Happy Thursday! Just  a quick post from me as we’re off to Preschool again this morning – and still adjusting to our new routine.  First off, MyGrafico is having an end of summer sale, which means Lindsay’s Stamp Stuff, as well as the other designers products, are on sale!

Lindsay has released a new SVG set – called Teacher’s Helper – super cute and easy to use. Since my little one just started Preschool, and I am volunteering at her school, this set was perfect for me!  I used it to create cute little pencil boxes/teacher gifts.  The super cute paper is from the Animal Cracker Stack (DCWV). I added little rhinestone embellishments from My Mind’s Eye – and viola – cute and easy! Really easy – just load the files in Sure Cuts A Lot, pick your, paper, and cut!  Now I  just have to finish the other 8!

Challenges I Played In:

• ABC Design Blog – Back To School
• Cutie-Sunday – Anything But A Card
• Hand Stamped Sentiments – Anything But A Card
• Little Red Wagon – Back To School
• One Stop Craft Challenge – Not A Card
• Paper Cutz – Anything Goes

If you haven’t already been to Lindsay’s Blog, be sure to stop by. I know she has a fabulous freebie and the links to all of the other DT projects (as well as some amazing creations of her own!).  Don’t forget the sale – 30% off as well!

That’s all from me – another morning of preschool and a lunch date await us! Have a fabulous day!

Happy Thursday and welcome to another adventure in creating using Lindsay’s Stamp Stuff designs.  Lindsay recently released a stamp set to coordinate with her Steampunk Style SVG cutting files – so I decided to once again venture outside my comfort zone and create a card using one of her Steampunk Style Digital Stamps images. I paired the typewriter with one of the digi-papers in Lindsay’s School Papers printables in Photoshop and let my Cricut and Sure Cuts A Lot (SCAL), and one of Penny Duncan’s awesome nesting cutting files do the rest.  In order to get my sizing correct, I used Inkscape to export the cutting file layers I wanted to use as bitmaps so that I could “read” them in Photoshop.  I resized the digital paper and clipped it to the cutting file template, duplicating as needed.  Then I added the typewriter image and printed out my layers.  I tried using Penny’s technique to cut the printed images with SCAL, but I wasn’t overly successful, so I opted to cut them out with my trusty scissors and use SCAL to cut my non-printed layers – which are embossed using Cuttlebug folders and my Big Shot. Before adhering everything together, I edged the layers with my Basic Black (SU) marker to seal the edges and add just a bit more definition. I also stippled Black Soot Distress Ink (Ranger) over the typewriter layer to combat the stark white CS I printed on – I thought the tiny bit of distressing added to the overall vintage feel. The card base is from DCWV La Crème box set – I am loving these! I wish our Joann’s had the 8×8 or 12×12 set of this style – it’s definitely on my wish list! I added pearl accents (Michaels) and viola – a 7-layer black and white vintagey card emerges.

Challenges I Played In:

• Incy Wincy Designs – Challenge #50
• KL  Stampin’ and Scrappin’ – Dry Embossing
• Little Paper Shop – Distressing
• Paper Sundaes – Lots of Layers
• Penny’s Challenges – 7 of Something
• Practical Scrappers – Embossing
• Paper Crafts Connection – Vintage Typewriter

If you haven’t been to Lindsay’s blog yet, be sure to stop by! She always has tons of inspiration as well as the links to the other DT projects.

Happy Crafting!

We’re celebrating birthdays this week with Lindsay’s Stamp Stuff Several of us DT members as well as Lindsay herself are July babies.  With that in mind, Lindsay is having a birthday sale in honor of her 34th birthday!  With all of the excitement about birthdays, we’ve decided to carry that theme throughout our projects this week.  For my project, I opted to create a birthday card (my sister’s birthday is Monday so the timing works out well) using one of the Breezy Backyard Lever Card cutting files from SVGCuts.com paired with one of the cupcakes from Lindsay’s Sweet Treats 2 digital stamp set .  I’ve never made a lever card before, so this was a little challenging for me – the folding,  not the cutting. My card back is cut from Whisper White CS (SU) and the front is a fabulous new Colorbok paper that I found at WalMart.  I wanted to have a double scallop layer behind my focal image, so I duplicated the scallop in Sure Cuts A Lot and scaled the duplicate down (keeping proportions checked). I cut the larger scallop from the Colorbok paper (using the same piece as the card front since there are only 2 sheets per design in the pad), and the smaller from the Whisper White scrap.  The sentiment is from another of the cards included in the set, cut from coordinating scraps.Since the card set came with an envelop template, I also made a coordinating envelope – but had it not, I would have used Lindsay’s Envelope Bonanza templates to create it.  After cutting my card and envelope pieces, I opened up Photoshop so I could resize the cupcake to fit my mat.  I printed the cupcake 3 times, twice on white Georgia Pacific CS and once on the Colorbok DP (I used Lindsay’s trick of attaching the DP to my printer paper with drafting tape and then printing using the printer paper as the carrier) as I wanted to use the DP as the cupcake wrapper.  I frosted my cupcake with Liquid Pearls and Stickles and used my Spica markers to color the candle and flame. While my cupcake was drying, I embossed the white scallop mat and the sentiment shadow layer with my Cuttlebug Swiss Dots folder and added a bit more shine/shimmer with my Spica markers. For a little extra dimension, I adhered small seed pearls (MS) around the scallop cut-out. Despite my initial folding “issues”, I’m rather happy with the end result.

Challenges I Played In:

• 2 Sisters – Anything Goes
• Beary Sweet Challenge – Emboss It
• Bunny Zoe’s Crafts – Nice and Girly
• Cowgirl’s Sunday – Scallops and Embellishments
• Paper Sundaes– White plus One
• Cupcake Inspirations – #66
• Rosie Dee’s – Summer Birthdays
• Sentimental Sundays – Celebrations

If you haven’t been to Lindsay’s blog be sure to stop by and wish her a Happy Birthday as well as seeing what the other DT members have been up to. There’s probably a freebie for you too!

Have a great day!