Storybook Bird for BBTB and a shadow box for Max

This week on Bitten by the Bug, the team were asked to use this bird from the Storybook cartridge. I cut him small, at 1 1/2" and perched him on a sissix diecut branch. The scallop layer was also from storybook, embossed with a cuttlebug snowflake folder. The paper is from a stack by Mambi

You remember me telling you about my friend Joan, who I met through this blog, coming with her husband to spend the day with us here in Florida? We talked a lot about our grandchildren, and a few days later she sent me these Fire Service uniform badges for our fireman-mad little 2 year old, Max. I wanted to display them in some way, so I bought a 8 x 8 shadow box frame, and mounted the badges. The firestation was cut at 6" using the My Community cartridge. I used Cricut markers first, then cut it out in white, red and blue, then cut various bits out and pieced them together. I covered the windows and fire truck in glossy accents, and the door is popped open with a foam pad. The number plate on the truck reads 'Max 1'. I found the yellow wellies lurking in a drawer, I think they are Jolees stickers. The lettering is red felt American Craft thickers

When Joan left, I gave her the halloween wreath I had made, to give to her little granddaughter Erin, here is a photo of a very pretty little girl looking delighted with her gift. Thank you for the lovely card you made for me Erin xx

I will be drawing the winners of the blog candy later today folks, so check back to see who will be getting the goodies

Shoes from Gypsy and some Christmas Puds

This card, using my favourite of the moment, kraft card, was made using the Christmas rectangles, a new release from Lily-Boo, pop over and take a look, there are the sweetest little fat robins in the set as well. The papers I used are by Mambi, the holly leaves were cut from the paper, so this really was a quick little card to add to my Christmas pile

This next one was made with the first cuts I made with my new Gypsy, the shoes are from Gypsy wanderings, cut at 3". The border punch is one of the new deep border punches by Martha (I use so much of her stuff, that I feel I know the woman well enough now to call her by her first name.................). The sentiment is from the shoe set by MFT stamps

The shoes were 'cuttlebugged' to give them some texture
A lot of you have said that you are waiting for my Gypsy review, and to see what I come up with. I will try to explain where I am coming from with this gadget, and hope it makes sense. I own, but have never used, Design Studio, all my Cricut cards are made by the 'cut and glue' method. To be totally honest, as I don't have time to scrapbook much, and so don't need welded phrases and titles, I have never seen the benefit, or had the time, to spend ages designing, say, a branch with a bird on it, when I can just go ahead and cut the branch and stick the bird on with a glue dot. This method has served me well for the past four years. Another reason for NOT using design studio was lack of space in my crafting areas, I just didn't have the space to conveniently hook up the Cricut to a computer for cutting.

As you know, I live in two places, the UK and Florida, three months in each place, so four times a year, all my cartridges (I have about 35) and all the overlays, and some of the handbooks, get loaded into my hand luggage (I can't check them in, too worried the bags will get lost) and off we all go across the Atlantic again. The gypsy is obviously made for me, just for easy access and storage of cartridges.

However, I am a creature of habit, and at the moment, I am finding the whole thing of design studio (because that's what the gypsy is, a small, portable design studio) a bit of a chore. It is so much easier to load the cartridge and mat into the machine, press cut, and away you go. Instead of which, even for a straightforward cut, you have to manipulate the image on a virtual mat and so on. I need to use it regularly, and I know that this will become second nature to me in a very short time, the catch 22 here being that I am reluctant to upload any cartridges into the machine until I am totally confident that I will get to that 'second nature' stage.

So if you are waiting for 'cut files' of complicated, or even non-complicated design from me, I don't think that will ever happen, I really think that I will just be cutting and glueing in the same old way forever. I quite fancy flipping images to make shaped cards, but that's the height of my ambition...... Those of you who know my work, know that I tend to use the Cricut in conjunction with other mediums, like stamps, rather than as an entity in itself.

Having said all this,( so that you understand how totally non-techy I am), the Gypsy is light, comfortable to hold, I love having access to all the cartridges in one place, and being able to see what is on the cartridges I don't own, so that my next purchase will be much more informed than in the past. I found the whole starting-up installation of the Gypsy sync
programme and the updating of the cricut machine quick, easy and painless. It has a facility to flip the screen for left-handers (me) which is great. The battery life seems good. It will be great not to have to load cartridges and search out the overlays, although the time saved by this will be negated by the time spent on the virtual image before cutting. The screen size is about the size of a nintendo DS screen, and I have been able to cope with that okay. It is small enough to hook up to my Cricut machine without compromising my crafting space. A downside is that I found it impossible to see the screen in bright sunlight, even though I adjusted the settings and brightness.

Will I keep it? I'm pretty sure I will. Would I buy it if I lived in one place and didn't want to design complicated cuts? No. Would I buy it if I still worked and wanted to do some crafting in my lunch hour? Probably. Would I buy it if I went to a lot of crops? Possibly
So, as requested, that's my assessment so far, but please bear in mind that everyone's crafting needs/habits/ambitions are different, so you will have to weigh up the options according to your own needs.

Snow Friends

So Provocraft have come up with another new idea, mini cartridges, and when I saw this one called Snow Friends, I had to get it. Just ten cute snowmen on it, all with adorable little outfits. This one was cut at 3", the paper is Martha Stewart, and the red letters are felt thickers by American Crafts. Love the little bird perching on his twigs........ of course, I had to doodle a little as well

Talking of doodles, today is Polkadoodles new challenge day, pop over and see all the design team's Christmas ornaments, you won't see one from me this week, time and stuff ran away with me, and despite all my good intentions I didn't get one done in time

Two for Making-Handmade-Cards

I was asked to make some sample cards for Making-Handmade-Cards using a new download called Flower Train - the papers are very pretty, in shades of pinks, blues and lilacs. Here I printed off the blue contact sheet and punched 1 1/2" squares which I stuck in a grid pattern onto a white panel. I stitched around the panel onto a blue base card

Cut a sissix branch out of white, inked the edges with colorbok cats eye chalk ink and dotted some gems onto it, and attached that to a script embossed panel. The birthday sentiment is a stamp by stampin up


Used the lilac colourway on this one, with a very sassy image download from the Born to Shop collection

The side border is one of the new Martha Stewart deep borders called trellis arch


She was coloured with copic markers

I added a velvety flower by Prima to finish off

No gypsy report yet, except to say that I have it up and running which was a lot simpler than I thought, but now I learn that there is an update which everyone is very excited about, can't figure out why since I have no idea what I am doing, all I know is that sometime today I have to hook it up to the computer again and hope that it is as easy as the first time

Three Ribbons for Practical Scrappers

Just sharing with you one of the latest photos I have of Max and Milo, aren't they adorable in their matching PJ's? Look at the way Milo is gazing at his big brother

This week for Practical Scrappers, I was asked to use at least three ribbons. I used whitewash paper by core-dinations, made the base card from that and distressed the edges. The cuttlebug script folder was used for the centre panel, and again, rubbed with a emery board. The flower was from the walk in my garden cartridge, I cut three at 3", 2 1/2" and 2 1/4", and layered them with silicone glue. A little circle in the middle dotted with shimmer dots finished it off. The ribbons were just knotted together and glued to the card, I tried knotting them around the 'stem' and it just distorted it, so a glue dot came in handy. It's all very monotone, but I like it...

I really love this whitewash cardtock, I never liked the original black stuff, but this white is just gorgeous, this sheet is white, reversing to charcoal grey.
Guess what, my gypsy has arrived. I have managed to do all the computer stuff, and it is up and running. I will let you know what I think when I have had time to get used to using it. At the moment, it's a bit of a faff because I don't know what I am doing. The jury is out...................

Blue Christmas for CDM and a jolly penguin for BBTB

A couple more design team offerings for you today. This first one is for Cute Daisy May, where the challenge is "Blue Christmas". The image is of course CDM, the papers are from last year's DCWV Christmas stack, snowflakes are a cuttlebug die, and the embossing folder is cuttlebug

I put the printed image through the cuttlebug using the snow folder by Kars, I like doing this on snowy images, it makes it look as if the girl is sitting in a snowstorm
Next, the challenge over at Bitten By The Bug this week was to use the penguin from the Stretch Your Imagination cartridge. I cut him/her at 4" and decided to spice it up a bit by making the outer layer in a black and white pattern, and added a holly leaf sticker I found hanging around in my stuff. I used the same snow folder as before, snowflakes are a cuttlebug die - never seen a red snowflake? Well, who has ever seen a penguin deckout in houndstooth check :)

That's it for today, more design team stuff tomorrow, boy, have I been busy..........

Funky Hand and Lily-Boo Monthly Challenges

Two monthly challenges to tell you about today. First Funky Hand, where the theme this month is

Autumn Woodland

I used papers from the Funky Seasons CD, the tree is cut from the winter woodland cartridge and the owl is a studio G stamp, stamped onto the pattern paper.

I added buttons to the tree to give a bit of a punch. We are taking it in turns to set the challenges over on the Get Funkychallenge blog, and this month is my turn, so I beg, plead, entreat you to enter, otherwise the rest of the team will think I set a rubbish challenge. You have a whole month to come up with something, the only requirement is that you use a Funky hand product (there is a free download still on the blog, scroll right down and you will find it), and the winner will receive a £20 (about $32) gift certificate
On to Lily-Boo, where the challenge is simple - use purple, any card, any occasion as long as it's purple. Again you have a whole month to join in and the winner gets free downloads
I used the Christmas Bauble set for mine, the paper is last year's DCWV Christmas stack and the green velvet ribbon is Martha Stewart


I coloured the holly leaves with a silver pen, and added gems for the berries


It was fun shopping yesterday, lots of people were wandering around in fancy dress for Halloween, I do love the way America embraces these events. So Dracula served me in Dunkin Donuts, his teeth weren't a very good fit and I was more scared that they would drop into my coffee than by the costume! I saw a lot of teenage girls dressed as ??????? - their mothers obviously didn't see them leave the house dressed like that, or they would have been grounded for the rest of the year. I gave some sweets to a couple of adorable little pumpkins, aged about 2, and the highlight of the day was seeing a couple dressed up as a wizard and a witch, who had, wait for it................................dressed their DOG up as the witches cat. Talk about surreal, the poor mutt was obviously having an identity crisis, and looked quite affronted. Quite right too. I tried to give him a piece of my donut (I'll use the American spelling, it's quicker), but the witch got quite shirty and said he was on a diet. Poor dog, didn't have a lot going for him really.

New Cards for Creativity

I was asked to do some designing for Creativity magazine in the UK, in the shops now. The first card is for the designer challenge, where they send two designers identical products and you are asked to make a series of cards with them. I think the readers are asked to vote for the designs they like best, but as I am in the USA at the moment, I have no idea how to do this. If someone can give me a link, I can at least make sure I get my own vote :)

I used a handbag shaped card base by Papermania, and some rather glitzy handmade mulberry papers that were lovely to use, the other product I had to use was mirri card, not something I use very often, but I love a challenge..................

The second commission was to make some New Year cards using the very cute little Forever Friends bear stamp that is being given away with the magazine, this was a joy to use, such a sweet little image. All the papers are by Papermania, and the silver ring around the aperture is a peel off. All the products are available from Docrafts

If you want to see the rest of the cards, I heard that this edition of Creativity is being given away free with this month's edition of Papercraft Inspirations (some of my cards are in that mag. as well), so quite a deal with the freebie stamp thrown in. This was in Sainsbury's apparently, I don't know if WH Smith have the same deal. If you like them, a vote would be nice too (I have no idea how this works, but it sounds a bit scary to me, how humiliating it would be not to get any votes, sniff)
I have been busy busy with design team stuff, so lots of cards to share with you over the next couple of days, in the meantime have a lovely start to the weekend folks...........

Cool Birdie for Polkadoodles

The challenge this week was to make a male card using the new Not for Girls CD, we had to doodle, and use three brads, so this is what I came up with. Okay, so I used five brads, oops, never mind. The branch is cut from Winter Woodlands cartridge on the cricut machine, the tweet word is Thickers by american crafts, everything else is from the CD

Be sure to go and see what the polkadoodle team have come up with for the men, and join us in the challenge - as always there is a prize for the weekly winner, plus you get the coveted blinkie for your blog

Musical Birthday Card and a Sneeky Peek

First, a quick Christmas card, the holly leaves were cut from the Stretch Your Imagination cartridge, and Joy is from Joys of the Season. I really do need to make a start on my cards, I am a bit laid back

I had to make a male birthday card in a real hurry, luckily I had my new 'Not for girls' CD fromPolkadoodles handy, and it took no time at all to make this, for a chap that loves music and has been known to get up and sing in pub karaoke nights. All the papers and the topper are from the CD. I embossed a piece of red card with the cuttlebug - allegro folder, I think that's what it's called, and did a shadow on the lettering in the same colour red with a copic marker

and here is a sneek peek at my card for the Polkadoodles weekly challenge tomorrow
Thanks to all of you who have been sweet enough to make kind comments about my first video attempt. I think I am getting a bit carried away, and keep thinking of other projects I can video. A couple of answers to comments, I got the matchboxes in the Dollar Tree here in the US, they were 12 for a dollar, they also have the big ones, two for a dollar. I think they are sold in Poundland in the UK. The big boxes would be quite easy to adapt, and have the advantage of being sturdier, and they would hold quite good sized gifts. Next year, when Max is three, I will make him one, at the moment one of these little ones would last about 10 seconds under his rather robust present opening technique. The little drawers were quite difficult to pull out, so today I waxed the sides of each drawer with a scented candle, they pull out smoothly and easily now, and the boxes smell gorgeous.
What have I done with the matches? They are in a big bag in the garage - does anybody feel like building a model ship out of matches? If so, I'm your new best friend......

Advent Box Video

Well what a palaver this has been. The video we did yesterday was too large because I talked too much, so I did another one which is a bit ropey because Steven Speilberg was getting his haircut, so I was trying to video and do a demo at the same time. I have used a half completed box, so it looks a bit of a mess, ah well, you get the picture.....

I am pleased with the box though, Alex will love it, and I am trying to find tiny things to put in the boxes. Off to Sephora to see if they have any tiny samples they can give me, I have put in lip gloss, tiny mints, eye shadow applicators, cosmetic sponges, earrings..... fun, fun, fun.

Punch card for Practical Scrappers

Over on Practical Scrappers this week, the challenge is to use your punches, well, that was easy, this double loop is one of the new round the block punches by Martha Stewart. I have still to master the complexity of going round corners, but love the punch itself, so it doesn't matter. I punched three rows of coordinating cardstock (whitewash by Core-dinations). The embossing was done on that paper too, and sanded to show the detail. The birds are a MS punch as well, I added a tiny rhinestone for eyes

The rhinestones look like googly eyes, I promise you they are not! Pop over and see what the rest of the design team have come up with, there are some fabulous layouts on there too
Now be sure to come by tomorrow, I have done a video on the matchbox advent box. It has been quite a day, Steven Speilberg (aka Mike) thought he needed to zoom in on me, who does he think I am? Catherine Zeta Jones? Doesn't he know that women of my age are always shot in soft focus? He also kept muttering to himself. 'Don't talk' I hissed 'Just concentrate on what I am doing, and don't show me, just my hands' All this marital discord was faithfully recorded of course, so the editor (aka Mike) is busy deleting his mutterings and my hissings.
Then I was happily burbling on, stating the flipping obvious 'first you need matchboxes' I announce...... well yes, you would really if you are making a matchbox box. Duh! Then we filmed a whole segment - oh yes folks, we did it in segments, and I realised that I had shocking pink and black paint all over my hands, so if you want a good laugh, call back tomorrow, that is if we can ever figure out how to get this spectacular production onto the blog

Advent Box

I have been having a lot of fun making this little advent box out of matchboxes for Kiki. I made a few mistakes, but I have got the hang of it now and will try to do a tutorial for the blog

Santa is cut from Doodlecharms at 3", I gave the first one some eyebrows, he looked so fierce he would have frightened a child, so I had to start again

The best fun was finding stuff small enough to fit into the matchboxes. So I bought sparkly little bracelets and necklace, hair clips and scrunchies, tiny m & m's, and some (UK) pound coins and 50 pence pieces that I soaked in pepsi cola for an hour to get them sparkling and new looking
There are 24 little drawers, so one for every day up to Christmas day, with a little treat in each drawer

It has to travel to the UK, so I hope it arrives intact and that she loves it as much as I loved making it

Polkadoodles Halloween

We decided as it was so close to Halloween that we had to give the adorable halloweenie download from Polkadoodles another outing. You don't have to make a halloween card to enter the challenge though, and there are prizes for the winner

My card is made with the downloads, spooky Jack is so cute, but I had to add some googly eyes, the big ones looked cuter than the teensy ones I put on first.

I added a strip of drippy-goo punched black paper, but the drips didn't show up, so I added a backing strip of orange and doodled around them. A bit of random stitching, a sentiment from the download, and it still looked a bit blah, until I decided to bring Jack's spooky friend into the scene and put him to peep over the sentiment

We had a most super day yesterday with Joan and Tom, our 'new' friends, although from the moment they walked in through the door, Joan and I never stopped talking, it felt as if I had known her for years. We escaped to a stamping store when the men started to talk about car insurance, and I introduced Joan to copic markers. Oh dear, maybe I am not Tom's new best friend after all...... It was a great day, and we are already planning our next get-together. Amazing what blessings you get from blogging!

lily boo orange and black flowers

After the red/orange fiasco yesterday, it had to be an orange card today didn't it? I used one of the Lily-Boo printable digi stamps for the image, and my favourite Making Memories spotty paper. The flowers are by Autumn Leaves. Don't forget, you have until the end of the month to take part in Lily-boos monthly challenge, (and pick up your freebie image at the same time).

I have guests arriving today, about 16 months ago, a follower of this blog sent me an email about something, I replied, we started an email friendship, and found we had so much in common. She and her husband live in another part of Florida, and today, they are driving up to spend the day with us. Isn't that neat! She will have a fit when she sees my untidy scrap space though, the house is tidy, the garage looks like a bomb has exploded in there

Birthday Boy

This image is one of the Kars (UK) ollyphant stamps. I needed to make a couple of boy cards, this is one of those cards that I wasn't at all sure where I was going when I made it.

Does that happen to you?

Stamp and colour an image, look blankly at it, look round everywhere for some red paper to match his shirt, wishing you had coloured it in orange, because the perfect orange paper just jumps out at you. Never mind, here's a scrap of red, it needs something else...., now where's that punch that does the notebook edges................hunt for an hour, remember you lent it to a friend. Go to friends house, spend two hours gossiping and drinking coffee, back home with the punch. A bit of random sewing might add something. Think I'll do" boy" in big red letters............................ I spend another 30 minutes of my life, that I will never get again, hunting for red letters, and find big letters in every colour under the sun, no red (I found some very nice orange ones though, I KNEW by this time that I had made a serious error of judgement when I reached for that red marker pen.........). Never mind, just had a brilliant idea, I'll ink some white letters with a red ink pad. ........have you any idea what a mess a red ink pad makes when you drop it on a pair of khaki shorts? Of course, the really brilliant idea would have been to start over as soon as I found that orange paper. I'll relax a bit and do a bit of blog hopping, the first blog I visit has a most fabulous card with a stunning colour combination, she has combined red and orange, I would NEVER have thought of that

Anyway, here's the card, frankly I don't think it was worth all the hassle, but it's all I have to share with you today as I have been finishing a project I can't share - yet (I do love a bit of mystery, don't you?)

The top right hand corner will have the age of the child, a big orange 6 would look nice........

Office Supplies for Practical Scrappers

Today is my first challenge as part of the design team for Practical Scrappers - a challenge blog specifically for showing cardmakers, scrapbookers and all crafty people how to use those supplies we all have lurking around, what a great idea. This week, the challenge was to use office supplies. For this card I used an adorable new image from Lily-Boos Boutique, coloured with copic markers. The graph paper was torn from a book, I used staples to fix the ribbons, and a label maker for the sentiment

I fixed two of those spiral paperclips in the middle of some looped ribbon

The second card was made using flowers made from a yellow legal pad, I just tore out circles, curled up the edges and layered them together, adding a button in the middle of a spiral paper clip in the centre of each flower



They look really messy, but I love the funkiness of these flowers

another paperclip in the centre of the bow, with a piece of string taken from a manilla postage tag

Whilst we were on the subject of office supplies, I thought this card would stand another airing,
it's one I made quite a while ago, the little paint rollers are made from paper clips, look closely at them and you can figure out how to make them. I rolled black paper strips for handles, and coloured strips for the rollers

You can tell I was in the USA when I made this, look at the way I spelt colour! Why don't you hop over to the site and see more inspiration on how to use office supplies

We were sitting out on the lanai the other evening, and there, sitting on the arm of my chair was this little frog. He seemed quite unafraid, and just sat there looking at me. What a cute little chap, I was quite fond of him by the time he decided to hop off

I was standing waiting to pay at the supermarket yesterday behind a young woman, and her adorable little girl of three - a little golden haired poppet with huge blue eyes. She looked at me, with that serious look little children have when they are weighing you up. "I'm Hannah, and this is my mommy" she announced. Of course, I started talking to her. After a while she said "you talk funny".......................................long pause.........................."MY gramma doesn't talk funny"

Well done Hannah, on recognising a UK accent, and also, depressingly, on being able to spot a gramma when you see one

Lola - Friends birthday card

Nikky from Polkadoodles sent me this little stamp as a gift, and I couldn't wait to ink her up. She is Lola by Rachelle Anne Miller

I don't usually 'do' purple, but I like the way this turned out, the papers are from a DCWV stack, I think it's the Nanas Kids one. The border punch is Swiss Cheese by EK Success. The sentiment is an old one by stampin up, I don't know what set it's from. I stamped the image again onto the gingham paper and cut out just the gift from that.

The flowers are prima, I inked the white one a bit
I have been working hard on some magazine stuff that I can't share with you until February, let's say there are a few hearts sprinkled around on the garage floor...... I find it very disorientating working out of season. I was singing Christmas carols in July and wishing people a happy new year in August.

I am just getting ready to post some blog candy
Be sure to pop back in the next couple of days to see what I am giving away

Polkadoodles Day

It's Friday, time for another Polkadoodles challenge, this week, it's a sketch (which I forgot to put on here, but that gives you a good reason to pop over to the site to see what all the DT have come up with, some wonderful creations on there this week). This card practically made itself, Nikky's designs are so easy to work with. I used my favourite papers from my Candy Doodles CD, and a couple of her new stamps, which complement the range. The tree is a stamp, and I added some buttons, just for fun, and parked the dog at the base of the tree - he looks as if he is debating whether to lift his hind leg :)

The sentiment is from the stamp sheet as well. It comes as a rubber sheet of unmounted stamps, I didn't have any mounting stuff, so I just cut out the stamps I wanted to use and stuck them onto an acrylic block with a glue stick, they stamped perfectly. There are downloads to be won each week, so why not join in the fun, the design team love visiting all the blogs and seeing what you have created
I can hardly contain myself, feel a bit like the dog at the base of the tree, because I know that I have the new 'Not for Girls' CD in the mail, should arrive any day now. I haven't seen the images yet, and can't wait, a whole CD with men's stuff on it. What a great idea

Thanks Rufus for telling us that the stamp from yesterday - still sizzlin - is by Art Impressions, and you are right, the sentiments are great. As well as the sizzlin comment, there is one that says 'smile, it's cheaper than a facelift' - now that is one that I will find a use for!