Thank you card

Good Morning and Happy New Year!! This week at SweetSassyDiva's the design team is making thank you cards!

I have several envelopes that aren't standard sizes, so my card for this challenge is 9 X 6.5. The front face of my card was cut @ 4.5 X 6.5.

From Lovely Floral I cut a red banner @ 6.11 and did some faux stitching with a white gel pen. I cut a green banner @ 5.4 and glued them together.

From the Sophie cartridge I cut the floral oval @ 4 1/8 and the background oval also @ 4 1/8. Using the bookmark and shift button, I cut two images. One in green and one in blue. I laid everything out on my gypsy. I placed the blue at the very edge, so that for the blue flower it didn't cut the whole image.

I added two brads to the flower to dress it up a bit. (I also used my white gel pen and added dots along the oval ~ shown in the final picture.)

I used the Stamping cartridge to cut the words "Thanks so much". I used my gypsy and hide contour to cut the phrase out in two colors.

I used my leftover paper from the front to decorate the inside. Then I typed up my sentiment on my computer and printed it out.

Thanks for looking!

Butterfly Thank you cards

Good Morning!

Just a quick post today. I made two Thank You cards using Everyday Pop Up and Cindy Loo. The butterflies were cut @ 3.5 and the words Thank you were cut @ 1.25.

Thanks for looking!

Christmas Decor

Good Morning!

This is Jen from 3 Cats and a Bug.

This week at SweetSassyDiva's the DT is making Christmas Decor items! I had a lot of fun making my wall hanging using a lot of stickles, ink and pop dots. For those who know me well know that I do not stamp as a general rule. I do, however like to ink my projects. I only used two cartridges to make my hanging, lacy labels and Christmas. With the exception of the two background papers, only scraps were used to make this project.

The background and frame are from lacy labels, cut @ 10.75

From Christmas: the Church @ 7.25
the tree @ 4
the lamp post @ 3.25

The snow in front of the Church and some of the snowflakes were attached with pop dots. I used the color Night Sky ink on the snow and snowflakes along with ice stickels. On the tree I used a green marker on the tick marks and then added ice stickles to the top of that.

Thanks for looking!

BugBytes Blog Hop

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Welcome to the Red, Green, Silver or blue blog hop! If you arrived here directly, please go to the beginning at The BugBytes! You don't want to miss any of the awesome projects from Pam or The Bugbytes design team members! Below is a complete list of the blog hop links. Please leave some "blog love" along the way, we all love comments on our projects!

I decided to do a winter theme candle using vinyl. I used the MS Seasonal cartridge and the Christmas cartridge. I picked up a 6 in. flameless candle from JoAnn's. Using design studio, I put together 3 snowflake borders @ 1.5 and welded them together. I stretched them to 9.44 by 1.53 to fit the width of my candle. I then cut several snowflakes from the Christmas cartridge in sizes from 1 to 1.5 in blue and white. After cutting them, I weeded one of the borders and took a picture to show how it looks weeded. Of course I can't do anything in my craft room without Sassy supervising me!

Weeding the snowflakes was a bit more difficult since the pieces are so tiny, even at 1 inch.

I used transfer paper to attach the borders to the top and bottom of my candle, although next time I think I'll forgo using that. It was more difficult to get them smooth using the paper. For the snowflakes I just peeled them off the backing and placed them around the candle.

These pictures just don't do it justice. Unlike the tealights, the larger candles flicker just like a real candle.

Here's the line up...
Pam from- The BugBytes.com/
Jeannie from - Scraps In My Life/
Jen from - 3 Cats and a Bug You are here!
Carole from - On my craft room wall
Lisa from - Rather B Scrappin
Audrey from - Cute and Some
Mila from - milamemories
Sheila aka sassylady from - She's a Sassy Lady
Elizabeth from - 217 Creations
Kelly from - Kam's Crafty Place
Dayna from - Sabriolet Designs
Lori from - Scrappin My Stress Away
Denine from - Pumpkin Spice
Melissa from - Melissa Made
Allison from- Goody Bag Diva

Thanks for looking and have fun hoppin!!

Window Vinyl for Christmas

Good Morning!

During the summer, my sister was given a bag of vinyl scraps. She had no use for them, so she gave them to me. My goal for today was to start using those scraps and dress up my front door and windows for Christmas.

I started out making snowflakes, the size depending on the size of scrap vinyl. I used winter lace and sophie and cut them out at 2.5, 3, 3.3, 4, 4.5 and 5.5. One of the many reasons I love my gypsy so much is being able to layout my vinyl all at one time.

Now if only I could come up with a faster way to weed it! I had to use the Sophie snowflake, it's so pretty and easy to weed.

For the Christmas tree I only had a 12 x 5 piece of green vinyl, so that was cut @ 10.5 from the Christmas solutions cartridge. The snow layer was cut with a shinier white, but the shine didn't show up in pictures. The two deer were cut from PDDU @ 5 and the single deer was cut from Give a Hoot @5 also.

I also cut out the bunny and the hat from Winter Woodland, both @ 3.3.

Thanks for looking!

Jungle photo frame

Good Morning!

While looking through the November issue of Cricut magazine, I saw a Animal frame by Kristen Spencer that I had to scraplift! Most of you know by now that I'm going to become a Grandma in January. They wanted to do the Nursery in Pooh, so I've made them several things. However, now my son's girlfriend has decided she also wants to do a Jungle theme... so when I seen the Animal Frame I was inspired to make one.

Thanks for looking!

My Memories free quick pages

Good Morning!

My Memories sent me a link for some freebies for you! They are .png and .jpg files, so you can use them in any software program, not just My Memories software. I've never used any other digital software program, so I really can't compare them for you, but I really do like this software!! V3 just came out, I downloaded it last night, and it's awesome. Every 14 days My Memories offers new freebies, so while these files only last 14 days, new ones will be available at the same link.

http://www.mymemories.com/store/share_the_memories_kit_1

http://www.mymemories.com/store/share_the_memories_kit_2

http://www.mymemories.com/store/share_the_memories_kit_3

I will post here when the new ones come out. Remember, use this promotion code STMMMS58718 to get $10.00 of the cost of My Memories Suite v3 AND $10.00 to spend on digital papers and embellishments from their store. That's a $20.00 value. Just go here to purchase the software, copy and paste STMMMS58718 into the promotion code area.

Another Easel birthday card

Good Morning,

A family friend is having a birthday next week and I needed to make her a card. Since she's a Nun, I wanted to do something with the cross from the Easter cartridge. I didn't make the standard 4.25 x 11 card stock, I used 5 x 12 instead. For the front layers, I used 4.75 x 5.75 for the patterned paper and just a hair bigger for the solid layer. On the bottom piece I used 2.75 x 4.75 for the patterned paper and again just a hair(1/8) bigger for the solid paper. The cross was cut at 5.5.

Since I was using K&Company's double sided paper, I took the top layer of the cross and flipped it on my G, along with the happy birthday (from an MS cart). That way I could layout everything except my card base and cross base on one sheet of paper and just do one cutting. So tell me, is that just being creative, or was it just plain lazy on my part?? I can't decide. :)

My Memories software tutorials and New Pages

Good Morning!

I've been playing with the My Memories software, and I'm really loving this! Today I have more pages that I've created for my sister's 50th birthday. {{Just for giggles, I'm the youngest one in these photos. You can click on the photo to make them bigger. That is my sister Deb, riding with her hubby right after she got her motorcycle license a few years ago. I don't know when it happened, but looking at these old photos, we really got old! LOL}}

All of these pages were made with either freebies or with a $5.00 coupon I've received from the My memories face book page. All I've spend was $0.77 to create all of these pages!!

I also have some tutorials from My Memories!

*Using outside content in your My Memories Suite software* from Lisa Jurrens on Vimeo.

Or if you prefer, here is also a .pdf version Here


Discount information: Remember, use this promotion code STMMMS58718 to get $10.00 of the cost of My Memories Suite v2 AND $10.00 to spend on digital papers and embellishments from their store. That's a $20.00 value. Just go here to purchase the software, copy and paste STMMMS58718 into the promotion code area.

Thanks for looking, have a great day!

I am thankful...

Good Morning!

This week on SweetSassyDiva 's design team we were asked to do a "Thankful for" post. There are so many things I'm thankful for, but I don't have pictures of all of them! So for this post, the first thing I thought of was this picture I had taken of the sunset. My DH, Mom, Dad, Aunt and her BFF and myself took our boat out on the lake to watch the fireworks. Nothing compares to watching the fireworks on the water! That we watched the sun setting while doing a little fishing and whole lot of laughing made it that much better! I'm also Thankful to BobbiJo for bringing me along to CHA this year, where I received the Fancy Frames cartridge! Now, on to my project...

I started with Fancy Frames, cut @ 5.75 and tweeked in DS to fit my picture. I added some pearls and a lot of yellow and orange stickles.

The swirls were cut in Home Decor @ 1.25 with some bling added to them.

Simple pleasures was cut from Country Life @ 2.

I cut the borders from George @ 1. I used my cricut markers and country life for the words @ .50.

The paper is from DCWV Tradewinds pack.

It's a simple project, but I wanted to make sure the photo stood out. I love how it turned out!

Thanks for looking!

A Baby Wreath

Good Morning!

Today is my day to post at The Bugbytes! Thanks again to Pam for inviting me to be part of your awesome design team!!

I'm having a baby shower for my youngest Son and his other half. (I think they may be joined at the hips LOL) Diaper cakes are so popular, I wanted to do something different. I searched the web and found several sites where they are selling baby wreaths, so I set out to make my own.

I started out with a wreath form, size 2 diapers (I only needed 16 for each wreath) and rubber bands.

I opened up each diaper and put it around the wreath. I then took a rubber band and put it around the end of the diaper to hold it in place. (At the end I pulled the ends of the diapers open a bit more) Continue all the way around the wreath, the last diaper is a tight squeeze, but it helps to hold everything in place.

Now comes the fun part... unless you have cats! I named my blog 3 Cats and a Bug because I can never do anything crafty (or anything in general!) without at least one of the cats "helping" me, although in this case it was 2 of them! They LOVE curling ribbon!!! Anyway, at this point I decided what I wanted on my wreath. For my first wreath, it was a learning experience. I wasn't sure how to attach things to the wreath and not ruin the diapers, so I wrapped some ribbon around the wreath and attached things with glue dots.

NOT the way to do it, but like I said, it was a learning experience. :) The best way to do it is to use the rubber bands and slip the baby items inside the rubber bands. Then you tie the curling ribbon on top of the rubber bands to hide them. For two of the wreaths (I made 3 of them) I used bows to top off the wreath.

For the third one I used a frog rattle between two diapers and attached it that way. To change things up a little bit, I tied some regular ribbon (cats don't like that as much!)in a few spots instead of curling ribbon. (Sassy is pictured below, picking out her favorite ribbon. LOL I ended up replacing 2 of the ribbons because they "tag teamed" me and got to the wreath before I could get there!)

I'm hosting two showers next month, so for the third wreath I put it in my Mom's craft fair and it sold within 2 hours. I was beyond pleased by that!! Nothing says "you did a great job" as well as selling something you've made. LOL I will admit, blog comments rank up there just as high, but they just don't give you craft money. :)

Thanks for looking and have a great day!!

Craft Fair Christmas Cards

Good Morning!

This week at SweetSassyDiva's the Design Team is working on Christmas Cards!
This year when I was getting ready to make my Christmas cards for the craft fair I decided to do something different! The last few years the things that sold the most were the simple cards. While the easel cards that I had given away had gotten great comments, they didn’t sell at all. So I decided to do everything rather simple this year. I also decided to cut out my paper first and figure out what to put on it later. :)

I didn’t use all the papers, but there’s always next year! I used last years DCWV Christmas stacks. I also cut out the 2 pages of borders and cut them down to size.

I love the child building the snowman cut from A Child’s Year! I lost count, but I cut out roughly 75 of them at 3.5. I used glitter paper and Coredinations Gem paper for the top pieces....

For the bottom pieces I cut out red, blue, purple and green.

While watching Monday night football, I put them all together. (This whole project took me several days!)

I also cut out the snowflake from Sophie, the cricut circle cartridge, at 3.5 in white and blue.

Normally I use my Pink ATG to put everything together, but I was running low on tape, so I decided to try my Tombo glue. I used the wide end and spread it on the outside of the paper to attach it to the card base. It worked great, even doing 6 cards at a time!

I also spent two days cut out cards from different colored paper and then scoring and folding them. I filled a 8 x13 plastic container plus some. Another half day to cut out the Christmas paper, roughly 120 card fronts. Two days of cutting shapes, one evening of gluing them together in front of the tv and another full morning of glueing card fronts to the bases. I spent another day and a half of putting everything together! I’m tired of looking at Christmas cards for right now, but I haven’t even started on my own personal Christmas cards yet! Lol

Thanks for looking!