Greetings from my Grandkids!

I know it's sideways - but had to share my birthday greetings from the grandkids that Jennifer posted this morning on facebook.

One more Card for today

I absolutely love the Birds and Birdhouses collection from SVGCUTS - I had to have it, but it has taken me this long to do something with it.

My inspiration for finally using it was the stamp that I have used on this card and one that I posted earlier today. It says "a little birdie told me" and in between told and me, there is actually a bird on the stamp. I simply masked the bird off before inking my stamp and then filled in the space with a little cutout bird on a foam dot. Oh, and did I mention - I found this cute stamp in the DOLLAR BIN at Michael's - its part of the brand new spring stuff!

This card features a scrap of basic grey paper that was in my bin, Core'dinations cardstock, bazzill cardstock, some pigment ink and I used the cuttlebug divine swirls embossing folder. The birdhouse and bird cut are from the aforementioned Birds and Birdhouses collection. My birdhouse is 3 layers - a blackout of the image as the underneath layer, the embossed front elevated on foam dots and then a 3rd layer that I used to cut the roof lines in a contrasting color - also elevated on foam dots.

That's it for me tonight - headed to bed. See everyone tomorrow!

A couple of cards

Okay, so I admit it - the snow is pretty! But, I'm totally ready for it to go away!

Thought I would share pics of the couple cards that I made today. This Christmas Card is super simple - embossed cardstock, a couple of snowflake stamps, a steaming mug and a warm wishes stamp:


The Birthday Card was a bit more involved - took me way tooooo much time to do this but I am okay with the result. The card base is made up of 2 patterned papers from the SEI chick-a-dee paper stack. I added a sheer pink polka dot ribbon around them. The birdhouse and bird are from the Birds and Birdhouses collection at svgcuts.com. I accented the birdhouse with stickles and some penwork and placed the house on top of a blackout shadow layer cut in pink. The little bird was also cut as a blackout (but not shadowed) - I layered the blue bird over top of the yellow one and then adhered the wing slightly skewed using foam dots. I cut the bird in two sizes and used the smaller one to replace the bird that was in that same position on the stamp - I simply wiped the ink off of the bird before stamping the image. Inside the card, I hand wrote "it's your birthday and then stamped "Happy Birthday."


Jenn - this next pic is for you. I took this just a short while ago, after considerable melting has occurred. The snow measures 8" now so we must have had at least 9 or 10 before it started melting.

Wait....I thought I lived in the SOUTH!

This is what we woke up to this morning:



We have 8-9 inches on the ground. Of course, Alabama is not really equipped to handle this and pretty much everything is shut down.

Doesn't bother me too much - I'll just spend the day crafting. I've made a couple of cards so far - guess I'll see what else I can accomplish.

Kindle or Nook?

NOTICE: Please go to the SVG tab at the top of my blog for important information regarding SVG downloads. 

I pondered this decision for a while - my SIL has Nook and my daughter has a Kindle. Had a chance to see and observe both of them and did a little reading on them. The touchscreen of the Nook is what finally made me decide to go with the Kindle. I don't know what it is but I seem to have trouble with touchscreens.

My Kindle is a birthday gift from the hubby and, weather permitting, should be delivered in time for my birthday! Even though I've been using the Kindle app for my blackberry, I'm very excited about getting the actual Kindle - the screen size on the blackberry is not great for book reading.

I started thinking that it would be nice to have files for these pieces of our everyday lives - and in creating them, I opted to also include a card base so they could be used for Amazon/B&N gift cards.































The pics on the left are the images from Inkscape - the pics on the right are my somewhat messy attempts at assembling and detailing the cuts. The .scut2 files are set up so that the assembled device will be the actual width & height of the device which will make nice size cards. Of course, if you want to scale the size to something smaller, that is definitely possible - although I'm not sure how small you could make the kindle file due to the circle cuts for the keys. I will try to design some envelopes to fit the files - possibly tomorrow since the forecast is that we will be snowed in (I live in Alabama - can you believe it?)

I'm also really having fun making pop-up greetings for my A2 card blanks - last night I created a Happy Birthday file using the Varsity font and I'm including that .scut2 file here as well.

I've got to get ready for work now - I'm hoping the bad weather holds off until I get home tonight. Wishing you all a restful/peaceful Sunday.

A couple of files to share

NOTICE: Please go to the SVG tab at the top of my blog for important information regarding SVG downloads. 

Thought I'd take just a couple of minutes before I get ready for work and post a couple of files.

The first is the inside cut for my Wk2 jinglebelles card - it's a pop up greeting that fits an A2 card. The file is set up as a .scut2 file for SCAL2 and is sized to 8 inches by 5 inches. There is a score line for the top fold. Using a scoring tool - you will need to also score the card at the 4 inch mark between the two words and then again at the very bottom edge of the bottom word.

The other file I am sharing this morning is for one of the mini-take out boxes - the one that I showed in the argyle pattern paper. This is an .svg file that you will import into your cutting software. It includes open paths for the score lines so will not cut with SCAL 1. You can resize it up to the maximum cutting area on your mat.

WK2 jingle belles card challenge

Wow - I've shocked even myself with this one. The challenge was posted at midnight and less than 24 hours have passed and I've got my card done!

The prompt this week at jinglebelles "comes from the song ... Have Yourself a Merry LITTLE Christmas ... which to us inspires making cards that feature Inchies and Twinchies (2" squares) in the design (or perhaps a twinchie-sized gift tag)."

I have to tell you - this was a REAL challenge for me. I don't own any of those cute little inchies stamps - I have a very limited collection of acrylic stamps - mostly some flowers and things that I can use for elements on my scrapbook pages. (Can you tell I'm not really a card maker?) I kept looking around my scrapbook room trying to figure out what to use for my "inchies" when my eyes fell onto one of my old class posters. I taught a class on "serendipity squares" - basically collage with a fancy name. So, I pulled out scraps of Christmas papers left over from this years card making and created a little collage and cut out some squares.

So, NOW WHAT? My card base is silver metallic cardstock from AC. I cut a smaller piece of red, embossed it with Cuttlebug Divine Swirls, and then inked that with MS silver ink. I tied a thin silver ribbon along the lower edge of the red cardstock and then added a red ribbon with a tiny rhinestone buckle (this is off of a stickpin from Joanne's - I'm really digging deep into the old stuff here). Next, I cut some scalloped squares from the Scalloped shapes collection at SVGCUTS. Added a little bit of that same MS silver ink to these squares. I added some tiny letters to each of my inchie squares - spelling out love, joy, and peace. I adhered love and joy to the background squares using thin foam dots and glued peace directly to the background square. When attaching the background squares, I glued down love and joy and used a thicker foam dot for peace - giving an alternating height effect. I finished up with 4 round gems from Paper Studio. Inside says "Season's Greetings."



I have a few more collage squares left so I may play around and try my hand at another sometime this weekend - but, for now, thanks for stopping by and taking a look.