Friendship Bouquet Card

Well I've finally stepped away from the Dotty paper!!! (but rest assured it will likely reappear in future posts!!!)

I was inspired by a couple of challenges this week, the Heart 2 Heart challenge to use distressing and the Mojo Monday sketch. So I'm entering this card in both challenges!

I love distressing and don't do it often enough, but the May Stamp of the month --Friendship Bouquet was calling out to me to be used in combination with some distressing. So I got busy....I used my edge distresser on all pieces of paper--some a little more than others. I also usesd my spray pen with water and pearl paint to spritz the piece of Olive cardstock then proceeded to crumple it up in a ball, then flatten it out again. I then got out my sponge dauber and cocoa ink and inked all the edges as well as some of the spots on the olive cardstock.

I stamped the image directly on the Colonial white cardstock in cocoa ink. I then got another piece of CW cardstock and applied versa mark then cocoa ink onto the stamp (without cleaning the stamp between the 2 inks) and stamped the image, covered it in clear embossing powder, tapped off the excess then heat set it.
Using my blending pen and the honey ink pad I coloured in the flower, then used the cocoa to colour the center. I love that with the blending pen and my ink pad, I can colour in an image without having to have all the markers to match my pads, simply squeeze the ink pad together when closed, and some of the ink transfers to the lid, so that when you open the stamp pad, you simply pick up the ink with the blending pen!

I was really happy with the way this card turned out, and I know I will be getting lots of use out of this stamp set!!!

Thanks for visiting.

Supplies used:
-Stella Papper pack
-Olive, Colonial white and Honey cardstock
-Friendship Bouquet--May SOTM
-Cocoa ink pad
-Honey ink pad
-versa mark pad
-clear embossing powder
-blending pen
-edge distresser
-3D foam tape

Dotty Pinwheel card

I've created this clean and simple birthday card using...you guessed it, the Dotty paper pack! You would think I'd be near the end of my pack, but I still have tons of paper left, (and yes I only had one pack) but with 24 sheets of double sided pattern paper, there are so many possibilities! I have been creating with other paper too, but wanted to get this one posted as I am entering it in the Heart 2 Heart Polka Dots and Stripes challange as well as CR84FN Color Challenge.

With these 2 challenges in mind it was a no brainer to pick up my Dotty For You paper pack. By the way it's still available for only $5, till May 31st, with a purchase of $35.

Thanks for stopping by.

Supplies used:

-Dotty For You paper pack

-Colonial white cardstock

-Paradise asst. of Bakers Twine

-silver brads

-lagoon ink pad

-Card chatter-Birthday stamp set



Teacher Gifts (with Dotty of course!)

I just love how my exclusive Art Philosophy Cricut cartridge makes whipping up some little teacher gifts soooo easy! (Don't know if I've mentioned before how in LOVE I am with this cartridge **sheepish grin**) Seriously though, when I realized that it was Teacher Appreciation week, and mentioned it to my daughter, and we came up with a plan, we were able to pump these babies out in record time!!

The pillow box contains a bag of microwave popcorn, and I'd love to give credit to someone for the poem, but it's been around for a while and I can't quite track down where it originated from. This gift was for her regular classroom teacher, who is diabetic, so the popcorn was a great alternative to the chocolates in the next group!

These next little gifts were for her extra teachers....music, french, drama...so we made 3 of these and  filled them with mini chocolate bars!

 The matchbook cards with Tea bags were for all the other teachers in the school (luckily it's a small school) we were on a roll and didn't want to leave anyone out, so we pumped out 20 of these guys in under an hour! Again super easy with the cartridge and coordinating stamp sets--just set my cricut to cut the desired shape 20x at the size that's conveniently located on the stamp carrier sheet, then did the same thing for the background tag increasing the size by 1/4".

Thanks for stopping by!

Supplies used;
Dotty paper pack
White daisy cardstock
Sweet leaf ink pad
Sunset ink pad
Thoughtful Tidings stamp set (Feb 2012 SOTM)
Art Philosophy exclusive  stamp set and cartridge

I'm Sew Happy....with Dotty!

Thought I'd share with you this quick card I made. OK making the flower not so quick....but once it was done everything else came together supper fast.

This is also my entry into Heart 2 Hearts April Showers bring May flowers challenge this week.

What made this card soooo simple is the CTMH exclusive Art Philosophy Cricut cartridge, the card base, the sweet leaf dotty paper and all the flowers were cut using the cartridge! I'll also note that the Sweet Leaf stitched grosgrain ribbon made gathering the ribbon easy because the stitching is already in the ribbon, just grab the white stitching and pull the ribbon back.

Directions for making the flower:
Cut 4 flowers at 2", and a 5th flower at 2 1/4" (or really whatever sizes you want, but the 5th one needs to be 1/4" bigger than the other 4.
Using the Clear ruler, and a craft knife I cut 3 of the 2" flowers into 6 pieces, between the petals. The 4th one I kept whole and used as a base to glue the other 6 pieces too. This was my solution after trying unsuccessfully to glue the 6 individual pieces directly onto the bigger flower--I kept getting a gap between the last 2 petals!)
I then used the ruler with the hole guide, and my paper piercer to make the guide holes for the stitching. Then stitch away!
Add something to the middle of the flower--I found this necessary (although I would have done it anyways just to finish off the flower) simply because you sew through the middle hole so often that it's a little unsightly!

Supplies used:
-Dotty for You paper pack
-Colonial White cardstock
-Green button assortment
-Sweet leaf ink pad
-Sweet leaf embroidery floss (retired)
-Simple Stitches stamp set (retired)
-2 sided tape to hold the ribbon down
-AP cricut cartridge
-ruler

Canada Day with Dotty

The May promotion at CTMH is a Dotty Paper Pack for only $5 when you order $35 in product. I've been playing with mine, and will have lots more to show you in future posts. I've had these pictures printed since last fall and was hitting a road block every time I pulled them out to scrap them! I was cruisin some of my favourite challenge blogs yesterday and was hit with the inspiration I needed to complete this layout! Thanks to Cheryl over at Heart 2 Heart, with her April layout sketch, I was able to put this together in no time!



 Pulled out my Canadian Celebration stamp set and the AP cricut cartridge, to make the layered stars--the cartridge makes it so quick and easy! Also added in some of the new Bakers Twine. I can see getting allot of mileage with all the choices of colours in this new set!

 I had a few photos of the kids with sparklers, that weren't the greatest shots but I still wanted to include them on the layout--so I made a little interactive piece that I will have sit outside the page protector so anyone going through the album can simply untie the bakers twine and view the rest of the photo's. The trick to cutting the page protector, is to use a hole punch at both ends of your slit, to prevent the protector from ripping.

Thanks for stopping by!

Supplies used:
-Dotty paper pack
-Tulip cardstock
-White daisy cardstock
-Tulip ink pad
-bakers twine
-Canadian Celebration stamp set
-Art Philosophy cartridge