Happy Valentine's Day with TESC98

Hey there, finally I was able to get back to making a card based off of one of Taylored Expression Sketch Challenges. This week is #98 and it was really fun to work with. I decided to combine this with the latest Bitten By The Bug contest (which is a Valentine's project using purple in it) so you will see another post of this with a matching bag or box for some Valentine's gifts.

Here is the TESC98 sketch:


And here's my take:




This really cute ice cream image and sentiments are from Taylored Expressions Sprinkled with Love stamp set. It has a bunch of really cute yummy desserts and other sentiments. I'm really looking forward to using the mug and swirly steam on another card.
I used Glossy Accents on the ice cream dish to make it look somewhat real glass, which is REALLY hard to see in the picture:




I always loved this die cut from Cricut's Stamped cartridge:


So anyway, wish me luck on being picked to being in TESC's Top Crop.

Recipe:
-CS: Bazzill Basics "French Silk" and "Bouquest", Mi-Teintes "Stygian Black"
-PPs: DCWV "Love", "Gold Script Designer", Olive Script" and from The Mat Stack
-Stamps: Taylored Expressions Sprinkled with Love
-FCI: Colorbox "Chestnut Roan", "Dark Brown" and "Merlot"
-Prismacolor Pencils: PC946 Dark Brown
-Sakura Glaze Pens
-Stickles: Xmas Red
-Cricut Cart: Stamped for Love cut at 3" with a shadow and AE for the Scallop frame cut at 3 3/4"
-Misc: Marvy Liquid Applique, Heat Gun, Black Pigment Ink, Glossy Accents

TFL!

Wreath Thank You

Happy weekend everyone! I'm doing the usual trying to catch up on stuff. :)

Here's a thank you card for Scott's mom and step dad for their generous Christmas gifts plus my birthday present.

If you haven't read before on my blog on how they have a cut your own Christmas Tree farm. Carolyn, Scott's mom, makes many many wreaths, swags, mailbox cozies and kissing balls using prunings from all the different trees they have, scotch pine, concolor, scotch pine, fraser, balsum, korean fur, etc. And real berries and rose hips from her own bushes. And every year she lets me make a 24" wreath for my parents and a 36" for myself. Did you know that between all the different trees you use to make a 36" wreath is about an entire tree! And she also lets me bring home a bunch of prunings to fill my window boxes. This one is outside my dining room window:


Here's the wreath I made for myself, besides the ribbon everything on this wreath is real and those berries are actually rose hips. For those that do not know what those are, they are the bud that is left behind on a rose bush if you do not cut the blooms off:


And a mailbox cozy:


So onto the thank you card...I thought I would make it with a wreath from JOTS:


As always, I just love stickles!




These are some great computer fonts from scrapNfonts, CK Bella & LD Dirty Drusillus




Wreath prunings:
-CS: Bazzill Basics "Bouquet", "Snapdragon", "Palo Verde", "Safari", "Mocha Devine" and "ruby Slipper"
-PPs: Creative Imaginations Sonnets "Terra Cotta Paisley" and "French Poetry"
-Fluid Chalk Inks: "Dark Moss", "Olive" and "Yellow Ochre"
-Stickles: Burgundy
-Prismacolor Pencils: PC988 Marine Green
-Cricut carts: Winter Woodland for the fonts cut @ 1 3/8" with a shadow
JOTS for the Wreath with the base cut at 6 1/4" and the Holly (Base Shift) cut at 5 1/2"
Beyond Birthdays for thank you cut at 2" with a shadow
-Misc: Gamsol, Thread, Sewing Machine, EK Success Edger Punch "Snowflakes" for the flap on the envie (not pictured), Adhesive

TFL! And feel free to leave a comment as I love to get them...

Wine Thank Yous

Hi everyone, I hope you all had a great and safe New Years!

I'm finally getting around to some thank you cards after the holidays. Here are two that I made for some friends that gave me some wine for Christmas. Actually when I was making them I realized one of them I didn't get a bottle of wine from, but she's a big fan of wine so I thought the card would be appropriate for her anyway.

The other one I was making for I receive an excellent bottle of wine! It's a CA wine which I'm not usually a fan of but it's from Napa Valley. And it's a strange mix of Zinfandel, Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon. I was REALLY surprised at how good it is as I've never been a Zinfandel fan at all! I highly recommend it...It's Ménage à Trois bottled by Folie à Deux Winery in St. Helena, Napa County, CA (www.menageatroiswines.com). The friend that gave it to me came across it from friends of his that live in CA and discovered this very delicious combination for a red wine. So now we are on a quest to find it at a local liquor store here in New England. ;p

So it was definitely appropriate to make them a wine bottle shaped card that I got from The Cutting Café designed by the very talented Regina Easter. I love working with her designs. This particular set comes with 5 circle sentiments, 2 regular sentiments, 6 toppers and an envelop.

I decided to go a step further and make the envelop a very very thin wine bottle gift bag, perfect size for a card. I'm actually very pleased with myself in designing it and got some great use with the Scor-Pal. I'm very sure I'm not the 1st person to figure out how to make one but I was just impressed how quickly I did it.

So here they are:


The Thank You images used as the bottle labels are stamps by Hero Arts from their Collage and CardArt collections:




A little spot for the personal note:


It's just a very thin wine bottle gift bag:




Grape Blends for the guy's card:
-CS: TPC "Sable" & "Espresso", Mi-Teintes "Stygian Black" and Nicole Crafts Natural Stock Paper
-PPs: DCWV "Gold Script Designer" & "Olive Script"
-Stamp: Hero Arts Collage Thank You
-Ink: Versafine Vintage Sepia
-Fluid Chalk Ink: Colorbox "Creamy Brown", "Chestnut Roan" and "Dark Brown"
-Misc: Ribbon, adhesive, eyelets, Crop-A-Dile, Scor-Pal


Grape Blends for the girl's card:
-CS: Bazzill Basics "Mocha Devine" and Nicole Crafts Natural Stock Paper
-PPs: DCWV Once Upon a Time "Palace Throne"
-Stamp: Hero Arts CardArt Thanks Phrase
-Ink: Versafine Onyx Black
-Fluid Chalk Ink: Same as above plus "Merlot" (appropriate, huh?)
-Misc: Same as above

TFL!! And off to make my other thank you cards...

More Twelve Days of Christmas

Hi, I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas and about to have a very Happy New Year!

Here are some boxes that hold 12 miniature Hershey candy bars that I made using Regina's The Cutting Café's Candy Box.

I made a bunch of each of these to sell as Christmas favors or gifts for people to buy. My finance's mother owns a cut your own Christmas Tree Farm, so every year we go up to help out and she suggested that I bring some of my stuff to see if it will sell. I did sell a few...not including the ones she bought. ;p

Here's a picture of us getting our freshly cut tree:


I had made a couple of these boxes last year for myself to give as dinner favors and gifts to friends and colleagues.

Regina's boxes are always fun to work with and with this particular box there also comes templates to cut out the candy wrappers if you want to use them to cover the Hershey wrappers to make it more custom.

So here they are...

This paper is gorgeous, huh? It's from SEI in their Alpine Frost collection (glitter stack):








I went a little Americana on this set (paper from DCWV The Fall Stack 2007):








I really like this music paper I got in a stack from My Mind's Eye "Festive & Frost" Short Stack with Glitter:






Other materials:
CS: Bazzill Basics: "Tropical", "Capers" and "Mocha Divine"
Glitter CS: DCWV
Fluid Chalk Inks: Colorbox "French Blue", "Celadon" and "Olive"
Punches: Cuttlebug Ice Crystal Die & Embossing Combo and MS Alpine Snowflake
Cricut Cart: JOTS for the Holly cut at 1 1/2"
Misc: Red Rhinestones, Red Ribbon, Adhesive

TFL and HAPPY HOLIDAYS!

NEW CRAFTING STATION FINISHED!!!

YEAH it's finally finished!!! Well it's been finished for a couple of weeks already but this is the 1st time I've been able to get around to posting anything.

I've done a few projects but forgot take pictures before I gave them away so I can't post them, oh well.

So here's my new crafting station. I finally have my hallway and guest bedroom closets back! ;p



Pretty much most of the goodies you see on the memo boards and two of the wall units were all hiding in the closets that I completely forgot I had. It was like Christmas for me finding all this stuff...




Now let see how clean I can keep it, yeah right!

HAPPY HOLIDAYS TO EVERYONE!!!

Grandma's Birthday

Hey there, here's a quick post to show you the birthday card I did for my Grandma...









Recipe:
-CS: Bazzill Basics "Brandy Wine" and "Vintage Pink"
-Patterned Paper: K&Company Brenda Walton "Madeline"
-Stamp: Stampendous' "Happy Day Topper" and "Homemade Topper" and Inkadinkadoo "Marvelous Birthday"
-Prismascolor Pencils: PC937 Tuscan Red, PC1009 Dahlia Purple, PC1005 Lime Peel and PC942 Yellow Ochre
-Stickles: Pink
-Punch: MS Doily Lace Edge
-Misc: Gamsol, Black Pigment Ink, Embossing Powder, Heat Gun, Adhesive

TFL!!!

Congrats on a long overdue promotion

Hi there and Happy Friday!!!

Here’s a card I made my fiancé for a promotion he just got that has been way overdue!!

Just a simple card using Cricut’s Beyond Birthdays & Cuttin’ Up cartridges. Using the CDS I welded the shadow of the Congrats to the Base of the Card.

Using Beyond Birthdays I cut the Congrats at 5 1/4” and You Did It at 1 7/8”. For Scott’s name I used Cuttin’ Up and welded the letters using the cartoon and shadow features, cut at 1 7/8”.

Here’s a pic of it with the back side of the envie:


And here’s with the front of the envie:


And of course I had to do a little on the inside:


Celebratory Recipe:
-CS: Bazzill Basics “Mocha Devine” and “Palo Verde”, and a shade of orange Bazzill CD
-PPs: DCWV “Once Upon a Time” stack
-Fluid Chalk Inks: “Chestnut Roan” and “Amber Clay”
-Cricut Carts: Beyond Birthdays and Cuttin’ Up

TFL!!

PS - My new crafting station is done, I just need to organize things and take pictures to show you. Stay tuned...

Lots of stuff - Overdue B-day Card, Updated pic of my nephew, Soon to have a new Crafting Station and finally back to posting

Hi everyone, sorry I've been so quiet, things have been very busy this summer and unfortunately not much too time to craft. :(

But anyway, I did get to doing a birthday card for my Aunt Joan, but of course it was a belated and I'm posting it much later than I made it. I made it mid-October and her b-day was at least two weeks prior to that. Oops! But at least she like it. :)

I actually used one of Taylor's sketches (#86) but unfortunately didn't finish it in time so I didn't fully stick to the sketch. I also used one of her stamps which is the Happy Birthday sentiment from her really beautiful Fresh Flowers set. You really should check out her store, Taylored Expressions, she has beautiful stamps that are unmounted so they are extremely reasonably priced and they come with an EZ Mount cling cushion AND they are already die cut, unlike SU! (which are great stamps too, but you have to cut them out yourself and mount them on blocks).

So anyway, here's the card:


Just love Stampendous' Scrumptious Shoes:


Here's the inside, the scrolly frame is from Cricut's Storybook cartridge with some doodling I did with a white gelly roll pen and some rhinestones:


And here it is again showing the back of the envie:


Scrumptious Recipe:
-CS: Bazzill Basics "Brandy Wine" and "Rain"
-PPs: K&Company "Brenda Walton "Madeline"
-Stamps: Stampendous' Scrumptious Shoes "Sundae" (just the shoe) and Taylored Expressions "Fresh Flowers Set" (Just the Happy Birthday sentiment)
-Fluid Chalk Inks: Colorbox "Celadon"
-Prismacolor Pencils: PC943 Burnt Orchre, PC950 Metallic Gold, PC914 Cream, PC949 Metallic Silver, PC1005 Lime Green, PC928 Blush Pink, PC925 Crimson Lake, PC930 Magenta, PC916 Canary Yellow
-Ribbon: Offray "Kendra Lt Pink/Opal"
-Punches: MS "Doily Lace" edge punch
-Cricut: Storybook "Vine" (pg 51 of the manual) cut at 2 1/2" and the letters at 1" using the Shorty/Holes feature
-Misc: Black Pigment Ink, Embossing Powder, Heat Gun, Adhesive, Gamsol, Rhinestones, Pop dots, Thread

PS - My DF is finishing my new crafting station today, FINALLY!!
He started it last summer, had all the materials but ran out of time. We both have the day off today and plan to not stop until it is done.
Currently this is what I have had been using, look at that tiny workspace! ;p
This is in my upstairs hallway:




This is one of the closets I've been using that is in the room that my NEW USER FRIENDLY station will be (No longer in the hallway!), I've also been using the hallway closet. All of this will be part of and/or in my new workstation:




So stay tuned for pictures of my NEW USER FRIENDLY crafting station!!!

And while I'm at it I would like to share a current picture of my cute nephew, Chase (sadly this is only the 2nd time I've had a picture of him with me), I plan to have more!:


TFL!!!