baby boy card

My husband's cousin just gave birth to a precious little guy about a week ago and this is the card that I made to congratulate her and her husband. The cut is from New Arrival. You can either weld 2 together to make a card or, if you don't have access to Design Studio, you can cut 4 blackout shapes. 2 will be for the front and back-then you will need to glue some strips of paper to those pieces to act as a hinge for the card. My hinges are where the bow is tied and at the wheel. The other 2 blackout cuts are glued to the inside of the card. They serve 2 purposes. The first is to hide the hinges. The second is to make the card sturdier.
After the card is assembled, it's time to decorate the front. You'll need to cut out another baby buggy-this time without the blackout feature selected. Your last cut will be the baby buggy with the shift on. For finishing touches, I added a string of pearls, a bow, some skittles on the wheels, and the heart above the buggy, attached with a small gauged wire that was shaped by wrapping it around a pencil.
Thanks for looking!

Mr. & Mrs.

This is my submission for the most recent challenge over at Whimsical Scraps and Bugs. The design team once again did a great job! We were to use an ampersand from any of the Cricut cartridges. I used the one from Graphically Speaking. The rest of the title is from the Calligraphy cartridge. I used a SCAL design for the frame and a ttf for the butterfly. I embossed the butterfly with the Divine Swirls Cuttlebug folder and traced the raised part of the image with silver stickles. I decorated the frame with skittles (which are in stock again at Michael's--they're a seasonal item in the wedding section and I think their true name is Decorative Accents).
I took the design from sketch #14 over at Unscripted Sketches. It was my first time using a sketch from that site, but it won't be my last! I love the basic sketches that give the freedom to make them your own! If you've never been there, I'd encourage you to check it out.
Thanks for looking!

Discover Spring

I created this page for the Whimsical Scraps and Bugs challenge--we were to use black and white with one accent color, the word 'spring' and some bling. I stole the sketch from Passion Sketch--I rotated sketch 33.
This picture was taken in the spring of 2007--the first spring that Jonah was really aware of his surroundings and curious of the world around him. So fun watching him explore new things!
I stamped the white paper with a floral stamp from Fancy Pants and brightened it up a bit with pink stickles. I embossed the black, gray, and pink strips. I used the Cuttlebug embossing folder Swiss Dots for the black, Divine Swirl for the gray, and Stylized Flowers for the pink. I put pink stickles over the flowers and black stickles over the swiss dots and divine swirls. The flowers are stamps from Autumn Leaves--I put stickles on those as well and a skittle in the middle of each flower. The word 'discover' is cut from Graphically Speaking and 'Spring' is cut from Storybook. The pink ribbon is from American Crafts.

Thanks for looking!

Mojo76

This card was inspired by the sketch over at Mojo Monday. I've mentioned them before on my blog, but it bears repeating that every Monday they provide a fabulous new sketch.

I used a stamp set from Close to My Heart on this one. I love the spring look to it and with temps nearing 70 this week, it's definitely feeling like spring is on its way. The background paper is watercolor paper, and I colored all of the stamps with watercolors. I forgot how much fun they are to work with and how nice the results are! I used dimensionals on some of the flowers to give it a 3-D effect, and the dragonfly's wings are folded upwards to imitate flight. I used stickles on the raised flowers, the butterflies, the dragonfly wings, and the stems to give the card some shimmer. The paper is from DCWV--the Stack VI. I pierced a circle around the sentiment at the bottom for added interest.

Thanks for looking!

Love Birds

Here's a recent layout I completed. It's for a challenge from Whimsical Scraps and Bugs. I am now one of their design team members! :) As a design team member, I get to create projects for their challenges issued every other week. I am really looking forward to contributing--the other members of the design team are so talented! It's fun to have my work thrown in there with theirs. The challenge for this layout was to use red, pink, and white, any heart cut from Cricut, ribbon, and buttons/brads/other embellishments but NO glitter.
The ribbon is fairly obvious so I won't comment further on that. I cut the heart from the Graphically Speaking cartridge. I used the center cut feature on my Expression and cut out a heart and then increased the size a notch before cutting out the same heart. This left me with a frame--and it was transparent because I cut it out from the plastic packaging that comes on a cartridge. Next, I covered the frame with different shades of pink skittles.
The paper is from DCWV. I used the Martha Stewart scallop dot border punch for the pink patterned paper and I placed lettered pink brads (Big Lots $1 find--and it comes with lots of them!) in the holes. I know it's hard to read, but it says "love birds." I tore the red paper behind it and inked it to give it some texture and depth.
The stamp in the bottom left corner of the picture is from Fancy Pants. I love how dark it turned out using my new VersaFine stamp pad! I used to trace over my stamped images with a black ink pen because the images would come out dull or gray. Very tedious.
Here is a better image of the details:
Thanks for looking!

{today}

Here's a layout I did of a day at the park earlier this spring. I wanted to keep it really simple and fresh looking, keeping the pictures as the focus. I just love the way the sun shines through Noah's hair on the swing, and the pictures of Jonah and Scott really show the way they love to spend time together. I used Printing Press for the title. Skittles are used throughout both pages (72 in all). I used small rub-on letters on the top picture on the right hand page. It says, 'Today was good Today was fun Tomorrow is another one.' You can see it better in the bottom picture. I think it took about 2 hours to cut out all those tiny letters and rub them on in the right spot. Sheesh! The floral stamp, clearer in real life, is from Fancy Pants stamps, and I stamped it in light blue.
A closer view of both pages:

Thanks for looking! Have a great 3-day weekend! :)

Smile...

I was recently able to capture a bunch of cute shots of my little Noah when he was in a particularly good mood. We were actually at a dog show, and I think the picture of him sticking out his tongue (middle row, left side) is him trying to imitate them. So funny!
Well, for this layout I knew the pictures had to be the star of the show and I wanted to bring out the primary colors in the background and on his hoodie. I think this also may be a record for the most number of pictures on a single page I've ever used. The 'journaling' in the circle is just smile*smile*smile* written over and over and highlighted in the middle. I surrounded the circle in skittles and mounted it on dimensionals to make it stand out. I also wrote *smile* to outline one of the yellow circles on the right hand side. Easy!

Thanks for looking!

Brothers

This is a very simple and clean design. It was a challenge for me to use so many pictures on a single layout, but I think it works. The title was stamped with a Scrabble alphabet stamp set, and I designed the brackets. The journaling is from my perspective looking at the relationship between my sons. If you look closely at the pictures, you'll notice that sometimes it looks as if Jonah is hugging Noah, while at other times it looks as if he's strangling Noah with his hugs. It is a fun privilege to watch their relationship develop and I do have a hunch that they will be close friends as they grow up.

A closer view of each side:

Celebrate

This is my entry for the Chirper Challenge (see post below). We had to do something birthday-related, and use green and a cupcake. After I completed this, I realized we were also supposed to have buttons somewhere on it. I tried to replace the red skittles on the cupcakes with red buttons to make them look like cherries, but it would have ripped the paper.
Also, after I completed it, I went to my scrapbook store and bought my first bottle of Stickles. I'm hooked! After this picture was already taken, I added the Stickles to the swirls on the cupcakes. I will post the 'After' picture in the next post so you can see the difference!

Thanks for looking!

Together

This is the first challenge for a group I recently joined. The coordinator will issue a bimonthly challenge in which we have to use a Cricut cut and various colors or elements. For this one, we had to use blue somewhere on the page as well as flowers. We were given a sketch to use--a circle in the lower-right side of the page. I used my new Storybook Cricut cartridge for the letters and for the hibiscus flowers. This cart is loaded with images! I also used 'skittles' to complete the circle outline. The lettering below the pictures may be a little hard to see, but it is the subtitle. So, the whole thing reads, "Together...is the best place to be."

Thanks for looking! Have a great day!