The Cuttlebug Spot Favorite New Folder Challenge

Don't you just LOVE the new collection of Cuttlebug folders? When Nilda asked us to create a card with our favorite it was a really tough choice but I finally decided upon the Flourish Frame because of it's versatility. I had already done a wedding/anniversary card using this folder so I wanted to do something different. Guess I still have Christmas on the brain so I used the Cuttlebug wreath emboss/die combo for the focal point.

I cut it twice, cut out the bow, added some red adhesive gems and popped it on. Managed to sneak in my ALL TIME favorite Swiss Dots folder On the card face as well. Matted in red foil board and stuck on a peelie colored with a permanent marker (thanks Lillie!) How easy was that!? Now these I could make multiples of. Be SURE to stop over to the Cuttlebug Spot to see the lovely creations by my Design Team sisters and PLAY ALONG! YOU could win all 11 of these fabulous new folders and there are 2nd, 3rd, and 4th place runners up who will receive some of the new folders as well. Thank you Provo Craft for sponsoring us this week! Be sure to read the rules for participation. Now go! Create! WIN!

BBTB Accent Essentials Snowflake

Happy Monday! This week at BBTB Regina chose the snowflake cut from Accent Essentials. This is one of my favorite cuts off this cartridge. In fact, I've used it so many times that it took me awhile to come up with something new. I decided to creat a flurry by welding an number of them on the shadow cut to the sentiment "Let it Snow" using one of the fonts from Storybook.

Instead of welding it to my usual rounded rectangle or square, I made a shaped card base using a large shadow of the cut as well. the white blackout layer is cuttled with Swiss Dots.

Then I layered up a storm, subtracting from the base design at each layer to maintain support and allow for a multi dimensional effect. I glittered the snowflakes using Martha Stewart glitter and my Xyron and added silver adhesive beads to the sentiment.

There's quite a blizzard going on at Bitten By The Bug, so be sure and stop by to see the marvelous creations by my Design Team sisters. And why not get a jump on your Christmas cards and play along? Also if you hurry there is still yime to enter the current contest sponsored by Paper Blooms. You have until midnight TONIGHT! Click HERE for details.

OMG! Another Award!

Oh my goodness, I was reading my comments about my blog award post and I was pleased and surprised to receive yet another one, this time from Piali. Thank you so much, Piali! I met Piali a couple of months ago when she won my BBTB Blog Hop candy and since then I've noticed that she is the absolute Queen of the Blog Challenges! Her work is fabulous and I'm amazed at how she can maintain such creativity and still do so many! Her blog is a real treat so be sure to stop by and say "Hi". I'm supposed to list 7 interesting things about myself and I did give it some thought. Since I think I've listed them before and can't think of 7 new things, if you're interested you can click HERE. Again, I pass this on to all of my blogging friends. I find inspiration from all of you each and every day!

Blog Awards and the Winner of the BBTB Blog Hop Candy

I am terribly remiss in posting my blog awards. I so love receiving each and every one, but sometimes they slip by before I realize and when I do, I've often no time to give them the appreciation they deserve. Since it's Aug 1 I'm going to try to catch up and at least publicly thank the dear friends who have honored me if not follow all the rules required to accept them. Here goes:

This is a new one for me and a very treasured one because it's about friendship. I cherish the friendships I've made through this wonderful hobby of mine and feel so lucky to have made what I hope to be lasting connections. Thank you dear sweet Leah, Vicki and Scrappinlil! All of these ladies are so talented and have pretty new blogs so be sure to click on their names and go say "Hi".

Next is the Kreativ Blogger award from Iamtutu, Kelly, Heather, and Kathy. Wonderful things await you on their blogs! Thank you so much ladies, it is truly an honor.

Next is the One Lovely Blog Award. I love this with the little cup of roses. I'm rarely blog hopping without a cup of something hot to sip on. Thank you Nita, Tracy and Shazza, your blogs are so much fun to visit. Oh and BTW, Shazza has a fabulous new challenge site called From Screen 2 Scrap. Check it out, how much fun is that!?

Next is the Honest Scrap award from my dear friend Margie. We are Design Team sisters for both The Cuttlebug Spot and Custom Crops and she does fabulous work! Margie is such a busy gal that not only did she forget to post this on her sidebar, but she also forgot to tell me she had so honored me and I just happened upon it by chance. LOL Trust me, we're great friends so she won't be offended by my teasing her like this (I hope!) but go check it out to see if she gave you this award. Click HERE. (I'm doin' your work for you gal, even if it is a month late!) HeeHee! :D

This fun award is from my dear friend Nancy. She's been another busy gal this summer but when she's crafting, oooh boy is her stuff amazing! Thanks sweetie! I could use a glass of this about now.

Last but certainly not least is this award from sweet Sandy! Truly I feel this award should have been given the other way around. Sandy has ALWAYS been a great supporter of mine and her kind comments on the Cricut mb, my blog, and at Custom Crops always make my day. Thank you dear friend, and all of you who have honored me with these awards. I certainly hope I haven't missed anyone and I'm all caught up. If you tally these babies up and multiply by the number of people I need to pass them on to, I hope you'll forgive me for not passing them out individually. As it is it's taken me 3 hours to hunt everyone down and link them up so feel free, dear readers, to accept one of these awards from me with love. xx

Now on to what you've REALLY been waiting for...the WINNER of my BBTB Blog Hop candy is #3, chosen by my random org DH. Congratulations Jeannie Phillips! Please send me a pm or an email with your address and I'll send it right out. Hugs! D

Make a Wish ,Cut file Available

I just love the New A Child's Year cartridge so I decided to make a few simple birthday cards. They are A2 size which is small for me, but I thought it would be nice to have something that is easy to send for a change. They are a Design Team project for Custom Crops and the article and .cut file are available HERE. They also only require 2 carts, Plantin Schoolbook and A Child's Year.

For the inside I mounted another silhouette right behind the shaped front to stamp or write a sentiment.

I thought the images would be great for layouts or also make cute tags so I included the cuts without the card backing as well. I like these cuts even without the patterned paper and embellies. Just a little embossing and doodling and I was good to go.

The Cuttlebug Spot Christmas in July

This week The Cuttlebug Spot features Christmas cards. It felt like a welcome relief after all of the hot weather so of course I chose a snowy theme. I've been dying to try a tri shutter card so I watched this fabulous tutorial HERE by Bonnie Szwalkiewicz and found they were really easy to do. The mats were a little tricker for me but I managed and the front and back mats lent themselves to the Snowy Village Cuttlebug folder quite nicely. Much of the detail was enhanced by Frosted Lace stickles. The pretty acetate glitter snowflakes on the front and back panels are from Me & My Big Ideas.

I used the Snowflakes folder on the top and bottom larger interior mats and left the smaller ones blank to decorate with Rain Dot snowflakes. All mats are outlined with silver peelies. The sentiment was computer generated and cut and embossed with the Labels 4 Nesties. Between the iridescent blue card stock, the white mats and the stickles this card didn't photograph very well but it's quite pretty IRL. If you ask me, the Cuttlebug is THE way to go when doing multiple Christmas cards so why don't you get started early and come play along with us at The Cuttlebug Spot? We have another fabulous prize awaiting, and while you're there, do check out the gorgeous creations by my DT sisters.

We are the World BBTB Blog Hop

It's the last Monday in July (I can't believe it, can you?) and time for another BBTB BLOG HOP! If you happened upon this post by chance you may wish to start at BBTB, otherwise you probably arrived here from my talented DT sister Krista's Blog. This week Regina asked us to use the sort of graphic man and woman from Going Places. I must confess that at first I groaned because these figures look to me like those on a unisex public bathroom (I guess they aren't holding hands there, God forbid, but you know what I mean). Then all of a sudden this idea came to me and everything changed. Maybe Michael was reaching down to inspire me, but this may be my all-time favorite card EVER. It took me HOURS to get everything welded and to cut the individual couples in all the colors of the rainbow but I'm SO HAPPY with how it came out. Thank you dear Leah for letting me borrow this cart yet AGAIN (guess it's time to invest) because all of the cuts but the clouds (from Hello Kitty Greetings) were from Going Places. Oops, I lied, I did use a square and tiny heart from Plantin Schoolbook but that doesn't really count, does it?

I used quite a bit of popping to enhance the floating nature of the background cuts and the continents and ocean on the world. The sky and clouds were cut from Bazzil card stock with pre- embossed dots and the ocean was cuttled with the D'Vine Swirls Cuttlebug folder and the continents with the tiny dots from the butterfly die/emboss set and the sun was embossed with Swiss Dots.

Now on to my amazingly creative DT sister Enfys' BLOG. 893 followers wouldn't lie, so you are in for a real treat! But before you go, please leave a comment to be included in the random drawing for my blog candy. The winner will be announced Sunday morning, Aug 2. Happy hopping and thank you so much for stopping by! xxD

Remember I have Faith in You

Okay, I'm bummed. Although I ALWAYS check out the fabulous sketches at 2 Sketches 4 You I'm always intimidated and have only actually officially played along once. Kazan's sketch 31 spoke to me as I was already thinking along those lines because of the fabulous black and cream pad from K&Co. Obviously I wasn't aware of the deadline because there I was about to post my entry and they had already announced Card of the Week and the Fab 5. (Note to self. Do it BEFORE Sunday morning.) I still think it turned out pretty well though and the gorgeous paper just begged for a sentiment from The Cutting Cafe's "I Have Faith in You" printable stamp set. Even better, Regina is offering this beautiful set ABSOLUTELY FREE through the entire month of August!

I did the whole card with my paper cutter, my square Nesties, and Martha Stewart butterfly punches. Somehow foam dimensionals didn't really work with this card so I cut the 4 small squares 3 times each to give them more of a chipboard feel. The punched butterflies are adhered in the center only with the wings bent up and the bodies are adorned with adhesive beads. "Remember" is a metal adhesive sticker that I colored black with a permanent marker. There's a bit of a glare in the picture on it because it's shiny, but that worked really well.

Again, the beautiful sentiment is from The Cutting Cafe "I Have Faith in You", a set of 12 lovely sentiments that is Regina is offering free for a limited time. Click HERE for details. She also has some .99 specials and a fabulous new wedding set so be sure to browse a bit.

Boo to You from The Cutting Cafe

I don't know about you, but I LOVE Halloween and for me it's never too early to start thinking up fun ideas. That's why I couldn't wait to play with the "Boo" printable background stamp from The Cutting Cafe. I just love the small scale and cool font, and the O's look like little eyes. OOOH! So much fun!

First I printed out the background on white cardstock for my card mat, cut a frame with my Labels 1 Nestie and a big moon out of orange with my Nestie Circle. That spooky tree is a Cottage Cutz die sold exclusively at The Scrapping Cottage. I wish I could say I thought up the google eyes idea myself, but I saw it on The Scrapping Cottage Blog and fell in love with the idea. Too cute, don't you think, and perfect with the background stamp. The little bats are RainDots and the spooky is a puffy sticker I added some more google eyes to.

The cool part about this background stamp is the image is large enough to use for layouts and in this case, wrapping paper. I just printed it this time on regular printer paper and wrapped a little box of treats with it. The tombstone tag and bat are Cuttlebug cut and emboss dies. How fast and fun it that?! Hop on over to The Cutting Cafe. There's loads of fun printable stuff to get your creative juices flowing and they're only an email away!

Caution Men Cooking .Cut File Available

I had this card in my mind since way before Father's Day but it took awhile to get it together, and the idea grew and grew. It was designed exclusively for Custom Crops and the .cut file and article with detailed instructions are available HERE. The card is held closed with a band that is supposed to resemble Caution tape. I don't know about you, but I really stand back whenever DH decides to act as Grillmeister. LOL

I thought it would make a cute Father's Day or B-Day card for the man in your life, or even a Barbeque or Cook-Off invitation (as long as you're not inviting a ton of people. LOL)

I'm afraid I used a ton of carts on this design and I apologize. This seems to bug some people when I'm sharing the .cut file, but as I said, the idea grew and grew, so the list came to George, Indie Art, Zooballoo, Mickey Font, Plantin Schoolbook, and Joys of the Season. YIKES! I just couldn't stop until I designed a cute inside as well with a hot mitt that opens for the sentiment.

I'd love it if you'd go to Custom Crops and take a look and if you could leave a comment there so much the better! Oh, BTW, my Forever card is also available HERE for download. WooHoo! You can see all of my designs on the Custom Crops site by clicking on my Design Team blinkie on the sidebar. Thanks for stopping by! xxD

BBTB Indy Art Ice Cream Cone Challenge

This week at BBTB Regina asked us to use the ice cream cone from the Indie Art cartridge. I made a simple shape card using Design Studio and popped the layers for dimension. I decided on strawberry ice cream so I used the cute paper from the DCWV Nana's Kids Baby Girl matstack and used pink stickles to add some Martha Stewart mica flake glitter to make it look frosty. To add some texture to the cone I embossed both pieces with the Tiny Mosaic Cuttlebug folder.

Some of the designers were sent gorgeous hand crocheted flowers from Paper Blooms. I already had my own stash of these fabulous flowers so of course I included one on my card too. And now Leah is making beautiful butterflies as well! WooHoo! The sentiment tag is from The Cutting Cafe A to Z is for 24 piece downloadable printable stamp set. They are the perfect size to use your Stampin'Up label punch and Nesties, and there are 23 more fun sentiments to choose from, perfect for a whole variety of occasions. There is also a new contest going on over at BBTB where you can win some of these gorgeous Paper Blooms, and it just happens to require the word "yummy" to enter. Be sure to check out the rules HERE and also take a look at the YUMMY creations my DT sisters came up with this week.

The Cuttlebug Spot Blog Hop

We're doing things a little different at The Cuttlebug Spot this week. Each Design Team member was asked to do a project using a technique formerly featured as a challenge. Instead of posting our projects on the blog, you're gonna have to do a little hopping to see what we've all come up with. If you missed the starting point of this hop, you can start HERE at the blog of our fabulous sponsor this week. I chose embossing something other than paper because I was hot to use more of my new Cuttlebug summer release folders. My DH is extremely fond of Diamond plate, and so much the better I could emboss actual metal. The word "Tough" is from the Tim Holtz grungeboard alphabet. I used the Herringbone folder on those because I think it looks like tire tread and then painted them with Ranger acrylic paint daubers and sanded a bit to enhance the texture. The metal letters are from Colorbok which I again used paint daubers in both white and black to dirty them up a bit, the gears are Tim Holtz Sprockets, and the screws are actual screws that my DH cut the threads off for me. WooHoo, he came home a day early from his trip because of stormy weather and boy am I glad! (Not just to cut off screws for me to use in my project LOL, I REALLY missed him! )

Lotsa metal going on here! This is one heavy card! More embossing and metal letters on the inside, and the "2 withstand" was done with Scrapyard 329 alphabet that I pounded with a mallet into a Ten Seconds Studio slate covered metal sheet (it's kinda like coredinations card stock, but metal) and then used one of their texture wheels and sanded.

Besides all of the texture from the embossing and metal embellishments I popped the "T" and "G" with foam dimensionals. You didn't actually think I'd do a card without them, did you? Your next stop on our little hop is my talented Design Team sister Kerri's blog so click HERE to see what she's come up this week. And thank you so much to our fabulous sponsor Katz Designz. She has an adorable stamp set that you can win by making a project using your favorite past technique and leaving a link in the comments section. So have fun and keep on hopping!