Trick or Treet

Trick or Treet
This was a great rainy weekend to spend in my craft room or as my family calls it, my Cricut lair. I didn’t get a whole lot of projects done, but I did do some experimenting, reading, sorting and thinking. I also tried out the Cricut Craft room a little more. They have some great free Halloween cuts this week. One that struck my fancy was the 3-Deminsional trees. You can’t make these too big or they flop over, but I made several ranging in size from 4-5 inches. The gnarly one didn’t cut as well as the wind swept one for some reason and it tends to want to hang over.

I thought the purple tree was fun!

I was intrigued not only with the trees, but the cutout the tree left when it was removed from the paper. I just knew it could be used for something great. After several false starts I finally decided to use it as a stencil. That's the one on the right. I'm entering this in the BBTB2 Tree challenge.

I love how this turned out

Over at Mary’s Cardz TV she’s having a SSSpooky S-card Cricut challenge. I’d never made an S card before so I thought it would be a fun project. The only problem I had was that I liked my trees so much I didn’t want to add a bunch of embellishments and cover them up. (I need to work on that) but for now, I’m going with the simple is better/safer approach. 

I did use half of one of the trees I had cut out as the overlap embellishment on the front of the card. Then I printed up the Trick or Treet tag for the inside. (misspelling is intentional) using Chiller font and free hand cut the tag.

2nd Section 

 

Two other cards I made were these using a pumpkin stamp from a halloween set I got on clearance several years ago. For the green one I cut out the eyes so you can see the googly eyes from the inside of the card. I’m going to enter this one in the Creative Time for Me Googly eyes challenge and in Pause Dream Enjoy Challenges FACE challenge.

Inside of the Green Card

The bat is from the Dress Up Paper Dolls Cartridge. The paper for both cards is from K&Company the Tim Coffey Halloween Mat Pad. I love this little pad!

Inside of Purple Card

This is the inside of the purple card. The skeleton is also from the Paper Dolls Cricut Cartridge and the pumpkins are from the Cake Basics cart. The sentiment is a stamp I picked up at Michaels. I cut the tag out with a pair of border scissors.

 Hmmm! I guess I got more done than I thought.

Salute to Summer

Today is the first day of Fall and I am so ready for it! It was 96 degrees here today so it didn’t feel like Fall, but I know cool weather is on it’s way. The heat isn’t as intense, it’s cooler in the shade, and in the evening it actually gets cool instead of being a muggy 81. As a last salute to Summer and the fun it brings I scrapped this Family Summer fun page and thought I’d enter it in the Fantabulous Cricut Challenge and Pink Cricut Link Up Party.

 

This was a fast and relatively easy layout to do. I downloaded the pictures from the day directly onto my computer. Using Microsoft Word I inserted the pictures into a word document, arranged them in a pleasing configuration leaving a ¼ inch space between the pictures so it would look like a border, hit the print button and presto! Instant layout. All that was left was cutting a title using the Life’s a Beach cartridge, journaling on a scrap of paper left over from the title and used a flower brad to stick it on. The quote is from DCWV “Fun in the Sun” Quote Sticker Stack. Easy as pie!

Big Girl Bed

Big Girl Bed

Do you ever have one of those projects that you just can’t seem to get right?  This page was one of those. For some reason I just couldn’t get the flowers to look right, the title was the wrong color and my paper was slightly whompy-jawed, but I persevered and it all came together in the end. My hubbie made this bed for our daughter when she was 2. Now it is her 2 year old's very own big girl bed that her Poppy made.

I used the Layout from the LastingMemories Challenge which I thought was really cute.

I cut all my flowers with the Cricut in various sizes. The cartridges used where; Cake Basics, Preserves and Flower Shoppe.

 I also used A Child’s Year for the title frame and Lyrical Letters for the title. The letters are so thin that I decided to swap my blade for a Cricut pen and ‘cut’ it directly onto the frame. I used the brown pen, but against the pink it looks black so I decided to paint it with some Frosted Lace Stickles to sort of soften the look and to tie it in with the frosted strawberries on the paper.

TIP: I’ve been told that the best way to store your Stickles or glitter glue is upside down. Unfortunately the lids don’t lend themselves to being upside down. I had these little wooden do-hickeys that I got at a garage sale thinking I would use them as a stand for clothespin dolls (which I never made), however, they are perfect for holding my Stickles upside down. You can find the wooden pieces at most craft stores.

Squirrelly Business

Squirrelly Business

There’s nothing squirrelly about this little card.  Over at BBTB2 they are having shape card challenge. I thought I’d challenge myself not to pull out my trusty Wild Card cartridge. Wild Card is one of the first cartridges I bought when I first got my Cricut Expression and I still reach for it when I need a card. So this time I thought I’d break out of my comfort zone and use the Give a Hoot cartridge. I haven’t had a chance to play with it to much but when I saw the 2 squirrels (row 3:5) I thought, perfect!

Front

Inside

I cut the basic shape at 4.5 inches using white. Tip: I always remove those white pages they put into scrapbook pages and use them for practice or when I need some white in a project. It also helps remove some of the bulk from my scrapbooks once they are completed. Then, using various shades of brown and a little white I stamped the little guy until he looked more like a squirrel. For the inside I used the Layer feature in brown for the detail. When I applied the layer it left the ears looking sort of funny on the squirrel on the left so I cut out a bow to cover the extra bump. I then cut 2 hearts freehand and glued them together with pop dots. I used the pink for the inside heart and the brown so that the heart looked like a nut from the outside. I was going to add I’M NUTS to the front and ABOUT YOU inside, but as they say, ‘a picture is worth a thousand words’ so I left the squirrels to state the obvious.