Kraft Explosion Box

I want to show you a fun project today.  It is an explosion box using kraft paper, brown paper and cream paper with just a little bit of red.  I really pushed myself on some of the techniques but I'm so pleased with the way it turned out.  It just goes to show, trying something new can be very rewarding.  The cuts were all done using my Cricut (it requires a 12 x 12 mat) and SCAL2.  I used an SVG from SVGCuts.  You can find the explosion box here.

First the top.  I have never made paper rosettes before.  I love them, I've been eying them but I hadn't tried them.  I must say, I think I'll be doing more.  This rosette is two strips of kraft paper, each 2 inches wide.  I then scored them every half inch, glued them together and pushed the middle down so it would fan out for the rosette.  I then glued a one inch circle to the back of the rosette and the heart with the twine through it to the top of the rosette.

Here is a close-up of the top.

On the edge of the top, I glued a piece of velvet ric-rac from Creative Charms.  I love the way the velvet ric-rac looks with the kraft paper.  It is elegant with out being inappropriate.  I also used Crackle paint along the sides of the top. I used Rock Candy so it would have texture without adding color.

I think this side is my favorite.  You can see the velvet ric-rac again.  I heat embossed the LOVE stamp on the pocket.  I also heat embossed a great Tim Holtz stamp to the tag.

Isn't that fun.  The final thing on this side, I used Versamark to give the kraft paper a little bit of texture.  I stamped the LOVE stamp under the pocket and through out the side.

This is another side.  The flower is part of the cuts from SVGCuts.  The brad in the middle is one of the very fun ones from Creative Charms.

Here is the explosion box opened up.  Doesn't it look fun.  All of the pictures were taken at one sitting this last Thanksgiving. 

You can see more of the velvet ric-rac and the brads in the middle say "We Love You".  They are from the Spare Parts by the Paper Studio.  It is the Hobby Lobby line of products.

Here you can see more of the mats.  I put pictures on the back of each side, in addition to the front.  I never print pictures at wallet size (and normally don't know that to do with wallet sized pictures when I get them) but this was the perfect size.  On the inner pages I really couldn't frame or mat them but the second and third level was perfect for matting.

One last shot of the pages.

I think there will be more explosion boxes in my future.  They are sooo much fun.  Thank you for looking and let me know what you think.

Graphic 45 Communique Collection - Part 1

I'm so excited about today's card(s).  I swear this first one created itself.  I love Graphic 45.  The colors are so vibrant and fun.  The designs are sophisticated and easy to use.  I just eat them up.  I saw some of the new Graphic 45 line coming out at CHA this week and it didn't disappoint.

Here are two cards.

The ribbon is from Hobby Lobby.  It is a lovely black with a slight ruffle.  The black cardstock is recollections line from Michaels'. The red cardstock came from my LSS and they don't label ANYTHING.  I have a TON of embellishments from Creative Charms.  I absolutely love them, in fact I love them so much that I hate to use them.  If you haven't had a chance to see their store, you can go here.  Luckily, I love the Graphic 45 so much, I hate to use it so all of this worked well together.  I swapped out the pearl center on the velvet flowers for one of the small vintage brads.  The sentiment stamp is from Hero Arts.  I'm in love with this line.  It has fun phrases and great images.  The edges are inked with Color Box Terra Cotta ink.

Here is a similar card.

I loved the idea of an old-fashion phone.  In fact, I found three or four carts with a phone but I thought this one would look the best.  It is from Summer in Paris.  I bought this cart last summer and I think this is the first time I've ever used it.  It really is sad because it has lovely images.  I'm thinking I might use some other cuts with this paper line.

I used another velvet flower from Creative Charms.  I also added some of the black gradient gems.  I decided the card needed a little more so I used glossy accents on the bottom of the phone.  I'm not certain how well I like it.  Maybe it'll work when it is completely dry.  It looks a little messy right now.

Finally, I have a sneak peek for you.  I'm not done playing with this line from Graphic 45.  Here is a part of tomorrow's card.

Dress forms seem to be all the rage these days.  I thought I would add one but I'm going to need to decorate it a bit.  What do you think I should do?  Check back tomorrow for my ideas.

Bah! Humbug! Update and Bugaboo Card

I received a lovely comment from Popsicle Toes (Donna is one of my favorite bloggers.  She does the most incredible work and thrills me on a regular basis.  If you haven't checked out her blog you can find it here).  I picked it up via email and she congratulated me on something with Bah! Humbug! but I couldn't tell what it was because I was working all day.  Well, when I arrived back to my computer and checked my reader list I found this lovely post (and surprise) from the wonderful ladies at Bah! Humbug! Manor.  Can you believe they were nice enough to get me a treat?

Here is the post where they show a picture of the most gorgeous Christmas cracker I've ever laid eyes on.  If you have a chance, you can still join the challenge for this week (make something with a Christmas Cracker).

In addition, I have found a place to purchase Cracker Snaps (I guess that is what they call the part on the inside that makes the popping sound).  It seems wrong to buy them here in the states but I may need to break down and do it.  For anyone interested here is the link and this is a picture of the page

That looks about right for what it seems like our crackers had on the inside.  Some of the sites I saw that talked about how to make them suggested using the champagne cork type popper that folks have around New Years.  It seems like that would be rather large for a cracker.  I like these much better.

I also finished a card last night for the Bugaboo Challenge.  I had hoped to create more projects for their birthday bash but it just didn't work out.  I realized once I started working on this card that when the challenge is all one color it really requires a person to work.  I rely on the different colors to carry the card which is impossible to do when you have just white (or almost all white).  It means the embossing, cuts and other items need to be spot on.  This isn't as good as I might want but I think it is a decent card.  I must say I love the Bugaboo digis.  They are very easy to work with, even for a newbie colorer like me.

This version has almost no color.  I inked the outside of the bottom layer (I used two Nestabilities to cut out the digi and to give the card some depth).  I colored the hearts in her hair and on her arrow.  I also colored her hair but that is it.  I embossed the card with tiny hearts (It is a cuttlebug folder with little hearts just like Swiss Dots, I can't find the name anywhere).

I thought this was just a little bit too plain so I also did one card with her dress colored in.

Finally, I have a picture of the side view. I love the amount of depth the pop dots give this card.  I think it is what makes the card work, otherwise it felt far too plain.

The Wonderkid loves rhyming words so I got a real kick out of the sentiment that came with this digi.  It says, "Ever notice cupid and stupid rhyme?"  Gotta love it.

Christmas Crackers

Last week I about pulled my hair out over the challenge at Bah Humbug Blog but this week I'm set.  Last week was stencils (I could show you how to see what I made but honestly, I'd like to forget that creation).

Go get your coffee or a little something to hold you over.  I've got a story and something to show you.

The challenge was to make something to do with Christmas Crackers.  Here is the post so you can see what the design team made and the exact challenge. I recommend playing along if you get a chance. 

I decided to make Christmas Crackers.  I had been thinking about making these since Christmas Night but I hadn't gotten around to actually putting it all together.  My family normally has Christmas Crackers on the table when we have our traditional Trivial Pursuit game and a light meal.  We normally have this lovely meal of salmon, shrimp, cheese and crackers and some veggies and dip. We break open the Trivial Pursuit game and after a couple of glasses of wine we open our Crackers.  This last year we didn't have enough crackers for everyone.

I should be clear, we live in Atlanta, Georgia, USA and Christmas Crackers are not a normal part of the holiday.  We can sometimes buy them but they are terribly overpriced and not very good.  While I have a brother that flies home from London to Atlanta for Christmas, whatever extra space he has in his bags is reserved for Wine Gums (people claim you can buy these in the states but they aren't the same).

This is a box of wine gums.

So, I started thinking on Christmas night about making crackers for next Christmas.  The Wonderkid thought crackers were fantastic and couldn't understand why we didn't have them every night.  Half of this year's were musical instruments and the other half were random.  We wore the lovely tissue paper crowns for the remainder of the night and periodically I still find the whistles from the musical crackers in random places (hidden by the Wonderkid).

Enough about my excitement for this challenge.  Here is what I did.

I bought some paper at the post-holiday sales at Michaels.  This is the paper.

Then I went and searched SVGCuts.com because I thought they had a cut so I could make these in my E.  They did, it was even a freebie (have I mentioned how much I love SVGCuts?)  They keep all of their freebies on their blog.  Here is the cracker freebie.

So, I resized the cracker to the largest that would fit on an 8.5 x 11 piece of paper.  It ended up being 6.5 inches wide and 10.75 inches high.  I cut 6 of them out of three different pattern papers.

These are the three different patterns.

Then I added a tag.  The scallop is from Mini Monograms.  The sentiment is from The Cutting Cafe (a great place to find digi stamps, especially sentiments in a circle). 

Then, I added a brad to the scallop to attach it to the cracker.  I added 1/4 inch grosgrain ribbon to tie the crackers shut. 

This is what it looks like.  I haven't added the candy but I have a tissue paper hat inside already.  I'll open one end up and add the candy in December.  I read online you can purchase the mechanism that make them "crack".  I'm off to purchase some for this year.

I hope you like my creation.  If you know where to get the internal pieces, I'd love to hear.  Thank you for looking and have a wonderful day.

Kraft Family Card

I love Kraft paper and will look for almost any excuse to use it.  But this week's challenge at Kraft Journal was tough.  It isn't that I don't love my family LOTS but I just didn't have anything that I wanted to scrap.  I started looking at quotes about families which reminded me of a favorite quote.  One of my brothers sent this quote to me when I was designing t-shirts for the family vacation (anytime you get 30+ family members together for a week on a small island, you need to keep your sense of humor close). 

Happiness is having a large, loving, caring, close-knit family... in another city. 

I was going for a grunge look so the inking is a little messy.  I cut the heart, family and city scape from kraft paper, in addition to the card base.  The words are computer generated on ivory cardstock. 

All of the cuts were made using my cricut.  I used the Plantin cart for the heart and cityscape.  The word art Family is cut from Going Places cart.  I didn't want any bling, it just wouldn't have looked right on this card but I couldn't resist putting something on, so I added some velvet rick rack to the bottom.

Bugaboo Birthday Bash - Place Holder

Here are a couple of cards I did for the Bugaboo Birthday Bash.  They turned 1 this last week.  I wanted to play along with all 5 challenges but between work and home and everything else I was only able to complete two cards, and even those were close.

The first card is for their Monday challenge, just blue and white.  In retrospect, I should have made the bird bigger.  I used a cuttlebug embossing folder (I think it is called sledding something) and I added a little snowflake brad.  The top just looked empty to me.

Here is a close-up of the bird.  I still only have my 20 pens so I'm limited in what I can do (luckily I have the blue pens so I was able to do this card.)

This card came out better than I was expecting.  It was based on a sketch (something I never use, normally) and I couldn't decide what sentiment to add until I saw one of the ones I had from My Pink Stamper.  I think this works wonderfully.  The little boy bug reminds me of the Wonderkid (part of the reason I was having trouble getting things posted this morning).

Here is a closer shot of him.

So, what do you think?  Don't you love the Bugaboo stamps?  One of the prizes they were giving away is a chance to design some stamps with the owner/designer.  I thought more little boy stamps would be fun.  Things in the line of this little guy.

OK, so I'm expecting a busy week next week but I've got a couple of project I want to show you.  I may start on one right now.

Caught a Bug Card

I made this card for Going Buggy's Party.  She is celebrating a ton of stuff, including 500,000 visits.  That is pretty amazing.  I love Enfy's work.  She does a lot of coloring with ProMarkers and she makes some incredible cards, calendars and other cool stuff.  So, when she created a challenge (which is going to be judged which makes me just too nervous to think) I wanted to do something fun and different.

The challenge was to use a bug on the project.  Well, I decided to use a few bugs.  The centipede is from Walk In My Garden.  The other two bugs are from Boys Will Be Boys.  The jar is from Doodlecharms.  I made the jar out of acetate (can you tell I'm on an acetate kick, yesterday it was acetate stencils, today it is an acetate feature.  I cut the jar 5 times.  Once for the shadow, once for the back, once for the lid, once for the top layer and once for the cut out of the bottom.  I thought it gave it a little depth to have the bottom cut out and inked.  Then, I pop dotted the jar away from the shadow. 

I tried to get a picture of the layers but it is tough to see.

I had to be very strategic in where I placed my pop dots so they wouldn't show through the jar.

These are the bugs in the jar. 

The sentiment was computer generated.  It says, "I heard you caught a bug".  Everyone in my family has a low grade cold so we are all just a little miserable but not bad enough to stop and do nothing.  It is no fun at all.

The pattern paper is DCWV from the Songbird stack.

So, what do you think?

Kraft Christmas Card Using a Stencil

This week's challenge at Bah Humbug was to use a stencil on a Christmas project.  Now, I love the idea of stencils (and masks).  In fact, I've bought 3 or 4 of Tim Holtz's masks but I've never used a single one.  Each and every one is still in its packaging waiting for me to use them.  Shh, don't tell anyone, I like to pretend that ALL of my craft supplies were NECESSARY. 

When I looked at the stencils I own, none of them really said "Christmas" to me.  So, they are still in their packaging.  However, I REALLY wanted to play along with the Bah Humbug Challenge. 

So, I thought about it and decided that I couldn't justify buying more stencils or masks.  I decided the best idea was to make my own stencil.  I pulled out a piece of acetate (mine came from a package of overhead projector pages) and placed it in my Cricut.  I cut out three snow flakes of varying size and style from the Winter Lace cart.  On a side note, I kept trying to tell myself I didn't really need this cart but when it went to $12 recently I just couldn't pass it up and I'm so glad I have it.  I've used it at least a half dozen times in just a couple of weeks.

Here are the snowflakes after I used them as a stencil.

I have cleaned them off since and I plan to put them next to the stencils I've purchased.  I used my Tombow Repositionable tape to adhere the stencils to the card.  Then I spread white A La Mode pigment ink over the stencils.  On the card above, I used Versamark and A La Mode Sparkle Embossing Powder before I started the inking.  The card below I applied the pigment ink with the stencils and then the embossing powder. 

I think I like the first card better.  What do you think?

Kraft Thank You Card with a Florish

One of my favorite things to craft with is Kraft paper.  I know it is brown and doesn't have a lot to it but it has such an organic look to it and I love to use it as a base.  I'm not crazy about white (too easy to get dirty) and cream, vanilla, beige can be tough to match.  I have some "cream" colored cardstock that has way too much yellow in it.  In fact, it probably should be called "butter".  OK, ok, enough about my love of Kraft paper and lets get on with it.

I recently found a blog and company the Kraft Journal and Kraft Outlet.  Oh boy, this could be fun.  They did a challenge this week to make something with a flourish.  At first this doesn't seem to fit together.  Florishes are fancy and elegant, Kraft paper is organic and down-to-earth.  However, I wanted to play along.  I decided to be very literal with the design. Here is my design.  I used my Cricut Expression to cut the file.  Don't blame the Cricut for the edges on the dark brown cardstock.  It actually looks much better in person.  It is funny, some things look better on the blog and others look better in person.  I get very frustrated with dark cardstock with a white core.  This is one of those.

This is a thank you card for a friend of mine.  I don't think she is reading my blog so it should be safe to show before she actually receives it.  The florish is a free file from SVGCuts.  You can find this cut (already laid out as an A2 card) here.  While you are there, I recommend looking at their other cuts. If you have SCAL and a Bug, you will love their work.  It cuts like a dream and really is quite beautiful.

I used it in my SCAL2 program.  It was designed as the top layer (the one on the right) but I wanted to add a shadow to it.  SCAL has a wonderful feature allowing you to make a shadow or a blackout shadow of anything you choose.  You can make just a tiny shadow or a much larger shadow.  Or you can make a blackout of the items.  This function is under "appearance" on the right side when you have the handles highlighted on an object.  If you haven't done anything, it will say "Normal" if you want a shadow, you have seven options on the pull down menu (pointy, rounded and straight shadow, blackout, pointy, rounded and straight shadow blackout).  Then you choose how thick to make your chosen option.

I also used SCAL2 for the lettering.  I hate my handwriting so it is unlikely you will see me printing anything.  Therefore, I love to use my Cricut to do headlines or lettering such as this card.  I have a full set of the Cri-Kits pens with the holder.  I love them.  They work so much better than the ones that come from Provo Craft (mostly because they aren't markers, they are pens) and they work better than my old method of inserting a sharpie or gel pen into a pencil holder and then trying to get the placement "just right" so I could get a nice line.  This font is part of the Lucinda package of fonts and was already loaded into my computer.

As much as I like the organic look of Kraft paper, I decided the card need a little bit of bling.  I used a combination of embellishments from Creative Charms (another favorite of mine) and Recollections, the Michael's brand.  I think they look great together.  If you haven't checked out Creative Charms, I highly recommend them.  They have a Deal of the Month and Kit of the Month.  I love them and this months is great for valentines.

I hope you liked my card. I'll try not to "talk" so much tomorrow.

Bugaboo Dottie Digi Stamp

I have another card I made with my first attempts at coloring and Digi Stamps.

This stamp is from an incredible store called Bugaboo Stamps.  I love her characters, especially some of the little boys.  She has some REALCharacters.  I love her older characters named Stella, Gus and Mildred.  I've already decided I need to buy one of the Mildred stamps to make a card for my Grandma. 

Dottie (the image in my card) was a freebie.  Isn't that nice of Bugaboo Stamps?  She does regular freebies so I recommend signing up for her emails. 

I think I did a decent job coloring Dottie given that I only have 20 pens and none of them are great for skin tones or hair.  The browns just weren't the right color.  I have one red and a slate blue.  Actually, the one color I could really work with was blue.  I'm not certain I would have made her dress blue or used that color for her boots but necessity dictated on this card.

I used a clear stamp from Inkadinkado for the sentiment.  It was a stamp I bought from Micheal's when they were on sale. 

The embossing folder is Birthday Greetings from Cuttlebug and the cardstock is Core'dinations.  I love the way the Core'dinations looks when it has been embossed. 

Thank you for checking out my card today.  I'm hoping to do a couple more challenges this week, although work and snow is really getting in the way.

First Digi Stamps

I tried so many new things today, I'm not sure I'll be able to remember it all.  First, I tried coloring stamps for the first time.  OK, that isn't technically correct.  I have been messing around with this technique for a couple of weeks but this is the first time I felt like I could use what I did.  It was the first time I ever used a digi stamp. 

This stamp is a freebie from Little Scraps of Heaven.  She has a lot of great stuff.  I must admit, part of the reason I used this image is because I have a VERY limited number of alcohol pens.  I bought a few from an art store (Dick Blick).  It is their brand and is close to ProMarkers or Copics (although the nibs are different from the Copics - from what I can tell).  So, I only have a few so it truly limited what I could color.

I embossed the card topper with one of the 5 x 7 embossing folders in the Preserves Cuttlebug Companion set.  Who would have thought it would work for a card like this but I liked the way it turned out.  I also used some Nestabilities for the first time.  I only have one set (Labels 8) and I bought them at least 6 months ago and never figured out how to use them in my Cuttlebug.  They worked like a charm. 

Here is a closer view of the embossing and the coloring.  The sentiment is computer generated and seemed to work with the little boy.  I picture him getting ready to put out the fire on a cake.

This is the other card I did with the same image.

I used another Cuttlebug folder on this one.  I can't remember the name but it is like Swiss Dots except it is little hearts. If anyone knows the name, please let me know so I can mark it.  I cut the oval and the funky shape for the sentiment with my E.  The oval is from George cart and the shape is from Locker Talk.  I liked that the digi isn't completely on the oval but moves onto the card.

Snow Angel Layout

Today's project is a layout of the Wonderkid.  We have had some unusual weather here in the Southeast part of the US.  Normally we don't get any snow but we are already on our second snowstorm of the year.  The first came on Christmas day, giving us a wonderful white Christmas.  This one is less exciting, unless you are three. Yesterday was the beginning of the storm and by morning it had stopped snowing but left us with three or four inches of snow.  The Wonderkid HAD to go out and play in it.  These photos are from that first trip out. He is lying in the middle of the street making snow angels.  (Because of the storm I haven't been able to go out and get the pictures printed so I put "place holder" pictures in for now).

 I love this cut from Winter Frolic cartridge.  The filmstrip was made by importing an SVG into inkscape, cleaning it up, making some modifications and now we have a filmstrip.  I think this cut will be featured in some more layouts.

The lettering was done with Storybook cart and Teardrop.  It looked a little plain to me so I added some bling to the Teardrop cuts.  I love to layer the letters so I used shadow cuts and shadow blackout cuts on all of the lettering.

I tried to find a paper that I liked and would coordinated with the lettering, filmstrip and cut snow angel.  Nothing in my stash worked so I used a piece of white cardstock and cut snowflakes from the Winter Lace cart.  I then added some different shades of blue under all of the cuts and stamped snowflakes using Mary Engelbreit clear stamps found in the dollar bins at Micheals (this weekend).

Christmas Card Embossed with a Holly Leaf

I have watched all of the wonderful cards created for some of the challenge blog sites and have been wanting to submit some items.  In fact, the reason I initially created this blog was so I would have a place to post my cards for the different challenges.  That was 6 months ago and while I've created a number of things, I haven't done a challenge since last July/August.  I'm hoping that will change. 

Without further ado, here is my Christmas card for today.

I wanted to try a new technique.  I embossed a piece of white cardstock using the Tim Holtz Sizzix embossing folder, Merry Christmas.  The embossed cardstock is 4 inches by 5.25 inches.  I covered my brayer with green ink, then rolled it over the embossing folder.  I must tell you, I was a bit nervous as I did this to one of my brand new embossing folders but it came off with just a baby wipe.  My embossing folder looks just fine.  I would have liked to have the ink a little darker and I'm not certain why the center section never quite inked the paper but I still like the effect.  Then, I added a bit of holly (I used the cricut cut from Joy of the Season) and I put all of it on a card topper of red with gold glitter florishes.  The card base is white card stock.  The red paper comes from Little Yellow Bicycle. 

Here is a close-up of the holly and the embossing.

I hope you like this and that it will inspire you to try something new, whether that is doing a challenge or a new technique.

Thank you for visiting my blog.  If you like what you see, please consider becoming a follower.

Black and White Sympathy Cards

I don't think it is ever easy to make sympathy cards.  However, I feel like these could go in the stash box for when I need them (except for the second one which is already on its way to some friends). I almost broke down and bought a card before I worked these two out.  The real plus to making sympathy cards, you can say what you really feel as opposed to trying to find a card that says what you want.  These worked for me, mostly because I chose the sentiments.  

OK, so here are the cards.

The paper is from Little Yellow Bicycle, Love Letters.  I got it on sale this week from their website.  It was a great price so I bought two stacks.  The scallop is from Alphalicous Cart and the circle and rectangles (card base and card topper) are from George.  I really don't know what I would do without my George cart.  It was the very first thing I ever "bought" with rewards points.  

Speaking of rewards points, I am getting a Gypsy with all of my rewards points.  I'm so excited  I have gone back and forth on whether I wanted one and thought about getting one when the price went under $100 and then this week Michaels started selling them for $50.  I'm not sure how much I'll use it, although it would be nice to set-up my E someplace that isn't immediately connected to my laptop.  If the transfer of files back and forth is as easy as they say, I think I'll be happy.  The truth is, I had 4000 rewards points sitting there and nothing to do with them.  I didn't want any of the carts they were offering and 4000 points would have gotten my 5 or 6 at least, and I really don't do "promotional" items.  If PC wants me to wear their T-shirt or hat around and advertise for them they can send it to me for free.

OK, I digress, back to the cards.  The font on the first is Calibri and on the second it is Papyrus.  The inside says, "It's so curious:  one can resist tears and 'behave' very well in the hardest hours of grief.  But then someone makes you a friendly sign behind a window, or one notices that a flower that was in bud only yesterday has suddenly blossomed, or a letter slips from a drawer... and everything collapses. - Collette"

I hope this gives you some ideas for simple sympathy cards.  Stay warm and let me know what you think.

Sympathy Card for a Little Girl

This was a tough card to make.  It is a sympathy card for a tweener whose grandmother passed away recently and unexpectedly.  I didn't like any of the traditional symbols (dove, praying hands, lamb, etc).  I know that it looks like it could be a valentines card from the front. 

Here is the inside:

I thought the images on the front worked well with the sentiment. 

I also was pleased with the way the trunk turned out.  For those of you that read about my advent calendar from Christmas Village (you can see it here if you missed it), you know I fell in love with Perfect Pearls.  Well, here they are again.  I used them to make the edges of the trunk look like they are held together with metal.


I also added a piece of patterned paper to the inside of the lid so it would look like it was lined with cloth. 

This is a picture of the trunk next to the paper I used to make the trunk.  Don't you like the difference?

Then I added small brads by punching a hole in the trunk where the cut had small marks.  I used my crop-o-dile and brads from Paper Studio. 

Sympathy cards are very tough to do. What do you think?