Happy Graduation!

Graduation season snuck up on me this year and caught me totally unprepared. Didn't realize so many of our friends and family were graduating this year till we started receiving all the announcements in the mail! It's a very good thing I had the cutfile for this card I created last year to fall back on.

Opening the card pulls out the gift card or monetary gift hidden in the pocket of the grad hat. Got the original template for this neat card shared by Alicia Coulombe at the Splitcoast Stampers Message board. Scroll down on her post for the links to the instructions and template she created. Or, if you own Design Studio and the George cartridge, I'll be more than happy to share my cutfile.

Ended up having to make six of these cards. The images of the guy and girl graduates on each hat are digistamps from InStyle Stamps, colored with copics and prismacolor pens, then cut out and adhered with foam tape. As a personal touch, I added each graduate's name to the front of the card using a Sizzlits Skittle Dee Doo Alphabet die cut strip, and tried to match the hats and tassels to each grad's school colors. Though I used a premade tassel (Jolees) from my stash for my first card, there were no more to be found at any of the lss I checked, so I was left with no choice but to try and make my own using DMC embroidery floss and some gold lame thread. They were actually pretty easy to do, and definitely more economical than purchasing the ready made ones.



Since I didn't have brads in all the matching colors for the buttons on the hats, I punched out 1/2 inch circles, used a Punch Bunch shaping tool to "cup" them and glued them onto the black brads to cover them.

"Congratulations" is a die cut from the Sizzlits Cardmaking set, and the "you did it" and star cuts on the inside sliding pocket are from the Beyond Birthdays cartridge. Then as a final touch I used Krylon gold and silver leafing pens to outline the edges of the hats.

Sweet Sixteen

My niece turned Sweet 16 this year, and for her card I finally tried my very first waterfall type card. I know these type of cards have been around for a long time, but the thought of all the pieces to cut and assemble always kept me away. As it turned out, it really wasn't too difficult to put together at all and actually, it was kinda fun, especially with all the cute critters to choose from in the Create A Critter cartridge! For my card, I used a tutorial by my super talented & creative friend, Jen Young which you can find posted on her blog, Pieces of Me.

I changed the size of the card and panels to be a little larger (3"x3") than the original just so I'd have an easier time cutting and assembling my critters. I also cut the first top panel longer than the rest so it would completely hide all the panels underneath and allow me space to add a sentiment to the front of the card.

Then by increasing the length of the sliding strip to 12"and adding an extra scoreline at 5", I was able to add an additional panel to my card.

With the additional and larger panels, the overall size of the card turned out to be 7" tall and 4-1/4" wide. To avoid having to increase the width of the card by too much, I decided to staple the holding strip onto my card instead of using brads. Then to conceal the staples, I glued on a piece of patterned paper the same size onto the holding strip.
All critter images (bear, owl, poodle, & cupcake) are from the Create A Critter cartridge. "16" was cut using the Sizzix Fun Serif number dies, and die cut alphas are Quickutz Mini Maggie. Square & scalloped square are Nestabilities, and the font for the sentiment is LD Miss Rose.
Had fun playing around with this and altering the original waterfall card. Recently, I saw another where the panels were ovals instead of squares! Gonna have to give that one a try too!

Create A Critter for Boys Day

Just recently got my Create A Critter cartridge and am lovin' it the the max! So many cutesy animals and bugs all in one cartridge. Hoping Provocraft continues to come out with more like this!
My first card with this cart was a Boys Day card created for my dd's bf. The inspiration for this card came from Jin Yong's "Sunny Days - Panda Family" card which she created and posted on her blog, Under A Cherry Tree. You'll find her cute card posted on her April 26th post. If you haven't discovered this blog yet, you must hop on over and see all her sweet and darling creations! I used the same Panda cut and changed him up just a little by bringing one of his arms up so he could hold on to his red carp kite.


The carp cut comes from another new favorite cartridge, Pagoda. I cut away part of the front of the card for the grassy background and mounted my panda (popped up with foam tape) onto it to create sort of a semi shaped card.

Super duper easy, but so cute!

For Our Special Moms

This was the card I made for our moms for Mothers Day this year. The original idea and inspiration for this came from a Hallmark Valentines Day card I purchased earlier this year. I really liked the pop up on it and decided to give it a try on Design Studio...

The original Hallmark card had a dog with outstretched arms in the center of the pop out "O", but I decided to try and keep it simple and used a heart shape instead. The base card and pop up insert were created using the George cartridge, and Opposites Attract for the alphas. What I really like about this card is that it could be quite versatile, and probably easily changed up to be a "thank YOU" or "happy birthday to YOU" card.

The roses, layered and popped with foam dots are from the Indie Arts cart. Patterned papers are from Lasting Impressions (front of card) and DCWV (inside of card).

Then for a sweet treat for the grandmas and aunties, I decided to do some chocolated dipped strawberries. Quick and easy, but so yummy!

And here's the bag the strawberries went in. Made these on a whim, very last minute so they had to be really simple. Mothers Day sentiment is from the Calligraphy Collection cartridge and strawberry from Hello Kitty Greetings.

Hope everyone had an enjoyable day celebrating and remembering how special our moms are!

Quick & Easy Gift Card Holder Purses

Been so pre-occupied with the planning of our upcoming trip that I haven't had the time to do much crafting. Decided it would be a good time to finally post these gift card holders that I made a while back, but never had the chance to post. These are really simple to do and I often fall back on this purse when I'm falling late with a gift.

The cut file for this gift card holder uses all George. For the front closure, I used a Stampin Up scallop punch and circular greeting stamp and a flower shaped rhinestone from Photocraft. To keep the purse nicely closed, magnetic strips are glued to the purse and the inside of the closure.

Here's what the card looks like on the inside with the gift card in place...

Hello Kitty is a sizzlits die...she's all decked out and ready to go shopping!

Here's another one done in shades of blue... I used glittered cardstock from the DCWV Sweet stack for these and had fun embellishing with rhinestones, flowers, ribbon and a paper lace edging cut with a Martha Stewart edge punch.

These are really kinda fun to embellish! Recently I picked some sizzlits dies of girly things like lipstick and nailpolish which I think might look cute to decorate inside these purses too.

If you'd like to give one these a try, shoot me an email and I'll send the cut file your way. BTW, next Cricut Club meeting is scheduled for the 25th!

Cards for Soldiers

For our very first group project, members of Photocraft Hawaii's Cricut Club were asked to create "Cards for Soldiers" which they shared at our last meeting in March. It was so much fun and so inspiring to see all the wonderful cards everyone created!

Here's Ev C.'s absolutely gorgeous card and matching tags which she created using the Pagoda cartridge...

Robin K. used her new Mothers Day cartridge to create SIX (!) sweet cards...



Iris T. stamped, colored and embossed these two beautiful and perfectly color coordinated cards...

Look at this pair of cuties created by Sharon F.! She used Wild Card and Sesame Street cartridges.

These two lavishly embellished and detailed beauties are Aileen H.'s creations...

These two elegant cards were created by Laura K. (left) and Roz J. (right). Laura used a paper doily to embellish the front of her card and Roz used A Childs Year cartridge for her scallop edge and embossed card.


Inside view of Laura's gatefold card...

These two super adorable cards were created by Cindy (left) and Brian (right). Cindy's cute puppy cut comes from the Paper Pups cartridge.

And Brian's multi-paged tag card features cuts from the Hello Kitty Greetings cartridge.

These two sweet cards were created by creative & talented ladies Michele C. (left) and Michele F. (right). Michele C. used the bamboo embossing folder from the Asian bundle to create the perfect backdrop for her cute panda from the Pagoda cartridge. Michele F's mouthwatering icecream cone is cut from the Indie Arts cartridge.

And finally, these are the three cards I made, very quick and easy. I used the Lyrical Letters cartridge to create all three, used Cuttlebug embossing folders to add a little texture.

Heartfelt thanks go to everyone who participated in this group project! Your talents and hardwork are truly appreciated! All your wonderful cards are being sent to our dedicated soldiers overseas so they may in turn use them to send to their loved ones.

"Hoppy" Easter!

Just barely had time to finish my Easter projects this year...my poor computer crashed and burned a couple weeks ago in the midst of my preparing for a Design Studio class and I've been frantically trying to catch up on things since then.

My first project for Easter were these little milk cartons and holders. Kind of like the Sizzix ones, but larger. The Sizzix milk cartons just seemed too small to me, so I was really happy to find these larger ones created and shared by Cricut Message board member thunderbirdlindy (Beth).

Beth's milk cartons are 5-1/2 inches tall and 2-3/8ths inches wide. Plenty large enough to hold a lot of goodies! She created two cutfiles, one for Design Studio and one for the Gypsy. Both use the George cartridge. You can find the link to Beth's files here. Please be sure to leave a message thanking her if you decide to download her files.

I decided I wanted a holder for the milk cartons so I created one in Design Studio, also using the George cartridge. The milk cartons and holders were pretty easy to cut with the Cricut and assemble. The tough part for me was the embellishing! Making and decorating my first set of four milk cartons didn't seem too bad...but I ended up making twenty-four, and that took way too much time!

Two of each set were embellished with My Melody cuts which I created with Make The Cut and images found on the internet.

And for the second two cartons in each set I used Hello Kitty Sizzlits dies. I spent way too much time on all the details on these!

For the sides of the boxes I used a round Easter Greeting $1 stamp from G Studio, Stampin' Up's scallop circle punch and a Sizzlit die for the cute chickies in the middle.

Flower, circle and leaf punches were used on the tops of the boxes and the swirly cut on the holder is from a large Sizzix die.

After spending too much time making the tiny cartons, I still had more gifts I needed to make, but with time running out, I decided to "Super-Size It". Using Beth's cut file as a guide, I created a cut file for an even larger milk carton.


Though it's difficult to tell from the photos, these cartons turned out to be 9 inches tall and 3-1/2 inches wide. Large enough to hold nearly a dozen cookies! These use two sheets of 12x12 cardstock and the 12x24 inch mat to cut.

Decorating these was a lot simpler too, since everything was a lot larger! Happy Easter is a sizzlits die, and decorated egg on the top of the boxes was created using shapes from George and Plantin Schoolbook cartridges.

Peeking Bunny was created in Make The Cut (LOVE this program!) using a digital image from Darcy Hunter's "Holiday Treasures" clip art collection.

Tulips are from the Walk in My Garden cartridge, welded in Design Studio and cut at 4-1/2 inches. Got six of these done just in time for our family Easter dinner tonight!

I was the lucky recipient of some really awesome Easter goodies from my sweet and creative friends! I received this sweet basket filled to the brim with goodies from my friend Dawne, when we got together last weekend for a Stampin Up demo at her home. The basket is from the new Easter cartridge...ooh, I love that butterfly!

This Tupperware filled with Easter surprises and this super neat swivel box is from my best shopping buddy, Kris. LOVE that box! Definitely a CASE study!


And this darling little box filled with her signature decorated cookies is from none other than my dear friend Heather. Box is a x-tra large Sizzix die....don't you just love the embossing on it!

I am blessed to have such wonderfully creative and generous friends!

Oh, oh! It's little Latte in her Easter bonnet with her new friend...wishing "ewe" a Happy Easter!