A Little Late, But Still Lucky!

A little late!!

Yeah, I know, it's not St. Patrick's Day, it's the first day of Spring, but I still wanted to share my St. Pats Day projects, however late it may be.  I mentioned in my last post that I couldn't wait to make the beer mug from the Feeling Lucky SVG kit and the beer bottle from the Surf Shack SVG kit (links below).  I wasn't lying, so here they are!

Drink some beer and be of good cheer!

I truly enjoyed making that beer mug.  It was fast and simple, and it looks awesome!  I plan to make more in different colors, as this is a versatile file and can be used for many occasions such as birthdays and Father's Day.

The beer bottle was a bit more challenging, but very doable.  It's just a matter of taking your time and giving the glue a chance to dry.  I think I was a little off on the top because it does not want to fit over the bottom!  I WILL be making another one, but it will be a replica of my favorite beer and hopefully will fit better.

Believe it or not, I used Christmas paper for the green patterned paper since I don't own one single sheet of St. Patrick's Day paper!  It's hard to believe!  My husband was in shock!

I created and then print and cut the labels in MTC out of sticker paper I got from Staples.  For some reason, I had trouble getting my Cameo to read the registration marks so I decided to just let it cut. Big mistake.  As you may be able to tell, they're a little off.  I had to cut the green border around the one on the mug with scissors and put some cardstock behind it to make it look right.  Anybody else who uses MTC with their Cameo have this problem?  I usually don't, so any tips would be appreciated.

Here's wishing you a very belated Happy St. Patrick's Day as well as a timely Happy Spring!

What Spring projects are you working on?  Love to hear from you in the comments!

Yay for Spring and Have a Crafty Day!!

Items used:
Make The Cut! software
Silhouette Cameo
Feeling Lucky SVG Kit (beer mug, rainbow, shamrock)
Surf Shack SVG Kit (beer bottle)
Celtic Card SVG Kit (Luck O' the Irish to Ye)
Honeyscript font (Lucky, Beer)
Impact font (CHEER)
American Crafts cardstock
Core'dinations cardstock
Staples white sticker paper

(I am an affiliate for both Make The Cut! and SVGCuts.com because I LOVE both of them and you will too!)

 

"Five Minute" Birthday Card

Can you really finish a card in five minutes??  Maybe you can, but I have yet to accomplish that feat, although this birthday card from the Five Minute Cards SVG Kit (from SVGCuts.com) I made for my mother comes close.  Usually the longest part of the creative process for me is choosing the paper to use.  Once my paper was chosen for this card, there were only five cuts to make, but I wasn't done yet!

This card is only four layers and went together quickly, if you don't count the time I spent obsessively applying foam tape to the back of the flower cut out layer.  You can see what I mean here:

Just a little bit of foam tape!

Once the foam tape was on, it really did take five minutes to put together!

For the inside sentiment I used my Silhouette sketch pens and wrote with the Cameo.  I haven't used my thin fonts from Lettering Delights nearly enough, so I was happy for the chance.

 

Being able to write with your cutting machine comes in real handy when you don't want to stamp or when your printers are out of ink (both are the case for me).  I thought putting the candles on the bottom was also a cute idea, but I'm not sure my mother will appreciate them!  I really enjoyed putting this card together, now all I have to do is get it in the mail!

Supplies Used:

Make The Cut* 

Silhouette Cameo

Silhouette Sketch Pen

DCWV Playtime Stack

Core'dinations Cardstock

Five Minute Cards SVG Kit

LDT Cursive

LDT Cutesie Doodles

Hope you Have A Crafty Day!

*I'm an affiliate for Make The Cut because I LOVE it and you will too! 

  

Hangin' at the Doghouse!

I'm hangin' at my house, with my dog Molly.  SVGCuts came out with a Victorian Row House cut file in their Parkside Row SVG kit.  I just bought the DCWV Limoncello stack, with you guessed it, a dog print.  What else could I do, but make a doggy hangout?

Woof!  Every dog needs a place to hang!

This house was so much fun to make!  The most difficult part was figuring out which paper to use for the many different cuts in this file.  Fortunately Mary at SVGCuts organizes the files by color which helps a lot.  You can also change things around if you want to make it your own!  I plan to make a few more versions of this (Halloween, Christmas, etc.), and now my daughter wants one for her room!  Guess I'll be busy.   If you enjoy making 3D paper projects you really should check out SVGCuts.com, they've got some creative stuff to make!

Here's what I used:
Make The Cut!*
Parkside Row SVG Kit
DCWV Limoncello Stack
American Crafts Cardstock
Core'dinations Cardstock

Woof!  Have A Crafty Day!
*I'm an affiliate for Make The Cut! because I love it and you will too! 

 

A Musical Birthday!

Birthdays.  I'd like to forget them.  But when you're only turning 15 like my son did a few weeks ago, it's okay to remember, in fact, you'd better!  Son #2 loves music and plays piano, guitar and viola.  Deciding what to make for him was a no brainer.  SVGCuts.com has two kits which contain 3D musical instruments.  One is called Thank You For the Music (piano), and the other is Vintage Valentines (guitar).  At first I thought they'd be difficult to put together, but they were surprisingly easy. Mary at SVGCuts makes everything look easy in her assembly videos, and this time it was!

The only part I'm not satisfied with is the guitar "strings".  I apparently didn't tighten the fishing line I used for them enough.  It was too late to tighten them by the time I realized how loose they were.  My son, however, could care less about the strings.  You see, the cool part is both instruments are also boxes, and I had stuffed his favorite candy inside!
 
I also designed a card to go along with the piano and guitar, using a program called Popup Card Studio (PCS).  This is an awesome, somewhat new program created by Andy, the same smart guy who created Make The Cut!(MTC).  It was really easy to create this simple pop up card, and it eliminated the need for some tedious node editing in MTC.  Of course I did cut the card with MTC after importing the card from PCS.  Here's the front which is a frame that I welded a keyboard and musical notes to, along with my son's name.

The black portion of the musical notes on the bottom are printed because they were so tiny there was no way they could be cut.  And yes, I did try!  It was a free file from somewhere, don't know where so I can't give credit.

Now check out the inside.

This is the first card I made in PCS, so it's pretty basic.  There is a learning curve to this program, and the place I get help is at susanbluerobot.  She has tons of helpful videos that got me up and running.   The cards that can be made in Popup Card Studio are amazing, so go check it out here.  Once I get more familiar with PCS I hope to be making some wow factor cards to show off, but until then...

Here's what I used:
Silhouette Cameo
Make The Cut!*
Popup Card Studio 
Thank You For the Music SVG Kit
Vintage Valentines SVG Kit
Musical Instruments and Symbols Cut It Set (keyboard on card)
LD Modern Slab (font)
Paper from Bazzill, Core'dinations, K&Company and The Paper Studio (Hobby Lobby)
 
Have A Crafty Day!
*I'm an affiliate for Make The Cut! because I LOVE it!
  

Free SVG Site and A Paris Themed Shadowbox Frame

Hello there.  I know it's been a while.  That's what happens when I get my car back after over a year of having to share it with my husband.  That means he drove it and I stayed home.  Hey, whoever makes the money gets the freedom and the car, right?  Well, last week that finally came to an end.  You could say I went a little nuts and made sure I was out every day since it was such a novel thing for me to do.  Of course I made visits to my local craft stores.  Hobby Lobby was my first stop, then Michael's and A.C. Moore.  Ahhh, sweet freedom.  Amidst all that, I did create a few things.  Some were Valentine related, and the frame I made could fall into that category, but it's really a gift for my daughter who I happen to love very much.  The cool part is where I got the frame from, but more on that later.  Take a look:

Name and face concealed to protect the innocent.

It's a shadowbox frame using the Be Mine digital papers and elements by Echo Park. The rose is from the Crush On You Boxes SVG kit from SVGCuts.  A side note about that rose: I had to cut it three times before I put it together to form a satisfactory rose.  I don't know what it was, but I had such difficulty getting it to look right!  Originally the paper was darker, more like the darker circles on the patterned paper, but after cutting it two times out of that I had no more.  I had to settle for the lighter color.  The black trim is from Michael's and it has its own adhesive which made it a snap to put on.  I had a little trouble making those corners look right, but I think they turned out ok, just don't check under that rose!  Here's a close up of that difficult rose:

Your eyes are fine, it's the camera that's out of focus!

Not the best picture, but the best I could do.   Now about the frame itself.  I learned about this site called Ideogram from this post at Cleversomeday.  It's pretty neat.  You put in your measurements for one of the twelve available templates and out comes an SVG file you can cut with Make The Cut!, SCAL, Silhouette Studio DE(SSDE) or any software that cuts SVGs.  I used SSDE to print and cut this frame by dragging and dropping the digital paper on to the frame template.  In fact, I laid out the whole thing in SSDE which made it so easy to envision the final result.  One thing I noticed is if I used inches, the frame would not import at the proper size, but if I used centimeters it did.  It's not a big deal if it comes in small, all you have to do is resize it while maintaining the proportions.  

By the way, my daughter loved the frame since she loves all things Paris.  I can't wait to make more of these frames for my other children, they'll make sweet birthday gifts (well, they would if my other children were girls, but since they're boys they'll probably not appreciate them much!).  You really should check out this site, and thanks to Kay at Cleversomeday!  I noticed they added a heart box too, it looks really cool!  I love getting things for free, don't you?  Let me know what you make!

To make the frame I used:
Silhouette Cameo
Silhouette Studio DE
Be Mine Digital Paper by Echo Park
Be Mine Digital Element Pack 2 by Echo Park
Crush On You Boxes SVG Kit (rose)
Celeste's Cutesy Corner Elements SVG Collection (corner on photo)
American Crafts Cardstock (white for printing)
Core'dinations Cardstock (rose)

Now go to Ideogram and Have a Crafty Day!

3 Things To Pay Attention To When Using Your Silhouette Cameo

With Chinese New Year coming on January 31, I thought I'd make some cards for my kids using Make The Cut (MTC) and the Chinese Zodiac Cut It Set from Lettering Delights.  That would mean making four cards, with each of their zodiac signs on the front.  Because of my lack of a fully functioning brain due to being sick for the past five days, I encountered three "technical difficulties" and only succeeded at making one card.  I thought I'd share these difficulties and what I learned here, in case you encounter them.  My first problem was easy to solve.  I noticed while my Cameo was cutting the square card mats I'd created, the shapes inside the mats were way too small to cut well.  I wasted an entire sheet of cardstock, ugh!    Lesson learned, make sure to do a test cut when cutting small shapes!  I also noticed the squares had cut farther to the right on the cutting mat than they should, problem number two.  I had no idea why that was.  The only card that seemed salvageable was the snake, so I decided to press on.  I cut the top layer of the snake in vinyl, and that's when the third problem revealed itself.  The shapes weren't closed, they looked like this:

This shape didn't finish being cut!

I racked my brain over this for a while, and then it dawned on me.  While I was test cutting trying to figure out what was wrong, I had the cut window open and I noticed some unchecked boxes, which if memory served me right, had always been checked when I cut.

This could be the problem!

I then clicked on that question mark to the right of settings and discovered this little tidbit of info:

Bingo!

Shapes not closing, exactly what one of my problems was!  And, since the "using carrier mat" option was unchecked the shapes cut farther to the right on the mat.  Try checking and unchecking that box some time and see the difference, the picture will change.  I hope sharing my mistakes will prevent this from happening to you!  Now, last but not least, here is the card I managed to create:

It's far from perfect, as you can see the rough edges from where the shapes didn't cut well.  To make the red mat have only the openings of the snake I used MTC and broke apart the snake, removed the solid portion that remained and joined the inner pieces to the square.  I was then able to put the actual snake shape cut from vinyl on top.  The one success I had was writing on the card using a thin font and a Silhouette sketch pen, it turned out perfect!

No, I'm not a snake!

This is one advantage of having Make The Cut, as this is something Silhouette Studio can't do.  If you use these fonts in Silhouette Studio it must be the true type version which is a double line, and personally I don't think it looks as good.  The red layer is popped up with foam tape for dimension, here's another view:

Ssssssss!

Of course I'm not really calling my 12 year old son a snake!  He was born in the year of the snake, 2001.  Here's the inside of the card:

Doesn't really sound like a snake!

I did a little reading to find that info in a book called The Secrets of Chinese Astrology by Derek Walters.  I found the Chinese character for snake by doing a simple Google search, clipping it, and tracing it in Make The Cut.  Making this card turned out to be a learning experience for me.  I now know to pay more attention to things like unchecked boxes and the appropriate size for cutting shapes!  Have you ever had a crafting experience like this?  I mean, for a while there it felt like someone didn't want me to finish!  I feel better now that I have one card.  I plan to make larger versions of the others tomorrow.  Here's what I used to make this card:
Lots of PATIENCE!
Silhouette Cameo
Make The Cut Software
Chinese Zodiac Cut It Simple Shapes
LDThin Font Light Sans
LDB Christine's Hand (inside of card)
Black Silhouette Sketch Pen
Core'dinations Cardstock (red)
DCWV Textures & Finishes Stack (gold)
Vinyl

Hope you enjoyed this post, and Have a Crafty Day!

(I am an affiliate for Make The Cut)

Christmas Tree Card with Lettering Delights

One of my favorite things to do is use Silhouette Studio Designer Edition (SSDE) to apply textures to card bases and shapes.  It's the only reason I decided to buy a Silhouette Cameo since I already had a cutting machine.  So here's a card I made using an image and digital paper from Lettering Delights.  It's very simple to create and if you don't want to go through the print and cut process it's easy enough to cut the card base on a paper trimmer.

For this card I created a 4.25x11 rectangle for the base.  For a shape to apply the paper to I created another 4.25x5.5 rectangle.  I made sure this rectangle was set to no cut since I only wanted to print the shape.  I filled this shape with patterned paper from the Claus Applause paper pack and put it above the card base. I love doing this because it not only saves ink by leaving the back side of the card blank, but I think it looks more professional.  I then created the smaller rectangle (3.925x.810) for the sentiment and colored it white and placed it above the card base.  I selected the type tool and typed in Merry Christmas, sized and colored it.  The brown frame was created by yet another rectangle 4x5.25 and sizing two smaller rectangles on the inside.  To make the open space I went to Object, Modify, Subtract.  This frame was cut twice and glued together to add a little dimension.  Next I cut the tree in colored cardstock at the imported size which is 4".  I wanted a little dimension for the tree so I made a .20 inset of the base layer and cut this from cereal box.  If I had made the inset any larger it would have made the shape two pieces because of the narrow distance where the tree meets the star.  I would have liked the inset shape a bit smaller, but you can hardly notice it and this method is much easier than using foam tape to pop it up.  To cut the card base I did use the print and cut method because I just like doing it!  There you have it, a very simple Christmas card!  Thanks for looking, and don't forget to let me know what you think! 

Items used for this card:
Silhouette Studio DE
Silhouette Cameo
Core'dinations Cardstock (green,blue green, red)
American Crafts Cardstock (white card base for printing)
Bazzill Cardstock(brown frame)
Claus Applause Cutset  (on sale until 12/22/13)
Claus Applause Paper Pack (on sale until 12/22/13)
SNF Cheer Squad (font) (on sale for $1!)
(I am not an affiliate for LD or ScrapNFonts)

Happy Easter Bunny Shaped Card

I had such a fun time creating this bunny shaped card!  I decided to do this for the Bunny Week Challenge Mary is having at Cardz TV.  I got this bunny from the now closed Little Dreamer Designs.  It was designed by Nancy Kubo.  As I am always late to get on the band wagon, this was my one and only purchase from this store.  I had not really looked into it until Jin at Under A Cherry Tree had posted about the store closing on her blog.  When I saw these bunnies I knew I had to have them!  This card was also inspired by Jin and the way she creates her shaped cards.  I created the base using a rectangle so the card would stand on its own and there was room for a sentiment.  Of course Make The Cut(MTC) was used to do this.  First I had to convert the bunny graphic so it would be traceable in MTC.  Jin has a wonderful tutorial on her blog which shows how this is done using Photoshop.  I used Photoshop Elements 7 and it worked just fine.  I also printed the "Happy Easter" from MTC.  And yes Jin has a tutorial for that too!  I finished off the front of the card with some hand cut "grass" at the bottom, some googly eyes on the bunny, and some stickles.  Since I can print from MTC I like to print my inner sentiments from there also.  It's really easy, I don't even have to use the hinge method as there is enough leeway that it seems to print correctly.

I think this adds a nice touch to the card.  I dare not say it looks professional, but I think it looks nice!  Hope you liked my card and have the time for a comment- it's nice to know someone is out there every once in a while!   Have a great Sunday evening!

Will You Be My Valentine? Card

Here's a simple card I made while making another card I wasn't too happy with.  Did that make sense?  I started to make a card using the Paper Pups cart (because I just LOVE those pups!) and I got a little annoyed with how it was turning out so midway I veered off and started to make this one!  The hearts are actually the insides of the heart border I was using on the other card.   I used a stamp I picked up from the clearance bin at Joann's last year.  Sometimes I think I make things too complicated- this simple card is so much better than the one I was trying to make!  It is also made from my scraps except for the card base.  I love using up those little pieces of paper (especially when it's Core'dinations) that you feel a little guilty just tossing.  I finished off the inside as well.  I really like doing that, it adds more stability to the card and gives a nice finishing touch.

Hope you like it and that you're ready for Valentine's Day- because I'm not!  My daughter just came home with her list of 20 children she needs to make valentines for and I know my son will be bringing his list next for at least 20 more!  OK, I'm tired already, but the secret is it's too much fun!!  Feel free to leave a comment and let me know your "valentine prepared status"!  Thanks for taking a look......