Uplifting palm tree card!

Today for the Paper Cabana I was asked to be inspired by a website… check that link out here!

So this is the picture that really made me feel happy!  Loved the tall palm trees on this poster!

 So I decided to create my own and mine turned out to be an uplifting card in the end!

So in being asked to be inspired by a website, with many many choices, it is good to just browse… until you find something you like… I could have added more art deco pieces and I even cut out some dancing girls but they didn’t make the final design…

After being inspired, try to figure out what exactly about that poster, picture, sketch, layout, et al that really impresses you and run with it… I was really inspired by the palm trees but couldn’t imagine them on a card… I loved the blue sky and the sand was my take on the boardwalk.  So I added a little of that… the ocean is solid cardstock that I tore to give it a wavy edge and the scalloped “sand” is my interpretation of a boardwalk.  This is the foundation of the card and grounds it.

After the inspiration I laid it out on my gypsy using Life is a Beach.  Like this:

In doing this design I used the flip buttons located under the advanced tab and it is in the middle.  You can flip horizontally or vertically but you have to flip all of your design that is pre-grouped in the cart… I did that with the trees and with the palm fronds!  I wanted my trees to pop!…

You can see the vertical and horizontal flip buttons here!

Now it is time to lay out all your colors on your mat!  That looks like this…

In the end I had some spare parts… I decided not to keep them but be assured I do keep them a lot… the sand in my card is a prime example!

What do you do with your spare parts?  What is your design process like on a broad spectrum like this challenge?  Don’t forget to go over to the Paper Cabana and play for a chance to win prizes!

Blessings!

Kathi

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Theme Challenge … Dress Up!

Hello everyone and a special hello if you found me at the Paper Cabana… If you haven’t been there go get inspired right here!

Today we are playing DRESS UP!  I am dressing up Christmas Cards with my new Create a Critter 2 cartridge!!!!

They started like this being designed on my Gypsy … check out that post here!

Then I cut out all the elements as below!

 Then I dressed that card right up and made it BEAUTIFUL!

 I used my Xyron sticker maker 5″ to get adhesive on the joy and the wreath… stuck them in place on my window card that was made on my gypsy for my cricut like in this post.

After the layers were glued together I embellished with stickles and diamond dust.  Look how the diamond dust stuck to the wreath.. it looks adorned in snow!  I added wet embossing to the joy with snowflake pattern and dry embossing then inked the wreath with some CTMH New England Ivy!

Hope this card inspires you to make some for those close to you this year!  Everyone loves a nice Holiday card!  🙂

May the Joy of the Season be with you as you show us your dressed up items 😉

I plan to enter this in several challenges including ABC Challenge Blog by Patty Gorka!

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

Background Challenge Card!

Welcome from the Paper Cabana… if you didn’t start there go check out our great challenge blog with prizes for each weeks winner… you have a week to make your themed project and this week is backgrounds!… I use a gypsy and a cricut and “carved” the pumpkin from Gypsy Wanderings with the coordinating shadow and put a cute ribbon on top and stamped a sentiment inside….  I love the chevron background paper and cut it smaller to show off the purple polkadot card base! Check it out!

This card would be perfect for Moxie Fab Worlds challenge for gallon quarter and pint card creating with orange as my gallon, black and white are quarters, and purple as my pint!  Too bad that is over but the concept still remains in designing 😀

Inside I put two stamps together to make one sentiment that I wanted!  And yet here that background is again inside the card!  Love double sided cardstock!!!!

I inked the edges making it a little messy as it was slower drying pigment ink in black by Megan Elizabeth.  The paper was all Doodlebug Design and the ribbon on the pumpkin was from my stash and went with it excellently I think.

You can see the dimension better from this angle I think…

So think up a fun background and link it on our blog at the Paper Cabana!

Have a blessed week!  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

Grateful window card with HOMEMADE action wobble!

Welcome from The Paper Cabana challenge… if you haven’t been there yet go check out this weeks challenge blog and then come back to see how I made this beautiful GRATEFUL card!

Every week I will build on what I covered the week before… but if you get lost please email me and ask… I am happy to answer questions!  I don’t want anyone lost but I don’t wanna leave you unchallenged either 😉  Email me at Kathi Clower.

Now onto this weeks challenge for you.. making a homemade wobbler and a window card too!  Did you know in the US fall starts September 22?  Wow that seems early this year as the weather in southeast USA is still warm.  But time to get ready for all the fall festivities like Halloween and Thanksgiving… at least here in the US.  So today I have 2 cards I made that are just alike… 

 but embellished a little bit different to give them their own personality.

To start I pulled out my gypsy and made a window card using the square window on Gypsy Wanderings…. it is on the bottom line under Decor Tags if you want to use the same one I did.  I made the square into a rectangle and sized it to an A2 size front then copied it and placed it above the other and barely touching and removed the inner square for the back so it would cut the whole rectangle without the window.

Next I found the phrase I wanted to use also on Gypsy Wanderings and it was “grateful” with a leaf.  I sized up the grateful and it fit perfectly without any fussing into my rectangle.  Just make sure that it is touching all 4 sides to have a stable window card!

Once I had done that I grouped my card and welded it and checked the cut with the eyeball… PERFECT!  Then I duplicated it and my screen looked like this….

Next I copied the “grateful” and opened a second layer for it.  I found a leaf with a shadow on Gypsy Wanderings and sized it to be just larger than the leaf on grateful.  I wanted the leaf to be the fun part… thus the added action wobble we will get to in a bit.  I made 1 leaf and 1 shadow for each card and layer 2 looked like this…

Next I chose my papers… on this project that was the hardest part!  I didn’t want just traditional fall colors I wanted something different… Thanks to my CTMH rep having a great sale I had some fall paper from her with some deep teal blue and coordinating patterned paper that is great cardstock for the cards and the sentiment… Window cards can be flimsy so using good cardstock is a must if you want professional results!

Another note on choosing the base cardstock is to make sure it is double sided or you cut a color coordinating with the outside of the card to put in the inside sentiment area of your card… because it shows!

I scored my cards and used the xyron to glue my sentiment to the window card base… if you have excess glue using the xyron just rub it and it will ball up and you can throw it away 🙂  Love that!

Next I glued my leaf top to my leaf shadow… I used pretty but thin and inexpensive paper for the leaf tops and one didn’t cut well so you will see the leaves look a little different… it is all good if this happens.. that is what scissors are for and the recipient will never know UNLESS YOU TELL THEM… lol!

Now for the action wobble.  I found several how to vids on you tube and went to my craft room to see what I could come up with… you need:
2 small solid shapes… like a circle or square 1″ size (smaller is okay too just hard to tape to)
wire
tape
small diameter pen or a pencil
That is it!

Your solid shapes need to be smaller that what you are applying your action wobble to… you can make it bigger but I find I need small ones when I need them and don’t wanna have to run out to get them… so I used this wire…

that was 26 gauge.  It is what I had on hand and worked like a charm… the vids I watched showed various sizes.  You should be able to find some wire in the craft/jewelry making section of your local big box craft store.  It cut easy with my scissors too!  No craft wire cutters needed.

Wrap the wire around your pencil or similarly sized diameter pen and wrap the wire around it 3 or 4 times.  I did 6 times for 2 action wobbles…

Now punch out your 1″ (or whatever size you have… ) solid shapes… I used a CM fancy square punch because I couldn’t find the circle size I wanted to use.  No one will see it so it doesn’t matter the shape as long as it is solid to tape to.  Apply tape to the bottom half and top half circles of wire after you have taken it off the pencil.  Now tape the top and bottom to your solid shapes… it will look like this….

and the excess tape can just be wrapped around the solid shape like this…

Then add glue dots to the top and bottom of your solid shape and place it where you want it then add the leaf or whatever you want to add action to … to your project… like this…

It works!  Yahooo!!!!

I then embellished my cards with ribbon… and added a knot of some burlap I had left over to my odd leaf to make it feel better (hehe)…

This now has a home in my living room as fall decor… the other one… is probably for my mom’s card stack I am making for her 🙂

I hope this has inspired you to find some wire… maybe a wiretie from your loaf of bread in the pantry???  And make your own action wobble for your project.  Whatever you choose… take some time to craft the season.  Fall is a fun time to start or get back to it!

Happy crafting!  Kathi

Designing a basic card with your Gypsy and Cricut

I wanted to start out this post with a big Welcome to all of you that are challenged to use your Gypsy and Cricut to make a card with from The Paper Cabana… I used mine for scrapbooking way before I ever designed a card on it so today I am starting with a simple card for you using the challenge ingredients of the primary colors red, blue and yellow.

I was tempted to throw in some white to chill it out a little but the sparkly for the center of the flower seemed to do the trick!  So get your Gypsy or Design Studio and lets design a card together!  If you have another e-cutter please continue reading because there is some great info here that includes basic card making too!

First get your Gypsy fired up and go to Gypsy Wanderings… I decided to use just this cart for this challenge so everyone could follow along 😉  Do you have a cart you would like to see featured in a future challenge?  Email me and let me know Kathi Clower!

We are going to make a card from an image… and for the first one I picked a rounded edged square.  I turned it into a card.  Here is how you do it.

 Find the rounded square that is 4 down and 3 across on the Gypsy Wanderings “Tag/Shadow” button

 When you put it on your board change 2 things under basic.  Make is the real dial size as this shape wants to be a shadow and will be bigger than you tell it to be.  Also unlink the gold link button between height and width… then click the x value and make it 4.25 and make the y or height value 5.50… the top x and y are not what we are concerned with… only the bottom ones.  Once you do that make a copy.  Scoot the copy out so the edges are JUST touching then group those 2 pieces and weld them on the advanced key.  To make sure the top edges are lined up look at the top right “y” value… they should both be the same on each rectangle.  You just made a card base!!!!

Now you can stop there but think about the card you are making… I can always use an extra or put one in my stash so I will make 2 when I make one… one for stash and one for you and for giving!!  So I have added an extra card on my page.   I did that by copying the whole card and putting it into place.   Cricut tip!  Keep your cutting area .25″ away from all edges of your mat if you want good trusted cuts.

Now with your bases made for 2 identical cards click the “+” sign in the top left corner of your gypsy and add a layer… you will be able to see Layer 1 in gray but if you click on the eye of layer 1 it will close and you will only see Layer 2 which should be blank.  I left my eye open as I designed my card then clicked it off to set everything in place for cutting!

 As you can see I cut out 2 bases that I just made smaller with real dial size on (because they are actually supposed to be shadows) to anchor my sentiment…I did that by selecting just 1 rectangle from layer 1 then clicking on layer 2 and clicking the copy button.  Then used the ball to make it smaller.

I will cut out the sentiment in a different color and I picked a flower from the same cart that is similar to the flower on “thinking of you” to be my pop of yellow!  How festive these challenge colors have been to work with!

Also notice how I have “thinking of you” sideways… I did that when I was designing my card to make sure of the size of the lettering would look good on the base and not be too big or too small… I turned it sideways using the second button down under advanced where the circley arrow is… is turns right or left using the buttons down below once you activate it… in case you wondered how I did that!  lol

 Just a note… when scoring your card base score so the “mountain” side is for the inside of the fold…. not the outside… I just learned this and am loving my folds so much better since I did!

 Now to cut out our layers… see how I have my board set up?  I used my gypsy mat to get the right measurements and just cut the paper accordingly.  Make sure patterned paper is going the right way if you set everything up like I did….

 Now I have everything cut out and I am ready to put my card together… I use a 5″ xyron to glue little letters like these that are welded together.

 Once they come out they looked like this!

 For the flower I found the right way for it to fit and added a Zot to the back… gives a little dimension (about 1/16″) and holds well… then a diamond jewel on top and whalaah!  The card is done… oops… The cardS are done… send them both out or save one for later… I am making a card stash for my mom so mine is going there.

The blue cs is from Colorbok and the patterned red and yellow papers are CTMH dotty for you.  The jewel was adhesive backed and from the $1.00 bin at JoAnn’s for a pack of them in different shapes and sizes!

 What would you like to learn to do in future challenges with your Gypsy?  I know lots of stuff and can share most anything via lots of pics (trying to learn how to do vids… so that is my future goal ;)) so send me your ideas via the link above or comment on this blog! Thanks for joining us and have a blessed day… here is a cute photo of primary colors for you this week!  Kathi

P. S.  Don’t forget to link your primary colors project of any sort at The Paper Cabana!  Can’t wait to see what you create.  And leave me feedback here on what you would like to see done with the gypsy in the future!

I am a guest designer!

I am a guest designer for a  new challenge blog created by Francie Flit at Inky Palms… The challenge will be presented each Wednesday starting next week with guest designers showing off our wares that we have made ahead of time for inspiration.

I am currently deciding the paper for this great challenge and what will inspire others.

The focus of this challenge is to meet the challenge requirements using your e-cutter… focus is on Sillouette and I am the Cricut/Gypsy girl.  I don’t have a Sillouette and don’t have room for a computer in my craft area if I did have one… so I am happy with my Gypsy.

Head over to The Paper Cabana and see how things are coming together to offer all of you a great e-cutting experience with lots of inspiration.

Here is my first card… The tutorial will be on the blog instead of here 😉

Have a blessed day!  Kathi