BBTB2 Just Because Cards Gingerbread Man

It's the last challenge of the year at BBTB2.  This week our talented designer, Julie chose our challenge.  She asked us to use the Gingerbread Man from Just Because Cards.  Now remember if you don't have this cartridge there are other cartridges with Gingerbread Men that you can use.  I made a cookie jar shaped card using my Gypsy.  I love making shaped cards as you can probably tell if you follow my blog.  This cookie jar is on the From My Kitchen cartridge.  I used the Cookies Label from the same cartridge.  My base card is kraft cardstock and I welded two cookie jar shadows to create it.  My printed paper on the front of the card with all the cute cooking theme is Creative Imaginations. I cut another rolling pin and mitt from the paper so I could layer them.  My gingerbread man was cut at 2.75" and I used a white gel pen to add his frosting trim.  For the inside of the card I cut another jar shape and used the hide contour feature so I could use it to place my sentiment on.  My sentiment was done on my computer.

I want to take this opportunity to wish you all a wonderful, joyous and blessed Holiday Season with your families.  I hope you make wonderful memories.

My Pink Stamper Challenge

Here's something I don't do very often...a scrapbook page.  Even though my papercrafting habits started with scrapbooking, I enjoy making cards much more.  I suppose it's because by the time I started scrapbooking, my five children we're all grown and the grandchildren had started to come along.  I'm so far behind it seems like an impossible task to manage 38 years worth of pictures.  It occured to me not long ago that I really don't want to leave this earth with the task undone.  So I've vowed to get back to the scrapping in the new year.  It is my goal to have an album done for each of my children for Christmas next year as a gift for them.  This page however, is the first page of the family Christmas album that I'm starting. When I saw that Robyn had a challenge today over at My Pink Stamper I thought I'd play along.  I used the Winter Frolic cartridge to cut the Christmas bulbs.  I used the fit to length feature with the dial set at 11 1/2".  The title is also from the Winter Frolic cartridge and it's cut at 2".   

Paper Cutz Challenge #72

We're celebrating the New Year at Paper Cutz a little early with a challenge to use a banner.  I thought, what better to put on my banner than 2011 for a brand new year.  Hopefully, this card will help me recall what year it is.  For some unknown reason I always have a difficult time remembering the odd numbered years.  I think it's because all five of my children were born in even years.  At least that's what I tell myself.  I always go into my checkbook and add the year on several checks so I won't mess up.  LOL  I used the Cricut Celebration cartridge to make my banner.  The banner feature comes with the numbers cut into them so I thought it was the perfect choice.  I cut each one at 1.5".  I cut the shadow from a bright lime green cardstock and the numbers from black cardstock.  My background paper is Creative Imagination.  I cut the Happy New Year from Cricut's Celebrate With a Flourish. 

BBTB2 Joys of the Season Wreath

Our BBTB2 challenge this week was chosen by Julia.  She asked the DT to use the wreath from Joys of the Season.  It was a pretty simple cut and I just couldn't decide what to do until I was sorting through a bunch of my buttons and decided to use them to embellish.  I seem to have an overabundance of light green buttons.  About a week ago I decided to take my new Cricut Christmas Cards cartridge and cut out all the base shape cards so I would have a stack of ready made cards to use for Christmas.  This is the first one I've used, plenty more in the stack.  I also used the cartridge to cut the word Joy.

The Cutting Cafe To My Neighbor

Here's a quick little gift that I put together for a few neighbors.  I used The Cutting Cafe's HAPPY HOLIDAYS TO MY NEIGHBOR PRINTABLE STAMP SET.  I started out with a tin of these luscious mints from Trader Joe's.  I took a one inch strip of patterned paper and put it around the the tin.  I printed the stamp and added some holly and berries I cut from my Cricut Winter Woodland cartridge.  Tied on the gorgeous gingham ribbon and added the tag.  Easy peasy!  Took me about 10 minutes. 

Now I have to tell you, if you go to Trader Joe's now to look for these tins, they've discontinued them.  But they do have some luscious dark chocolate wedges with caramel in them and wedges of just plain dark chocolate.  The tins are the exact same size and will work equally as well.  If you just want the mints because they look yummy (and trust me they are) they sell them in 2 oz. bags now with no tin.  Guess they weren't as popular to anyone else as they were to me.  Glad I bought mine a month ago and put them away for little Christmas gifts.

Paper Cutz Challenge #71

This is my little Snowman Soup project for this week's Paper Cutz Challenge.  Mary asked us to use a snowman this week in our design.  This fantastic snowman image and poem are from The Cutting Cafe's Fun with Frosty the Snowman printable stamp set.  I simply printed it and cut it out.  I paper pieced the hat added a little glitter for the fur trim and a white pompom.  I colored his nose using a Copic marker.  The background paper is DCWV and I just lined the inside of the clear paint can with it.  I used a piece of the dp for the lid and added a sparkly silver and white snowflake.  Then I added assorted ribbon, lace and trims onto the handle.

Inside the can are the makings for a great cup of hot chocolate.  A package of Supreme hot cocoa mix, a few mini marshmallows and mini Hershey kisses that I placed in clear bags and added paper toppers to, and two mini candy canes.  Can't you just imagine what it will taste like?  This makes a cute little gift for co-workers, teachers or friends.

 Here's a close up view of the poem that you can get from The Cutting Cafe using this link.  This set comes with 31 images.

Thanks for stopping by today.  Don't forget to check out the rest of the snowman designs from the Design Team at Paper Cutz.

The Cutting Cafe Hangman

Are you looking for a stocking stuffer for a child or a quick gift?  I made this with a printable stamp set from The Cutting Cafe.  This Hangman Set comes with a sheet of four hangman cards with the alphabet printed at the bottom for crossing off and several sentiments.  I also used the Greeting Card folder as a holder for the game cards. I ran off six sheets of the cards (for 24 total) and cut them to 4.25" x 5".  The same size as a greeting card, perfect to fit into the Greeting Card folder. My dp is Paper Studio. I trimmed one of the hangman cards to use for the front of the folder and scattered the sentiments around, attaching the circle sentiment with a ribbon, jute cord and a button. 



Cricut Cardz Challenge #54

This is just a real simple card I made today for the Cricut Cardz Challenge.  This week's challenge is for a Circle Shaped Christmas card using no red or green.  I used the circle feature on the Christmas Cheer cartridge to cut this reindeer image from pink cardstock at 4".  I mounted it on a scalloped circle that I cut from the Mini Monograms cartridge using a piece of brown paper from the DCWV Amber stack at 5".  I cut my base card with Wild Card at 4".  I added a little bow and brown flower on her antler because this card is going to my baby granddaughter.  For her nose I took a white pearl and colored it with a Copic Light Prawn (R22) marker and I added a little doodling with a MS sepia colored marker.

Digital Tuesday Challenge with Cutting Cafe

I had a bit of spare time today so I decided to play along with the Digital Tuesday challenge.  The challenge is Baby, it's cold outside.  I used digital images from The Cutting Cafe.  Both the frame and the snowman are from the Fun with Frosty the Snowman printable stamp set.  I used my Copics to add a little color to Frosty's scarf and mittens.  I used a Nestie to cut a dark blue frame for my snowman to sit on and embossed it with my Cuttlebug snowflake embossing folder.  I brushed over the embossing with some cream colored chalk ink to highlight the embossing.  I embellished with a light blue snowflake printed ribbon and a couple of sparkly silver snowflakes. 

BBTB2 Winter Frolic Santa Envelope album

This week at BBTB2 our talented design sister, Joanna, chose the Santa from the Winter Frolic cartridge for us to work with.  I decided to make an envelope album that I've wanted to do since I picked up the kit while on vacation at a cute little scrapbook store I found in Virginia Beach. This kit is made by Little Yellow Bicycle and came with chipboard covers, four sheets patterned paper, five reversible envelopes, five double-sided inserts, washers, eyelets, string and binder rings.  To embellish the front cover I used the Santa from the Winter Frolic cartridge.  He's cut at 3.5".  I used my Gypsy to make the title using the Gypsy font and welding the letters together.  They are cut at 1".  I embellished the binder rings with assorted Christmas ribbons, cording and a jingle bell.

I know this is a terrible picture but I couldn't figure out how to photograph this album and get the whole thing. This shows the second and third pages and the journaling paper that goes inside the envelope with the tie closure.  The reindeer is cut from the new Jolly Holidays cartridge. Thanks for stopping by today and make sure you check out the rest of the DT creations at BBTB2.

The Cutting Cafe NIght Before Christmas

I don't know about everyone else but I send all handmade Christmas cards.  I make each one with that particular person in mind and don't usually mass produce. Using digital image sets from The Cutting Cafe makes the job a lot easier and quicker.  For this card I used the Night Before Christmas printable background set and the Christmas Mini Colored set.  I simply printed them out and used punches for each.  The spiral bound punch from EK Success and the circle punches are from Marvy.  I didn't want to distract from the beautiful holly image so I didn't add any sort of embellishment.  Quick, simple, easy and done in under five minutes.

Paper Cutz Challenge-Two Patterned Papers

The challenge at Paper Cutz this week is to use two patterned papers.  I used scraps from last year's DCWV paper stack.  This adorable little bird came from the new Cricut Lite Jolly Holidays cartridge.  This is my favorite Christmas cartridge so far.  The images are just so darn cute.  I haven't been able to put it down since I brought it home from Walmart on Black Friday.  I was pretty excited to be the 4th person at the Cricut pallet on Black Friday.  I arrived around 11:00pm.  At 12:00am when the sale started and the pallet was opened I grabbed the cartridges I wanted and lucky for me the checkout lanes were directly across from the pallet.  I checked out with my purchases at 12:01am.  It doesn't get much better than that.  I cut my little guy at 3" and embossed the black layer with my Cuttlebug Swiss Dots folder.  I used Fun Flock on the "fur" trim and a white pompom for the tip of the hat.  My sentiment is computer generated.  My base card is a 5" square cut from Cricut's Christmas Card cartridge. 

Christmas Countdown w/ Sour Cream Containers

I made this Christmas countdown for my little friend Tanner, who's six years old.  He can take off one container each night before he goes to bed and find a treat inside. I used scraps of leftover Christmas papers and my Fiskars edge crimper to make the sour cream containers.  Each container uses a piece of paper that is 4 x 6".  Here is a little tutorial to help you see how they're made.

Place a piece of double-sided on the 4" edge and bring opposite edge around to form a tube.

Add a piece of double sided tape to inside just large enough to stick it together when flattened.  Then place the edge into the crimper and crimp edge.  Place treat into the container and then add a piece of tape so that the other edge can be flattened and crimped.

I used digital stamps from The Cutting Cafe's Christmas Daily 2 set for each day's label and punched them out with a circle punch.  I punched a hole in each number and container then tied them together with red cord.

I used a jingle bell garland and tied each container to it.  I purchased two garlands from the Dollar Tree store and attached two together so that there was a jingle bell between each container.  This required a little cutting and tying  back together for the correct amount of bells.  This also allowed me to have a loop at each end for attaching the garland to a fireplace.  For photo purposes I just hung it from my Christmas stocking hangers on the mantle. 

Using this premade garland made this project so easy to complete. The funny thing is, I just wanted some jingle bells to attach to each container. When I arrived home with what I thought were individual jingle bells, it turned out to be a garland. So I used it to my advantage by just attaching the containers to it. Easy peasy! This project took me about two hours from start to finish. I used pieces of candy, stickers, erasers and some of those little capsules that you can put it water and when they dissolve you have a small sponge shape.



The Cutting Cafe Camera Set

These new sets from The Cutting Cafe couldn't have come out at a better time for me.  I made this project using the CAMERA  SHAPED PHOTO HOLDER TEMPLATE, the PHOTO BACKGROUND PRINTABLE STAMP SET and the CHRISTMAS MINI COLORED SET.  Just yesterday we took a little road trip with our four year old granddaughter, Payton.  We took her to Bronner's Christmas Wonderland in Frankenmuth, Michigan.  You have never seen such a fantastic Christmas store in your life.  It was Payton's first trip there and she was enchanted.  (Though she pooped out quicker than we thought she would).  I made this photo holder to give her the pictures we took while we were there.  The pictures will be placed in her Christmas Daily album I made for her.  As the name implies, this is a holder for photos that is shaped like a camera.  First I printed the Photo Background onto white cardstock then cut out the Camera Shaped Photo Holder.  Using a scrap of Christmas paper I cut a decorative edge to place on the front of the holder and the piece to hold the photos inside.  The circular Holiday Photos sentiment was punched out with a two inch punch and placed atop the black circle.  The Christmas tree was cut from the Christmas Mini Colored set as well as the punched Merry Christmas circular sentiment. 

The date and place tag is part of the set and I just cut it and placed it on the inside for a reminder of the date the photos were taken.  Isn't Payton adorable standing next to that life size snowman?  She got to pick out an ornament to take home and put on her Christmas tree along with one for her baby sister.  This is a long-standing tradition in our family...getting an ornament from Bronner's.  When the first of our five children was born we went to Bronner's and bought her first Christmas ornament.  Every year thereafter, for each of our five kids, we bought them a Christmas ornament.  It went on the tree that year and then went into a box with their name on it.  Then when they married or moved away from home they took their box of ornaments for their own Christmas trees.  Now we carry that tradition on to our grandchildren.  They always know they will get an ornament as part of their Christmas presents.