Birthday Card Snippet

Just a little snippet of the card I made for my granddaughter's birthday last week. I'm slow to get things on my blog, but pictures are waiting. (Hey... at least they are out of the camera and on the computer.)
I have carried my camera with me to show off my pictures. After I saw the commercial with the lady showing off her CDs in the photo album, I thought the least I could do is get them out of my camera. :-) woo-hoo!
So... a snippet it is. Made this with my Cricut Expression,Stretch Your Imagination cart. Mounted it to a top-folded card and trimmed it a little bit for the shape to match up. Added glitter to the dark pink areas and stamped her name on the cake.

Happy Friday night and happy stampin'

I'll be back!

Cricut cards

I had time to play with my Cricut Expression this weekend and made a few cards.

The ‘apple basket’ (Doodlecharms cart), with basket cut from scrapbook paper and cardstock, and ‘basket shadow’ cut in black. The apples are backed with white ‘blackout’ to show up the white highlight on the apples. I colored the leaves and stems with opaque markers so it’d show up on the dark card stock. I used pop dots behind the basket and a thinner one behind the front apples. Stamped ‘thank you’ (SU!) using a marker. I layered using red check scrapbook paper. Then I inked around all edges with a mustard color stamp pad.
‘Hello’ card was just a fluke. I cut the ‘coneflower’ (Walk in my Garden cart) a little too big, but used it anyway. Inked around the edges, used bronze stickles to highlight flower center and write the word ‘hello at the bottom. Layered flower onto scrapbook paper with a leafy design in green.



‘Sunflower’ card was the easiest one to make by using the card feature and ‘sunflower’, then used card frame (Stretch Your Imagination cart.) Naturally I inked around the card edges and inked the center of the sunflower.

‘Thinking of you’ purse card was another fluke. I was looking around on the Doodlecharms cart and thought it was a basket. It turned out to be a baby bag. I used it as a purse, cut from light and dark lavender papers. Used purple flower brads on each side of purse. I used green round brads to attach the two green background papers together. The bottom one has a torn edge that I inked. I also inked around the purse. I used a ‘thinking of you’ stamp (Penny Black.) I used pop dots to raise the purse. The purse has a green ‘shadow’ layered behind it, but you can’t see it very well.

‘Party hat’ little envelope and card. This envelope is small enough to hold a gift card. I was just playing around again, and used scrapbook paper for the envelope. I cut a ‘party hat’ (Doodlecharms) and glued it to the front. The card inside is actually two cards glued back to back. I used little pieces of scrapbook paper behind the die cut window on each side. I stamped ‘happy birthday’ (SU!) and ‘thinking of you’ (SU!) on either side.

The Christmas bouquet was made the first weekend I had my Cricut. I saw something like it online. A very big shout-out goes to Lciaccio31. She is very talented and has some of the most beautiful work I’ve ever seen. You can see her work at http://www.scrapbook.com/. I used the Christmas Noel and Joys of the Season carts to cut various images for the bouquet. I stuck a couple of poinsettia's here and there. It took a long time to make but turned out pretty good for my first Cricut project.

I hope you like my projects. Happy crafting....... see you later!

Cricut Expression for Christmas

I'm a craft nut that loves many different types of creativity. I've been painting and sewing most of my life. (And that's a long time.) I started stamping in Dec. of 1995. A friend I worked with at the time got me interested and as they say.. the rest is history.

I was hooked so bad I bought every stamp that I could get my hands on. Eventually I became a demonstrator for Stampin' Up and then later The Angel Company. Both companies have wonderful stamps and it was a lot of fun. I have a fairly large collection of stamps now after 13 years of stamping. I did sell a good bit on Ebay when I started running out of room for storage. Now I just look for new ways to store them. The advent of unmounted has helped somewhat.

I don't know what you'd call my stamping style. I drift all over the board sometimes. I like clean-cut styles and also like the antique grunge look too. I love collage and lots of layers. My favorite technique is watercolor. I use watercolor pencils by Staedler, leaving them in the metal tin and use my water brush to touch the tips of the pencils to get my color.

I'm fortunate enough to have been chosen to be a designer for Sunday International beginning Jan. '09. I've been on cloud 9 ever since the announcement. I'll start in the next week or so designing for them. It's a new journey for me and I'm very excited about it.

I have an 11-year-old granddaughter, Scarlett, (she'll be 12 Jan. 9) that has been crafting with me since she was about a year old. She used to sit in my lap and stamp. We've always had such fun when we craft together. She likes to carve her own stamps and is doing such a wonderful job at it. She amazes me with her talent. We love our crafting time together.

I got a Cricut Expression for Christmas '08 and am in love with this machine. (Is that sick?) I made some pajamas (cover) using Mary Engelbriet fabric for it the first day I got it. Scarlett and I wore out the cutting mat the first weekend we used it. (Got it two weeks before Christmas.) She made a bunch of cute signs, using the markers and then coloring in the shapes. I made a Christmas bouquet. I craft lifted the idea from the net and my hat is off to Lciaccio31 (http://www.scrapbook.com/) that made one and posted it. My co-workers just loved it.

I'm looking forward to mixing stamping with the Bug. It is the most unbelievable machine I've ever seen. I love gizmos and it's by far the coolest I have. (Well... my embroidery/sewing machine is pretty darn cool too!) So is... paper cutters, the Sizzix, Zyron machines, label makers. Geeze... can you tell I love gizmos! I used to be called Gizmo Queen by my friends.

What is one to do when one is hooked on many crafts? I guess "craft 'til you croak!"

Hey... I hope you didn't fall asleep while reading my first blog. I'll try to keep you awake in the future with some of my ideas and creations. Scarlett's too!

I look forward to hearing from fellow crafters out there.

Thanks so much for visiting... do come back.

Debbie