The card that almost wasn’t!

Hello my friend 😉  Glad you could join me for a bit today.

Have you ever had a project that never seemed to be just right to call it mission complete!  I just had one of those projects… not my first by far though!  lol

I made this card… I thought I took a pic of it but can’t find the before pic so you just get to see the beautiful after pics… check it!

 And a close up….

It was all shades of brown… my daughter decided it needed the black so she painstakingly doodled on my stamped areas and brought out the designs in the K and the swirls of the butterfly imagining where the swirls would go from where I had inked the edges with a dauber!  She ROCKS!

For the card itself I used dry embossing on the card base front that I inked with tea dye ink, heat embossing on K in gold that didn’t come out as well as when I used pigment ink with detail powder!  Live and learn folks 🙂

I cut the butterfly out of  Florals Embellished on my cricut and cut out 3 of them scoring them in the middle… after stamping them with a swirly tone on tone inked stamp.  I then folded them in half and glued them together… let them dry then attached them to my card… this has been the 4th butterfly I have made… but I have now mastered how to do it for the best results!

I am happy to show you how to make the butterfly.  If you are interested… leave me a comment… 🙂
Thanks for visiting with me today and stay tuned for a casa del loro update!

Kathi

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Making a sympathy card for someone near and dear is hard…

Hello my bloggy friends.  Do you ever have the occasion to make a specific card for a specific person or family that NEEDS to be done yet you find because of the emotion attached to the project it is difficult to complete?  Am I making any sense at all???

Here is the situation.  My brother and his wife recently lost a baby at 10 weeks gestation.  It was very difficult for all of us.  I could have sent them flowers as she LOVES gerber daisies… but I know as the card maker I should make her something special… I say her but it is something for the family!

So I started out with my desk looking something like this…

I really liked the patterned paper with the pops of orange yellow and light blue!  I thought it would be a cheery card… then I saw a vid on how to make a 3d butterfly and thought a butterfly would be the perfect thing for a card for this specific occasion… so off I went to cut out my gypsy created inspiration card pieces and the paper messed up … it was all good I had another piece… it messed up on a different mat!  UUUUGGGHHHH!!!!!  Okay… at this point I stopped and prayed and ….

It all got better… I picked out new paper that still had pizzazz but was more toned down and I think more appropriate for the occasion…

and turned it into 2 “s-fold” cards!  I used the cricut and the Art Philosophy and Gypsy Wanderings carts!  It was super fun and easy after I took a minute to pray and everything cut out perfectly!

So when you get downhearted… do what this Bible verse says…. and Trust in the Lord!

Isn’t it nice when a deed you do for someone else winds up being a blessing for yourself!

Hope you find something good to share in your day!  I would love to hear a praise report 🙂

I am sharing this card on ABC Challenge blog 😉  They want CAS cards and this is as CAS as I get so I hope they accept it!  lol

Blessings!

Kathi

Another 3d BOO and more!!!

Good morning my blogging friends… Today I have some upcoming projects for you to take a sneak peak at… and this cute door hanger I finally finished around all the showings of our home!  11 in 10 days!!!  Hopefully it sells soon with this kind of traffic 😉

The cute “Spooky” stamp came in a pack with the jewels from Studio G.  The paper is Doodlebug on the pumpkin and some cs I had in my stash for the hanger itself.  When I did my other door hanger here I made 2 out of one sheet… so I just had to put this one together!

I used the Create a Critter 2 cart for the pumpkin like the pic below

but hid countour the piece of candy for this one!  I didn’t cut out the back shadow only the pumpkin face and his backing… then I added stickles to the eyes and inked a Boo I had cut out of the same paper as the hanger with Slate CTMH ink to give it a little pop!

Isn’t he cute!  He is safely holding M & M’s for the receiver of this booing item!

Next up are Christmas cards!  Here is where I am at… it is all cut

And what are the rest of my family doing while I am busy crafting???
Seeing who has the best John Deere attitude of course!  My dd and my honey are in competition!

It is cool and rainy today but it was breezy and warm the day I got this pic 🙂

Have a blessed crafting Friday!

Kathi

You have been Booed door hanger!

What says Boo more than a ghost!

Welcome back to me… been busy this week showing our house (we are trying to sell it) and haven’t had time to chat with you!  I have missed you though 😉

So for inspiration today at The Paper Cabana I have a great door hanger for you to put on your own doors… or as I will do “BOO” your friends and neighbors!!!

So pull out your Art Philosophy and Create a Critter 2 carts and lets play!

First I cut the door hangers… now they will be bigger if you only cut one but then you have paper left over so I made them a tad smaller and set it up with my gypsy to cut out 2!

I will post the second one later this week.  Today I wanted to focus on the ghost.  I chose a neutral light gray for my background as I wanted the ghost and the boo to really pop off the page!

Next I cut my elements…

Then scored each box that I had eliminated the fold lines on… by looking back at the book… added some red Tacky tape to make sure it held well…

Put the elements from the second page together… the poor haunted house didn’t cut our right… luckily I didn’t have room for it so… live and learn moment!  lol

I sponged on some CTMH Slate ink behind the ghost and added an action wobble to the ghost to make him float around!  Want info on how to make your own action wobble?  Check out this post!

I added some fun size M & M’s and now we are ready to Boo our neighbors!

Hope this post has inspired you that anyone can make something 3d… use what you have and have fun!

Monochromatic Challenge Card!

Welcome from the Paper Cabana… if you didn’t start there and want to check them out click here!

This weeks challenge is making something monochromatic.  So I did!!!  Lucky me my bff Brandy needed a birthday card for her sister… so she came over and we got creative… here she is with my Daisy Mae!

And here is the card we made!

First we picked the color… PURPLE … it is her sisters fave color.  I pulled out my purple colored paper bin and we chose colors of cs that we liked and that coordinated with each other.

Next we played in my stamp stash and picked some CTMH and HOTP stamp sets.  Then it was over to the gypsy to design our card …

Using the CTMH Art Philosophy cart we picked out the base that she liked… I “hide contour” on the hash line it cuts at the fold line… that is why it is light gray.. it doesn’t cut if you hide it.  The we made 3 flowers in the upper left hand corner that coordinate with CTMH stamp set that comes with the Art Philosophy cart.  Each layer of the flower has a different pattern stamped on to the electronically die cut image!  Isn’t that cool!!!!  Okay back to designing the card now .. hehe… In the upper right hand corner is a place for our sentiment.  This gets changed later and I will explain why…

So now it is time to cut… get the mat ready and fire up the Cricut.  Look at the beautiful purple and lavendar tones…

So here is the story… the sentiment stamp we wanted to use to wish her sister a Happy Birthday was too large for the size we cut out of the upper right lavender glitter paper.  Then the stamp smudged on the glitter cardstock so we finally cut one the size that a)fit the stamp b) that we liked with the card and c) was still in a lavender shade!

We put it all together after stamping the flowers with SU’s Lavender Lace and the sentiment in Megan Elizabeth’s Lush deep purple.  Then she added “May this be your grandest year yet” inside and whaalaaah!

But how to put it together… what layout with these elements looks best… we decided on this loosely…

then thanks to some zots glue dots and my handy dandy ATG gun we got the elements in place in their permanent home!

Love the button on the front with the hemp tied through it too!  What do you think?

Do you like playing with monochromatic projects?  Hope you play along with us this week at The Paper Cabana!

Craft on and have a blessed day!

Kathi

How to make a lot with your gypsy!

While perusing my fave blogs I found this from Sheila at She’s a Sassy Lady here!  It is a youtube video about making multiples and the series she does there is called Gypsy Made Easy (GME)!

Thanks to her inspiration and some happy mail I got in the form of a new cart…Create a Critter 2.  I didn’t get 1 when it came out and I have no cutesy carts… but I sure didn’t expect to make christmas cards when I ordered it!  lol

 I found this image and turned it into a window card!

 Watch where the arrow is on the cutting mat to know which way to line yours up if you try this but I need 30 Christmas cards… I have 15 sheets of ds Heidi Grace design paper that is gorgeous red and green polka dots on one side and a light green polka dot on the other… planning my cards I laid this out so that the Joys on the bottom of the paper will cut out on the red side and the card will cut out with the light green side as the outside.  My plan is to use the extra “Joys” to make cards for friends and neighbors with some premade cards I got on sale at Hobby Lobby for $5.00!!!!  Yay!  Love sales!

 Now I have 2 sizes of red cs so I needed 2 layouts for the different sized papers…here is one…

 And here is the other… I did use labels on this project to keep me honest when I am cutting these cards out so I labeled one 8 x 10 and one 10 x 12 to go with the 2 sizes of similar red cs I have.

Next for the green cs I am cutting these cute wreathes… they have holes in them for the ribbon and berries so the red shows through .. but my idea is to add some stickles I have for BLING!

 Because my cards are red on the inside I need a place for a sentiment… so I chose my stamp I wanted to use for the sentiment and measured it and found this shape in the Art Philosophy Cart by CTMH.

 It took me about 1 hour to design once I had picked out what I wanted to do and now all I have to do is hook up my gypsy to my cricut and cut away!  Then put them together… embellish and done!

Finally.. here is a pic of me and my honeys.. Rick and Daisy last Christmas!  This is one of my fave photos of us. 

Do you make Christmas cards???
Have you mass produced before???
What is your advice for someone about mass production if you have done it???

Stay tuned for the finished product!

Blessings to all!  Big announcement tomorrow October 1 you don’t wanna miss!!!

Kathi

Inspiration Wednesday!

Welcome to my blog.  If you are from The Paper Cabana you are in the right spot.  If you haven’t been to the challenge blog I design for you should check out this weeks challenge… and there are always cool gifts for each weeks winner!

Today we were asked to get inspiration from a website.  Mine looked like this…

and from this came a very inspired card using my new medium flourish die and my Gypsy, Cricut and the Art Philosophy Cartridge!

These two cards went together fairly easy and turned out fantabulous I think.

One thing I learned doing these cards and a new mat that is super sticky is that you can IRON your paper flat again using the same iron you iron your clothes with… just cover your paper with a scratch sheet of paper and whahlah!  flat paper again 😀

I used Sweet Threads paper by Basic Grey and the jewel brads are CTMH.  The stamp is by Verve and it made me smile to see these cards as I hope the recipients will smile when they see them! The flourish is from MFT and is the medium flourish die.

Don’t you love getting “unstuck”???  I know I do!  Show us some love and post your work… you might win something fun and you will have fun too!  Check out The Paper Cabana this week and try something new if you are stuck!

Have a blessed day!  Kathi

The card that almost wasn’t!

I made a card destined for my bff but to use in this challenge blog at The Paper Cabana I am a part of so the theme was basic colors like in a crayon box.  But when I looked up the basic colors it only mentioned red, yellow, and blue… so off I went to create… this is NOT what I came up with but was my plan B with the parts from the original card.  Have you had that happen before???

To see the project and tutorial for what I DID make for that challenge go here.

This card was easy with the parts I had already punched and cut with my Cricut.  I punched the scalloped square and had stamped and embellished the Celebrate today.  I had the dragonflies I had cut from the Cricut Art Philosophy cart and put together for the “other card”… and I wanted to use them.  The red oval was to be inside the other card and worked out perfect as a background to make the red in “celebrate today” pop!  The “Celebrate Today” stamp is CTMH and embellished with real red ink and a glitter blue pen by sakura.

Thanks for looking!  Hope you can be inspired to use some of your pieces and parts to make something whole!  Have a blessed day 😉  Kathi

Making a fall banner!

I admit it… as much as I love warm weather … and I do!!!!  I am ready for fall and all the fun festive decorating… love Halloween and just the change of seasons… this may be my last change as we are planning to move to Fla next year but for now… we will soak up the fall… so why not start the festivities off with a nice banner that says “Blessings”!

It’s home is over our TV in a “dead space” that I thought me and my craft self could cover… What do you think?

The close up is my favorite!  I love seeing it in the room… here is how I did it!

I started with basic supplies:
paint
chipboard pieces (I got mine from CTMH for $5.00 and it comes with 10 pcs and jump rings)
cricut (and gypsy or Design studio preferred but not necessary)
CTMH Art Philosophy Cartridge for Cricut
Stickles
4 pieces cardstock ( at least one should be solid)
ribbon if you want to hang your banner with (you can use the jump rings if you don’t want a decorator look)

First I painted all the pieces I planned to use… to make the word Blessings I used 9 of the 10 pieces… I saved the last to use on a card or some future project.  They are set at 4″ height and come in 4 styles.

Before I painted I decided how I wanted them laid out then painted them in that order….

I used latex paint because it matched my living room and I wanted this to look nice on the front and back… so I painted all the edges and inside the holes with the paint to cover all of one side and most of the other.

Now it was time to design the banner base and component parts…
Here is how my pages looked on the gypsy… notice how I left almost no negative space….

and the second layer to finish the 9 4″ banner pieces and more minimal negative space as well!

I even had room for an A2 card on this one!
Then I cut them out… check out this great tip of cutting out various shapes you think you can use in the future from paper that will get thrown out or end up in a scraps pile and never used!  Thanks Sheila at She’s a Sassy Lady blog!  Love that tip on your Gypsy Made Easy tutorials 🙂

Now back to the banner.
I took the cut out pieces and used my fave pink ATG gun to glue it well to the not all painted side of my chipboard banner pieces matching the shapes accordingly… then I chose to ink my edges with “Wrap me in Chocolate” by Megan Elizabeth.  Have you found her yet on Above Rubies Studio?  She has taught me tons!

Anyway… next it was time to cut out the chocolate squares so I pulled out my new Spellbinders I have been dying to use and used 2 sizes of scalloped squares with my Cuttlebug…

I chose 4 smaller and 5 larger scalloped squares.  Then I cut my letters out using this design on my gypsy

Notice again that I used up the space left over this time with some scalloped edging I will use on cards… it is lacey looking paper and I thought that would be a nice addition!  I chose the CTMH Art Philosophy Cart again because I think this font is classy and I wanted to add some stickles and the dogs on it make it perfect for Dressing Up!

In this close up the afternoon sun is messing up your view of the gorgeous paper I used for this project.. and the stickles I chose was “Copper” out of my stash!

Repeat for the 8 more tiles and whalaaah!

And that is how you make a beautiful banner!

Hope thing has been a blessing to you!  Please give me feedback on what you like or what you would like to see… in the meantime I will keep crafting!

Kathi

Altered CTMH Card Box!

Today I have a project I have prayed over and tried to focus on for about a month… since I got the card box from CTMH.  Look how nice it turned out!

Scrapbooking and cardmaking are my loves so I have been checking out other altered projects to make this one… it is for my mom and dad to hold cards in!  Won’t this be a nice Christmas present when I get the box full of miscellaneous cards!  She is a HUGE card giver 🙂

So this is how I did it… first MOTIVATION!  Here fave color is Sage Green.  Also I have a Bobunny paper set I use to make her cards with so I wanted to use some elements from it… and I found some lace that reminded me of her and I had the motivation… see the pic?  I left this sitting on my craft table for a few days while I thought about it….

Finally I got motivated and started with some ink on the edges… as you can see above… then I took the sage green cs I had pulled out for inspiration and used it to cover the box starting on the bottom.  Some of the blogs I have read talk about having a template… but it didn’t come with one so I just winged it and made measurements with little indentations with my thumbnail and then cut or scored it at that point…. see…

After some inking and taping on cs I finally covered the whole box….

I used heavy cs and my ATG to glue on the paper… now for the fun part… embellishing!

It all started like this above… and ended with this below!

I even decorated the inside too!

My mom loves butterflies and there is a large one on the top that is not so identifiable in this pic… but it is there!

I am so proud of this box… now for cards to fill it up!

My favorite is the bling on the box…. I think it isn’t to much or too little.

What do you think???  I would love your feedback on this project.

Have a blessed day!  Kathi