Stretch Your Imagination

Here's a little baby boy card I made for my best friend's beautiful baby boy who arrived the other day.  I got to have a cuddle of the gorgeous little boy and wow did I forget how little babies are when they are newborn!

I used my 'Stretch your imagination' cartridge to make the card.  I have mentioned before that it is not really a favourite cartridge of mine, but after getting out the booklet and having a good look through, I found quite a few things that I thought I could use.  I hadn't really used the 'card feature' before and there are quite a lot of cute little images for this feature.

I used the 'card' feature on the cartridge which cuts out the whole card and the pram image.  It then cuts out the scalloped piece too, which makes for a super quick and easy card!  I ran the scalloped piece through my cuttlebug with the 'swiss dots' folder and then I just added some gorgeous little footprint ribbon and a bow.  I've had the ribbon in my stash for over five years and it was one of those things that I keep in my stash because I just love it so much but didn't want to waste it! 

I think I will make a heap of these just to have hanging around, maybe in pinks and yellows as well...

Thanks for looking!

Dragonfly card

Don't you just love this cute little 'wink face'!  It is my favourite Peachy Keen face.  It's from the Everyday Faces set and I use them all the time. 

Please excuse the dreadful lighting in these photos - it's almost dark here and I only have a couple of hours to go before the Paper Playtime challenge ends...so I found the room with the most light (our ensuite), turned on all the lights, tried to get my shadow out of the photo and then clicked and hoped for the best!

This little card was made for two challenges:

Paper Playtime:  For challenge #7 use any type of DIE CUT and/or DIE CUTTING machine and make a BUG CARD!  I chose to use the dragonfly from the Create a critter cartridge.  I hope that dragonflies are considered bugs!  I did have a look at the other entries and there were lots of bees, snails and dragonflies so I think I'm right! 

Peachy Keen Stamps:  Anything goes challenge - must use Peachy Keen stamps.  I used my peachy face for the dragonfly - you know those faces can be added to just about anything!  I first bought them to use exclusively with my Paper Doll Dressup and Everyday Paper doll cartridges, but now I'm enjoying using them for all sorts of things such as faces for flowers, suns, critters...the list is endless!  I've seen them used on cakes, couches, carrots, strawberries...they make the images come to life and look so cute.

I used the Stretch Your Imagination cartridge to cut out the card base in dark blue and also to cut out the green scallop frame.  This cartridge continues to surprise me.  I got it for free when I bought my cricut expression and to be honest, I had a quick flip through the booklet and wasn't overly impressed or excited by many of the images.  But there are a few little surprises in there and I am so glad that I had another look at it and found the card bases and frames - I think I'll be using these a lot more now.

I cut the card at 4 inches and the scalloped frame at 3 1/4 inches.  The dragonfly was 2 3/4 inches.  Patterned papers are from a Jillibean Soup collection - I think it's called Owl Soup.  I wanted the sentiment to say, "Fluttering by to say hi" but given my space restrictions, I settled for the much shorter "hello" sentiment.

Thanks for looking!

Happy Brrrthday

Boy was I stumped with the Birthday Sundaes challenge this week!  I spent most of the week just trying to think up an idea and then (gasp!) thought that I didn't have any snowman images on my cricut cartridges!  Luckily I found one on Stretch your imagination, and even though I don't particularly like this snowman, he was my only option.

This was the challenge at Birthday Sundaes:  

This week's challenge is to create a birthday card using the following picture as inspiration. We've added a new twist to our inspiration pictures this term and will require one visible element from the picture. So your birthday cards must have a SNOWMAN on it. 

I used the sketch from CPS for the layout of my card. 
 

I had to really scrounge through my papers to find anything 'cold' looking for my card.  I am used to using bright colours and as we don't get any snow here at all I pretty much had nothing 'snowy' to use. I ended up using Kaisercraft 'Konstruct' papers (the ones that didn't have construction images on them).

Thanks for looking!

Birthday Sundaes challenge #35

The challenge this week at Birthday Sundaes is:

Challenge #35 Include a tree on your birthday card and a birthday sentiment.

This one sure required a bit of thought!

I thought I'd make a sidestep card after seeing some fabulous Halloween projects on Amy's blog, Amy's Crafting.  She made a few sidestep cards with a Halloween theme and they are just awesome!  You can see her different projects here, here, here and here!  Her cards were my inspiration when making this birthday card.  She pointed me in the direction of some great instructions for sidestep cards, which not only had easy step by step instructions, but also had photos for each step of the process to assist those of us who require something visual as well!  Thanks Amy!

I love the saying on my card, 'Growing up is for trees - stay young and have fun!'  Perfect for this birthday card.  I found the quote here.

Sidestep cards are fun to look at and quite easy to make.  They are lots of fun to embellish!  Here are some pictures to show some different angles of the card, so you can see how it looks and get an idea of how it is made:

This side view shows the ribbon that I attached to hold the card together - once you embellish a sidestep card they get pretty heavy and your card tends to do the splits and kind of flop down flat instead of standing up!  So I attached this ribbon to the inside to hold the card in position (it can't be seen from the front view).  This was a tip that was a part of the instructions (not something intelligent that I designed and thought of myself!)

Anyway, I love how this card turned out and I doubt that I would ever have thought to do a birthday card with a tree on it, so thanks for the great challenge Birthday Sundaes!  It's always good to be stretched with your creativity and think a bit differently to the way you usually do.  It also made me use a cartridge that I haven't touched in a while so that was a bonus too!

The tree was cut with Stretch Your Imagination cartridge.
The grass was cut from Plantin Schoolbook cartridge.
The bird is from Create a Critter (cut at 1 inch).
'Happy Birthday' sentiment is from Kaisercraft.
Stamped apple faces are Peachy Keen face stamps - everyday face assortment (never thought I'd ever need to use the tiny, tiny faces but now I have)!

On a different note, I was so thrilled this morning to look at the Card Patterns website and find my Reindeer card was chosen as one of their Super 6!!!  I could have cried I was so excited!  I loved that sketch and I think it's one that I'll use again.   Check out their website, the winning card by Fran is absolutely stunning.

Thanks for looking!

Black and White Wedding Card

This is a wedding card that I made using the CPS#238 sketch for the week - I'm really happy with how it turned out.  I love black and white, it's such an elegant combination.  I was going to add just a touch of another colour but I decided to stick to just black and white. 
The bride and groom are from the Stretch Your Imagination cartridge and the flourish is as well.  I never really liked this cartridge but the more I look at it the more potential I see in it!
Here is the sketch that I used:

This is my card:

I love these papers - three are from the Crate Paper 'Portrait' collection and another one is from the lilybee design 'This and That' collection.   I'm also really happy with how the lace on the bride's dress turned out.  Now I just need a friend to get married!
Thanks for looking!