I'm frantically trying to get ready for CHA (I leave tomorrow morning) and fulfill at least SOME of my DT work but I had to sneak in a card for this week's
Bah!Humbug Challenge which is to create a Christmas scene (from scratch). Oops, sort of missed the "from scratch" part. LOL I immediately thought of the beautiful Christmas Scenes to be found on my Peggy Loves Vintage
Christmas CD Volume 7. I guess Peggy did all of the work for the scene, but I so enjoy all of the lovely vintage images and I thought it would be perfect for this card. It was hard to choose just one, but I'd just gotten one of the new
Cuttlebug Embossing Plus Brocade Window folder, and although it isn't Christmas themed, I thought it would work. I measured the cut out and resized the image to fit the frame and printed it out. That's what's so wonderful about using the CD images and Peggy had LOADS to choose from
HERE. She also has downloadable
Cut Outs for those of you who prefer more IMMEDIATE gratification and no shipping!
First of all, I felt like an idiot because these new folders basically come with no instructions except some pictures on the back, and the packaging is unlike any I'd ever seen. No big blister pack like the regular folders. The whole layered folder is attached to the packaging with some little green button thingys that didn't look to me like they were supposed to come off so I thought the WHOLE thing was supposed to go through the Cuttlebug. Not the case. No matter what sandwich I used, it either didn't cut or wouldn't make it through. Hmmm... I was talking to my friend
Lillie on the phone and she suggested Googling it and fortunately there were
videos on how to use the darn thing or I would still be there scratching my head, or would have broken my dear Cuttlebug by now. Thanks Lillie. The little green buttons are supposed to be pried off to release the folder. (Well who knew? They looked pretty permanent to me. And there is still a cardboard piece attached to the whole shebang after you've remove the "packaging", sooo...) You can see they had been pried off here. The mini tut about this was an afterthought because I can't be the ONLY one who couldn't automatically figure this out, am I?
Anyway, the card stock is put between the 2 metal plates and run through the bug with the A Plate, B Plate, Folder dealie, and B Plate. It cut and embossed beautifully but is really BIG. It's a full 5x7 so with matting the card is a bit larger. I'm pretty sure there are smaller ones available, but I liked this one best to try.
On other cool thing that I would NEVER have figured out without watching the video is that the top acetate piece lifts up so you can ink it while it's right in the folder, which I tried immediately. It worked quite well, but the acetate is attached very close to the top so depending on the pad you use or whatever, it's difficult to get it completely inked. I took my piece out a couple of times and saw where I'd missed and reinserted it to add more which made the inking less than perfect, but I did like the effect over all and will probably buy more of these although they're kinda big bucks.
Once I positioned the image and popped the frame, all I added were some embellies that looked sort of vintage to me (Prima poinsettias and leaves with some adhesive beads and some kinda weird, sort of sparkly ribbon I'd gotten in the $1 bin at M's before Easter. I bought loads of colors of this because I thought it had a kinda fun texture and that it looked like Easter grass but didn't really used much of it. Finally the sentiment is a peelie that shows up a heck of a lot better in person. So I'm 28 for 28 in the
Bah! Humbug! Challenges and feeling quite smug about all of the cards I have in my stash so far. How about you? There's still time to join in at
Bah!Humbug!, and with the help of
Peggy Loves Vintage you could quickly come up to speed and not spend your December all stressed about making cards.