Birthday Card Swaps

So school is going to start soon and before I know it, I'll be back to work with no time on my hands.  I decided now was a great time to build up my swap supply of cards for the next few months.  FYI swaps are cards that I make for a monthly stamp group that I attend.  We each make 12 of the same card and bring it to our meeting.  We then "swap" cards so we will all come home with 12 cards that are different.  I use these cards as ideas or to send out when needed.

                                                 
I was browsing Splitcoast Stampers the other day looking for a bit of inspiration.  I haven't pulled out my Crazy for Cupcakes Stampin' Up! set in quite some time, so I decided it would make a perfect swap card.  I found several cards that were lovely, but this one caught my eye.  I, however, did not want to hand cut all of the images so I decided to use this lovely invention to help me out!!

Well, I'm falling in LOVE with my Silhouette even more!!!  So the silhouette has this great Trace feature on it.  (Don't get me wrong!  I still love my Cricut too, but this is something that my Cricut cannot do!)  Here's what I did:
     * I stamped the images from this Crazy for Cupcakes Stampin' Up! set onto plain, white copy paper.
     * I then scanned the page into my computer and created a .jpeg file.
     *I then used the fabulous 'trace' feature in the silhouette software and traced the outer edges of each image.
     *I also used the 'offset' feature and created a little "border" around the stamp lines.
     *I went back and deleted the original traced image, copied the offset image about 12 times, lined up all 12 images onto my paper, then cut the images out.

I LOVED that I did not have to "fussy cut" around all of the cupcakes and balloons that I used on these cards.  I am NOT a very patient fussy cutter, nor am I very good at it, so this was AWESOME!!!!

After all of the stamping fun, I colored in the images with my Pink Pirouette, Cool Caribbean, Smoky Slate, So Saffron, and Only Orange SU! markers.  I also coated the sprinkles, the flame, and the balloon with SU! glitter glue.  I used an embossing folder to emboss the pink paper on the one side, stamped the greeting at the bottom of the other with smoky slate ink and called it done!!!

If you have any questions, please let me know!  Thanks for looking!!!

Power Ranger Birthday Card

While walking through Joanns one day I saw an new product called Honey Bee honeycomb paper by Colorbok.  I've been wanting some of the Honey Pop paper that you can buy at Archivers for a while.  Since Archivers is over 2 hours from my home, I haven't gotten any.  I was really excited when I saw this at Joanns!!!

This is a paper that is "honeycomb" like and when opened creates a 3-D image.  I freehand cut a candle and flame from the honeybee paper and placed in inside the card.

I've been seeing a lot of cards lately that are created with digi stamps.  I'm a red rubber stamp girl myself, but I have seen many very cute digi stamp images colored with copics.  I did a youtube search and found that I can print the images with my inkjet printer and color them with my copics the same as using momento ink!!!!  I thought I'd give it a try on my nephew's birthday card!
 

For the outside I found a Power Ranger image and printed it onto Neenah card stock and colored it in with my copics.  It was really fun and my nephew really enjoyed it. I used a Stampin' Up! set for the birthday greeting and background paper was also from SU!

If you have any questions, let me know!! Thanks for looking!!!

Caterpillar Card

As you may know, I'm a first grade teacher.  I love my job and my students are always very special to me.  This is my third year to teach and every year I send a card to my students in their final report card.  I don't tell them about it so I never know what they think of it.  I had a student come up to me about three weeks before school was out and tell me that they still had their card from last year and that they kept it in a special place and looked at it often.  That sure did make me feel good!!!!

Anyway, I do a different card every year for my students.  This year, I used the caterpillar from Create a Critter cricut cartridge.  I also used Locker Talk and hid some of the outer shaped from the first grade sign cut and welded it into a rectangle.  This was one less layer I had to cut by had b/c the cricut did it for me!!!  The letters are not make to cut out completely on this image so I took a silver sharpie marker and traced them in.

I used the Peachy Keen Stamps critter XL face stamps for the caterpillar.  I thank ran the caterpillar through my big shot with the Tim Holtz notebook embossing folder to give the caterpillar some "wrinkles."  I used SU! red dazzling diamonds glitter glue on the nose and orange stickles on the antennae.  I decided to glue on some google eyes to make it more fun for the kids.

If you have any questions, let me know!! Thanks for looking!!!

Happy Birthday to my Friend

One of my dear friends celebrated her birthday a couple of weeks ago. Me being the crafty girl that I am decided to make her a birthday present. Despite many attempts to discover the length and width of my friend's camera strap I had to flat out ask her. I wanted to make her a camera strap cover for her Canon ISXI camera. Seeing that I have a Rebel I could not use the measurements from mine. I found the inspiration for this project HERE. She has a wonderful tutorial on how to make these. Instead of quilting mine, I just make one long strap out of a single piece of fabric. I also made one for my camera and it's very comfortable!

Of course I had to make her a birthday card that accompanied it!


All supplies are SU!

Thanks for looking! If you have any questions, please let me know!

Buzz Lightyear

My nephew loves Buzz Lightyear. His birthday party is this weekend and I recently purchased the Toy Story Cartridge to make a few things for him. Here is what I came up with.


I must say that I read a few of the posts from the cricut mb about this cartridge and I was a bit leery about putting this together. It was not as bad as I thought. It only took me about an hour to cut and put the card together.

I cut the base and everything out at 6". I figured it would be easier if I just used my cricut expression the 'normal' way instead of using my gypsy! (It was so weird to cut with the machine and NOT with my gypsy). I love how the handbook shows you exactly what color to cut everything in. That made it much easier!! I'm glad that I chose to make this a larger card and cut Buzz at 6". Some of the pieces were really small, so I don't know if I would cut it any smaller!! Thanks for looking!