We had a busy weekend here in the desert!  My DH spent most of his time digging up and replacing the main line from our house to our septic tank. The 30+ year old clay pipe had succumbed to a Mulberry root invasion!  A HUGE Thank You to Mr. Rooter for their prompt and courteous service Friday evening – without their camera scope, we would not have known how much damage had occurred! We were definitely on borrowed time.

Not to fear, we did have some fun too! We were invited to a birthday party for one of DH’s coworker’s kids.  Nadya enjoyed being outdoors (no wind – hooray), and playing with the many Hoola-Hoops though I think her favorite part was the Winnie The Pooh birthday cake! I took advantage of the party invite to create a gift box and coordinating birthday card.

I am so loving my Cricut and Sure Cuts A Lot (SCAL) software – this project was really easy thanks to those handy tools! The box is based on a template by Heather M. I modified the lid using one of Penny Duncan’s awesome nesting shape SVG files and opted not to use the scalloped inner box liner/compartment.  The box base is textured green CS from DCWV, the top is DP from a Best Occasions Punch Out Pack (WalMart) that’s been in my stash for quite awhile.  I colored the adorable Dustin Pike birthday elephant in Photoshop (see how here) – actually I cheated a little, when I color a stamp and am super happy with the results, I save the file in case I want to use it later – which I did in this case – he was actually partially colored back in October/November.  I did use copics to color his tummy and Spica’s on his cupcake candle and frosting. He’s been trimmed and attached with pop-dots.  I used an orange crystal sticker for the ball on his hat.

I had a lot of fun with the card too!  I printed the elephant twice – so that part was easy!  My card base is whisper white prefolded card from my stash that I embossed with my Swiss Dots Cuttlebug folder. I cut the grass, clouds, and sentiment using SCAL – the grass is from Pigtails Paper Trails, the cloud (cut in shadow blackout mode) is Cloud 9SVGCuts, and the sentiment is from Shelly’s Art at Paper Threads (I converted the AI file into an SVG using Inkscape) though Shelly has made the SVG file available now. I cut the  grass and sentiment from DCWV CS that matches the box bottom and the clouds from scrap SU Ballet Blue DP.

That’s it – what do you think? Even my Dh thought it was cute!

Have a happy Monday!

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 afterwards.  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!

My Father-In-Law’s birthday is this coming week, so in addition to a zillion other things on my list, I needed to create a birthday card for him. I “pieced” this fabulous digital stamp from Dustin Pike using digital papers from Jodiann’s  just released Christmas Be kit – I love the rich colors and textures and thoughtthey’d be perfect with Frosty. Frosty’s hat and scarf as well as his “soaking” mug all feature papers from Christmas Be (which is on-sale right NOW). I used gradient fills and layer masks to “color” the cocoa, marshmallows, carrot, and Frosty’s mouth and to add just a bit of shadow/depth to the paper pieced objects…and I thought blending with my copics was a challenge!  So here’s my digital image, ready for printing:

And here’s what I should have done – instead of leaving the background white, I should have used this fabulous crumpled glitter paper from Christmas Be – like I did for the sentiment – ah well – I’ll save this one- who knows he might appear on a Christmas card or two: Here’s the sentiment – I generated it in Photoshop – man I love that glitter  paper!Here’s the finished “product”: Once I printed Frosty and the sentiments, I used my corner rounder to trim the focal image and front sentiment – then adhered them to red mats made from red mirror cardstock (The Papercut).  My husband likes me to “keep it simple” when I’m working on cards for his Dad, but I did manage to sneak in a little bling.  After attaching everything to a blue CS base (DCWV), I added pieces of “coal”  – Black Bauble Drops from my friend Suzanne at Crafting-Connection and black glitter glue eyebrows (and you thought I just forgot to color those items in!).   I coated the marshmallows and the snowflake in Glossy Accents (Ranger) as Michaels and Hobby Lobby were both out of Judikins Diamond Glaze and highlighted the snowflakes with my white gel pen. Viola – one birthday card complete.

That’s all from me – today is errand day for Nadya and I – so now that she’s awake, I’m gonna give her a bath and we’ll head out!  Happy Monday everyone!