Kickin' Off Christmas Blog Hop Day 2

WooHoo! It's Day 2 of the Kickin' Off Christmas Blog Hop. Hope you are enjoying all of the fabulous projects using products from Chomas Creations mini gel pen and marker holders and the fab embossing tip, iCopic and SP&Company Stamp line and be sure to comment on each and every post to increase your chances of winning the prizes along the way. If you've arrived from Amber's Blog you're on the right track. If not, you might was to start at the beginning to hear about the special giveaway on Amy's Blog and the fabulous Black Friday prices on all of her wonderful merchandise. Hurry though, the prices are only good through 11:59 pm EST tonight!

For my project today I've created custom gift wrap using the mini gel pen holder and Cricut Design Studio. I have to admit, I really had no idea the time it would actually take to fill a 12x12 page using the words Merry Christmas (from Plantin Schoolbook roly poly font) but once I got started, I was determined to finish.

I typed each word separately because in the end, I wanted Merry in one color and Christmas in another. That required 3 full pages in Design Studio and tons of cutting and pasting. This first shot from Design Studio is the entire 12x12 mat filled with Merry Christmas.

Then, in order to have Merry in Red, and Christmas in green, I had to cut and paste all of the Merrys onto one page and the Christmas' to another. I did hide the contours of the letters that were off the margins when I finally began drawing to make sure the glue on the mat didn't gum up my pens. First I loaded the mini gel pen with the red and clicked "cut" to draw the Merry page. Then removed the holder and changed the pen to green (very carefully so as not to drop it on my paper) and drew again on the Christmas page. I really thought the paper came out cool, but did not anticipate how long it would actually take to do the full page. Let's just say you might plan to eat breakfast, exercise, shower, do your hair, etc. instead of just waiting around for the Cricut because I forgot that Design Studio has a mind of it's own when it comes to speed. It takes it's own sweet time. Not necessarily practical, but if the wrap were customized with a person's name? Pretty darn cool.

For the tag I used the Embossing tip and 10 Seconds Studio metal. I taped the red side down on the embossing mat and embossed the jingle bell from the Christmas Solutions cartridge. Then I sanded the embossing to show the silver underneath and cut the bell out with my scissors. I used the blackout version of the same cut (because the shadow cut out the bottom of the bell) and sized it larger for the back of the tag.

Then I used the Mini gel pens and holder to write the To: and From: on the back. (Again 3 mats in Design Studio or your gypsy). One for cutting, and one for each word because I wanted one red and one green.) The embossed metal easily attaches to card stock with Scor-tape. Please scroll down to Day one if you're interested in a link to a tutorial about using the gel pens (Mine is actually with Cricut markers, but they work the same way) And also the entire list of hoppers in case you get lost. Rough day today, and I'm honestly too tired to type it all in and link it again, but if you're following the hop, your next stop is iCopic. Thanks so much for visiting and for your sweet comments. Happy Thanksgiving to you ALL! xxD

Kicking Off Christmas Blog Hop

Welcome to Day 1 of the kicking off Christmas Blog Hop! If you've come from Amber's Blog, you're on the right track. If not, bop back to Amy's Blog because you're not going to want to miss the fabulous creations and wonderful prizes you can win so be sure to comment on each and every post to increase your chances and hop to the end because Samantha has a giveaway too. We're featuring products from Chomas Creations, iCopic, and the SP& Company Stamp line so I hope you're inspired.

My favorite way to use Amy's mini gel pen holder is to outline a Cricut cut and then color it with Copic markers and that's just what I've done here. I've used Tink from Tinker Bell and Friends and the poinsettias from the Christmas Solutions cartridge. I have to say I never use the Tinker Bell cartridge until Amy clued me about using the Gel pens with Copics. The cuts were far too intimidating. On one page in DS were the regular cuts for outlining, and on a second page were the shadows (with the exception of the poinsettia layers which didn't have shadows so I cut them with the regular cut) for the cutting. If you have questions how to do this, I have a tutorial HERE that explains the method (although the tut is for the Cricut markers, the method is the same).

The "Believe" sentiment (also from the Tink cart) was done with the embossing tip on vellum. I love the effect and it would have been impossible to make this cut on the Cricut so small. The window was cut with my Nesties Mega Ovals Large and outlined with peel-off stickers.

Then it was just a matter of popping the layers with dimensionals, glittering her wings with Stickles, and adding some adhesive beads and pom poms to her slippers and you have a magical Disney Christmas card. I so love the special effects you can do with the Chomas Creations holders and tip. The possibilities are endless! Next stop is the iCopic Blog and if you get lost, here's a list of the hop destinations. Be sure to come back tomorrow for more ideas. Enjoy!

Amy Chomas

Amber Holden

Donna Mundinger You are HERE!

iCopic

Maria McGuire

Stephanie

Penny Duncan

Susan Edwards

Linda

Jin Yong

Calypso

Dana Ansell

Lori

Samantha

Bah! Humbug! Winter Wonderland (a Couple Hours Late)

Good morning! Mine started dark and early (1:45 am). It's been deathly hot and I woke up sweaty and thirsty and just couldn't go back to sleep. It must have been that I hadn't finished my Bah! Humbug! card and of course I didn't want to miss that! This past week the challenge was Winter Wonderland so I decided to play a bit again with my mini gel pens and holder from Chomas Creations. This time I chose the teal pen from the Assortment to match my frosty color scheme. The images I chose are from the Cricut Christmas Solutions cartridge. I used Design Studio for placement of both the regular and shadow features and then placed them on different mats; one for the drawing, one for the cutting. After drawing the images (pressure 3, speed 3) I pressed load mat (not load last) and replaced my pen holder with the blade housing. I adjusted my pressure to 5 and went to my second mat in Design Studio (where the shadows were) and pressed cut again. WooHoo! No fussy cutting. I did a bit of shading with my Copics using BG0000, BG000 and C1 and added some sparkle with Star Dust Stickles. I'm really loving these pens! SOOOO many applications! Be sure to stop by Amy's Blog to see more fabulous examples and you can order her fabulous products there too. Sorry about the pic here. It was still dark but the Stickles sure do stand out!

Hmmm, another card that fits a business envie. The base is Bazzill sparkle and the background is embossed with the Snowflakes limited edition Cuttlebug folder from Custom Crops. The top mat is embossed with a OMC Internet Exclusive Sizzix snowflake folder. The cut out is a Nesties Mega Classic Scalloped Oval. Big surprise that I used the Cuttlebug Embossing Plus Fanciful Labels which I colored with the same gel pen and added a peelie and pearls. This dimension shot is a bit better as to color. I'm also entering this in the Winter Wonderland Challenge (another great Christmas challenge blog) whose theme just happens to be Winter Wonderland. Anyway, hope you like. It's gonna be another scorcher so this Winter Wonderland is looking pretty nice right now.

I'm sorry for those of you who have asked, but I didn't save a .cut file for this. I just used Design Studio for placement of the shadows (for the cut page) and each of the images was cut individuallyafter drawing them all first. I have a tutorial on using Cricut Markers HERE that explains what I did I guess in more detail. Cricut markers work the same way as these pens. The example showing the monkey in that tut is what was done for this card. Hope that helps.

It's a Cricut Card, REALLY!

So of course you all know I've been enjoying a bit of a diversion with stamping and the like but look again here. This is a Cricut card. At CHA I spent alot of time with fellow Custom Crops Design Team sister Amy Chomas of Chomas Creations. Amy makes those fabulous mini gel pen, mini sharpie, and micro mini sharpie holders that work in the Cricut like the Cricut markers but SO MUCH BETTER! (Over a martini or two, hee hee) we got to talking about Copics and she said "Well you know you can use my pens with Copics too." What? Are you kidding me? Sure enough. (Okay, so I'm a little surprised I remember the conversation...)

Although I LOVE the images on the Tinker Bell and Friends cartridge, the chances of me cutting those teeny little pieces are slim to none. Instead, using Design Studio, I placed both the shadow and regular cuts of Fawn and that gorgeous floral corner on my screen for placement. Then I copy and pasted the shadow images to another screen and welded them and went back to the original screen and deleted them. Now I have one mat for drawing and one mat for cutting. I replaced my blade with the mini gel pen holder and first drew the images. (I used pressure 3, speed 3 but in DS the speed has a mind of it's own) NOW, DO NOT UNLOAD THE MAT, PRESS LOAD MAT (not load last) and replace the pen holder with your blade again. (ADJUST YOUR PRESSURE to cut, VERY IMPORTANT) Go to your second page (with the shadows for cutting) click cut and voila! Now you don't have to use DS for this if you're just cutting single images and it works the same way. If this is clear as mud, check out Amy's video HERE.

WOW! Now I could color to my heart's content and didn't have to fussy cut around the image to pop it! I have the freedom to resize like a digi, WOOHOO!!! I don't know about you, but those Disney carts drive me up the wall and I can see getting SO much more use out of them with my pen holder! Not all that much more needed for the card either. The gorgeous paper is K&Co Que Sera Sera, a bit of that sort of weird sparkly fuzzy $1 bin ribbon from M's and "imagine" in wire attached with my Tim Holtz Tiny Attacher. Guess you still can't really see it, but it's there and looks pretty cool in person.

Not a whole lot of dimension here, but this was a first attempt. It will be interesting to try drawing and cutting the layers for even more dimension. Thanks Amy for cluing me in to this fabulous application for your mini holders. I'm SURE to be using them a whole lot more now, not to mention all of those nearly unused Cricut carts I thought I just HAD to have. Be sure to check out Chomas Creations for more great ways to use these FABULOUS holders (including the embossing kit which I'm anxious to try after seeing Amy's super cool layouts). They can be purchased right on her blog (as well as Custom Crops) and I have to mention that they are manufactured in the USA which is always a big deal to me (especially in this economy) by Amy and her family members. (Tell me that's not cool and deserves support!) Luv ya, girl!

I'm also linking this up to Scraptastic Saturday which is a great new feature on Hannah's blog where you can view a wide variety of fun creations all in one place.