Handmade Birthday Gift

I had a really great weekend!  I got to take lots of pictures of my niece.  I miss babies being that small.  Oliver no longer will sit still for me, but here's a couple pictures of them.  I just LOVE the lens I got for my birthday.  It really does well.

Here also are what I created.  I made the box myself.  It was a 6x6x1.5 box that I filled with goodies for my sister to scrapbook with. I used a lot of blue and orange because she likes those colors.  The extra colors I added came out a little funky but it was a learning experience. :) I also made the card using the Straight From the Nest Cricut Cartridge.  

Exciting news and a Giveaway!!

I was so completely thrilled this week when I found out that I had been selected to be a Joy's Life Featured Designer!  I will soon be creating away with her new stamp set "Lots of Pun".  They are too too cute and go great with the Create a Critter cricut cartridge.   They can also be used in all kinds of other ways and my head is just spinning with ideas!  Here's what they look like:

Aren't they just adorable????  Oh I just can't wait to get my hands on them.  You can get your hands on them too!  Joy is celebrating 300,000 hits on her blog and is giving away one of these "Lots of Pun" stamp sets!  All you have to do is follow this link for the giveaway.  If you aren't one of the lucky winners, you can also purchase her stamp set by following this link.  If you go to her product site you'll also notice she's going to have a DVD on using vinyl with the Cricut.  I am SUPER ecstatic about that!!!  I can't wait to buy it! 

Later this week I'll have a cute project to post but can't do it yet in case the person that it is intended for reads this :)

Tweet Day!

I don't often enter things with my cards but I saw this sketch on Card Patterns and thought it was just so cute.

Here is my card:

Digi stamp and sentiment are from AiFactory.  White cardstock from Papertrey Ink.  All other cardstock and patterned paper from DCWV.  I colored it in with my copic markers and added some buttons and ribbon and viola! 

Birthday goodies!

Since life if finally starting to slow down a bit I actually have a chance to post about these!  My daughter wanted something special for goodies for her overnight guests and after she saw the video on http://www.mypinkstamper.com/ using the Forever Young cartridge to make a purse with cards we knew that's what we wanted to do.  Since I do not have that cartridge, I turned to my trusty Plantin Schoolbook cartridge.  I wanted to make 3x3 cards with envelopes to go in the bags so I used my Gypsy to manipulate the bag to accomodate a square card, rather than a rectangle.  I also used the Create a Critter cartridge for the cute flowers on the front.  I ran the blue cardstock through my Cuttlebug using the Swiss Dots folder and I think that helped dress it up a little.  The cards were all made basically from scraps that I had.  The stamps on them are from Clear Dollar Stamps and the sentiments were from Papertrey Ink.  It was a lot of work putting them together but I think they came out pretty cute :)

Mother's Day cards

Now that my cards have been distributed I can finally post them!

For both my mom and my mother in law I made a special card with a matching CD case that contained a CD of our family pictures.  I think they both turned out so cute!  I am especially proud of my little owl card.

Birthday Invitation

Well they are done.  I finally made time the other night and made the invitations for my daughter's birthday party which is next Friday, the 21st.  Now I need to get busy on her party favors and buying all of the other stuff we're going to need :)

This was a really simple card.  I didn't want anything complicated since I had to make several of them.  All of the cardstock is from the DCWV Flower Shower stack which I am just in love with.  I love how they all coordinate together.  I used the Create a critter cartridge (my favorite of course) for the bird.  I was lucky to find that I had some ink that actually matched the paper.  Woohoo!  I love it when things work.  And I just threw the orange ribbon in there for a bright color.  My daughter just loved them.  She couldn't hand them out fast enough and she's even more excited that we have 2 confirmed guests so far.  What was I thinking allowing a sleepover of a bunch of pre-teen girls?????  I must be out of my mind.....

But here's the card :)

Projects coming

Unfortunately my mom and MIL have not yet seen their cards so I cannot post them yet.  But tomorrow I will have my daugher's birthday invitations!!  I also realized I did not take a picture of my circle journal before I mailed it.  Ugh.....Oh well....tomorrow's another day.  And I can always take pictures of it when it comes back around to me :)

Card and Journal

Sadly, this is one of the projects that kept me busy earlier this week.  A week ago, a good friend of mine lost her mother.  While it wasn't unexpected, it is still sad and my prayers are with her and her family.  Her favorite colors are green and blue so I made her a card and a journal since she likes to write.

For the journal, it another altered composition book.  I used a cut on the Graphically Speaking cartridge to make the background.  The cardstock is from My Mind's Eye.  The oval and scallop are from Gypsy Wanderings and for her name I used the Gypsy font which I first welded  together and then welded into the oval.  For the cardstock dimensions for covering the book, please see my previous post here.  I then added the ribbon, which at midnight was very hard to tie!

I also made a card using the same colors.  For this one I decided to try something different.  It is a brayer technique I saw on Robyn's (My Pink Stamper) blog.  It was one of her older videos.  Can you believe I did not use the cricut to make this card?  I myself was shocked :)  To do this technique, I used glossy cardstock, a spectrum ink pad (these are pretty expensive but I bought mine used on ebay.  I got all 12 sets for less than $20 and they work fabulous!  Totally beat paying $10 a piece for new ones), stamps (I used a set of circles from Clear Dollar Stamps), a black inkpad (I used the Perfect Match Hybrid Pad from Papertrey Ink), a Versa Mark pad, and a brayer.  I discovered I need a better brayer.  You can see Robyn's blog for instructions....I'm in a hurry this morning because I have a little one that doesn't feel good.  So I made the background, trimmed it down chose another stamp from Stampendous for the image on the front. 

Time to go!  Happy crafting everyone!

An Altered Journal

This was the project I posted yesterday on Pam's blog TheBugBytes.  I haven't had a chance to get the cut file yet.  Been really really busy! 

I have been making a lot of cards lately and wanted to do something different. I had several composition journals sitting around and my daughter wanted to know if she could have one, so I decided to make her a journal. The cartridges I used for this project were Home Accents and Home Decor. Here's what I started with:

Paper/Cardstock (I used a combination of cardstock from My Mind's Eye, DCWV, and The Paper Studio.

a Composition Book
Scor Tape
Trimmer
Mono Adhesive
ATG Gun
(and of course my Gypsy and Cricut!)

I started by cutting down the paper I was going to use for the cover and binding. The front and back cover pieces were trimmed to 9.75" x 7" and the piece for the binding was 9.75" x 3". I put Scor Tape on the pieces. I then stuck them to the book and trimmed the corners. And this is the result:

After that it was time for the fun part! I started in my Gypsy with 12x12 mat and got a rectangle from the Plantin Schoolbook cart. This was simply so that I could see how everything out fit on my notebook. My daughter is a huge fan of butterflies so when I saw the butterfly on the Home Accents cart I knew I wanted to use that. I also liked the corner flourishes. Since she is a daydreamer, I also picked out the words "dream" and "imagine". On the Home Decor cart she wanted to use the star and also the words explore. I then separated the images so I could cut them. The main images were on one page and the shadows on another. (I was having lighting problems so one of the pictures is a screenshot from DS)

And here is what my mats looked like.

After I had cut them out, i noticed a few cutting problems. I had to go back and recut the "dream" and "imagine" shadow and image. I ended up putting in the cartridge in my cricut and cutting them so that I could adjust the speed because the paper kept tearing. But I finally got it. Then, when I finally was ready to assemble the book, I decided the butterfly was too big and that the journal was looking to cluttered. So....I ended up only using the corner flourishes, butterfly, and "dream". And here is the end result:

I was pretty happy with it and my daughter was ecstatic (which is all that really matters).


I hope you enjoyed my project! I will have it up on my blog later today along with the gypsy file. Have a good day everyone and happy crafting!

~Amanda