A Case of the CASEs

I've been doing a lot of CASEing around here recently...I love it when my blog peeps do all the heavy lifting of creating a card and I just copy it in my own way!
First, a birthday card for my dad:

based on this card by Lindsey of Bashful Blogging (see her post here).

Of course, I had to use that same Echo Park paper because it is awesome, and I also used the reverse side for the red and white stripe border.  I used a Silhouette file for my airplane.  I also notice that Lindsey is way better at taking pictures of long cards than I am. 

I also cased two cards recently from Emily of Art from the Heart, starting with a New Year's card

based on this card (see her post here).

When I commented that I needed that skyline die immediately, Emily was kind enough to tell me it was on sale this week, but the $10 price tag was a bit too steep for me, so the Silhouette came to the rescue.  I found a good image of the Birmingham skyline with lots of contrast between the sky and the buildings, then traced it in the Studio.  I added some squares for windows using the duplicate and space vertically/horizontally functions (added bonus: instant confetti!).  I embossed the Market Street sentiment onto some black shimmer paper.  The best part?  The little heart bling is the building (and floor) where we had our wedding reception.  Awwww! 

The second card that I cased from Emily was a thank you card for one of my students who gave me a de minimus gift (because, yes, the new Alabama ethics rule says you cannot give teachers a gift that is worth anything, because couldn't a teacher be bribed into giving a good grade if they got a cruise for Christmas from one of their students?  Could someone please tell me what school district is having parents give cruises at Christmas, and do they need any math teachers there?)

based on this card (see her post here).

I feel somewhat bonded to Emily's card, since I helped Em make the logos on the Silhouette.  I kept mostly the same layout, but added the Market Street Vintage Notepad in blue because I thought it made it look more high schooler-y.  The "thanks" is an old Cuttlebug die, and I used a Martha Stewart border punch on the ends.

So what are you doing New Year's Eve?  Mr Corgi and I have a nice grilled steak dinner planned and hopefully some good crafting time (well, for me, anyway.  Mr Corgi will probably get some good X Planing time!).  Stay safe out there, kids!

Belated Thanks!

Eek!  So I had a whole thankful-for-blog-friends post planned for Thanksgiving Day, but then somehow time got away from me before we left to spent the holiday with my parentals (which was loads of fun by the way.  Also, if you are ever having a small Thanksgiving and don't want to do a lot of prep work, I would highly recommend La Madeleine's take-home dinner.  It was SOOO yummy!) and then I've been a bit crazy here the past couple of days since I've been back.

BUT it's never too late to be thankful, right?  I'm thankful for all of my loyal readers who stick around even if I don't post every day (or week).  And I'm thankful for the following blog friends who sent such nice happy mail!

Angela of The Paper Cupboard is a wiz at putting together all sorts of fun elements, like these labels and flower and patterned paper!  The flower is so pretty in real life, I almost want to wear it!

Lindsey of Bashful Blogging sent me this awesome Hallowe'en card (the apostrophe is for her benefit).  I love that swirly purple paper that looks handmade and the glowing vellum moon!

Emily of Art from the Heart sent me this OTTER MATH card to thank me for sending her some silhouette die cuts.  Did you see she even paper pieced that fish!??  Plus did I mentioned it has an OTTER and MATH on it? 

Maria of Crafty Cre8tions sent me the most gorgeous Thanksgiving card. She has magical distress ink powers that I wish I possessed--this card almost looks lit from within!  And I got it right as we were pulling out of the driveway to drive to Houston, so perfect timing!

And speaking of Maria, she recently celebrated a milestone birthday, so I made this birthday card for her:

Ha.  I totally crack myself up.  I used a little print-and-cut magic for the label, with patterned paper adhered behind the 39 and the "th" cut out and glued.  How much do I like Maria?  Well, I cut into my red metallic paper for the "happy birthday."  I think that says it all, doesn't it? 

And speaking of saying it all, I think I'm all done with my thank yous!  I hope to be back later this week (or weekend) with some new Market Street goodies as well as a big project I've been working on for my parents.  Stay tuned and stay thankful! 

Pun or No Pun?

As many people have noticed, The Play Date Cafe and CAS-ual Friday both had "black, white and red" challenges, but CAS-ual Friday went with the pun of "read."  I made a different card for each challenge because I was in a card-making mood yesterday.  First up, no pun:

My BIL's birthday was last week (actually a day after mine yet I am always late with his card).  He's been restoring an old car for forever, so when I saw this cut file in the Silhouette store, I popped it right into my cart.  I cut it out of black vinyl so I wouldn't have to worry about gluing those small pieces and to give it a shiny look.  (You can see all my supplies at the end of the post--yes, I'm now using the inlinkz link manager tool so I can be part of the cool blogger crowd.)

My pun cards I based on my most recent favorite book(s), Isabelle Gillies Happens Every Day and A Year and Six Seconds: A Love Story.  Since both books involve her trying to keep her act together during and after her divorce, I thought this sentiment would be appropriate (and also appropriate for the Wee Memories Simply Sentiments challenge)

I made a wee little card (2 1/4 by 3) and like potato chips, I couldn't stop at just one:

I thought these would be perfect to stash at work in case someone needs a little extra happy. This fun stamp set was part of my stampy awesomeness from my friend Angela of Paper Cupboard.  She is fully aware of my Keep Calm and... addiction, and this fun stamp set has lots of phrases from which to choose.

Finally, I also have the winner of My Mind's Eye Lime Twist "Life of the Party" paper pad from Saturday's post:

Lindsey, use the "contact me" button at the top of my blog to give me your mailing details!

Hope everyone is enjoying a nice Monday---even nicer if you're off for Labor Day!

"You're a Classic" supplies:

Silhouette Antique Car	Echo Park Happy Days	Clear Dollar Stamps Cruisin' Classic	Memento Tuxedo Black	Black Vinyl
Papertrey Ink White Cardstock	Papertrey Ink Pure Poppy

InLinkz.com

"Keep Calm and..." supplies:

Maya Road Keep Calm	Stampin' Up A to Z	Papertrey Ink White Cardstock	Papertrey Ink Pure Poppy	Memento Tuxedo Black
VersaMark	Filigree White Embossing Powder

InLinkz.com

50th Birthday + RAKs!

A fellow math teacher celebrated his 50th birthday this week, so of course I had to break out the number background from the Silhouette store:

(I'm still playing with the depth-of-field on my new lens.)

In the Silhouette Studio, I cut out the center circle, then welded a circular ring to make the window opening.  The dotted paper is from My Mind's Eye Lime Twist "Out of the Blue" paper pack (more on my love for the Lime Twist line a wee bit later), adhered to the back of the number background, then pop-dotted onto the lime green base.  The "5" and "0" just didn't seem right by themselves, so I went back and made an offset shadow for them from black paper, then super-pop-dotted them so they would be above the number background.

And that was not the only birthday celebration this week...mine was on Monday (not 50th, though!) and I got lots of happy mail!  Here they are, in order of arrival:

Samswindle was certainly on top of things as a member of the BRAK group on Splitcoast! I got to enjoy this card all month.  I love that happy pool-ready moose and of course the pink bow just makes me happy.  Definitely put me in the "relax" mode when start-of-school stress started to take over. Make sure to check out her gallery--she has many fabulous cards there.  Thanks, Sam!

Speaking of school, Lindsey picked the perfect apple for the teacher!  The background paper she made herself by using the acrylic block technique, doesn't it look awesome?  You can read all about all the trials she had while making this card on her blog, Bashful Blogging.  She also included a cute little Christmas stamp--thanks, Linds!

Two things I love: pink and long dogs.  Emily must really know me well since she put both of them together to make this fabulous card.  Look at all those happy borders!  You can read her post about it on her blog, Art from the Heart.  Thanks to Emily, I'm also the owner of an entire spool of honeydew twine from the Twinery! Thanks, Em!

Ang broke out the corgi for this card, and a *blinged* corgi at that!  Could that speech bubble be any cuter?  It's like she knew how much Addison loves to bark.  Angela likes to keep her cards a surprise, so this one isn't on her Paper Cupboard blog yet, but you can go over and see the absolutely stunning set of CAS cards that were part of her amazing stampy gift she gave me.  Thanks, Ang!

I also thought you might be interested in seeing my Gallery Idol loot!

I haven't even had a chance to use any of it yet, but I have big stampy plans for this weekend.  Also remember if you promoted me on your blog to use the "contact me" form at the top of my blog to send me your name and address so you can share in the goodies!

Remember when I said I'd talk more about Lime Twist later?  Well, now is later!  I ordered 8(!) paper pads from Two Peas (thanks to my sister's birthday gift certificate) and they accidentally sent My Mind's Eye "Life of the Party" instead of "Fly a Kite."  They are going to send the correct one out, but told me not to worry about returning the incorrect one-how's that for awesome customer service?  Their mistake is your gain!  Since I already have this pad (and love it), I'll give it away to a random commenter on this post.  Let's say Sunday night, midnight central time?

Whew!  When it rains, it pours around this blog doesn't it?  Now I'm going to go get stampy so I can share some more things with you this week!

Supplies:

InLinkz.com

Gallery Idol Final Round: Totally Rad!

Vote here!

I'm, like, so totally stoked to be in the top five, dudettes!  I was waiting for someone to go "psych!" right after I found out! 

But since no one did, that meant I had to make a "party trio."  And since I've been at the beach all week (did my super secret robber-thwarting scheduled posts fool you?), I only had Sunday afternoon to pull everything together.  It was a little wild at the Corgi household for a few hours, especially since I've run out of both "good" white paper and ATG tape!  I went with an Eighties party theme and here is my trio:

In the Eighties, it was not a party until you brought out your pink radio!   I think it was the standard birthday gift for everyone I knew for a year, along with the Cocktail soundtrack.  So to get this party trio started, I made the radio card using my Silhouette.

If you're a bit fuzzy on the original, you can see it here on the Victoria and Albert museum website, which just makes my day that it is on there.  I made the entire radio (except the cassette tape) from scratch in Silhouette Studio, even trying the print-and-cut feature for the first time (which is awesome).  I scored the tape deck at the bottom and only attached the bottom portion so it opens to pull out the cassette:

You could easily put a twenty dollar bill in the cassette (definitely no gift cards in the Eighties, although they might have been better than trying to return 3 extra Cocktail soundtracks to Sam Goody's).

And what tune always gets a party started?

I modified a Silhouette studio bag download by enlarging it to take up two sheets and adding the song title cut-out.  Cutting the letters out of the bag and then backing it with a different color is about 1,000 times easier than trying to adhere each letter, my friend.  Plus it looks cooler, too, right?

Finally, I had great plans for a roller skate candy holder...which probably would have worked better if I had some "good" white paper.  Although I'm thinking now I could have adhered two sheets of "crap" white paper together to make it stronger but that is now, and this is then:

In real life it's a little lot wobbly.  I had a roller skate image from this Skate On card, so I just enlarged it and added some stripes and a velcro strap because, duh, it's the Eighties!  Doesn't hearing that rrrrrrrrrip just take you back in time?  I cut out two skates and sandwiched a box between them.  Then I went to fill the box up with Hersey's kisses and someone thought that was a good time to bring up how center of gravity works.  This is Gallery Idol, Mr Corgi; I've got no time for your science jibber-jabber!   Instead, I folded some skinny strips of paper into "L"s and adhered one to the back of each wheel to give it at least a little bit more stability (and then, shhh, filled most of the box with tissue paper and just put some kisses on top). 

I really am pinching myself over here--I cannot believe I've made it into the final round, especially with all the fabulously talented gals that have been playing!  And it's all thanks to YOU so I have a special present for you to enjoy:

Photo from Zooborns

Ok, so you don't get to keep him, but isn't seeing that little koala face enough of a present?  I thought so.  "What's that, Unnamed Koala Joey?  You'd like everyone to go vote?  Well, if you say so, Unnamed Koala Joey!" 

UKJ also wanted me to tell you to come back and visit tomorrow because I have even more exciting news to share!

Batter Up!

Vote here!

((If you're looking for my gallery idol sofa card, you can see it in this post.  Only one more day left to vote; it closes at 2:00 Eastern on Thursday!)

My nephew had his tenth birthday this month, which, for me, seems like a hard age to make a card.  But I'm lucky in the fact that he loves baseball, so I went with that theme and made this:

I just love that shimmery paper from DCWV.  It turns every card into a party!  To make this, I got a random picture of a batter and ball (wink, wink), traced it in Silhouette Studio, and cut it out.  Then I cut out the rounded rectangle with the letters, and adhered a red strip and a blue strip behind the letters, and adhered everything to the cardbase.  Don't forget to keep the insides of your letters if you do it this way (like A's and O's).  A pretty quick and easy card from start to finish, but I think he'll still get a kick out of it!