Christmas Cards Day 2

As promised, here's another set of cards I made for this year's collection.

And the same card, just flipped sideways:

Stamp: CTMH C1469 December 25th

Card base and cut shapes made with CTMH Cricut Art Philosophy cartridge Z1686

I totally cased these cards from CTMH TV.  Here is a handy dandy video tutorial:

Want some more crafty holiday video inspiration?

Check out CTMH TV

Lorrinda

Another one of those "special" birthdays...

I know, every birthday is special as long as we're around to celebrate it.  But some birthdays are just more special than others.  You know, those milestone birthdays...
We recently celebrated my Dad's 65th birthday in style...the entire family spent it together on a Vacation Houseboat on Shuswap Lake in BC.

Since 65 is one of those "special" birthdays, I really wanted to make my Dad a great cake, but it would have been too hard to take it on the 3 day road trip we took just getting to the lake.  So I made him this special card instead:

Some of you may recall seeing others like this that I've made. 

I have made several of these Birthday Year cards books for family members. 

I have a full tutorial with pics for you on THIS POST.

Here are the inside pages,

click the pics to enlarge them if you're interested in reading the text.  Some of these trivia tidbits were really interesting to research:)

Thanks for not un-following me as I have been a very lazy blogger this summer!

Lorrinda

 

Recipe:

(All product CTMH unless noted)

X7137B Lucky Level 2 Paper Pack

Cardstock in Cocoa, Outdoor Denim, Desert Sand

Inks in Cocoa, Outdoor Denim, Desert Sand

Stamps: C1439 Enjoy Life, D1495 You & Me

 Z1387 Wooden buttons

Z1371Blue buttons Assortment

Z280 natural Hemp

Retired Pewter accents medley

Ribbon scraps

Cricut and Plantin' Schoolbook Cartridge

H2H From Our Heart to Yours...Creating Background Paper for Dad

Hello there!

This week's Heart 2 Heart challenge is to create your own background paper for a Father's Day card.  The Design Team has made some fabulous cards with their own background techniques, and since this is a 'From Our Heart to Yours' challenge...we're sharing tutorials of what we did :)
Their links are over on my sidebar, or you can see all of their projects at once HERE.

I used a couple of different background techniques on my card this week:

Random Stamping on the Hawaiian shirt:

Started with a 4x6" piece of paper.

I stuck 4 small stamps on my block to keep the pattern uniform, and then just filled the paper with it:

To fold the shirt, just google origami shirt-fold and you'll get an assortment of tutorials to choose from.

Sponged Background Scene:

Start with your piece of blank cardstock. Mask off the sun with a circle of scrap paper and a temp bond tape that can be easily removed.  Then mask off the horizon with post-its, cover the bottom edge of the sun too.

Then I used a sponge and Sunny Yellow ink and dabbed and rubbed until it was even.

Next I used Smoothie ink, and filled in the rest of the sky.

Then I grabbed the Sunny Yellow again and went over the entire sky to blend them together.

Remove the post-its and you should have this. Leave the circle mask on for now.

Now use post-its to mask the horizon line, line them up right along the edge of the sky.

I sponged Sunset ink for the water, leaving a strip of white beneath the sun to look like a reflection.  Remove the post-its mask.

Then I sponged the edge of the reflection with Sunny Yellow, and blended the colors.  The trick with this sponging technique is to build up the color in layers so you don't get smears/blotches of ink.

To make the waves, I just cut a random wavy edge on a scrap of paper, and held it in place while I sponged with Smoothie Ink. Randomly move the edge and ink along it until you have a wave pattern.

Now you can remove the circle mask...

Cover the horizon line with the edge of scrap paper, and lightly sponge on Sunset ink to get the water line.

And there is your sunset scene!

The rest of the Design Team have more 'From Our Heart to Yours' goodness for you here.  Do go to each of their blogs to learn what they did, and leave them some love while you are there...we all love getting comments :)

We'd love to see what you can come up with!  Create your own background paper for a Father's Day project, and link it up at H2H so we can all see!  Each entry has a chance to win a prize from our June sponsors, and yours could make it into our Top 10 for a crack at a future Guest Designer spot.

Thanks for visiting today!

Lorrinda

All supplies used from CTMH unless noted:

Paper for shirt: from X7129B Hooligans Level2 paper pack

Cardstock: White Daisy, Black, Lagoon

Inks: Black, Sunny Yellow, Sunset, Smoothie

Stamps: D1470 Dreams Come True (flowers), B1376 Wings (leaves), D1423 Happy Forever and D1288 June Word Puzzle (Sentiments, both stamps retired)

Z1393 Black Mini-Medley (mini button brads)

Black hemp string

Sponges

Post-It notes and removable tape for masking.

Spring Flower Pot Pocket Card

I may be a victim of wishful thinking, but I could sure use a little spring right now. March has been miserably cold, and I am so sick of snow...

Thankfully, the Heart 2 Heart challenge this week is APRIL SHOWERS BRING MAY FLOWERS!  We are to focus on rain and/or flowers. 

Even though I could not seem to find any stamps with rain or showers in my stash (note to self: buy more stamps), I was happy to make this card, it really makes me think of spring:

But wait...the spring part is in the inside!

I attached a package of flower seeds to the pull out part :) 

Nothing makes me wish for spring more than a pack of flower seeds...

Here are some close-ups:

**Tutorial for this adorable Flower Pot Pocket Card is HERE

The paper marigolds were made by layering about 8 scalloped circles in graduated sizes from 1" to 3" (smallest on top), centering them with a brad punched through, then just scrunching them up, super easy! I cut the scalloped circles in various sizes using my Cricut. There are several cartridges with a scallop circle on them, I used one of the flower shapes from Forever Young because it was already in my machine. It's getting scrunched up anyway, so no need to be picky :)  To be honest, I made the flowers first, then found a pack of marigold seeds in the garden shed (behind a 3 foot snowdrift), and thought they looked like the flowers I just made. Eureka! Don't you just love it when things come together this easy.  It was meant to be.  To finish it off I made a triangle stand for the back so it will stand up too.

Now to wait for all the snow to melt so someone can plant these suckers, not sure yet who the recipient of this card will be...I think it would be a nice teacher gift, or maybe Mother's Day.

Want some more springy inspiration? Check out what the fabulous  H2H DT has got for you this week, APRIL FLOWERS BRING MAY SHOWERS ...I'm sure you'll be inspired to play along!  Remember you should use mainly CTMH products, and please give us a list of the items you used.  Link up your creation to Heart 2 Heart for a chance at some prizes and maybe get a spot as Guest Designer for an upcoming month!

Thanks for visiting my blog today!

Lorrinda



Recipe:

All product CTMH unless noted.

Paper: X7136B Mayberry Level 2 paper pack

Cardstock: Kraft, Colonial White

Stamps: W330 Beautiful Day (sentiment), B1380 Mayberry (leaves)

Inks: Desert Sand, Garden Green

Sorbet ribbon

Garden green brads (can't see them, in the center of the flowers)

Sorbet brad on the butterfly

Martha Stewart Butterfly punch
Provocraft Cricut and Forever Young Cartridge

The Three Bears are Popular

Hello everyone. When I posted my Three Bears card (post below), I had no idea how popular it would be.  Thank you to everyone who left comments here on my blog, and at Big Red Scraps and on the private CTMH consultant board!  I have received about 15 private emails requesting instructions for this card, most wanting to know how I did the inside tent fold, and how to get a full sized border with the Cricut.  To be honest, I winged it :)  But, rather than answer all the emails individually, I thought I should just do up a tutorial to share with all of you.

First, the finished size of the card closed is 5x7". 

Here is another view of the inside of the card which shows the center fold a bit better:

This pic shows on scrap paper how to score and fold the inside paper. If you want your card to fold flat, use a lightweight paper for the inside, cardstock would end up pretty bulky.

Click the pic to see bigger



For the tent, just cut the paper on the center score line, and fold the flaps back to form a tent door.  I paper pieced Lucky pattern paper to make my tent, but you'd get the same effect without the paper piecing:

To adhere the inside piece to the card base, apply adhesive to the outside edges only, leaving the center pop up part free to move:

That's about it for the card...easier than it looks isn't it? Now you can embellish all you want!

Here's a tip for cutting out detailed images:  Stamp them in an ink color similar to the paper... I stamped the bears in desert sand ink onto kraft paper. This way, you don't have to be perfect with the cutting because the lines don't show as much as if you stamp the image in black ink. After the image has been cut out, ink the edges a bit with a sponge to hide any imperfect cutting.

And here is a CRICUT VIDEO TUTORIAL that explains the 'Fit to Length' button on the Cricut to customize a border.  I used the Plantin' Schoolbook cartridge to make the background trees border on the card, I made mine 11" and trimmed it to paper piece onto the card.

If you have time, you should check out the rest of Robyn's awesome Cricut Video Tutorials. I learned so much about using my Cricut that I never would have figured out on my own.   You can find her and all of her videos at My Pink Stamper.

I hope this post answers everyone's questions, and I expect I'll be seeing several tent pop-up cards in the galleries!   I'm happy to keep sharing my instructions if you promise to credit me with a link ;)

Thanks for popping by today!
Lorrinda

A Cold Care-Package Card...

The challenge at Heart 2 Heart this week is to make a card using anything that makes you think of the word COLD.  Ice cream, icicles, snow, Popsicles...Brrrr!!

Well, I kinda took the word COLD a different way...sniff sniff...because I got me a doozy of a cold right now, I was inspired by my medicine cabinet:

Here's a close-up of the cute little birdie:

Yep, that's actually itty bitty birdie Kleenex tissue :)

When you open the card, it's a care package!

This care package includes a pocket pack of Kleenex tissues, Halls throat lozenges, Neo Citron cold medication and a tube of lip balm.  Now that I think of it, I should've included some instant chicken soup too...I'll add that next time I make one.

CTMH Supplies used:

Cardstock: Sky, White Daisy

Pattern paper from Mayberry Level 2 pack

Stamps: C1396 Love Birds, D1013 Playful Caps (retired), C1079 Playful Lower Case (retired), D1308 All Decked Out (branches), D1467 Trees & Things (leaves)

Inks: Black, Sky, Honey, Pear, Smoothie, Cocoa.

Z1377 Color-Ready Kraft Borders

White Grosgrain Ribbon

Other Supplies Used:

Martha Stewart Score Board

Spellbinders Nestabilities Labels Four

Scor-Tape

Kleenex, Halls Breezers, Neo Citron Cold and Flu, Avon Lip Balm

What makes you think of the word COLD?   Check out what all the super talented gals on the DT have done this week, I promise you'll be impressed!  The links to their blogs are in my sidebar.  Go and leave them some warm comments!

Play along with us at H2H this week...whip out your CTMH products and create a card that makes us think COLD.  I know there are more appetizing ways to use COLD than I have here, and I can't wait to see what you come up with!  We still have prizes from our awesome sponsors up for grabs, and we'll be looking for our next Guest DT member from all the entries we get.

If you're interested in making one of these Get Well Care Package Cards for yourself, I had to design the box since I couldn't find a template for what I needed, so I took some photos and made up a tutorial for you!

COLD CARE PACKAGE CARD:

You will need:

* 2 pieces of cardstock: 7.25"x10" for the box, and 6"x11" for the card/top.

* pattern paper and stamps etc. to embellish it.

* a strong tape adhesive like red-line tape or Scor-tape works best to hold the box together.

* a scoreboard helps, but you can make do with the track in your paper trimmer.

* a bone folder for scoring

Take your 7.25"x10" piece of cardstock for the box:

Score it along short edge (shown in red) at 0.75", 5.25", and 6"

Rotate cardstock, and score along long edge (as shown in red) at 1.25", 2", 3.25", 4.5", 5.5", 6.75", 8", and 8.75"

Trim off the parts shown in black: 

Trim off the bottom parts shown in black as well, and then CUT along black lines as shown to create tabs,fold them all in (valley fold) and valley fold along the score lines marked with green stars too:

Here is a closer look at the top, you now have to add score lines to the top squares as shown, 0.5" in from each edge, then valley fold those score lines in:

At the top, fold center tabs up, fold top tabs over them as shown to create a little box:

Now, stick that box down to the base as shown, using a strong adhesive tape:

At the end, fold and adhere the tabs as shown to create the end boxes:

Do the same thing at the other end as well.

Should look like this, go ahead and stuff it to make sure it all fits:

For the card top, take the 6" x 11" cardstock, and score it (shown in black) along long side at 0.75", 5 3/8", 6.25", and 10.75"

Valley fold at all score lines:

Tape the box inside with strong tape, tape at back and front edges as well:

Should look like this:

Now decorate it as desired, and fill it with your goodies!

I hope this tutorial can be followed, I put it together in a cold medicine haze.  Please let me know if you try to make it and it's totally not working?

I'm going to go back to bed now.

Thanks for visiting today!

Lorrinda