CBH Aug 4th Pets

Another CBH Challenge is under my belt and this week it dealt with animals or pets. Well I definitely went gong ho with this one, even though I'm not a pet person. I did have a couple cats in my younger days... The first card I made for the challenge was the cat card, love that cat. Then I wanted to do something with my Koi stamp from Onyx Xpression which I also love. It's a solid stamp so I wanted to use watercolors on it, then I said, lets do Ecoline, since I've been on that kick for a while, might as well continue... BIG GRIN. Love the results (PS there are 3 cards on this web page). Click on any card to see more images and descriptions etc. Enjoy

Flourishes Challenge Sketch & FREEBIE

Over on Rubber Stamp Chat, Flourishes is having a Sketch challenge called "Hip to be Square"... Well only after I finished my card and was writing the details etc, I realized they probably wanted a "square" card. BIG GRIN. Too late, mine's a rectangle. Square cards are more expensive to mail and so are the envelopes.
So I used the Flourishes stamp from Quietfire Design, both as a rubber stamp and as an image I manipulated and cut out with my Cricut. Also stamped and cut out the small butterfly which is from Qietfire Design as well. Click on card to see detail pics and description etc. Enjoy



And since this is my 400th post, I thought I'd give something away.
To win this card, please
1) link my blog to yours
2) give me a comment as to why you'd like to win this card
3) And sign up to be a follower of my blog if you're not one already
Hopefully I'll figure out how to send an email to the winner.
4) You better send me an email, since I can't figure out how to email a reply to your comments. If anyone knows how, would appreciate a little help.
yogihg@yahoo.com
DEADLINE: Next Sunday, Aug 9th, at Midnight Calgary time.

Thanks for commenting and playing

Condolence Card

A friends mom just past away and this is the card I made for her. It also fits the Rubbernecker Wacky Wednesday challenge #22 which was to use buttons.

I created the design for the scalloped edge and then cut it on my Cricut. I had made both the cut out design and an outline design, so I had a brown cut out as well which I attached to the inside front of the card. I also cut out the outline shape in a faux crackle scrapbook paper and attached it to the inside back.
I added some glitter dots with a Quickie glue pen and Ritz Glitter micro fine glitter. The quote (Quietfire Design) was stamped with Versafine Vintage Sepia. The buttons were punched out using a Sizzlits button die and some decorated paper I had on hand which was done with walnut inks and a flourish rubber stamp (also Quietfire Design) and gold embossing . I then added some orange toned 4 ply waxed linen thread through the button holes.
Click on images for larger views

Cricut ATCs

And here are a few Black & White designs for an upcoming ATC swap theme that also use my Cricut and Ritz micro fine Glitter Put a piece of Sookwang double sided tape (the 2.5" w one) on a piece of either black or white cardstock. Drew my words - "Black" or "White" with a zig bullet tip marker, scanned and thrugh my software programs and then through my Cricut. I put it at a #2 blade depth and a #4 pressure. It cut only through my release paper and not all the way through to my cardstock. I then removed various pieces of the release paper and dropped in Ritz micro fine glitter (black, clear or warm highlights), or Perfect Pearls. Mounted the to a metallic white cardstock or a black matte cardstock both run through my Cuttlebug with some circular type of embossing folder.
Click on images to see larger versions. Enjoy

Cricut Autumn card

Well here's another card I made today using my calligraphy and Cricut machine. I'm on a roll and you'll probably get quite tired of me soon until I get this machine out of my system... BIG GRIN if that's possible.
The letter "a' is the same as the one below, but cut from double sided tape to use my Ritz Glitter micro fine glitter and the "autumn" word is one of my funky styles of lettering. Click on image to go to my website for details and larger view etc. ENjoy

Cricut Congrats Card

Well I finally had a few minutes this morning to play with my vector program and the Sure Cuts A Lot software. And this is the results. The letters "abc" I did calligraphically with a 6.0 Pentel Parallel pen with Sumi ink. Scanned it in color and converted it to a black and white image and added maximum contrast. Fixed a few things in the image with the brush feature or the eraser. Saved it to a BMP image. Opened it in my Inkscapes vector program and defined the lines. Saved it to an SVG file extension and opened that up in my Sure Cuts A Lot software. Sized it to what I wanted approx 1.25" x height letters. Cut it out from 3 colors of paper. The grad cap is an outline image I found, which I filled and inverted etc, then manipulated and saved as above. Cut from some light weight black cardstock. Adhered all these elements to a purple cardstock. Rubber stamped the quote and "dream" word (both from Quietfire Design quotes) with black Versafine stamp pad and clear embossed them. The edge on the purple cardstock was punched with the EK Success Swiss Dots border punch and the scalloped/dot border was Martha Stewart border punch. I added a bit of purple Pan Pastels to the inside of the card, just to make it stand out a bit. And of course added one of my calliraphic Peel Offs. BIG GRIN
Click on images for larger views.

I'm In LOVE!!!

I just had to share. I'm in LOVE... Most peop0le would think there's a guy involved. Sheesh - just give me art stuff...
Ok I mentioned last week I finally bought a Cricut Personal Cutting machine. And it works well with the one cartridge it came with. But I noticed a USB slot on the machine and started to google how to use it with my computer. Lots of info out there, but one that said you can download a free Vector program from Inkscapes which I did. Was playing with that for a bit. There will be a definite learning curve for that program.
But I also need to buy some software to download whatever I draw to my Cricut. Well I bought that yesterday evening from Craft Edge called Sure Cuts A Lot for $75.00 which was about $85 Canadian. (Michael's sells the Cricut computer program for $130.00, which I guess you can get a bit cheaper if you shop around, but I believe it's limited to access to only their cartridges). Tried it and it didn't work. Said I need to download firmware and stuff. I was tired and said "sheesh" and closed the machine.
Anyways, tried again this morning, and needless to say it worked. I was trying to cut using the "scissor" icon, so instead I used the drop down menu command and that worked. Forget about the firmware they were mentioning. My firmware was just fine on my machine.
OK so now I have all the True type fonts on my computer that I can cut including Dingbats and stuff. AND what's best is my machine would only cut 5.5" tall ovals (which were too narrow) from the "George & Basic Shapes" cartridge I had because I couldn't flip it. Now I can cut ovals that are 5.5"w and humungously tall. YES!!
I was also melding my letters (makes letters closer together for a more united word)
Then I said, now if only I could cut my calligraphic letters. So I did a large Italic "a", scanned it and opened it up in my vector program, saved it and imported it into my Sure Cuts A Lot program and cut. I can't believe I'm able to do that. BIG BIG GRIN
Ok I erased a few lines when I scanned it and the Cricut cut my thickness of lines instead of the outer and inner portions of the letter. So I need to work on figuring out how to only cut what I want. I'm not very savy on vector programs yet. Give me time. But it did cut it and it was recognizable if not perfect.
There might be some interference with my Adobe Photo Deluxe scanning program and the Sure Cuts A Lot program, because when both were open, I couldn't scan. So had to close down my machine, scan and then open the other program. Hey so I can live with a bit of conflict, which might not be there all the time. Will see if that problem persists.
Forgot to mention, the software overrides the commands on the Cricut machine. So even though you might say on you machine to cut a 2" letter, whatever the size letter is on your "mat" in the software program is what's going to be cut, as well as the position of where it is on your mat.