Calendar

I have to admit this is a bit of a departure from my norm in the color department. I usually design with more subdued colors. I guess it must be the gloomy winter weather that made me want to use bright and cheerful papers for this project. This is a 6" x 6" easel card with a white cardstock base. My designer papers are from DCWV The Whimsy Stack. My last post was a New Year's card made from the same paper. I thought it would be nice to give as a set for a little New Year's gift. Everyone needs a calendar, right! I will enter this in several challenges:

• Allsorts (http://allsortschallenge.blogspot.com/)- Anything but a card
• Creative Card Crew (http://creativecardcrew.blogspot.com/)- Anything goes
• Saturday Challenge (http://thesecretcraftersaturdaychallenge.blogspot.com/) -Last minute gift
• Crafty Creations (http://craftycreationschallenges.blogspot.com/) -Anything goes

I gave these calendars to my hairdresser and my massage therapist. They were a big hit.

My bird on this calendar is cut from Cricut's Storybook cartridge. I cut him at 2 1/2" from the same blue print paper the calendar is sitting on. I shadowed it with a bright yellow. I embellished the bird with some pearls from Creative Cafe. I used a little lace and ribbon to dress her neck up a little. I doodled a few dots around the bird with a Sakura 3-D glaze pen. I attached it off the edge a little and used foam dots. For the inside of the card with the calendar I used the blue print paper and edged it with an orange cardstock punched with a Fiskars punch. I cut a flower and a little paisley design from the front design paper to place on each side of the calendar and popped them with foam dots. Now, don't you think this would make you feel cheery if it was sitting on your desk?

Cricut Cardz Challenge #6

Wow! I can't believe this year is at it's end. This year was much better than the last (when I was diagnosed with breast cancer). My husband and I have our retirements to celebrate and the birth of grandchild number eight. I can't believe we have not worked in six months. Boy, that sure went by fast. So far, retirement is the best thing ever. I love not having to get up at 5:30 am with the alarm clock blaring. It is so odd though that every day is the same. I never know what day it is. It's like everyday is the weekend. I wanted my card to be bright and cheerful so I used bright colors and lots of sparkle. My print papers are DCWV The Whimsy Stack. I really mixed it up with the Cricut cartridges for this card. "Celebrate" is from Gypsy Wanderings, "It's" is from New Arrival, "New Year's Day" is from Designer's Calendar, and my party horn is from Sweet Treats. I designed this card with my Cricut Gypsy. My favorite thing about my Gypsy (besides it's portability) is being able to get images from different cartridges to be combined on one mat without having to change out the cartridges in the machine. Of course, you can do that with Design Studio also, but it isn't portable. It is so much more convenient. I still refer to my cartridge booklets though. I used Stickles, MS glitter pens and rhinestones for embellishment.

PapertakeWeekly/CreativeCardCrew/PinkElephant

I'm so excited that I actually did it. I handmade Christmas cards for my entire family. They're all addressed and getting mailed in the morning. So now I have time to play. I chose Papertake Weekly's (http://papertakeweekly.blogspot.com/) sketch, Creative Card Crew's challenge
http://creativecardcrew.blogspot.com/ for anything goes, and The Pink Elephant's challenge
http://thepinkelephantchallenge.blogspot.com/ for a Christmas Card. I used a 6 1/2" x 5" white base card. I went around the edge with a gold paint pen then placed my patterned paper from Ta Da Creative Studios on top. I stamped on white cardstock embossed with my Cuttlebug using a cute little bird from an Inkadinkado Holiday Stamp set called Pattern Play. The sentiment also came from this set. I used gold ink to stamp. I embellished with lace and ran a gold cord through it for sparkle and a bow. That's it for this card. Quick and easy. I'll use this card in case I get a stray Christmas card in the mail from someone I forgot on my list. I accidently deleted my mailing label addresses before I got them printed. Don't even ask how I stupidly managed that. So I had to start from scratch and I'm terrified I left someone out. I had to use my old address book. Some of the addresses in there are from people who, unfortunately, are deceased and some from people who aren't married anymore. I guess I should have backed them up on my new little portable hard drive. I'll have to do that now before I forget.

Bitten By the Bug Winter Woodlands Branch

I'm just absolutely in love with SEI WinterSong double-sided papers. This blue, white and red has become my favorite color combo for Christmas cards this year. I new that bird in the red circle would be perfect to go with this branch cut from Winter Woodlands. I cut my branch at 2" from silver cardstock and shadowed with white cardstock. I used Frosted Lace Stickles down the center of the branch and Fired Brick Stickles for the berries. I placed my branch on the blue side of this double-sided paper, the red is the back side. I edge trimmed my blue piece with a Fiskars punch. I accented the small holes in the decorative edge border with pearls. I scattered a few red rhinestones for accent on this blue piece, also.

My sentiment is a digital stamp from The Cutting Cafe's Christmas Gift Tag set. I cut one of the circles out from the DP to put in the middle of the Peace on Earth sentiment. Then I cut it out and placed it onto a metal tag from my stash. I embellished with a red checked bow.

DelightfulSketches/CreativeCardCrew/Allsorts/365

Do you ever forget about cute digital stamps you have? That's what happened with poor Angel Maggie here. So now I've decided that I need to come up with a better system to catalogue my digital images. Sounds like a job for after Christmas. I used Delightful Sketches for my sketch for this card. It has swirls and pearls for the Allsorts challenge and silver for Creative Card Crews challenge. 365 challenge for Thursday asked for "peace" on a card.

I colored Angel Maggie with my Copics and a MS silver glitter pen. Then I added MS Sterling glitter to her wings for a little extra sparkle. I cut my oval with my Cricut machine and then embossed it with Cuttlebug's Divine Swirls embossing folder. Then I highlighted the swirls and went around the edge with the MS silver glitter pen. My sentiment is a rub-on from K&Company. I added pearls in each corner of the sentiment. I embellished with narrow white ribbon and on the bow I added a piece of silver cord for a little added bling.

FridaySketchers/PaperCutz/OCC/SCSC/Crazy4Challenges/CupcakeChallenge

'Tis the Season To Be Jolly....Fa La La La La....What's more jolly than an adorable snowman.
The challenges:

• Friday Sketchers-Sketch
• Paper Cutz-Snowman/Snowflake
• Our Creative Corner-Christmas
• Saturday Challenge-Snow or related to snow
• Cupcake Challenge-Song
• Crazy 4 Challenges-Snowmen or Snowflakes

I finally got to play with my new Cricut Snow Friends cartridge. This is my favorite shaped snowman. I cut him at 4" and he sits on a background of green checks for my 5" square card. I did use foam dots to pop him up a little. I thought he'd look cute with polka-dot clothes. I used black rhinestones for his eyes, but his nose and mouth are cut from the cartridge. I love how each snowman on this cartridge has their layers of clothing and such going down in a row beneath them. Makes it easy to see what goes on each one. Just a simple wide red ribbon and the cool felt snowflakes on a strand. I found this roll of felt snowflakes in the Christmas wrap section at Target. I usually hit this area the day after Christmas for the half off sales, but this was unusual and I didn't think it would be around for long. I'm not sure who made the 'tis the season stamp. For some reason my packaging is missing from this stamp set.

MojoMonday/CharismaCards/Caardvarks/PinkEle/Whimsie Doodles

Mojo Monday had a great sketch this week that I used for this card. I'll also be entering this one in the following challenges:

• Whimsie Doodle-image


• Charisma Cards-Red, Green and White


• Caardvarks-Digital image


• Pink Elephant-Favorite Christmas colors

My printed papers are Me & My Big Ideas, last year's Christmas stack. Tell me this gingerbread angel is not the cutest little thing! She is a Whimsie Doodle digital image. I colored her with my Copics. For her "icing" trim I used a Sakura 3-D glaze pen. I used a MS glitter pen in gold to sparkle up her halo and MS glitter for her wings. I added a couple clear rhinestones on the ornament she's holding. A couple of red and green rhinestones for some bling on the printed paper. I had this cute little gingerbread charm so I added it to the simple red ribbon bow.

One Stop/Spoonful of Sugar/Papertake/Creative Inspiration

The challenges:

One Stop Craft Challenge-Fancy Folds
A Spoonful of Sugar-Monochromatic
Papertake Weekly-No Red or Green
Creative Inspiration-Non-traditional colors

I love when I can combine challenges. This card covers all the above. This is my first angle fold card and I quite enjoy how it came together. It doesn't look like it would be simple but it was. I followed a tutorial on Christmas With The Cricut, which was very easy to understand. My print paper is from Ta Da Creative Studios. It's double sided so the back of the card looks nice. I also used light gray, dark grey and white cardstock. My inside sentiment is from The Cutting Cafe's Christmas Inside Greetings set.
The Christmas tree was cut from Cricut's Joys of the Season cartridge. I embellished with a crystal star at the top. My white cardstock is embossed with a Quick Kutz embossing folder. The card is tied shut with white organdy ribbon.

Christmas Bow Gift Set/Three Clovers/ Saturday Challenge

I made this set of gift bows with matching tags for my very special Aunt. Every summer I travel to her house for a week of scrapping, Cricuting, and craft supply shopping. We have the best time together and always share great ideas for fabulous creations. Going to her house is like going to a great rubber stamp store. She used to own a craft shop and has boxes and boxes of rubber stamps. Anyway, I knew she would really enjoy this. The set has four bows and tags and stores in an empty computer disc container. My husband had put some in our recycling bin and I took them out because I knew I could find something to do with them. This week's challenge at Three Clovers was for a gift item and Saturday challenge this week is for a matching set. I think this gift set qualifies for both challenges.

Each bow uses a 7" x 12" piece of paper. The bows look best if you make them with double-sided cardstock. I've made so many Christmas cards this year my supply of double-sided Christmas paper has dwindled to almost nothing. So I used light colored papers so the white side wouldn't look too bad. To make each bow you cut your 7" wide paper into seven 1" strips. Then you trim them to get four 6" pcs., four 5 1/2" pcs. and four 5" pieces. The last strip is used for the center of the bow and you need a 4" pc. for that. The tags were cut from the Joys of the Season cartridge's tag feature. I cut them at 4" then decorated with leftover scraps from the bows. Below is a picture of the decorated top of the container. The scalloped circle is cut from Cricut's Mini Monogram cartridge. I put a print paper circle on top of it then added a circle of white with my sentiment which came from The Cutting Cafe's (http://www.thecuttingcafe.typepad.com/) Christmas Inside Greetings set. The holly came from the Winter Woodland cartridge. I used 3-D Glaze pens from Sakura to doodle the edge of the sentiment circle, the holly and the edges of the tags. I embellished the container with a simple red checked bow.

Triangle Santa Ornament

This little guy was super quick and easy. The hardest part was finding a cartridge with the right shape triangle. I finally settled on using the Christmas Cheer cartridge (page 91) Christmas tree. I used the shadow cut with the shift key pressed, cut at 5 1/4" in red cardstock. Then I used my Plantin' Schoolbook cartridge for the rest of his features. His face is a circle cut at 2", his nose is a circle cut at 1/2". I also used the circle cut for his beard (2 1/4" in white cardstock). You need to trim this circle a little to make it straight where it attaches to the face piece. One more circle from black cardstock cut at 1" for his shoes (then cut it in half). The "fur" trim is cut from white cardstock using the rectangle cut from Plantin' Schoolbook. The hat trim is the rectangle cut at 2 1/2" with the italic key on. For the trim at the bottom I again used the italic key and cut at 4 1/4". I found this was a little too wide for the bottom trim so I cut the rectangle in half.

Then it was time to assemble. I'm going to help you out so you can learn from my mistake. I wanted to use Fun Flock on the white "fur" trim pieces and beard. Before you flock, decide where you want your shoes to go and put the adhesive down first. I used foam dots, but do not remove the covering from the side facing up. If you don't do this, you can't get your shoes to stick to the Fun Flock. I wanted my shoes to sparkle so I covered them with MS glitter in Onyx. You'll want to do this before you attach them to the bottom flocked piece. Otherwise, you'll end up with black glitter in the fur trim. Just so you know I didn't screw up on both of these steps. Just the first one, trying to get my shoes to stick on top of the Fun Flock. The first piece I attached to the red "body" was the face, then the beard. I used a flesh colored copic to go around the edge of the nose and popped it with foam. Then I added the "fur" trim pieces. To finish Santa off I added two black rhinestones for his eyes and a white pom pom at the tip of his hat. My three year old granddaughter, Payton, will be coming over on Sunday and I will make a couple of these with her, one for her and one for baby sister, Paige (3 mths.). Payton loves to craft with Nana. (Mostly, she just likes to play with all my embellishments). We're also going to make an ornament for her Mommy and Daddy. My daughter, Jill, (Aunt "Jilly" to Payton and Aunt and Godmother to Paige) will be coming for a visit from N. Carolina. I figure between the two of us we should be able to get the ornaments made even while tending to Paige. My daughter Heidi is dropping them both off while she goes to work. While I'm talking about Paige I would really appreciate any prayers you all could offer up for her. She was born a little premature after Heidi was in a car accident. It seems she has all kinds of health problems. Last week she had to have tests done on her kidneys and is going to have to have surgery to fix a problem there. While doing that test they found that her liver and spleen didn't look right so she will be going back to the hospital this Thursday for scans of the liver and spleen. She is just so tiny and helpless, weighing barely ten pounds now at three months old. It's hard to know she is in pain. We don't know yet when surgery will be.

My First BBTB Design Team Card

This is just the most exciting day ever for me. It's my debut on Bitten By The Bug. OMGosh!

I'm just over the moon with excitement at joining the Bitten By The Bug Design Team. I have admired Regina from the first moment I stumbled upon her digital stamp site The Cutting

Cafe (http://www.thecuttingcafe.typepad.com/). I have never seen such an amazing group of talent as you'll find in her Design Team. Now, to be a part of that team is so incredible I can hardly believe it. I am so very honored to be a part of the crew. The challenge for this week is to use the Ribbon Frame cut from the Joys of the Season cartridge.

I combined my frame cut with an ornament cut from the Christmas Cheer cartridge. My frame is cut at 4" and my ornament is cut at 2 1/4". I used kraft brown cardstock for my base card which is a 5 1/4" square. My print paper is from Paper Pizzazz with one edge trimmed with a Fiskars Scallop edge puncher. For my frame I cut two shadow cuts from cream cardstock so I could layer them. I inked the edges with ColorBox chalk ink in Maroon then used foam between the two layers. I cut the frame twice, once from red and once from green cardstock then pieced them together. My berries on the frame are Crimson Pearls from Queen and Co. My ornament has sparkly gold paper for the shadowed base and the ornament is cut from red cardstock. I used gold cord to hang the ribbon inside the frame and foam to pop it up. The photo below shows the layering effect.

I'm so happy that I could join this week's challenge and look forward to the future weeks of designing. I want to thank everyone on the Design Team for the wonderful welcome they have given me. Most especially, I want to thank Regina for giving me this amazing opportunity and I hope I can live up to her standards and her faith in me. This is really a dream come true for me.

Friday Sketchers/Paperplay

This card was quick to put together and I will probably make a couple more of the same to finish up my last few Christmas cards. I thought I started plenty early to get a handmade card done for everyone on my list. Let's just say I'll start earlier next year. I used the sketch from Friday Sketchers but changed it up a little with my shape for the Nativity stamp (which came from Digisparkle). I used my Nesties for the scalloped frame shape. I will also post this card onto the Paperplay blog for their challenge of a Christmas card with no red or green. I do have to say the pictures don't do this card justice. The sparkle doesn't show very well. If the sun would just shine here in Michigan my light for my photos would be so much better. But, I should be happy that we haven't had any snow yet (yuk, I hate winter).

I think this image is so beautiful in it's simplicity. I used Martha Stewart glitter pens to color the image. I also outlined the white frame with the silver glitter pen. I backed the image with navy cardstock. Below the navy cardstock the paper is silver metallic though it doesn't show in the picture. My ribbon is white organdy with silver trimming the edges. For embellishment I used stars that I cut from Cricut's Celebration cartridge. I inked the edges of each star with navy blue ink then put a crystal star in the center of each one.

My Papercrafting Class Samples

These are my samples I made for a papercrafting class I'm teaching on Friday at JoAnn's. There is a gift bag and tag and two Christmas cards. I'm posting them for the following challenges:

• Creative Card Crew-Christmas
• 365-Red and Green
• Creative Inspiration-Christmas card and tag set
• 2 Red Bananas-Christmas

Supplies (all available at JoAnn's):

• K&Company Ck McKenna Mat pad (great double-sided paper)
• Inkadinkado Queue Rose Petal Inks
• Inkadinkado Clear Holiday Pattern Play Stamp set
• Inkadinkado Colorbox Black Ink
• EK Success punch edger Snowflakes
• Small (5 1/4 x 8 1/2" ) brown paper gift bag with handles

Above and below are close ups of the two cards. All images and the sentiment come from the Inkadinkado Holiday Pattern Play stamp set. The first card has the Happy Holidays sentiment and the candies inked with maroon ink and uses the snowflake edge puncher. The second card uses the holly and flourish stamps with maroon and black ink both on the stamp. The bird is stamped with only the maroon ink. After stamping the hollies are cut out for arrangement on the flourish. The little bird looks as though he's hanging from the flourish.

The snowman stamp you see below is stamped on a green patterned paper and surrounded with the snowflake stamp from the set using three different red inks. The snowflake edge puncher is used on the bottom edge of a light beige paper.

The gift tag used the holly, sentiment and Christmas tree from the set. The tree and holly are stamped onto green patterned paper and then cut out. I hand wrote the To: and From: on the tag. The gift bag has a piece of beige paper that's stamped with the snowflake in the three red inks, scored and slit to fit over the handles.

Cricut Cardz Challenge #4

I'll tell you, Mary is really doing a good job of mixing things up on the Cricut Cardz Challenge. I was excited when she sent out the challenge list for the DT and I saw a stair step card. I made one a long time ago but it has been years. To me a stair step card invokes thoughts of a scene. A little something for each step but all tied together with a main theme. I guess you could call my theme edible SWEETS. I used a background paper that looks like pieces of candy, a ribbon that looks like candy canes, a gingerbread house with candy scattered around it and a yummy gingerbread girl. (You can tell it's a girl because she has a glittery bow in her hair and sparkly gem buttons). My first "step" of this card is a piece of wide ribbon with red rick rack on top and bottom. This ribbon came from Walmart the day after Christmas last year and I put it away to use this year. I have to admit this gingerbread house was a little bit of a job and took longer than I would normally spend on a card. But in the end, I'm happy with the results. There are several cartridges that have gingerbread houses and gingerbread men. I used MY COMMUNITY. I cut the house from brown kraft paper at 4". I cut all the layered pieces out of white cardstock then used my Copics to color them in, adding MS fine glitter to the gumdrops and roof and course glitter to the pretzel twist. The shiny center of the green candy was done with a Sakura 3-D Glaze pen as well as the white around the edge of the ginger girl. I added a little red rick rack to her to dress her up. I used Stickles in Red Brick for her hair ribbon and red rhinestones for her buttons on the front of her. My Merry Christmas sentiment with the candy canes around it was something I downloaded from Paper Crafts magazine's online site (http://www.papercraftsmag.com/) . Please take the time to go up and look at my top post because it contains an important message on how we can all help our military troops have a little happier Christmas http://bugnme.blogspot.com/2009/12/bbtb-telephone-challenge.html.

BBTB Telephone challenge

A couple weeks ago a new set of digital stamps called Christmas Daily came out at The Cutting Cafe (http://www.thecuttingcafe.typepad.com/). I just thought the images looked pretty cool for scrapping a Christmas page or two. Then as I read the post I realized that this set was about something bigger than a page or two. It was about a whole album to document the month of December. I thought this would be a great gift to give my daughter as a rememberance for her two girls, my beautiful newest granddaughter Paige (3 mths.) and her sister Payton (3 yrs.). Especially, since it is Paige's first Christmas. I spoke with my daughter today on the telephone and only told her that I needed her to jot down something on the calendar for each day until Christmas and take a picture of the kids doing Christmasy things like decorating the tree, hanging the stockings, etc. I told her it was really important that she not forget each day and she would find out why on Christmas day. Of course, she is a busy mommy and I will have to call and make sure she doesn't forget every day. We will be traveling to Ohio to spend Christmas day with our granddaughters. I can't wait to give them the finished album.

For this page I have lots of different elements that came together to make the whole page. I'll try to get them all down here. The telephone cut came from Cricut's From My Kitchen cartridge. I cut it from a patterned paper from DCWV Christmas stack from last year at 2 1/2" and shadowed with brown kraft paper. The Bitten By the Bug challenge this week was to use this cut. I added some small black rhinestones to the dial part of the phone for a little bling. I thought it was the perfect page element to add to the sentiment "Received a call from Grandpa and Grandma today". This sentiment and the word December came from the Christmas Daily set. The number 10 was cut from Cricut's new Designer's Calendar cartridge. This cartridge is one of my new requisitions from Black Friday shopping. I love this cartridge and know I will be using it a lot. Of course it has the months of the calendar and numbers both boxed, liked the one I used and in circles. You can also cut number words and one of the feature keys cuts names of events (one for just about any holiday you can think of). It also has images for each holiday. A groundhog for Groundhog day, a dragon for Chinese New Year and so many more.

I printed this sentiment right onto my patterned paper that came from Cosmo Cricket's Gal Friday pack. Perfect for journaling since the lines are already on it. I backed it with a red cardstock that already had the punched edges. It came from my scrap bin so I don't remember who makes it. The stamped flourish is from Inkadinkado's Pattern Play holiday set. I'm teaching a papercrafting class at JoAnn's using this set. Tomorrow I will post pictures of my samples from the class for everyone to see. I inked the stamp with a Colorbox chalk ink in black and maroon. I was really happy with the way this page came out. Now only 15 more pages to go. I better get busy. I hope no one fell asleep before they got to the end of this post, it is a long one.

Please take a moment, if you can, to go back up to my top post (http://bugnme.blogspot.com/2009/11/remembering-our-countrys-servicemen-and.html) because it has an important message about how we can all make sure our military servicemen and women can have a little better Christmas as they serve our Country.