How Many Candles?

Here's a kind of fun card I came up with for my bil's recent birthday. Though he comes across as being a quiet person, he often says the most witty and funniest things when he does speak. I wanted to make him a card that would bring a smile to his face.

For his card, I used "the Count" from the Sesame Street Friends cartridge, and cut him at 9 inches. Couldn't find candles that I liked so I created my own using the rectangle and leaf shapes from Plantin Schoolbook. The wording on the front of the card was created by welding letters from Base Camp in Design Studio. Used some old patterned paper from KI Memories for the background and layered and foam dotted all my cuts onto it.

Sentiment on the inside was computer generated using a font called "Kosal Says Hi". Hope my bil enjoyed his card as much as I had fun making it...."Muah ha ha ha ha!"

You're Still the World to Me!

Dh and I celebrated our anniversary in October but I never had a chance to post the card I created for him. Figured that since Valentines Day is just around the corner, now might be an appropriate time to post this card.

First saw this style of card created and posted by my awesomely talented blogging pal, Patti of Creations By Patti, as a very cool Halloween card together with her tutorial. Patti originally got the idea for her card from Jan Tink, who claims fame as its oringinator, and calls this her "Marvelous Magical Marquee Card". Jan also has a video tutorial for this on her blog, which is definitely a must see to fully understand how to put this card together.



So, although the front of this card looks rather plain, opening the flaps to the card...





...reveals a sweet surprise, as the bright glittered moon...


...is "magically" replaced with an image of the world!

Here's the card fully open...

Really liked how this turned out, and hope to experiment with it a bit more, to do another soon, hopefully with a larger window.

For the embellishing on this card, I used scalloped heart frames created with Design Studio, Cricut and the George cartridge. Tiny stars on the front are from a Fiskars hand punch, larger star is a Marvy punch. The crescent moon is from the George cartridge, glittered with stickles. The world die cut is from Quickutz. And the cute teddy bear couple is a scut file created in Inkscape and SCAL using a stamped image from a Darcy Hunter stamp. Font used for sentiments is DJ Fancy. As a final touch, I added a few heart shaped raindrops from Cloud Nine.

2010 Roars in Like a Tiger!

This was my first project to celebrate the New Year. Being that 2010 is the year of the Tiger, I decorated my "designer bag" with the tiger head cut from Animal Kingdom. Originally I had hoped to find a fiercer looking tiger and do a cut with SCAL, but being that I was short on time, I had to settle with this "cute" tiger instead. Used my new Pagoda cartridge (thanks, Kris!) for the bamboo cuts behind the tiger and Plantin Schoolbook with welding in Design Studio for the "Happy New Year".

Here's the back view of the bag...

Back of the bag decorated with more bamboo from the Pagoda cartridge and "2010" cut with Plantin Schoolbook. The gold prismatic paper is just wrapping paper cut to fit, and the red Asian borders on the top and bottom were cut from Japanese washi paper.

I used the tutorial created by Cambria Turnbow on her blog, "Stamp A Little Love, Baby" to make the designer bags, but altered the size to a larger size to accomadate my goodies. For my bag, I cut the bottom box piece to 4-1/2"x6-1/2" and followed the rest of her instructions.

For December Graduates

Here are a couple graduation cards I made for two very dear friends who graduated from college this month. Again, I used the style of gift card holder shared by Dawn Griffith on her video tutorial.

For my cards I used a cutfile I had created using the George cartridge and Design Studio so the base cards on these were pretty quick to do.




The first card went to a sweet young lady, so I chose to use cuts from the Hello Kitty Greetings cartridge. For the front of the card, I cut Hello Kitty at 2 inches and added the grad hat from the Locker Talk cartridge, flipped and also cut at 2 inches. The "Congratulations" is a Sizzix Sizzlet from the Cardmaking Set.


For the inside I used the Hello Kitty graduate cut at 4 inches. Made her gown in green for the University of Hawaii and tassel yellow for the Bachelor of Science graduates. Sentiment inside was computer generated, and font is Lambo Hmk. All background printed papers are from the DCWV Sweet Stack.



My second card went to a young man, also graduating from the University of Hawaii. The owl cut on the front of the card comes from the Happily Ever After cartridge, cut at 3 inches. Graduation cap is from the Locker Talk cartridge, cut at 1.5 inches.

The die cuts of the cap and diploma on the inside of the card are from Quickutz.

Congratulations and best wishes once again to our two UH graduates!

Seasons Greetings, 2009

These dainty little snowflake favor boxes were created to share at the Cricut Club meeting held in November at Photocraft Hawaii. The whole concept of this design was actually lifted from the cute little Halloween spider favor boxes shared at the previous month's meeting by my good friend, Kris. At the meeting, one of the members commented on how cute a snowflake would be on that box for Christmas. I thought it was such a great idea and decided to do a cutfile with Design Studio for it. I really liked how these turned out. I used George and the Joys of the Season cartridges to create the cutfile for these. Wasn't too sure at first what to use for the box base, so I experimented with different types of paper - vellum, Bazzill bling (blue), and clear shrink plastic. I really liked how they all turned out, still can't decide which is my favorite. Snowflakes were simply cut with white cardstock and embellished with stickles and some Robin's Nest dewdrops. Boxes were then filled with yummy Hersheys Kisses.

Here are some of the other wonderful Cricut projects that were shared by members at the last meeting. Super cute snowman gift tag was created by Michele...the snowman is from the Hello Kitty cartridge. List organizer folder was shared by Kris...the festive "Ho, ho, ho" font is from the Storybook cartridge, welded in Design Studio. And the fancy pillowbox favors/ornaments are a brainstorm of Robin...she used the Wedding Solutions cartridge to create them.

Photo Craft store owner Brian was kind enough to make individual kits with all the pieces cut from the Hello Kitty cartridge so that all of us who attended the meeting could do this cute Hello Kitty "Make and Take" Christmas card. Isn't this holiday Doodlebug patterned paper the cutest? BTW, for anyone that might be interested, the next Photocraft Cricut Club meeting is scheduled for Sunday, January 10th at 12:30 pm. It promises to be another fun afternoon of informal sharing of ideas, tips and projects.

I didn't get to do too many crafty holiday things this year because I just got started too late. But I did get to do at least one simple gift card holder for our mail carrier. The template and instructions for this are shared by Dawn Griffith of Dawn's Stamping Thoughts on a video tutorial here.

For my card, I used a cutfile I created on Design Studio using George. But if you watch Dawn's tutorial, you'll find this card is so easy that you can quickly put it together even without a cutfile. The cute little reindeer is from the Doodlecharms cartridge, and holly and berries are cut from a QuicKutz die. "Happy Holidays" is a QuicKutz SkinniMini font called Banana Split.

The only other Christmas card I made this year was the annual family Christmas card. Funny thing, when I first came up with the idea for this card this summer, I thought it would be fast and easy because I knew would be using my Cricut to cut all the pieces. I guess forgot to take into consideration how long it would actually take for my Cricut to cut all the pieces (7 for each card), as well as the time it would take to assemble my 90 cards once all the pieces were cut. Then there were the unanticipated mechanical difficulties. Halfway through the cutting phase, Design Studio and Cricut suddenly stopped communicating, and I found I had to let the machine rest a good 15 to 30 minutes between cuts. Thank goodness my dh and dd helped with the production and mailing of these.

Here's what the finished card looked like opened up...a slightly altered gatefold style card. I used the round card cut from the Wild Card cartridge to create the base, George to cut the circle inserts and photos, and Joys of the Season cartridge to cut the wreath.

Hope everyone had a wonderful time with family and friends this Christmas! Happy Holidays!

Hello Kitty Gift Card Holder

Here's a quickie birthday card created a while back for a special friend. Last minute as usual, so this had to be fast and simple. I used Chia Wald's template for her covered slider card again, this time to do a sliding card which reveals a surprise gift card when you pull up on the ribbon up top. I really enjoy the versatility of this template! Patterned papers are from DCWV's glittered Sweet Stack, font is DJ Fancy, and Hello Kitty and strawberry cuts are from the Hello Kitty Greetings cartridge.

Ship In a Bottle Card

When I first saw the ship in a bottle card, created and posted by JulieH, I was totally blown away. I thought it was the coolest looking card I'd seen in a long time, and of course I wanted to try one too. But when I went over to www.craftersdelight.co.uk to purchase the template, I was disappointed because I couldn't find it anywhere on the site. I really had my heart set on making this card for my dad...in his younger years, building ships in tiny glass bottles was a hobby of his and I have always been so amazed with his beautifully detailed creations. I thought this card would be perfect for his upcoming birthday. So after spending a long time staring at the photos Julie had posted, I decided I would try and wing it. Ha, ha...yeah, I'm nutz. Anyway, you definitely should go take a look at Julie's card, because it is truly awesome. Mine is my lame attempt to re-create it without a template. If you read Julie's post on this card you'll see that she ran into some difficulties constructing the "bottle" even with the template...so I pretty much figured I was up for quite a challenge.

The boat was easy. The Mayflower cut is from the My World cartridge, cut several times at 2-3/4" and layered. The bottle was another story all together. Everything was guess-timated based on Julie's photos. Basically it was just "cut and create as you go". For the body of the bottle, I cut a rectangular piece of clear shrink plastic with tabs which I tried to tuck into slits cut in the base card stock. The shrink plastic was way too rigid and difficult to work with. For the neck and bottom of the bottle I used pieces cut from a plastic pillowbox I had, which was a little more flexible and cooperative. A funnel shaped piece connected to a smaller rectangular piece were used to create the neck of the bottle and an circle shaped piece folded in half for the bottle bottom. I used double stick tape to connect all the pieces and a lot of twine and gold foil ribbon to hide all the seams and tape. The finished size of the card was about 8.5 x 5.5".

The end result was kind of messy looking, but okay I guess. I wish I had a cork like Julie did to cork my bottle too. I'm pretty sure I'll never be making this again unless I get ahold of the template. Either that, or maybe I will try using a plastic water bottle cut in half lengthwise next time....any brave souls up to the challenge?