I can't believe I made this

I had made a card box for my sister's birthday a few weeks ago, but I didn't have the stamps or ideas for the cards yet. When I saw these stamps, I knew they were for my sister. The colours of the box I had made were all wrong. Then I found a pad that just worked. So I made a new box this weekend, and have been working on the note cards, small cards, and tags to go with it. I am so pleased with how the cards turned out, I can't believe that I made them. What has stopped me from doing a lot of card making in the past was that everything I made looked homemade, not home crafted. I have pushed past that with these, I think. The small cards are embossed in blue. The note cards, the image is in black, but the phrase is embossed in silver ( it says "Fashions fade, style is eternal - Yves St. Laurent"). The tags I thought would look nice in the brown sepia toned ink (called Cocoa), but I like the embellishment accent. I think I might now be addicted to bling. I still need to add ribbon or strings to the gift cards, and do the rest of the note cards, but had to share!

More valentines

Today I made a Valentine for my grandma. She's 93, and as she puts it, is blind in one eye and can't see out the other. So I wanted it to be simple, but pretty. I know she won't be able to read the to and from inside the card, but I am saving all my scraps and negative images from my cut outs right now, and so I just glued those on the inside and wrote on them. I'm glad Easter is late this year - that will give me lots of time to come up with Easter designs!

Out of my window

Enough already. Really.

Birthday gifts

Saturday I made this card box for my sister's birthday. I still have to make the cards and tags to go in it, but I got the box done. I also have to add some embellishments to the front, but I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. I think this might be a staple gift now. It's meant to hold some larger note cards, some smaller note cards, and a few gift tags. The directions for it are here http://www.splitcoaststampers.com/resources/tutorials/stationerybox/.

Cabin fever

My husband travels A LOT for work. He left yesterday, comes home tomorrow (at about 10 pm), but leaves again on Sunday, gone for a week, back just to repack a suitcase, leaves again...Between middle of September and middle of December he was gone for about 10 weeks. I'm currently unemployed, and with no kids, there are what seems like days on end that my only social interaction is with the cats.
Especially with the bad weather, it has not been too condusive to go out. Hence the inspiration for today's offering.

I tried to weld the letters using the Gypsy, but I guess I didn't do it right. I did not want to glue the individual letters, so I decided to use the negative image instead. I'm trying to play with colours (using colours I wouldn't normally put together) and with layers.

Question: What do you use for glue? I'm using white glue, and am having problems with it leaking, and curling the paper. I do have some craft two sided tape, but it wouldnt' work on smaller, more delicate images. Suggestions?

Figuring out my Gypsy

I gotta love my husband. There was one cartridge I really wanted, for a very specific project (secret for now...). The man drove all over God's green earth seeking it out for me. He finally found someone selling it on Kajiji. God bless Trish! Not only did she have the cartridge (A Child's Year...apparently non-existant in Canada!) but she was also selling a Gypsy, and as my husband loves to buy me presents (I'm not complaining) so he picked that up as well. Trish was gracious enough to walk us through setting the Gypsy up, and getting it registered, which was a bit of ordeal. So tonight I finally sat down and walked myself through the Gypsy. It wasn't as complicated as I thought it would be. I thought I would get frustrated with how small the screen was, but I didn't realize that it had a zoom feature- that sure helped. It will still take some getting used to, I think - the layers were annoying, but that was because I kept forgetting I needed to switch back and forth. That is what we used to call and "I D ten T" error when I used to work for a software company (ID10T, aka end user error), not the product. So my humble offering for today is just a simple blank card.

Cats and Dogs

These are for my niece and nephew. The images are from Everyday Paper Dolls. I liked being able to use the marker to make the pictures stand out a little bit, but I wish that these had a shadow feature so that the cuts weren't directly over marker lines.

Love, love, love

This was a simple card, sometimes simple is best. I'm not sure how I feel about the colours. Maybe the purple is a little too tone on tone. I was trying to avoid traditional all red, pink, and white for valentine cards.

Lovebirds

This card was largely inspired by the ribbon. I don't think it shows up well in the picture, but it is a pink ribbon, with brown branches and pale flowers. The tree and branch were free cut (gasp! I didn't have an appropriate branch on the cartridges I own.) The flowers are glitter paper. 3 of the flowers have foam tabs behind them to add dimension, and I curved them around my finger tip. The only thing I think I would change is that I wish that I had used the marker first before cutting, just to give a little more emphasis to the birds.

Heartstrings

This was my first Valentine attempt. I took the hearts from various cartridges (Lyrical Letters, Storybook and Paper Lace, I think). The last heart is a little too far down for my liking.

Paper Dolls

My sister was coming over with her 2 kids for a visit. I don't have kids, so I don't have a lot of toys at my place. I made these paper dolls (Everyday Paper Dolls) representing my sister's family, thinking my niece could play with them. This was fun, just to get to start playing with the Cricut.

First posting

This blog is to keep track of my creative endeavours. I got a Cricut Expression about a week and a half ago, and have become addicted. Thank goodness Valentine's day is around the corner, so that I had purpose to my initial attempts. I don't think that it would take much to become buried in projects.
Right now, I am just in this for card making. Loving it, though. I don't expect to buy a card ever again (well, maybe en masse Christmas cards, but then again, if I started now.....) I don't do scrapbooking, but I think that might change as I look for more and more excuses to use my Cricut.
So without any further ado, here are my first attempts...