Spring Forward Blog Hop

BLOG HOP is Full! A great group has been assembled - be sure to mark your calendars for March 11 - the HOP starts Here!

Hi everyone – exciting news today! Celeste from Touched by a Butterfly and I have decided to team up to host a Blog Hop. The theme of our blog hop will be Spring/Easter and is open to paper crafters of all types – cards, scrapbook layouts, 3D paper projects – paper and the theme are the only criteria. You do not have to offer patterns or cut files but if you want to, that would be awesome. We are looking for 8 to 10 other crafters/paper artists to join us on this little adventure. Participating in a blog hop is a great way to increase the number of viewers/followers to your blog.

If you haven’t participated in a blog hop before – this is the perfect opportunity to jump in as we’ve never hosted before either – we can all learn together. How does it work? Basically, once you decide to participate you should make an announcement on your blog to help generate interest in the event. Then, design your project, take pictures of it, and write up instructions on how to duplicate it. If you want to offer blog candy, have that selected, photographed and your criteria set. Then, at the appointed time, you publish a blog post that includes your project information, blog candy info (if you are offering any), as well as the main blog candy info and blog hop itinerary. I would also ask that as a participant, you visit the other blogs and leave comments. Not too hard, right?

There will be a prize/blog candy offered for those who visit and comment at every stop along the way – the prize has not been determined yet as this is something we’ve just decided on today. If you would like you can also offer a small blog candy for those who visit your blog – you determine your own criteria and run your own give-away.

The blog hop will run March 11 – 13 (the weekend clocks “spring forward”).

We’d love to have you participate! If you are interested, please email Celeste or me as soon as possible as the number of slots will be limited to 12 (Celeste, me, and 10 others).

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.