Soar Layout–FCCB Challenge #153–Spring is in the Air!

Good morning everyone! I hope you all had a wonderful weekend and a happy St. Patty’s Day! Today on the Fantabulous Cricut Challenge Blog our theme was ‘Spring is in the Air’ and the challenge was to create something with a kite or a balloon. So I decided to create a project with a hot air balloon! I liked the idea of soaring and dreaming as high as you can go and made a layout for my new grandson’s photo.

The hot air balloon is from the Everyday Pop-Up Cards cartridge and I cut all the layers out at 6.5”. I think there are 5 layers to this balloon but it was very easy to put together. The clouds are from Art Philosophy and were cut out at 1.5” and 2”. I love the background paper because it reminds me of wind blowing the balloon through the sky.

I ran some of the images through the Cuttlebug to give them some texture. I used the Polka Dots embossing folder for the top layer of the balloon, the Swiss Dots folder for the basket of the balloon, and D’vine Swirls for the clouds. I inked all of the edges and then inked very lightly over the embossing with a sponge to make it stand out a little.

A closer look at the clouds.

As you know, I love dimension so I HAD to use my pop dots to put the balloon layers together and pop up the clouds!

I used the Art Philosophy cart by CTMH to cut out the word “SOAR”. This font doesn’t have a shadow or second layer but I really wanted those little holes in each letter to stand out. So with the Cricut Craft Room, I created a bottom layer for my title. This is just one of the reasons why I love using CCR so much – you can do so many things with your images! First, I placed my title on the virtual mat, sized it, and then tilted it a bit. Then I made a copy of it. On the original title I simply highlighted each letter, one at a time, and hit the “Hide Contour” button that comes up when an image is highlighted. Just move your mouse over your image until the part that you want hidden, or gone, is red in color and click it. Hit “EXIT” and that part of your image has magically disappeared! I hid all of the little circles in each letter so when I cut out my title and layered it together, the circles in the top layer popped a little more with the solid white cardstock underneath.

I don’t know if you can see this next part very well but on each side of the balloon I put a dot of a liquid magic transparent pearl pen from Viva Décor. I’m really trying to use stuff in my stash that I’ve bought, put away, and then quickly forgot about! (Don’t even try to pretend that you don’t what I’m talking about!!! Go take a look in your stash and I’ll bet there’s something in there that you forgot about too! LOL!)

Then I found this poem on the internet about soaring and dreaming and it fit my layout so well that I had to include it. (The author is unknown.)

Well now it’s your turn! Please play along with us at FCCB and create your own project with either a kite or a balloon and link it at FCCB. Don’t forget that your project needs to have a least one Cricut cut. Come visit us and check out the other Design Team members wonderful projects.

Thanks for visiting and playing along with this weeks challenge. These challenges really are a lot of fun and help you get some projects done and also help you to use images and carts that you may not have used yet! I know it’s helped me – this was the first time I’ve used any image from my Everyday Pop-Up Cards cart and I’ve had it for a while now!

Until next time, Happy Crafting,

St. Patty’s Day Candy Cracker

Hey guys! Do you know that St. Patrick’s Day is next Sunday? Well, I’m sure you all know that I’m not Irish, lol, but like my friend Danita said, “you can kiss me anyway”! Today is my guest designer day over at Cricut FANatics and I made this candy cracker for St. Patty’s Day.

It was so easy to cut out and put together. I used the CTMH Artist cartridge for the cracker cutting it out at 9.25”. There is also a cracker image on Tags, Bags, Boxes & More 2. The sentiment was cut from Tags, Bags, Boxes & More 2 at 2”. I would’ve loved using glitter cardstock for the “Good Luck” but I didn’t have the right colors so I used regular cardstock and used Stickles in Platinum and Lagoon to color the images. Before I cut out the cracker, I created a rectangle from CCR Basics and welded it to the cracker in the Cricut Craft Room to create a window in the cracker. After it was cut, I used Scor-Tape (Love this stuff!!!) to adhere a piece of transparency to the inside.

Instead of using ribbon as a closure, I wrapped some gold tinsel that I bought at Michaels last Christmas at each end. (Who knew you could use up your Christmas hoard for other holidays! Yet again, hoarding pays off, lol) It’s filled with lucky gold chocolate coins! Oh yes, it just couldn’t be finished without some green bling!

Now it’s all ready to ‘POP’!

I hope that you all have a wonderful St. Patty’s Day next weekend. Now I need to get to work on some Easter projects! See you soon and until next time, Happy Crafting!

Peacock Card–Finally!

Okay, I know that this should have been posted a few days ago but I have a good reason! I absolutely hated the first card that I made with my cut of the peacock!!! Has this ever happened to you? Have you ever made something and knew it didn’t work? Well, I do this a lot! Sometimes after I make a project, I just need to let it sit on my craft table and look at it for awhile – sometimes it takes a day or more before I decide what to do!  When I made the first card, I just knew that something was off. I stared at it for the longest time trying to figure exactly what was wrong with it (there ended up being more than one thing, I finally decided!). So I took it all apart and started from scratch – well, nearly - I kept the base, lol! I just couldn’t find the right paper to use. Then I remembered some older Stampin’ Up! paper that I had in my stash and used that. See, like I’ve said before, it pays to be a paper hoarder sometimes! I wish that I could post before & after photos but that first card looked so bad that I couldn’t even snap a picture of it! So here is the final card:

There are three layers to the card base. The first layer (the one the looks shiny) was sprayed with Goose Bumps, a clear texture spray made by Tsukineko. The second layer was cut a bit smaller and run through my Cuttlebug using an embossing folder by PC. The SU paper on top was cut even smaller and then cut again in the middle with a Spellbinders large oval die. Then I cut out a frame using a Spellbinders die called Floral Ovals. All of the layers and the oval frame were adhered using foam tape for dimension.

For the bird, I used pop dots to give him some added dimension also.

Since I love my bling, I added little hot fix gems from Imaginisce to the peacocks tail instead of the tiny cuts that were supposed to be there. I also added gems to the oval frame.

Then I added some ribbon that I hand dyed myself and a stick pin that I made.

To make the stick pin, I used a ready made pin that had a triple white head that did not match so I colored the top using Tim Holtz alcohol inks. I added a few drops of Eggplant and Red Pepper inks into a baggie, placed the top of the pin in the baggie, rolled it around in the ink and then let it dry. Here are the inks that I used and what the pin looked like before I altered it:

I then added some beads from Michaels and adhered them to the pin with Glossy Accents. I finished the inside of my card with some cardstock punched with a Martha Stewart edge punch and the SU paper.

I hope you enjoyed looking at my final card! I’ll be back on Monday with my Cricut FANatics post.

Until next time, Happy Crafting!

Fantabulous Cricut Challenge #151–Bye Bye Birdie

Good morning everyone! This is my very first challenge as a Fantabulous Cricut Challenge Blog Design Team member and I can’t wait to share it with you! This week is “Bye Bye Birdie” and all you need to do is create something using a Cricut cut of a bird! There are so many different kinds of birds on all of those Cricut cartridges so I know you have something to use. I picked the hummingbird from Art Nouveau.

There are some beautiful images on this cart and at first I couldn’t decide between the hummingbird and the peacock (so I actually did both – I’ll share the peacock with you on Wednesday so make sure you come back to see him!). One of my favorite things I like to do with my Cricut cuts is add dimension. To do this I used distress inks to shade the layers, used lots of pop dots, and, for this image, I cut out and added an extra layer – instead of one green layer, I added a second green cardstock in a slightly different shade! I hope that you can see the multi layers in the photo below.

I also cut out three flowers from the Artiste cartridge. After cutting them out, I inked their edges, rolled them, then misted them with different shades of Glimmer Mist and added them to the front of my card. The ribbon is seam binding that I dyed myself using Distress Stain in Peeled Paint. I love the different shadings of green in the seam binding. :)

Ok, you may think I’m a bit lazy of a perfectionist, lol, but I like to cut most, if not all, of my images in one single pass with the Cricut! So here is how I lined everything up in Cricut Craft Room to cut out my hummingbird. Each layer of the bird is on a different mat layer in CCR but I put each image in separate areas leaving enough room around each one making sure that I had enough space to lay out my cardstock.

Then using the “mat” in CCR as a guide, I placed my different colors of cardstock in the corresponding spots.

Now I only have to load my mat once and make all of my cuts before unloading! Here is what my mat looks like afterwards (did you notice the extra green layer that was cut at the bottom?):

I hope that this little tutorial can help you, too. If you have any questions please leave a comment. If you don’t have any questions, please leave a comment anyway, lol! I love hearing what you guys think and have to say, so spread some <blog> love!

Now I hope that I have inspired you to find an image of a bird and create something for the Fantabulous Cricut challenge! Head on over to FCCB to get even more inspiration from my fellow Design Team members and to link up your bird project this week! Thank you for looking and if you like what you see, please comment and follow me!

Recipe:

• Cricut Cartridges – Art Nouveau & Artiste
• Hummingbird cut @ 3.5”
• Cardstock – American Crafts & Stampin’ Up!
• Patterned Paper – K&Company
• Bead on Eye – CTMH
• Ink – Tim Holtz Distress Inks
• Ribbon – Seam binding & Tim Holtz Distress Stain
• Spray Mist – Glimmer Mist

Until next time, Happy Crafting,

It’s Fantabulous News!!!

Hey everyone, I have some very exciting news to share with you today. I have been selected as a new Design Team member of the incredible Fantabulous Cricut Challenge Blog! This is one of the first blogs that I went to when I started using my Cricut years ago and now it’s my privilege to give back to help and inspire others on their Cricut journey. My first challenge starts this Monday, March 4th, so please stop by and get in on the Fantabulous fun that we will have.

Can’t wait to see you there! Click HERE to meet all of the other new FCCB DT members.

Until next time, Happy Crafting,