cricut THIS!

For an older couple, they both have their birthday on the same day :) He likes boats and she loves nature and gardening. Sorry I forgot which carts I used :( but they truly enjoyed their cards!

Here is another quick to make card. This time I used the Dinosaur Tracks cart which is soooo fun! The base card was made in Design Studio:
Use the desired size of the shadow function and put on work space. Move image down. Then use the same again and sit above. Flip second shape, then use the curved corner handle to turn it around. Move them towards each other so that they overlap. An about 2 inch overlap up top is good and sturdy for a card, make sure to align the bordering boxes around the image to have them exactly lined up. Weld and cut.



The first layer was cut from brown card stock. The second layer (shift) uses a designer paper that depicts sand/beach for a nice structure, the third layers are regular clay colored card stock. Take a cosmetic sponge rubbed onto a brown ink pad to pad all edges, this gives nice dimension to the individual cuts. The background card (white) was brayered with turquoise and green inks.

I can make a quick card without a lot of thought and effort with the available "card option" on many carts. Needed a baby card but I did not exactly want to spend half a day on one. I don't even have a new arrival or baby cartridge. But, oh see here, the Stretch your Imagination cart has just what I needed:



This is key 40 using the card option and then the card frame option at 5 inches size. I tweaked this just a little bit with hand cutting the inner frame of the card frame a touch larger, and no it doesn't bother me a bit that it is not exact but a big wiggly! I also decided to cut my own base card (the light green) and cut off half of the cricut card base so that I get a nice green border around the entire thing. Add just a touch of stickles to the design, a simple ribbon around the frame and done :) Very easy and quick (well, except for waiting for the stickles to dry) and not too shabby looking.

The Stretch Your imagination cart also has a baby icon on key 39.

This month for MidWestStampers the mingle ATC theme is "two colors and/or brads". My recipient is a cat lover, so I thought to play with that theme a bit here. I used the first item in the card function of A Child's Year cartridge to make my ATC base card. Size 5 by 3.5 inches (to fold). I prefer to delete the nick marks for folding from the item with "hide selected line". The cat cutout can be found on the Animal Kingdom cart. I flipped the shape and added it to the scalloped side of the base card at 1.8 by 2.8 size.



The background behind the cat is a custom watercolor background leftover from another project. I stamped a fun kittie background over the front and back of the base card with gold pigment ink and clear embossed that. Stamp is from DRS designs. My brads are two greenish yellow crystal brads from the stash. Some eyelash yarn trapped inside the card and as a tail finishes this nicely.

Kinda sad when you forget the login for your own blog, isn't it? my way of saying, its been a while....
Today I was playing around with the Pagoda cartridge and Design Studio. I like the card option function, even if I don't necessarily like their odd sizes of the resulting cards. But most of the design shapes are flexible enough so that you can shift the card size to a regular 5.5 by 4.25 inch card! Meaning, if you stretch the design it still looks good and not funky out of whack. For this example I used the card option with the bird3 (key 16) and put in the dimensions in the Shape Properties : Width 11, Height 4.25:



I also added the character for "Happiness" in the lower corner of the card front. Some of the characters are slightly different for the "tag/card" option when compared to the die cut option, if you want to keep the background with an image cut out, use the card/tag option for the character, it will look clearer. Example "happiness" (key22):



Left is the regular character (I colored in the three small center cuts) and to the right is the tag/card version of the character as it would appear after cutting. The Kanji alone gives you a convenient one part item to add to your layout, the card/tag option of the character cuts in two parts and has more definition that way, even if the differences are just subtle. If you add the card option of the character to your card front, just select the surrounding border and do a "hide selected contour" to have it not cut, I also hide the score marks in the center of the card....
The resulting window card can be finished in many ways, I used some hand made paper inside the card and added a touch of eyelash yarn and some pierced holes at the top:



These designs look very cool with mulberry paper or patterned designer paper behind them!