Fall Favorites SOTM Blog Hop

Welcome to our September Stamp of the Month Blog Hop! This month Close to My Heart is offering a stamp set called "Fall Favorites". This set can be purchased exclusively through a Close to My Heart Independent Consultant for only $5 with a qualifying purchase of $50.

 

In this hop, you will see projects featuring this fun stamp set from many talented crafty ladies! We hope you enjoy our blog hop today!

If you have just hopped onto my blog, please start at the beginning at Lucy's blog: Love 2 Create .   If you just came from Lucy's blog then you are on the right track. :)


My Project Details:

My mother-in-law sent a wonderful wiper card with Tinkerbell on it for my daughters 1st birthday, so when I sat down with this stamp set I decided I really wanted to try making a wiper card myself. :)

Now the big challenge I had was figuring out measurements since every tutorial I could find when I did a google search brought up measurements for making an A2 (4.25 x 5.5) card landscape and I needed it to be portrait for this card and when I kept the sides the same as the tutorials said it looked very strange and awkward so I had to play with this a lot. The sentiment I wanted to use also wouldn't fit on the wiper part so I changed the dimensions of that too and then inked part of my sentiment and stamped it and then inked the last part of my sentiment and stamped it below that.

The ink I used for the sentiment is Barn Red which coordinates perfectly with the Dakota B&T I used . I used one of the new colours "Cashmere"to stamp the scarecrow image and the pumpkin image on the wiper and then I wanted to colour it with my watercolour pencils but could not for the life of me find them in my messy craft area so I used chalks instead.

I cut the frames to make the opening reveling the card underneath where I stamped my image from the Art Philosophy cartridge in Cricut Craft Room (of course) but you could just use center point on your machine and cut the label shape first and then the rectangle using the same center point coordinates. The letters are cut out of the piece I cut out from the middle of the frame using the Artiste cartridge.

The card doesn't really "open" but when you pull the card front to the right and the back piece to the left the wiper piece pops up from the middle.

Here's how it looks as you "open" it.. (closed, half way and all the way).

Isn't the main image stamp just too cute?! I love that this set has a single bird, and the pumpkins as a separate image as well as some great fall words and sentiment. Love it!! You can get this fantastic stamp set "Fall Favourites" for just $5 with a $50 order plus you would also qualify to get the double stamp set "It's Your Day" for National Stamping Month (which you can see pictures of and a great blog hop full of ideas for in my previous post here) for $5... that is an absolutely incredible deal! :)
.



Your next stop on the Fall Favorites Stamp Set Blog Hop is  Shelly Mendenhall of Inky Wheeler's Artsy Musings




Here is a complete list of the blog hop in case you get lost along the way:

1. Lucy :  Love 2 Create You came from here
2. Darla : Caution: Crafting is Contagious! You are here
3. Shelly Mendenhall : Inky Wheeler's Artsy Musings  Go here next
4. Eva Friesen : For The Love Of Creating
5. Judith Ashmore : My Blog Adventure
6. Stephanie : The Quilted Scrapper
7. Tina Gale : My Scrappy Ideas
8. Maria Woodworth : Maria's Paper Craft Place
9. Jennifer Kramer : 4 Hearts Scrapbooking
10. Carolyn : Nuts 4 Scrappin'
11. Madeline Morcelo : Inking From The Heart
12. Theodora : Celebrate Crafts
13. Laura W. :  Scrappinsweetie's Escape
14. Michelle Stewart : My Creations With Michelle

PRODUCTS USED:

InLinkz.com

August Artiste Blog Hop

Welcome to our August ARTISTE Blog Hop! Each month we will showcase a feature of the amazing ARTISTE Cricut cartridge which can be purchased exclusively through a Close to My Heart Independent Consultant (if you don't have one I'd love to help you out).

We're so excited to be doing this hop and we have a fabulous lineup with some very talented ladies. There will be lots of fun projects AND some blog candy!!!

This month we will be showcasing a different page from the Artiste cartridge! Did you know there are 700 images on this cartridge?? That's right -- 700!!!

If you just happened to come to this blog, you should start at the beginning at Lucy's blog - http://www.love2createitall.com.

If you want to take a look at the booklets that come with the Artiste cartridge here's the links for you:

Artiste handbook
Assembly Instructions

Well, we've been on vacation for the last 3 weeks (tomorrow is our last day, back to normal on Monday). We have done a lot of travelling and camping during our vacation which meant a very BORED 3 year old sat in the backseat prompting me to come up with more fun stuff for him to do while buckled in.

Besides the great mini-album cuts on the Artiste Cartridge and LOTS of other stuff there are a few puzzle cuts on there which of course got me wondering what I could make with that for my kids that wouldn't get destroyed...

Introducing my magnetic puzzles stored in a tin....

I had some metal containers I had picked up for 99 cents at a liquidation place as well as some magnetic sheets that have adhesive on top of them from the dollar store.

I printed off photos of my kids and stuck them to the magnetic sheets, cut it using my deep cut blade and the puzzle image on page 57 of the Artiste Cartridge (resized using Cricut Craft Room so I could pull it out of proportion and make it fit the picture better) and ta-da!!

You will see that the edges get a bit worn after handled by the kids so I might laminate the top next time... but other than that I am very happy with this project.

Thank you CTMH and my new Artiste cartridge for saving my sanity!!!!

The best part is that it stores in the tin and then you can open the tin up and use the outside of it to assemble the puzzle. I love toys that stay together.

I also posted a project using one of the 3D purses from the cartridge earlier this month here.

Now make sure you head over to Julia's Blog and see the eye candy she has for you!

Here is the list of all the talented consultants who are participating in this months blog hop:

1. Lucy ~ http://www.love2createitall.com
2. Darla ~ http://www.stampingunderdoctorsorders.blogspot.com <--- You are here
3. Julia http://youcancreatectmh.blogspot.com/
4. Theo www.celebratecrafts.com
5. Tina Gale http://tiggersscrapplace.blogspot.com
6. Stephanie http://www.quiltedscrapper.blogspot.com
7. Mandy http://www.mandydesigns.blogspot.com
8. Joanne http://josiesjoy.blogspot.com
9. Laura W http://scrappinsweetiesescape.blogspot.com/
10. Rebecca ~ http://blog.scrapprincess.com/
11. Maria Woodworth - http://mariawoodworth.blogspot.com
12. Judith Ashmore- www.grammiejudys.blogspot.com
13. Lisa Woodward~http://mycraftyspaces.blogspot.com
14. Laura Charko - http://koladesigns.wordpress.com/
15. Jennifer Kramer- http://4heartsscrapbooking.blogspot.com/
16. Eva Friesen ~ http://loveofcreating.blogspot.com/

Thanks so much for stopping by and hopping with us - we hope you LOVE all the projects we created!

July Art Philosophy Blog Hop

Welcome to our July Art Philosophy Blog Hop! Each month we will showcase a feature of the amazing Art Philosophy Cricut cartridge which can be purchased exclusively through a Close to My Heart Independent Consultant.
We're so excited to be doing this hop and we have a fabulous lineup with some very talented ladies. There will be lots of fun projects AND some blog candy!!!

Lucy Kelleher, our hostess and fellow CTMH Consultant, will be giving away a stamp set! She is giving away a prior Stamp of the Month set that can no longer be purchased called "You Are ...". (This stamp set has a $17.95 retail value). You will find a picture of the stamp set on her blog. To enter to win, you will need to leave a comment on her blog and on every stop of the blog hop. If you also become a follower of Lucy's blog, she will give you another entry .

This month we will be showcasing the "Card" feature of the cartridge. Did you know there are 100 different card shapes you can make with this cartridge? You heard me correctly -- 100!!! Now we won't be able to show you ALL 100 card options, but we will show you as many as we can.

If you just happened to come to this blog, you should start at the beginning at Lucy's blog - http://www.love2createitall.com/.

My project today uses the card feature key on page 47 (without the shift key) which is the 3rd row down 7th key over (going left to right) of the white image keys on your keypad.

First.. a close up of the glittery goodness!! :)

Here's what the whole card looks like from the front:

Now.. just to show you that this really was the card shape which has a cutout window in the middle of the front panel and not just a plain card with this stuck on it (and because I thought the picture looked really neat)... here's a shot of my card open in front of a window so you can see that you can see through it. :)

Here's how I achieved this look.
First I made my file in Cricut Craft Room so all the pieces would line up and cut in the correct spot as well as I was able to play with the colours to decide which ones I wanted to use.

Next I loaded my silver paper (the paper I used was Reflections cardstock from Michaels) and cut the card shape @ 5.5" using CCR. Then I took a piece of acetate which I had applied a piece of Scortape to first and with the mat still loaded in the machine i carefully lifted the cut card shape up on the side with the cutout and ligned up my piece of acetate with the acetate side on the mat and the tape backing facing up so that it would cut the pieces in middle of my acetate 9yes I could have just cut a bigger piece and put t in approximately the right spot since CCR shows you where on the mat it will cut but this way I knew exactly how much edge I would have on the acetate around my shape). I cut all oth the layers for the ornament and the label shape like the opening in the card front with my setting on 4 speed, 4 pressure, 4 blade depth and a mulitcut of 2 since the kind I used was BCT tape which has a very thick backing on the tape.

Now I had my card shape cut from the silver card and a solid square of acetate with adhesive on it and all the pieces cut out of the tape backing.

I removed the tape backing on the outer edge leaving all of the part you can see through the window cut opening of the card covered. and lined it up with my card from behind and stuck it on. now i just removed one section of backing at a time and applied my glitter to the exposed adhesive rubbing it on really well with my fingers and then using a shaving brush to brush away all the excess glitter.

I used my Say it in Style stamps (which is no longer available as of August 1 so make sure you order ASAP if you want this amazing set of sentiments) to stamp the sentiment in versamark ink and heat emboss with red tinsel embossing powder.

The next stop on your blog hop fun is Gloria Shirr so hop on over and see what wonderful project she has to share with you today! :)


Here is the list of all the talented consultants who are participating in this months blog hop:

1. Lucy ~ Love2Create
2. Darla ~ Caution: Crafting is Contagious!
3. Gloria Shirr - Purpleglo Creations
4. Laura Wolff- Scrappinsweetie's Escape
5. Eva-For the Love of Creating
6. Danielle ~ Little Bit of Scrap
7. Connie ~ Connie's Crafty Closet
8. Wendy ~ My Scrapbooking Blog
9. Joanne - Josie's Joy
10. Laura Charko - Koala Designs
11. Carolyn Heniges - Nuts 4 Scrappin'
12. Kindred Hearts (Penny) - It Makes Total Cents
13. Stephanie Feist- The Quilted Scrapper
14. Julia Hammond You Can Create

Thanks so much for stopping by and hopping with us - we hope you LOVE all the projects we created!

Sketch Challenge

I took part of a sketch challenge today with MCCR.

Today's sketch is:                                                    

My take on it is:

I created the whole thing in Cricut Craft Room first of course. I just love how I can plan out my whole card colours and all without using any paper or even taking any out. Here's a screen shot of it all laid out:

The ducks and the onesie are using the free digital cartridge that you can use with CCR called Craft Room Basics and are 1" high.


The card base is 5.5" high and it, the layer and label shape are all from the Art Philosophy cartridge from CTMH.

The onesie and the label shape are both on foam tape for some added dimension

The sentiment stamp as well as all the papers (Lucy B&T, Creme Brulee and Colonial White) are from the Lucy Workshop On The Go. I used cotton candy for my sentiment and sponged some creme brulee on the card base and label shape backing as well just to take the starkness away from it.

Cricut Craft Room Cartridge Font Tutorial

Today I have a video tutorial on how to use fonts in the Cricut Craft Room. I will show you 2 different ways to use the fonts from your cartridges as well as how to join the individual letters into words and getting the fonts shadow lined up and sized correctly.