Home Sweet Home

Dh and I just got back from a mini vacation visiting with our daughter and son in law at their new home in Cali. For our housewarming card to them, I thought it might be fun to try a house shaped card...
Been seeing so many different styles of very cool fence, door, and window dies in all different sizes being released by many of the companies specializing in thin dies lately. And seeing all the beautiful cards and paper crafts that others have created with them really made me want to run out and buy some too! Ahhh.....but at 10 - 15- 20 dollars per die...I just couldn't justify the spend. And how often would I actually use them? Better to try and create my own using the Cricut cartridges I already own and Design Studio or search for some images to trace in Make the Cut.



I admit it did take a lot longer to do than simply buying the ready made dies, but in the end I had cutting files that can be changed, re-sized or re-designed to fit my future needs.
It's difficult to see in the photo, but the roof on the house was actually inked and pieced as three separate scalloped, overlapping layers for some dimension.
The tiny flowers and leaves along the fence and in the window box were punched from a mini Punch Bunch blossom punch and Martha Stewart small branch punch.
For the front of the house, I used MTC and the Silhouette to design and cut the door. I used my Cricut, Cricut Design Studio and the George cartridge to create the windows and windowboxes; Picturesque cartridge for the picket fence and Wild Card cartridge for the mailbox.

Really had fun with the mailbox! I made a teensy-weensie envelope to fit inside the mailbox, and couldn't resist decorating the mailbox with some personalization. Does that look familiar? Yes! It was inspired by Carl and Ellie's painted mailbox from one of my daughter's favorite Pixar animated movies, "Up".

Open the card to the inside of the house and there you'll find a little white doggie perched on a comfy couch. (LOL, this is the little doggie my son in law has been promising to get once they got a place of their own...) The sign on the wall above the couch reads "Home Sweet Home".

Couch and doggie are Cottage Cutz dies and the sign was created in Design Studio.

 



As a final step, I decided to add an easel to the back of the card so it could easily stand up for display.

I inked up a Cuttlebug embossing folder (Tiny Mosaic) to try to create the look of a front sidewalk, and placed on it a charming old Irish saying framed with cuts using the Nestabilities Label Four die.
Whew! Took me quite a while to put this one together...but I have to admit I did have fun with it!