WooHoo! A Giveaway from The Cutting Cafe

Ahhh, the weekend is here and the weather is absolutely GORGEOUS! It was 82 yesterday and although it was difficult to stay inside at the Expo, I somehow managed (LOL) and came home with loads of bags I have yet to unpack. I also had time to make a quick card using the Got Coffee? and Coffee Beans Background downloadable printable stamp sets from The Cutting Cafe. If you love coffee, these are the sets for you, and you can win them BOTH, right here, just by leaving a comment. The Got Coffee? set has 24 different coffee related images and sentiments and the Background set comes 3 ways. The beans print in solid black, solid brown, and clear (outline only), so imagine the possibilities! On Monday, Regina will be announcing the list of all of the DT members who are participating in the giveaway so be sure to stop by The Cutting Cafe for more chances to win! She'll also be announcing new additions to The Cutting Cafe Design Team and you can browse all of the fabulous new sets Regina has in store. See ya there! I will be announcing the winner of these two adorable sets on Wednesday, March 24th, so be sure and stop back by.

Tea for 2 - .Cut File Available

The Alice craze has gotten me VERY into tea parties lately, so I thought I'd do this tea related card for Custom Crops using the new Once Upon a Princess cartridge. Originally I was gonna pass on this cart, but upon further investigation I found it's not only good for your girly princess related stuff, but it has some great sentiments as well. For once I actually designed a card using ONLY one cart. Amazing!

It's pretty straight forward and the full instructions and FREE .cut file is available HERE. As in all of my cards, they can be assembled with out dimension as well, but you know me, I've never met a pop dot I didn't like. LOL If YOU like it, I sure would appreciated a comment on the CC site so they know you guys are lovin' the articles. The paper here is from Graphic 45 Domestic Goddess and I LOVE IT, don't you? Anyway. The week is getting away from me and I haven't been able to craft as much as I'd like what with my hair appt. on Wed. , lunch out with DH, and today a Scrapbook Expo. WooHoo! I'm afraid I'll be missing out on a few of the challenges I'd hoped to do and I haven't even begun my DT stuff for next week. Wish me luck as I hope to be in major debt by the end of the day.

Cottage Cutz Birthday for Cards for Men

It's Cottage Cutz Thursday at The Cuttlebug Spot. Every other week The Cuttlebug Spot brings you examples of fun things to do with my favorite dies to use in my Cuttlebug. I just love the Cottage Cutz Camping release from The Scrapping Cottage. My DH is a backpacker and I thought these would be great for cards for him and males in general. (This is NOT something we share. My idea of camping is when room service is late.) This one will probably be from the two of us to his backpacking buddy but I think it would really be good for any male with a sense of humor.

I used the Bear Sitting and the Pine Tree Forest dies and inked and popped them. That Pine Tree Forest is great because although it's only a single 4 x 4 die, the layers work to make 4 different sized trees. I used more of that cool paper backed veneer to cut the trunks. LOVE IT! I used the same die in the previous post as well. I love how the Cottage Cutz dies work so quickly in my Cuttlebug. That perfect background paper is from an older DCWV Summer stack. The sentiment is computer generated. Now you know what's coming, don't you? LOL

The inside paper is also from that DCWV stack and I printed the upper sentiment in a strip to cover the words that were on that stripe. Hee, Hee! I'm lovin' the puns! I was happy to discover a new (at least to me) challenge site that focusses on Cards for Men. The current challenge is birthday cards. I hope to be able to continue to do these challenges because what could be MORE challenging, eh? And wouldn't it be nice to have a stash so you're not scrambling at the last minute? I'm pretty sure the challenge is every 2 weeks which makes it quite a bit easier for me, at least. So if you're game, be sure to check out Cards for Men, and also The Cuttlebug Spot for more exciting ideas for Cottage Cutz dies. Thursdays are volunteer at school days for Nilda so sometimes we beat her to the punch at posting but be sure to check back.)

Bah Humbug Challenge #9 Cool Combos and ABC Christmas Challenge

After last week's dismal entry for Bah! Humbug! I decided to try and redeem myself. The challenge this week was to combine at least 3 of the previous challenges but of course, 2 of the ladies on the fabulous DT used all 8 so I had to give it a go. I used the Joys of the Season Cricut Cartridge for the snow globe. The globe itself is packaging from Terrifically Tacky Tape (#1-recycling), the die cut Tree (# 7) is a new (#2 new stash) Cottage Cutz die (Hmmm, I don't see the specific die at the moment,( perhaps it's out of stock) from the from the Camping release, available at The Scrapping Cottage and is trimmed with red adhesive beads (#4 baubles). The Snowman (#6) is also a Cottage Cutz die from Holly Jolly Christmas (thanks Leah!) which I simplified a bit by leaving off his nose, arms, hat and broom (poor guy, but there's just so much room in there and I wanted to stick to the color scheme) and glittered (#3) by running it through my Xyron and sprinkling him with Doodlebug sugar coating. I also stickled the tree and the globe is filled with MS mica flakes. (You can never have too much #3! LOL)

I made a pedestal and trimmed the folded bits to match the contours of the snow globe.

The base of the pedestal is trimmed with holly (#5) paper and the berries were enhanced with more adhesive beads. Finally, the sentiment is ribbon that looks like it's been cross stitched (#8 stitching real or faux). WooHoo! I'd already had this card in my mind for ages and wasn't it convenient that I could incorporate all of the previous challenges? Thanks so much Ann, Max, and Irene for coming up with the perfect challenge to get me off my bum and finally make this card! I don't always have time to do something this elaborate (and I don't want to miss a challenge) but I'm happy it worked out this time. I'm also entering it into the ABC Christmas challenge which is F for Frosty. Thanks Sheryl! xxD

The Cuttlebug Spot Goes Digital

This week at The Cuttlebug Spot we've gone digi, with adorable downloadable images provided by our sponsor, Lily Boo's Boutique. I had such a hard time deciding which images I wanted to use, there are soooo many adorable ones, but finally decided on #5 Circles collection because I love the bold and beautiful flowers. I colored the flowers to look like my favorite Leonidas roses (which already has buds in the garden WooHoo!) and then decided the image would look pretty framed by the rose folder from Stampin' Up. I cut a circle out of one with my Nesties and cut them apart and shadowed them in black by cutting freehand. The background paper is K&Co Portobello Road (again!) embossed with the Cuttlebug Script folder.

The rose frame is popped with dimensionals and I cut the sentiment in fun foam using the Cuttlebug Everyday Grettings Card Making Combo. The digi image was printed twice so I could cut out the butterfly, and the final touches were the adhesive beads and peelie corners. Be sure to stop by The Cuttlebug Spot to see the fabulous variety of cards done by the DT and hop on over to LilyBoo's Boutique and check out the adorable designs. Just for leaving a comment about your fave you may win 2 free sets!

BBTB2 SYI Flourish and Technique Tuesday Stamp Challenge

This week at BBTB2 we have a new twist. Besides our usual interpretation of a Cricut cut, we were provided with adorable stamp set from a new sponsor, Technique Tuesday This made it a bit of a tough week because stamping is ALWAYS a challenge for me, and because a stamp is what it is, (and the flourish cut that was chosen) I was a bit limited as to size. I rarely make A2 cards because I like to load my stuff up, LOL, so while rifling through my paper I came across this great design from Me&MY Big Ideas and decided to make a tag instead. After several thousand tries (well not really, but it seemed like it) I managed to get a clean impression of the little deer and faired much better with the sentiment. The flourish cut blended in so much with the DP that I used adhesive pearls (big surprise) to embellish.

Just a bit of popping and a few punched butterflies and there you go. Be sure to stop by BBTB2 to see the amazing projects by my fabulous DT sisters. And certainly we'd love it if you'd play along.

Fabulous, Colorful and Quick Birthday Card from the Cutting Cafe

Tell me this card isn't a party waiting to happen. I was in need of a quick b-day card suitable for a male. YIKES! We all know how tough THAT can be! Well, Regina to the rescue with her fabulously colorful new Colored Birthday Celebration Background downloadable printable stamp set (coming very soon, I just couldn't wait!) from The Cutting Cafe. The cool thing about this is it's all colored for you (no messing around in another program) and actually comes as a full page for bigger projects but I resized it so the entire thing would fit on my card. The "HB" is from the set Happy Birthday 40 Ways which I mounted on a block of dots from the Colored Mini Polka Dot Background set (another pre colored set, WooHoo!) As you can see, I love me some dots, so I used 2 of the 12 different colors available on this set!

Inside I trimmed it out using scraps from my dots and a sentiment from the Extended Family Birthday Huge Circle Printable Stamp Set and I was done! The Cutting Cafe is the place to go for affordable downloadable stamps for all of your scrapping and card making needs. Having some sets is like money in the bank. Be sure to visit often, as new things are added all the time.

Oh Alice and Sunday Stampers Challenges

WooHoo! I'm lovin' the Alice challenges! This week at Oh Alice! Chapter 3 is "Painting the Roses Red": a color challenge of red, purple and blue, inspired by the new O.P.I. Alice nail polish collection. Also, through my blog hopping I came across Sunday Stampers where the theme is either Rabbits, or Alice, or BOTH! I gotcha covered! the sweet image is a digi from Sassy Studios Designs, colored with my Copics. the cool frame is done with my new Labels 13 Nesties. The blue mat is embossed with the Cuttlebug Fleur de Lys folder and the vine border punch is EK Success. The white and red roses are from Cottage Cutz Topiary die from The Scrapping Cottage. (I had originally planned on using the entire rose tree but opted for just the roses instead.) My story here is that the White Rabbit is looking at his watch because the roses aren't all painted yet and he's worried the Queen will be furious.

Jezzie in the cards

Okay, no card yet to show, but I just HAD to get that poor little Christmas card off of your sidebars. LOL I did craft yesterday but it was DT stuff that I can't show 'til next week. Couldn't resist posting these pix of Jezzie. I'd been sorting my mountain of cards and they were all over the floor. Here's what she thought of that. (So rare I can get pix of her.)Margie says I should scrap this. WHAT, a LAYOUT!? Maybe some day.

Bah Humbug Challenge #8 Stitching Real or Faux

I'm gonna apologize right up front for this card. I had great intentions this week because the Bah! Humbug! challenge was stitching real or faux and I was going to attempt, for the first time EVER, to stitch on a card using my sewing machine. And then the weather turned lovely. And then I walked this morning. And then DH suggested going out to lunch and after 2 glasses of wine it lead to an (ahem) nap. Oh crap! The challenge. Needless to say, I almost blew it off BUT as the good Loyalty Member that I am, I persevered, looking for an image that lent itself to stitching in some way shape or form (and was so tiny that it didn't take much to color. LOL) Yea, Fluffie! However it did take 2 attempts, because the darn thing was too small to get any nuance with Copics so I brought out the Prismas (not that it helped much, but a little.) So what about the stitiching? I was WAY too impared to fire up the machine so I pierced and intended to use my gel pen for faux. But it looked BAD! Out came the needle and floss and I stitched by hand... quite shakily I'm afraid. Thank heaven I cut the mat with my new deckle oval Nestie so it sort of looked like it was planned. (Well, maybe.) Anyway, that's the card, devoid of further embellishemnt because it's probably going in the bin. A total embarrassment, but I'm sure Max, Ann, and Irene will at least appreciate the effort.

Stampotique Color Challenge - "Made for Each Other"

Well I missed the first Stampotique Designer's challenge and was determined NOT to miss this one. It's a color challenge using rose, yellow and mossy green and you MUST use a Stampotique stamp this time. I've been dying to use these 2 stamps by Daniel Torente together. Don't Moth Fab and Bowtie make a cute couple? IMOO they're MFEO! I added a rub on flower in his hand and a couple of hearts and there you go. True love! WooHoo! Wouldn't this make a cute anniversary card?

The Cuttlebug Spot Vintage Challenge

I was so excited that our challenge at The Cuttlebug Spot was vintage this week because I'd been browsing the adorable images on my Peggy Loves Vintage New Baby Volume 1 CD and came across this precious bundle. I have no idea why, but I've had baby fever (no chance, I'm WWWAAAYYY too old for that, LOL). The CD is chock full of fabulous vintage images and this sweet little guy all wrapped up in his blanket just called out to me and I HAD to use him. I resized him to fit a 2 1/2 inch square and cut him out with my Nesties along with a scalloped mat. Then, to echo the blanket, I cut a 5 inch square and used my MS punches (these are obviously my current faves since I used them 2 weeks in a row, LOL), scored each side twice diagonally and ran it through my Cuttlebug using Swiss Dots. Then I folded each corner in, then out on the score marks to make the sweet dimensional frame.

I decided that some weaving might be in order (thought it looked like an old fashioned baby blanket) and once I'd woven the strip I embossed it with Swiss Dots as well. I cut a channel in the top mat and embossed it with one of the 5X7 folders from the Romance bundle. I ran my ribbon over the mat but under the weaving and added a bow.

The image is popped and I added pearls and little Alpha Beads to finish it off. Be sure to stop by The Cuttlebug Spot to check out the lovely efforts by my DT sisters and if you leave a comment you not only may win a gift certficate to the Craft Barn, but our sweet DT sister Lillie has donated a fabulous set of her handmade "hip huggin' jammies" for your Cuttlebug and Cricut. Of course if you can't wait, click to shop Lillie's store. Also, we'd love it if you'd play along, and if you're in search of vintage images for ALL occasions be sure to visit Peggy Loves Vintage. Not only does she have CD's, but also downloadable cut out sheets with 8 images in a variety of designs available for immediate gratification. Also, check out the Peggy Loves Vintage BLOG for freebies, contests and MORE!