Hoppy Valentine's Day!

Hoppy Valentine's Day to you!  Well, that's what this frog would say if he could, right?  He let his heart do the talking instead!  I used Make The Cut to design this card with a little help from Jin at Under A Cherry Tree.  She has an excellent tutorial for making shaped cards in Make The Cut.  She uses a method which involves taking the two shapes (in this case a frog), flipping one and then putting them next to each other and creating a shadow.  It is much easier than the way I was doing it.  By the way the frog is from the Frogs and Kisses SVG set from Lettering Delights.  I love this set, it is too cute!!  It includes a few frogs and some really adorable sentiments.   I made this card for my daughter's teacher since she happens to have a thing for frogs.  I knew this would be perfect for her.  I couldn't get enough of the frog, so I had to make a matching envelope!  I just welded him to an envelope I created using basic shapes in Make The Cut.  In order to get the printing on these hearts I had to use the hinge method I learned about on Cleversomeday.  I have not perfected the print and cut with Make The Cut, and I believe it's because my Cricut is inconsistent with where it cuts.  The hinge method is much more accurate and less frustrating for me!  Hope your Valentine's Day is full of love and happiness!  Feel free to let me know what you think of my frog shaped card.  Here are a few more pics (sorry, I really like this one!).

Thanks for stopping by!!

You've Got Mail!

 

Have you gotten all your Valentine's completed and mailed?  Here are a few little notes I made for my daughter to take to school.  I also made a drop box using the Lettering Delights drop box SVG.  The valentines are just simple 3x3 cards with a mat and two cuttlebug die cuts and another smaller square.  I wanted them simple because I had to make 20!  I also created the envelopes to go with them in Make The Cut.  It was fun to design my own, and I think they came out cute.  The other small card was just a stamp with a strip of paper I border punched and added some ribbon to.  The drop box was a lot more difficult to put together than I thought it would be.  I wish I'd had this tutorial from Under A Cherry Tree to guide me, but I didn't.  I think it still came out very well, and I know the next one will be easier!  Here's some more pics of the drop box.

I made the "love letters" in Make The Cut using the typeset font from Lettering Delights.   The "You've Got Mail" is the Buttercream font from Lettering Delights.  This is one of my favorite fonts!   I love how you can make shadows of your letters a gazillion times easier than you can in Design Studio!  It's just a matter of clicking your mouse and adjusting the size.  I also love how the mat can be formed by blacking out the shadow just by checking a box!  Make The Cut ROCKS!!!  If you haven't discovered this program, you MUST try it out!  I'm not an affiliate or anything (although I'm considering it since I LOVE this program). I have nothing to gain, I just want to shout how much I love MTC to the world!! For the base of the box I used a thick cardstock that came in a DCWV packet.  I then put the patterned paper over the top.  I think it made this box quite sturdy, which is essential when your kids will be messing with it!  Hope you like my valentines and I hope you're ready for tomorrow!  If you have the time please feel free to leave me some love! 

Give A Hoot It's Your Birthday!! Card

About what?

My Dad and I both celebrate our birthdays this week, and this card is for him (since I wouldn't be making it for myself-LOL!).  The owl, the banner and the phrase come from the Give A Hoot Cricut cartridge which I bought months ago and have never used.  I grabbed a square from Plantin Schoolbook and a scalloped square from Mini Monograms.  For the last two years (about as long as I've been making cards) I made my father a card using the Paper Pups cartridge and the Cuttlebug embossing folders with the similar puppy images.  This year I thought it would be nice to change it up a bit.  It's always hard for me to figure what to make for my Dad.  The girlie stuff is so easy, but I find the stuff for men to be a challenge.  I don't even know if he likes owls!  He's not aware that in the crafting world they're all the rage-LOL!  Any hoo, I planned this card out on my Gypsy, which made it easy to figure out sizes.  The only thing I don't like about the Gypsy is the lack of a color preview.  I wonder if that will be in a future update?  Sometimes I'll just create the file in Design Studio (DS) and load it on my Gypsy, that way I can look at the preview while I'm picking out paper and cutting.  I have to say, however, if I wasn't using the cartridge images I would be using Make The Cut (MTC) instead.  It is a much easier program to use, and not only can you use colors for a preview, but patterned paper as well.  I show this in my post Be Mine Valentine with Make The Cut.  You can also print directly from MTC, as I did on this card and shown in the picture below.

 I used a font from Lettering Delights called Old Typeset.  I simply typed it in and created a shadow layer (another convenience of MTC!)for the background.  I chose my colors for each layer and printed it out.  You can't get much easier than that!!  So as much as I enjoy the Gypsy and DS, they are both limited in their abilities.  Perhaps Provocraft will do some serious upgrades to catch up!  So what do you think of my Give A Hoot card?  Why don't you give me a hoot and let me know?  I appreciate you stopping by and taking the time to comment!  Come back again sometime!

Thank You Card with Make The Cut!

Here's another card I made using Make The Cut! software.  I used Monotype Corsiva for the font and the flourish shape that's welded to it is a font I downloaded from somewhere (can't remember!).  I made the scallop oval in MTC using a star shape that's included in the software.  For a little bling I added an i Rock gem to the flourish.  There's a little story behind this card which explains why I made it.  My car battery went dead a few days ago because one of my children left the door open and I didn't notice it until the next day.  It has been quite cold and I guess one of the lights stayed on.  So I went out to get pizza one night and nothing!  Well, thank goodness for delivery, right?  The only problem was we needed to go grocery shopping desperately and my husband was out of town.  I am clueless when it comes to cars, so I wasn't sure how I was going to get it started.  I decided to ask a neighbor, who is the mom of a boy my boys play with.  At first she told me she had no jumper cables and didn't know how to jumpstart a car herself.  I went home and  I  searched our garage for either jumper cables or a battery charger.  I found the battery charger, but again, clueless as to what to do with it! (So why was I searching?LOL).  A moment later, my doorbell rings, and it's my neighbor saying she found some jumper cables and had called her husband who told her what to do.  Finally, after some more questions to her husband (who was getting a good laugh out of this, of course!) we got the car started.  I was so grateful to her and I decided to make her a card.  I want to give her something with it, but I'm not sure yet what I'll do.  It's nice to know neighbors still help neighbors these days!  I realized after this how little I interact with my neighbors.  I've lived in my neighborhood for 8 years and I don't really know most of my neighbors beyond a compulsory wave when I see them as I drive by.  Maybe it's time to change that!  So, what do you think of my card?  Is it enough or should I make (or bake) something to go along with it?  Thanks for coming by and I'd love to hear your comments and suggestions!

Be Mine Valentine Card with Make The Cut!

This card was inspired by Jin's tutorial at Under A Cherry Tree.  She is doing an entire series on how to use Make The Cut!(MTC) software and Lettering Delights images with your Cricut.  If you're new to this, you should check out her blog.  Since I don't have the SVGs and font from Lettering Delights that Jin used, my card looks a little different.  The heart is from the shape library in this amazing program, and the font, Monotype Corsiva, was already on my computer. The Martha Stewart border punch is called Doily Lace.  I also used an i Rock gem for the dot on the i.  One of the wonderful features of this software program is that you can print directly from it.  That's what I did with the "Be Mine".  I typed it into MTC and put it exactly where I wanted it to print.

This is so convenient and it's one of the things I've gleaned from Jin's tutorial.  I've had MTC for a few months now and I'd not tried doing this before.  I like the way it works, it seems much easier than using Word.  Another fabulous thing which can be done with MTC is importing textures or patterned paper!  Then you can print them and cut them- sounds like a more economical version of the Cricut Imagine to me!!  Here's a picture of my preview page in MTC with the papers I used applied to the shapes.

This is so helpful when you want to visualize how something will look before you cut (and possibly waste) anything!  One thing that is absolutely necessary when doing this is to make sure the paper image is under 512KB.  I found out this little tidbit at the MTC Forum.  When I just brought in digital papers as they were, it caused my computer to lag. In order to make them smaller I used Photoshop Elements (PSE) and resized them.  Once I did that everything worked fine.  Since I didn't actually print these papers I don't know what that will do to print quality- it's something I plan to test out.  I used the actual papers on my card and then just scanned them into my computer.  I really enjoyed making this card, it's so much fun to learn something new!  One note I should mention is Provocraft for some odd reason does not approve of third party software and using it with your Cricut will void your warranty.  My Cricut is out of warranty, so this poses no issue for me, but even if it was still under warranty I would use MTC with it.  I've never experienced any problems using MTC.  This is just my personal take on it, you have to decide for yourself.  I think this software was money well spent!  I know I haven't even tapped into all the things MTC can do!  See you next time............

Ornaments, Ornaments, Ornaments!

 The glitter ornaments were made using the Future floor wax and some Martha Stewart glitter.  I've seen these done on several blogs.  They are so cool and easy to do, as well as extremely economical!  I gave these to my parents and even my mother was impressed!  I can't say I'm as happy with the vinyl since it was very difficult to get it to lay flat.  I put 2010 on the back and I guess I cut it too big so there were some wrinkles in it.  They still look pretty elegant and I'll be making more for my tree!   

This is an image from Lettering Delights Trim The Tree set. I used the awesome Make The Cut software to cut this out using metallic paper and holographic vinyl.  The picture just doesn't do it justice!  I wish I had other colors of the glittery vinyl......hint hint, Santa are you listening?  I got the idea to use vinyl from Joy at Joyslife.com.  It makes the more delicate cuts come out much cleaner than using paper! And if you're wondering how to use Make The Cut with Lettering Delights be sure to check out Under A Cherry Tree, she rocks over there and has plenty of tuts on how to do it!  I also added a little bling with the irock gems.

Here's the Santa tag transformed into an ornament.  Plenty of stickles were used here!  I would love to get some more stickles, I mean I just love that stuff!

The snowflake was cut with American Crafts metallic paper and DCWV glitter paper.  It's pretty hard to see any glitter in this picture, you certainly don't see all the stickles I used!  I must say I prefer the paper snowflakes to the real ones!   Well, that's all the pictures I have loaded for now.  I have made more, but haven't got pictures of them.  Just thought I'd chime in and show I haven't really been slacking, I LOVE to craft!  It is terribly cold in my craft room right now making it difficult not to freeze my fingers off.  I'm hoping for this awful weather to let up.  Can anybody say SPRING???  Until next time............

Some Halloween Cards

Just a few cards I made to get ready for Halloween! I love this time of year, yet I hate it! I love the changing colors (although they have yet to change here) and the slight, and I mean slight chill in the air. However this means that dreadful winter is on the way. I am not looking forward to another several months of snow! I'm hoping last year won't repeat itself. It was too cold to craft or do much of anything! Well, hope you (someone, anyone!) likes the cards. I am looking forward to Halloween, I want to be the Red Queen from Alice in Wonderland. No, I'm not that mean, but I have been known to say "off with their heads!"and "I need a pig here!" when speaking to my kids LOL! If you'll notice, I have changed the name of my blog. I felt I didn't want my name on it, nor do I actually "feel" like a "finecrafter". Perhaps that's why I haven't felt much like posting. I'm hoping the change will help me feel a bit more inspired to post. I haven't stopped crafting, although there's been some moments when I've lost my inspiration, I guess you'd call it "crafter's block"? Well, with the holidays coming I should be more inspired and posting some stuff. I have discovered a few new things I didn't know how to do last time I was here, and I'd like to share that soon. Until next time......