Soccer Card

It's been a while since I've posted--so long, in fact, that I needed a "how-to" refresher!

No great creative masterpiece here, just a simple card I made for a young man halfway across the world. I love using my Cricut Explore to create cards to let others know that someone is thinking of them. Don't we all need that once in a while???

Images can be found on the following Cricut cartidges:

Soccer Ball - Life's a Party

Cloud - Hello Kitty Greetings

Grass - ZooBalloo

Thanks for visiting!

Giraffe Wobble Card

 

 I'm running out of giraffe designs to use on Teresa's cards.  I found this one on the Cricut cartridge Life's a Party.  It's one of those cuts you might never notice.  You can find it on the card/shift creative feature from the Mother-to-Be hat, which is on page 59 of my handbook.  The handbook shows it as what I would call a "negative space design", in which you would actually discard the giraffe cuts and use the window shape that remains.  Instead I used Cricut Craft Room to hide the rectangular border (a step you could skip if you don't use a computer design program with your Cricut machine) so that only the giraffe pieces were cut.

 

Because the giraffe shape didn't have layering pieces, I decided to ink an embossing folder (from the Cuttlebug set Animal Print) and run the head and body through my Sizzix Big Shot for added color and dimension.   Admittedly this print probably belongs on a cheetah, but sometimes you have to work with what you have.  I'll obsess over acquiring a giraffe embossing folder later.

 

Since the head and body are two separate pieces, I thought it would be fun to put the head on a wobble spring (you can almost see the motion in the second photo).   I found a tutorial to make my own on Linda Kaiser's blog, The Paper Boutique (thanks, Linda!).   To complete the card I stamped "Happy Birthday" on a balloon shape, added some cording, and tied the balloon to the giraffe's tail.  A little ribbon along the bottom "tied" it all together.

 

 

Another Birthday Card for a Teenage Girl

Hubby wins again. 

As I recently posted, he asked if I could make a second card for our granddaughter's 14th birthday since we had to postpone the celebration until the weekend.  Men.

 

 

I used the Create a Critter Cricut cartridge for the panda, chopsticks, and bamboo.  Since Life's a Party was this week's freebie in Cricut Craft Room, I decided to search there for a balloon to give it some credibility as a birthday card.  I found a group of balloons on the first key, third row, card/shift function, and I then used the "hide contour" feature to cut a single balloon (it's amazing the lengths to which I'll go to avoid getting out of my chair).  The grass was cut from a Fiskars border punch.  I used a Cuttlebug embossing folder to add texture to the panda's hat. The background patterned paper is from DCWV Mango Frost pad.

 

The panda has no food, but he got chopsticks anyway.   My granddaughter is the only family member coordinated enough to eat her Asian food with chopsticks, so I couldn't resist adding a little personal touch.

Simple Birthday Card

I used the Cricut cartridge "Life's a Party" to create this simple card.  I added a few layers inside to dress it up a little (and to cover my mistakes).  On the inside I also used an EK Success edge punch, "Swiss Cheese", to mimic the cake design from the front.  (I had to look up the punch name on their website--HUGE mistake.  Have you ever seen how many cool punches they make???  I could go broke buying the ones I want!  Well, to be honest, with the lousy economy hitting me where it hurts I could actually go broke just buying one.)

Thanks for looking!