adhered to a spellbinders oval that is embossed with one of the folders from the Asian bundle using my Cuttle bug, of course the edges were inked!
The small velum envelope with tag was a perfect way to showcase my brads. It was cut using Fabulous Findings@ 2.48x 2.32 for the insert. I know the lattice was cut using French Manor but I can"t remember the details of my butterfly. (I cut and stickled it a while ago and found it in my stash while doing this project, lol.
I have been taking classes at My Creative Classroom so I had to incorporate a few techniques. One was the memory frame that is stamped "Laugh" and uses alcohol inks for the background. I used Plantin School book in for my "vintage" flowers that were cut @ various sizes and has a rhinestone center.
The Just A Note was cut using Imagine More and then inked. I finished the whole project off with some Jolee embellishments (paint tubes, apron, palette etc.) and of course some beautiful ribbon.
Although this project was a lot of work, every time I look at it I smile so I guess it was worth the time and effort. I hope this has somewhat inspired you!
                                                               
                                                                     
                                                              

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.