More Christmas cards

Ok, I'm on a roll now. The first is done with my new exclusive HSN cuttlebug folder. The Peace is a $1 stamp from M's, heat embossed. Very simple but nice.

The second was done with Winter Wonderland cartridge except for the flowers which were punched, scored and glued together. Losts of Angel Dust and the background paper is sparkly too.

Some new cards finally

All my creativity has been sucked dry lately. I haven't played my violin, and although I stare at my craft supplies everyday as I sit here at the computer or watching TV, nothing is happening. Well it didn't help I travelled for work the past 2 out of 3 weeks either.

It was actually a local radio station that got me going today... they do continuous Christmas music starting around now, and they started yesterday. I put it on, and was able to churn out two cards!

Started with the cute house mouse image and then played around with my cricut. The tree is cut with the Christmas cartridge. Then I put tape on the back of it so the sticky side showed thru and trimmed all the edges. Then dumped green glitter all over and pressed it into the sticky. The white snow was cut, then I put thru my xyron to make them sticky and them dipped in diamond dust. The flower is made from two flowers punched from the 5 petal stampin' up! punch. The leaves are from the poinsettia from JOTs, I think. The star on top of the tree is a sticker.

Redone T-shirt

I was so excited to get my band parent T-shirt, but it didn't fit! So I decided to redo it. I went to Joann's and got some music fabric and cut out our favorite instruments - Saxophone, Violin and Guitar (actually put some wonder-under underneath the fabric first). Then positioned, ironed on, painted around each instrument with gold paint, and cut down the middle. Added some iron on embellisments and now I have a little jacket instead and now I can wear it. The white you see in the middle is the design of the band program showing thru - it's all white on the back of the shirt.

Silly project for Son

At school they don't celebrate Halloween, per se, but celebrate "spirit week"... (meaning school spirit). Tomorrow is celebrity day and we couldn't figure out what do to....then I had a brainstorm. My second cousin is Nicolas Cage (yes it's true, my father and Francis Coppola are first cousins, Nic Cage is the son of Francis' brother August, my father's other cousin (and to drop another name, their sister is Talia Shire). To simplify, my great grandfather and Nicolas Cage's great grandfather is the same person. My grandfather and his grandmother are brother and sisteer.

I had no iron on transfer stuff, so I just printed out a picture from the internet on cardstock and sewed it to a t-shirt, lol. And since no one ever believes my poor son that he is related, I put his family tree on the back.

PS: no, unfortunately I haven't met him, but my sister met him once at a wedding!

Another House Mouse card

Wow this was a tough one to color. Used both pencils and markers on it. I'm not thrilled with the outcome, but the card all put together is nice. The poinsettia is made with Joy of the season, the other flowers are punched flowers.

House Mouse Challenge #54 - Movies

I knew exactly which stamp I was going to use for this one - a new one that's all about Chocolate. Right away the move Chocolat comes to mind for me. I had gotten the sentiment stamp a while ago and could not wait to use it. Don't these two stamps go together perfectly? The flowers are homemade using a Stampin' Up! 5 petal flower.

AZ State Fair Winners

I entered 7 items in the State Fair, and they all won something. They will be on display at the fair thru the middle of November!

First Place: Tole painting (I don't have a pic at the moment), Swan, Frog card, my first card (the one with the party hat
Second Place: flower pot place setting - the picture I have shows a red/white/blue one I first did, the one I entered was made of greenish flowers; Christmas card


"Best in show" for all card divisions and first place = flower pot card!

Simple Floral punch craft tutorial

This is my first attempt at a tutorial, I hope it's easy for you to understand. I'm making a very simple basic flower here using punches.

Here is what you need: I have two punches, the 5 petal flower is a medium EK Success punch, and the small punch is from the $1 bin at Michaels. Two pieces of card stock. Some fun foam. The green tool is an image transfer tool - I will be using the round end. You can use a gel pen - cap end also. A darning needle. And I forgot to include a stylus in the picture.

I've also discovered you can use your cricut to cut out flowers or petals from one of many cartridges that have them.

First step, punch out your pieces:

Next I marked how I wanted to cut my leaves from the green flower and then cut them out.

I am saving that little star - might make another interesting center for a flower.

Now you score your pieces using your darning needle. Press the needle side into the leaf and drag toward the end. Push down into the foam as you do this and the leaf will automatically curl.

Now add your veins.


Here is what it will look like when your leaves are done. Then turn them over.




Now onto the flower. Score similar to the leaves. I'll be scoring 3 lines down each petal.



Here is the flower once scored.



Turn your flower over and push down into the foam using your tool (in my case my image tranfer tool; this is where you could use the cap end of a gel pen).
Here's the flower when done. Notice how the pressure into the foam gives it dimension.



Let's make the center now. Take your stylis and push down into the center of the small green piece.


Turn the center piece over. Use a little glue to hold it all together, and Viola a simple flower. Believe me these instructions take longer than it takes to make the flower!

Tag card with Flower

Tag card made with Joy of the Seasons, flower cut with Plantin Schoolbook. Center is a $1 punch from Michaels. Closeup of the flower to show the work to make it pop.

Floral punch craft

Found another cool craft that I had to try - it's all about making homemade flowers using paper punches. I've been making little flowers all week and tonight made a quick card. While I was at it, I thought I could also use my cricut. Here's the "recipe"

Pointsettia: Joys of the season

Daisies: medium EK Success 5 petal flower

Daisy leaves: same punch, cut out teardrops from the petals to make leaves. It's hard to see, but all leaves are veined. There are tools to do this artwork, but I am using a darning needle, a piece of fun foam and a transfer rub on tool as well as a stylus to do all the shaping and veining

Inside of flowers: $1 punch found in the dollar bin at Michaels.

I have a couple more cute flowers put together, just need to figure out what to do with them and then I'll post those too. The leaves are bigger and inked, so you'll know what I mean by the veining.

My baby's birthday!

It's my baby Timmy's 16th birthday! Actually, it's tomorrow, but here's the story. He was born in NY at 12:06am after I was in labor literally all day. The child did not want to come out of his warm cozy cocoon. He was born by caesarian, finally, but not before I begged the doctor to try and get him out before midnight. Well that didn't happen. So now we live in AZ, and it pushes his birthday time to 9:06pm AZ time. So we celebrate over two days (also in memory of me being in labor all day October 8 with nothing to show for it on that day, lol).

Faux quilting

I saw a version of these on the cricut message board today and finally was able to get through my brain block to do these. It's been terrible just staring at all the great stamps, cartridges and paper I have and not be able to come up with anything! At least this got me 3 new cards. Many more to go tho!

Updated paper swan

I submitted my swan to the state fair yesterday as an entry, but before I did that, I wanted to add something to it. So I made a Christmas wreath using my MS branch punch. The ladies who accepted it just loved it. Who knows, maybe I'll win a ribbon. That would be so cool :)

Another button card

Button came from Christmas Cheer cartridge.

Brayered Note card

Practicing my brayering again...tried to do a reflection, didn't come out well. I'll call it the illusion of a reflection, LOL.

House Mouse & Friends Challenge #52

This week's challenge was to pick a previous challenge as HM&F is celebrating it's year anniversary. With Halloween coming, I did Challenge #8 (Halloween) and I used one of my favorite stamps. I also did something fun - I made a home made button. Can't say it's my idea, but if was from the Splitcoast stamping Monday challenge. Its very easy:

Cut 4 pieces of same design from any cheap card stock. I cut these ovally pieces with my cricut using the George cartridge.

Cut one piece of same design from pattern or stamped card stock (or even plain).

Using a liquid glue, glue all together with your "nice" one on the top.

Let dry.

Sand the edges - this is what makes it look like one piece when you are done.

At this point punch holes with a cropodile or other hole punching device.

Use Glossy accents or other clear laquer to finish - the toughest part is keeping your holes clear. When it's almost try I start clearing out the holes with the end of an opened paper clip. Haven't experimented yet with repunching the holes or waiting until the glossy accents are dry.

This is really cool because you can make coordinating buttons for all your projects and can do them in any shape!

First card in over a week

How do you get your crafting energy back when you lose it? I have no excuses, I had a very light work week. I thought I was going to be very productive in terms of making cards but no such luck. Even tonight, all I did was take some elements that were already done: the angel was already colored and cut, and the background was already cuttlebugged. The only energy I had to expend was to change the color thread in my sewing machine and sew the card. You'd think I could do more like this, but it's still not working. Still a few months til Christmas, thank goodness.

Paper Swan

I was playing around with some 3D origami this weekend. It's impossible to find any instructions online. Eventually I found some very basic instructions plus this swan, but it turned out those instructions were wrong! I had gotten about 1/4 through it and couldn't get any further until I played around and figured out why the instructions were wrong. There were also some error which I had to figure out too (maybe because the instructions were translated from korean or chinese, who knows). I am wanting to make a vase for some of my paper roses, but need to figure that out next.