Hooray! I’m back!  For those that don’t know, my FIL lost his footing on an ice patch and fractured his hip at the end of January.  Nadya and I spent 3 weeks in Oklahoma cheering him up and helping to get him settled in rehab.  He’s doing well, and should be coming home soon!  We actually arrived home ourselves late Wednesday – but have had a full schedule between dental visits, gymnastics, and laundry/unpacking.  I managed to squeeze in a little creative time while visiting my Nana (we stopped to visit her for a couple of days on the way home) and again this morning.

I used all sorts of fabulous products to create this fun and easy project!  

     Whew – I told you I used lots of products! Now, let’s get to the goodies! For this basket, I used the basket base SVG file from SVG Cuts Easter Egg Treat Bags kit, sized to 10.5 and cut on my Nana’s Cricut Expression with SCAL. These bags are SUPER easy to put together!  The designer eggs are digital stamps from Lindsay’s Stamp Stuff – Cute Easter set.  I opened them in Photoshop and “colored” them using styles from Bannerwoman  (Easter Egg – retired).  The detail work I also did in Photoshop using Jodiann’s Robot Gold styles – I adjusted the pattern size and bevels a bit since I was working with fine detail lines and fills.  Then I printed them out on SU Whisper White CS as I really wanted a smooth and bright finish, trimmed, and adhered them to my bag.The coordinating card was also super-easy to make!   As before, the designer eggs are digital stamps from Lindsay’s Stamp Stuff – Cute Easter set.  I opened them in Photoshop and “colored” them using styles from Bannerwoman  (Easter Egg – retired).  The detail work and sentiment  were done in Photoshop, this time using Jodiann’s Robot Princess styles – I love the versatility of her styles!  For the sentiment I added a color overlay to one of the Robot Princess styles – I am quite please with the end result.  The sentiment layer is edged with an EK Success punch and matted with a bit of bluish glitter CS from DCWV – one of my many mat stacks.  I used the same punch to edge it as well. The card base is from my stash and happened to coordinate perfectly with the yellow CS Nana and I used to cut the treat bag.

That’s all from me – at least for today.  We’re having a guy come out to give us an estimate on pruning our Mulberry trees – they’re getting a bit out of hand! Then Nadya and I are off to do our grocery shopping, and have a picnic at the park with one of the local Meet-Up groups – that is if the weather cooperates!  Have a great Monday and following week!  Be sure to stop by Lindsay’s blog – she usually has fabulous eye candy and treats on Mondays, plus links to one of her DT groups creations.

It’s Thursday – which means gymnastics for my little one and a new project for Lindsay’s Stamp Stuff! Lindsay has some awesome new Houndstooth papers in her My Grafico store (and they’re on-sale right now!!), as well as some cute Princess stamps.  However, I have once again, used her Love Grows Here set along with Jodiann’s Gelly Hearts and Mini Stripes Light styles to create 4 cute little cards.

Using Lindsay’s Multi-Bracket Paper SVG freebie as a starting point, I experimented in Inkscape until I created Multi-Bracket card base and mat SVG files – definitely a bit of a learning curve, but completely doable! Then I turned to my trusty Photoshop and with the help of Jodiann’s styles, created 5 different papers that I printed out and then using SCAL cut the card bases and mats – I used 5.5 inches as the height for me card base and 5.15 inches for the height of the mat.. Then, using Photoshop again, I selected and printed the stamps from Love Grows Here.

I must admit, I’m rather pleased with the way they turned out – though my fingers were getting a little tired – thankfully I have really good, sharp scissors!  The birds are colored with Copics and Bic Mark-Its; the hearts have a generous coating of red stickles on them, and the the stitching was drawn in with a Blue Spica pen. The sheer organdy ribbon is from my stash. The heart paper is one I created and the card base is from my stash. This was one of my DH’s favorites. This little guy was colored with Bic Mark-Its with a touch of Spica Yellow glitter pen added to his wing and Cool Grey 1 Copic for shadow. Since Lindsay is sponsoring this week’s challenge over at Tuesday Morning Sketches, I used Melissa’s fabulous sketch to guide my layout. I used Bazzill CS and an EK Success Punch to create the image mat.  The card mat is one of my creations; the base is Bazzill textured CS.  The flowers are from Prima (checkout my friend Suzanne’s store – Crafting Connection, for awesome deals on Prima) and the pearls are from Michaels. This was DH’s other favorite!

Yes, once again, I HAD to use the fabulous cupcakes in the Love Grows Here set.  I colored the cupcakes with Copics, Mark-Its, and Spica pens – I used a white gel pen for accent.  The small cupcake sprinkles are coated with Red Stickles while the large sprinkles are Dew Drops from Crafting Connection.  I added ribbon from my stash to the card mat (another of my papers).  The card base is SU.Last but not least, I used the doily heart from Love Grows Here.  I colored the heart with Copics and punched the holes in the lace with my Fiskars hand punch.  The flowers are Prima and the pearls are MS.  Both the card mat and base were created by me.

That’s about it from me, but before you head over to Lindsay’s blog to check our her fab project and goodies – as well as the links to the other DT creations, I have a surprise for you!  I’m giving away the card base and mat SVG cutting files and 4 layered, printable cards – you can get them here.  If you like them, please leave a comment and send your friends to my blog – don’t share the links directly – thanks!

Have a fabulous Thursday!

And available at Cocoa’s Studio store at My Grafico!  I had the privilege of working with this new SVG cutting set – a let me tell you – it was EASY! The files cut beautifully (thanks again Mom for loaning me your baby bug).  Cocoa has included JPG printables and cutting templates for those that don’t have a Cricut or SCAL/Make The Cut.  The printables are full color and adorable – perfect for other cutting systems (think print and cut with your KNK, Wishblade, Gazelle, Silhouette, etc). The JPG templates offer further customization – bring them into your favorite editing software and use them with digital papers to create one of kind items!  FABULOUS!!!  Ok, so you want to see what I did – here ya go: This card was a breeze to assemble! First I cut the adorable bear set from Confetti Vanilla CS using the SVG cutting files in SCAL and my Mom’s baby Bug. I wanted to add some texture, so I coated the bear in Versamark and then applied Heat N Stick Powder.  I melted the powder with my heat gun and applied brown flock (I should have heated the powder a bit longer so that more of the flock adhered) and then reheated to set it.  I used Taffy and Moonlight Smooch (check out Bunny’s Stamping Studio – love the goods and she’ll try to order anything you need – just ask) on the mouth, ears, nose and heart cutouts and then glued them on to my bear body. I colored the eyes and added the smile with my Spica and Sakura glitter pens.  I used my SU Regal Rose marker to color the balloon, then coated it in Versamark and Heat N Stick Powder.  This time I wanted bling instead of fuzz, so I used Doodlebug Design’s Sugar Coating Bubblegum Glitter over the Heat N Stick powder.  I painted the balloon highlight with Moonlight Smooch and glued it in place.  I was going to cut off the “string” that came with the balloon but found I liked the swirl shape, so I wrapped it in white embroidery floss from my stash and viola – a string that has the paper shape but a more realistic appearance! Hooray! Before Christmas I has snagged a couple of packages of DCWV glitter cards from the Hobby Lobby clearance rack, so I used one of those cards with the largest of the Labels 8 nesties to create my shaped card base(which means I can enter TSG’s challenge – woohoo).  For the mat, I found this fabulous swirled and embossed paper in my DCWV The Sweet Stack mat stack, so I used the 2nd largest of the Label 8 nesties to cut the mat – you could do the same thing in Cricut using SCAL if you’d rather or if you don’t have the Labels nesties, etc. I used ultra thin glue dots to adhere the mat and base as my mono adhesive doesn’t always handle glitter well. For the bear and balloon I used Dimensional Dots and Ultra Thin glue Dots.  The mini pearls are from my stash. I think the card is adorable – perfect for Valentine’s Day, or in my case, a little girl’s birthday! 

I’d better run – it’s grocery shopping and errand day. So we’ll be heading to  my “favorite” place – WalMart. Have a good one!