Sometimes, it is nice to do a card that doesn't require any stamping. Particularly when you're doing 32 of said card. I'm going to a fire wife baby shower this weekend. Yes, another one! If you're trying to figure out the count, we're at 11 in 20 months. Yep, 11 babies and toddlers running loose at this year's Christmas party. Should be a blast.

What started off as a cry for help, to add a little pizazz to the invitation that had already been started, quickly became a complete redo. I wish I had taken a picture of the original. It had potential, but it did need something. After some discussion about ways that we could pump up the design, Kara asked if it would just be easier to start from scratch. Since I had a package of pink baby paper I'd bought to make thank you cards for The Girl, I assured her that not only could we easily do up a new design, we could do it without buying anything.



Let me take a moment to talk about the Cricut Design Studio software. I know people rave about Sure Cuts A Lot, but I've been extremely happy with the rather basic package Provo Craft put together. That's not saying it couldn't use a dramatic upgrade in the features department! That being said, I really like the flexibility it gives me with the standard cartridges. I literally do not make a cut with my machine without it. The paper savings alone makes it worth while! I love being able to weld my shadows and maximize my cuts. This job was no exception. I broke out the Cricut Expression machine I got for Christmas (h'ray for Black Friday sales!), and a 12x24" mat. With one mat and two sheets of cardstock, I was able to cut 90% of the darling little dresses. Another run through got the white shadows. Once more through with got the rest. So three times through the Cricut with a 12x24 mat and I had the makings of 32 baby shower invites.

When doing that many cards, mass production is the best way. I printed the details on white cardstock we used as the card base. That is layered with a pink paper, followed by the baby dresses. To give the cards a little bling, I ran the flowers through my Xyron 150 (the little X one) and added glitter. Another thing you need to be aware of when doing invites or cards that need to go through the mail is to keep your bulky embellishments to a minimum. Simple can have lots of great impact.




This was a super simple set of cards. Just cardstock, glitter and six sheets of patterned paper. The cardstock is American Crafts, Georgia Pacific and Prism. The glitter is from Art Institue and I haven't a clue who makes the patterned paper. I bought a bulk pack of it at Dollar General when I was making thank you cards for Linsey's baby shower. I used the New Arrival Cricut Cartridge for the cute little baby dress.

I know, I know, it's been forever since I blogged. I took a much needed blogcation. (laughing) Between stress of hunting up a new job (no luck there yet) and learning to cope with suddenly becoming a stay at home mom for a while, I decided the blog would get the short end of my attention span.

While I haven't blogged, it doesn't mean I haven't done other things. In fact, I've done lots. I find coloring and cardmaking to be quite relaxing. Let's start with a card I did up for Becky over at Page Maps. She buzzed me back in July asking if I'd do up a sketch for her September card maps. Of course I said "absolutely!"

It was a fun sketch, but a bit challenging for me. I took several stabs at it, trying to stay true to what Becky had drawn. It just wasn't working for me. First off, I just don't put sentiments on the front of my cards. It's not laziness, I simply don't like confining my cards to a simple statement. That way I end up with a fine stash of blank note cards ready for whatever I need at any given moment. I can always add one to the front later if I choose, although to be honest, they nearly always go on the inside. Once I let go of the sentiment, the card just fell together!

Even though I'm a huge tool junkie, I've just never been a big fan of punches. This includes border punches. It means I have to be doubly creative when I want things like a cute mini scallop border on one side of some patterned paper. Nestabilities to the rescue! I cut my patterned paper and black mat to size, then lined up the patterned paper, centered on top of the mat while keeping it lined up on the edge I was going to cut. Then I ran them both through with one of my long rectangle scallop dies. when I separate the two layers, I have perfectly lined up scallops on the paper and the mat.

The image is called Peek A Bunny. It's an Elisabeth Bell image from Sugar Nellie, courtesy of Funky Kits. It will make for a cute "Hi" or "Thinking of you" card. I always have a need for those. You'll notice that I filled the orientation of the sketch and made the scallops for the sentiment go all the way across. The card felt more balanced to me this way. A few dew drops and some ribbon finished it off.

The paper is BasicGrey from the Urban Prairie mini stack. I love those little 6x6 paper stacks. They're perfect for cardmaking, leaving me little to no scraps left over to feel guilty about dumping in the recycle bin. I use rectangle nestabilities here, all in rectangles. The image and mat are done with the regular sized rectangles and matching scallops while the outer piece was done with the long rectangle scallops. The cardstock is American Crafts, ribbon is Ribbon FX from Hobby Lobby and the dots are Dew Drops. The image was colored on PaperTrey Ink's Rustic White with Prismacolors and blended out with Zest It. Becky has some great card maps available this month. Be sure to stop and check them out!

Christmas is my favorite of all the holidays. I can't wait to put up the tree, pull out the decorations and cover our house in snow themed decorations. Oddly, my obsession with Christmas does not extend to Christmas themed scrap papers. This is mostly because the Christmas themed papers are so overly...well...Christmas. The last Chistmas papers I bought were Prima and I ended up using them to make a Halloween layout. I'm not sure how that works out in the scheme of things.

All that being said, I tend to do my Christmas layouts on anything but Christmas papers. I look for papers that suit my photos, or rather photos that suit my papers. When I pulled out the Bo Bunny Abbey Road papers to work on recently, the first photos I thought of were ones I had been going through a few days earlier. The photos are of my daughter, who at just shy of three in these photos, shares her Mama's love of Christmas. Between pregnancy and travel, this was the first year in several that I'd put up a tree. Even though I barricaded myself and the tree away from the kids in order to get the decorating done, it didn't last. As you can see, I relented to a pair of big blue eyes and let a little girl hang a few ornaments on the tree. The title says it all. She was simply enchanted.



The photo on the left is a 5x7, while the ones on the right are wallets. This is a simple layout, using only one sheet of patterned paper, in contrast to the three or more different patterns I tend to prefer. I made up for the lack of patterned paper by using three different colors of cardstock. I did the center pieces of this layout and tried it on several very dark tones before finally settling on the lighter putty tone for the background. I'm finding that my layouts lately use a lot of white space around photo area. I was really wishing my LSS had a better selection of Bo Bunny double dot cardstock when I was putting this one together. The subtle dot pattern would have been a great accent in the background.

I glittered the letters with pale green Art Institute glitter, mounted the stickers on cardstock and then on pop dots to give a bit of extra dimension. The ribbon is more of the Wrights Binding Tape.

Even with all the paper I used on the layout, I still had enough left over for a quick card. This time, I got extra impact by pairing it with a dark chocolate cardstock. I colored up one of my favorite Elisabeth Bell images from Funky Kits called Reflective. I used prismacolor pencils and blended it out with Zest-It. The image was stamped on PaperTrey Ink's oh so yummy Rustic White cardstock. I kept the card simple, rounding the corners with my spiffy new We R Memory Keepers Corner Chomper (seriously awesome tool!) and finished it off with a bit more of the brown hem binding tape from Wrights.

I tend to leave the sentiments for the inside of my cards unless I have a specific person/event in mind when I make them. This one is destined to be a "thinking of you" card, or a nice thank you card. Either sentiment suits the image quite well.

Supplies are simple this time. Prism cardstock, Wrights hem binding tape, Bo Bunny Abbey Road paper and stickers. Not a button in sight and nothing from the Creative Cafe. Simply amazing! :)

One of my goals while I'm being just a mom is to clean out the disaster area of desk. I look back there and while it doesn't feel like I'm making any progress, I know I am. There's definite evidence...like the clear path from the door to the desk that was previously small, uncomfortably positioned stepping stones. Not only that, I keep finding things. Finding things is always good, like this layout...



Four years ago, I found out that after 12 years of trying, I was pregnant. I was excited. I was thrilled! I was also sick, but that just comes with the package. Our vacation that year came along when I was 8 weeks pregnant. On that trip, we visited my parents, the Fire-Rescue International Expo and Cheyenne Mountain Zoo. I love zoos and try to plan one into a trip as often as possible. Cheyenne Mountain is in Colorado Springs, Co and is one of the prettiest zoos I've been to. It's on the side of a mountain and the zoo follows the ups and downs that come along with that. Through an accident of "let's climb the hill part first" decision, we didn't come on the giraffes until the very end of our explorations. It was the highlight of the zoo and I couldn't have planned the adventure any better.

Cheyenne Mountain has an impressively huge giraffe enclosure, with giraffes of all ages. But the really amazing part is that they let guests feed them. The upper tier is positioned to be the perfect height to stroke the velvety nose of the giraffe and experience first hand the incredibly long tongue! If you ever happen to be in the area, I highly recommend a visit to their zoo. Take the high road first, the giraffes are totally worth the wait.

Supplies here...more BoBunny. I believe this line was called Fall Festival, or something similar. I fell in love with it and bought twice what I normally would have purchased. This is from the time when Bo Bunny did paper weight stock, so it's great for altered projects. I'm thinking it might grace a fall wreath sometime in the near future. The title is done with the Cricut, one of my first after that purchase. The font is Stamped. I remember working with scraps and the "set paper size" function on the Cricut to get the most out of my single sheets of matching cardstock.

I'm one of those Christmas nut cases that decorate their house following a specific theme. I love the sparkling whites and blues and the oodles of snow themed decorations. None of today's projects fall within that theme. :) So, let's start with a card. As soon as I saw this image in this week's collection from Dustin, I knew I would use it. It fit well with my sense of humor and I can easily see sending it out to a friend during the holiday season. Since I had my BoBunny paper bin out, I pulled out their Classic Christmas papers from a couple of years ago. Decorating with a theme doesn't necessarily mean I don't horde Christmas papers in traditional colors.

In addition to being psychotic about my decorations, I also wrap packages with real ribbon bows, tying on gift tags rather than using the prepackaged flimsy tags that are sold in stores. I love making personal gift tags for each package. I think that makes the gifts just that much more special, not to mention looking really cool when they're stacked under the tree. They're also great to tie onto gift bags as an added embellishment.


These tags are 3" x 3 1/2" with a hole punched in one corner for the ribbon. For package use, I would use the bit of ribbon to tie the tag to the package or bag. The images were printed at actual size for these tags. I've also done smaller tags that are 2 1/4 x 2 1/8. Those are done by taking a quarter sheet of standard 8 1/2 x 11 cardstock and cutting it in half, then folding that in half again. Quick easy cutting measurements. For those, you'll want to size the images down, perhaps using the more simplified ornament peekers that Dustin has released this month.

Supplies this time around are pretty cut and dry. I used BoBunny Classic Christmas papers. These are a couple of seasons old, but I wouldn't be surprised if you couldn't find them with a bit of searching on the internet. The ribbon is also from the Classic Christimas collection. I also used Bazzill cardstock and a few different Spellbinders Nestibilities. Check out Dustin's new release for this week and don't forget to stock up on the Christmas images he's released the rest of the month.