Happy Monday everyone!  I hope you all had a fabulous weekend! Yesterday my DH met-up with one of his friends from my hometown at the Fairgrounds for an afternoon of Go-Cart racing.  Nadya and I met them for dinner afterward.  They had a great time and it was a much-needed break for my DH after a couple of  work weeks with really long hours.

I also spent some time being creative – I pulled the Cricut out of her box, installed the blade, unloaded all of my 12×12 paper (ok not all but a lot), and began to play.  Since tomorrow officially kicks-off the Lindsay’s Stamp Stuff celebration, I wanted to have a few items ready to share! See this post for more information and be sure to visit Lindsay’s blog and the My Grafico crop room Tuesday-Thursday for fabulous freebies as well as a 50% off sale Lindsay’s My Grafico store – you DON’T want to miss out!  Thursday is my MIL’s birthday, so I put together a card for her – inspired by one of this week’s projects by Mary Rudakas at the SVGCuts blog – check it out here – and I need to say a HUGE THANK YOU to Leo and the folks at SVGCuts – one of their contests was for a FREE copy of Sure Cuts A Lot and a $50 gift certificate to the store – and my Mom and I won!!!  I split the GC with my Mom and as soon as the SCAL cd arrives, I’ll take it to her as well since she doesn’t have the software yet and she was awesome enough to let me use her baby bug while I was still deciding between the Cricut and Gazelle cutters. Anyhow, on to my project…The card is A7 – 5×7, offering me the perfect opportunity to use Lindsay’s Envelope Bonanza SVG  and Printable Template set.  I used some heavier weight DP from my stash and opted for the scalloped edge envelope as I wanted something both pretty and elegant.  If you don’t have a digital cutter, Lindsay has included a printable template file in the set. The card base is cut from a sheet of DCWV The Rustic Stack – I love the vintage feel and the subtle elegance.  Using Mary’s card as a guide, I imported the gate, oval mat, scallop 1 and scallop 2 SVG files from the Moonlight Garden Party set and sized them according to Mary’s dimensions.  I didn’t want to cover up the glittered pattern on my card base, I opted to omit the oval frame mat.  All of the elements are cut from DCWV glitter cs – though they came from different mat stacks.  I adhered the oval frame and scallops first.  Then I stamped the birthday sentiment (SU – retired) in Brilliance Pearlescent Crimson.  The gate is attached with pop-dot material – my sheet was almost empty and I thought the edge was perfect for the fence strips, so I trimmed it and used it – perfect! The flowers are Prima – attached with pop-dots and glue dots depending on the amount of dimension needed.  I wanted to decorate the gate a bit more, so I used the end of a paint brush to apply PVA glue and then Spring flowersoft – I am actually really happy with the result!For the inside panels, I wanted to continue the theme from my DP card base without the added bulk of heavy CS, so I opened up Photoshop and created 4.5×6.5 panels that my DH could inscribe. I used a couple of blending modes and an awesome overlay from Kim Broedelet’s Floral Grunge 3 set: In fact, I liked them so well, I thought perhaps they would make a nice custom notepad tucked neatly inside a 5×7 folio…so I’m giving them to you!  I didn’t stop there though – following with my idea of notepads, I made a set with journaling/notebook lines (Jodiann – this one’s for you) and a 2nd set with binder rings for the digital scrappers out there.   I hope you enjoy them and can find a use for them.

That’s all for today – I hope to see you all in the My Grafico crop room tomorrow, Wednesday and Thursday!  Until then – have a great Monday!