A Card To Amuse Dad

Still catching up on posting birthday cards from last year. This one was made for my dad who turned 92 in November. Always a challenge to come up with guy cards...LOL, even harder to think up a card for an OLD guy! Decided to make a Magic Color Card for him, hoping that he might be amused by it.

I chose to use good ol' Mickey Mouse for his card...Mickey turned 82 years old in November, so he's nearly as old as dad...and even tho dad's memory isn't so good anymore, I figured he'd still remember Mickey Mouse, right? I used a coloring book image of Mickey found on the internet and added the "92" behind him  Found some old vintage Mickey Mouse scrapbook paper in my stash which I thought might be fun to use as a background.

Pull up on the Mouse head shaped tab at the top of the card and Mickey disappears from the window...

...and re-appears at the top of the card all colored in! Always a fun card to give, and not too hard to put together. I used the tutorial by Beate Johns found here at Splitcoast Stampers.

As it turns out, dad was more amazed to learn he was 92 years old than with the color changing card. "Wow!!! I'm 92 ?!!! Wow, I'm old, huh" Happy Birthday, Dad...we love you.

Splurge a Little...It's Your Birthday!

Happy Valentines Day! I didn't make anything for Valentines Day this year since we were away on vacation, but in the spirit of Valentines Day, this card does have a few hearts on it! This is the card I sent to my daughter for her birthday back in October, but haven't had the chance to post due to all the busyness and excitement of the holidays at that time. For her card, I went with an ice cream theme since she and I both have an insatiable love for ice cream...guess it must be in the genes. I found what I thought would be the perfect cutting file set for her card called "Cool Treats" over at Marjorie Ann Designs.

Doily and ice cream are from "Cool Treats" and "Lacey Doily" cutting files from My Scrap Chick; and "Splurge" was created in Make the Cut using Ballerina font.

Using the tutorial from Norma's "From My Craft Room" I made this into another Peek A Boo Slider Card. As the card is opened, a panel with a different image slides over the bear with the ice cream scoop...

...and here's the card fully open.

All the paper piecings on this card were cut from white cardstock and colored with Copics. Background panels were embossed using a Cuttlebug folder called Juli's Garden. Similar to the Peek A Boo Slider card I made earlier, I added a spine to this card to try to prevent the paper pieced images from getting snagged as it slides open. You can find the details here. Having much fun learning to make this type of slider card! Hope to do more soon!

Swinging In with the Year of the Monkey

Happy Chinese New Year! Today marks the beginning of the Year of the Monkey so I made batches of Oriental Crispex snacks and put them in the same take out boxes I we used for giving our Chex mix during Christmas.

This time I tagged the boxes with a Year of the Monkey tag. I used the "Gone Bananas" cutting file from Marjorie Ann Designs for my monkey and welded together cherry blossoms from Cricut "Pagoda" cartridge to create the border. The numbers for "2016" is Arial font rendered into a cutting file with Make the Cut (MTC) program. Tag was cut using a metal die from Lawn Fawn's "Stitched Circle Tag" set. I really like that it doesn't take much to make these take out boxes to look festive enough for holiday giving...just some ribbon and a cute tag!

Also made a bunch of these refrigerator magnet calendars to go along with the treats. Actually, this is the project I had originally created for our annual Cricut Club share project. Made 30 of these calendars for our Cricut Club project, another dozen donated to mom's Senior Citizen Club craft fair, and 30 more for giving to friends and family at New Years.

I used a combination of Arial and Bergamo fonts to do the "2016", using MTC to create a cut file and shadows for it. The red base background layer was created by welding a shadow of the "2016" to a rectangle shape. Adorable little hanging monkey is from the Cricut "Life's A Party" cartridge. Found a traceable image of the kanji character "saru" or "monkey" on the web and had MTC create a cut file for that as well. Added that to a small circle as a medallion for the monkey to hold.

Then for a bit of whimsy, I attached the monkey to the calendar using a small brad. allowing him to swing from side to side. Fun!

Speaking of fun...

...couldn't go without sharing these two AMAZING New Years goodies from my super wonderful and talented crafty friends, Kris and Lorna!

No question about it, Lorna once again got squeals of delight from all of us when she brought these fabulous daruma treat holders to our workplace. I thought the colors and details on her Daruma doll face and body were really well done! I love how she added the kanji character for "kotobuki" which is the symbol for "celebration, long life, happiness" to her daruma and the branch of glittery sakura blossoms. Hard to see in the photos but even the holder itself has been embossed with an Asian wave pattern. Inside, a yummilicious rice cracker!

And how about this super ADORABLE pillow box holder filled with sweet treats shared by Kris at our last Cricut Club meeting?  Kris' little monkey is a cutting file from Miss Kate's Cuttables....isn't he the cutest thing ever? Love how she embossed the red belly band with the weave embossing folder from Cuttlebug's Asian bundle for a perfect festive touch!

Okay! Looks like even our little Latte is dressed and ready to celebrate the start of a brand New Year! Gung Hay Fat Choy! Best wishes and congratulations to all for a wonderful prosperous New Year!