Happy Birthday Dear Mitchie

My co-worker has had quite a year. After having some crappy things happen in her life, she took control and used the gym as her outlet. Over the past year she has had a total body transformation, and is now being featured in places like Shape and Health magazines!

Since I don't have any buff weightlifting girl Cricut cartridges ... I decided to make her a birthday card themed around wishes coming true, because she is out there reaching for the stars!

I cut out this cloud and stars from Paper Doll Dress Up cartridge so that it would fit perfectly on the front of this glittery A2 card base, then I found some stars and a moon on Paper Doll Dress Up as well--but in a totally unrelated location. The moon cut out super weird, so I ended up just using the stars to give a bit of a 3D effect thanks to my therm-o-web foam squares. I now see there are lots of moons and things on New Arrival, so that is a good option if you want a nice moon.

The cute paper is from a DCWV Stacks. I love the blue color with the maroon red; it isn't typical baby boy blue and lipstick red. They are really nice atypical colors.

I cut out the cake and the layer from Stretch Your Imagination. The cake is actually a baby pink even though it looks kind of peachy here. I had to "hide" the candles and the flame, as they cut with the cake. So you can see I cut the cake, the "frosting," the candles and the flames all separately. Hooray for Gypsy layers-by-force!

"Birthday Wish" was cut out from the Gypsy Font, while "Come True" was cut out from San Serif.

Since I had the outline of this adorable cloud and stars leftover, I realized it would go perfectly on the envelope! Clearly my best envelope ever, if I do say so.

Happy Birthday Mitchie!

-marcia

Baby Bump Stamp

Check out the stamp deliciousness I just got from Lisa and the gang at Stampoutonline. Can you believe how cute? They hand drew the baby bump girl just for me! Can't wait to use it on congrats-you-are-knocked-up and baby shower cards. Yay!

(I suppose the You Grow Girl stamp could also be used alone for friends that need to eat more fruit and less pastries but ... I don't think I'll go there.)

It's raining here in So. Cal., so you know what that means .... the perfect stay-inside-and-craft weather!

Have a great weekend!
-marcia

Baby, Baby

I have at least three friends who are pregnant right now, so I thought I'd better get a jump start on some baby card making!

Inspired by the popular teething toy, Sophie the Giraffe, which my sweet nephew loves, I made this cute giraffe card using New Arrival. I created an appropriately sized Giraffe, flipped it and welded it together.

This great cartridge also has a "layers" button, so cut that out to get the layered effect. This was a bit of a work in progress--a simple card that took longer than it should. I originally wanted a cute patterned paper for the top later, but it just looked weird / like a mistake, so I had to recut in standard giraffe colors--brown is the card and yellow is the top layer. Now I have a cute giraffe in cute paper with no home ... Hmm, wonder where he will end up.

I ran the giraffe through the Cuttlebug using Swiss Dots. I had to stick it through twice since the giraffe is taller than an A2 card ... convenienetly I left a little spot to tie a ribbon ... almost like I'd planned it ... yeah that's it.

The cute B is for Boy is from my stash / stolen from my sweet mom. Once I know who this card will be going to, I will cut out the baby's name for the envelope.

Cheers to my parents-to-be friends!
-marcia

Rain, Rain Go Away!

My mom has been having a rough time lately, so I wanted to cheer her up with a card. And I wanted an excuse to experiment with the ol' Cuttlebug.

I used a pre-cut A2 Card from DCWV. These sets are great, and you can often find them on sale at JoAnns and Michael's. I chose a yellow one as that reminded me of rain boots.

Here I put lots of paper and ran it through my Cricut ... all DCWV paper.

I then used the Paisley Cricut cartridge to cut out this umbrella and the rain boots. Paisley is kind enough to have the shadows for both, so that makes things nice and easy. 


















I ran the umbrella through the Cuttlebug using a flowery embossing folder, and then attached the top layer of the umbrella on with some pop dots so it would stick out / be awesome.

I glued the shadowed boots on the inside of the card to add a little somethin' somethin'. I used my handy Zig 2 Way Glue for all this gluing. When I spied this DCWV paper in one of my Stacks, it reminded me of some rain boots I saw at Target recently. ha!

You could also add a frame, some grass or a ribbon to this card to make it your own. I chose to add a butterfly embellishment I have from K. and Co. to the umbrella to help symbolize the rain clearing and brighter days ahead .... These cute butterflies were part of my Wal-Mart finds. Sometimes, Wal-Mart is worth braving (kind of).

I ran a second set of boots through the Swiss Dots embossing folder and stuck those to the envelope to cute that up a bit. Another bonus with using these DCWV pre-cut cards is they come with envelopes so no fumbling to make that fit just right. yay!

The finished product is below ... hopefully this help cheer my mom up a bit / chase the rain clouds away. :-)

cheers!
-marcia

Over my Head

For our first anniversary, Mr. Awesome got me a gorgeous wedding album from Pottery Barn. It comes with it's own box and everything! So chic.

Well here we are, 2.5 years into marriage and I still haven't assembled it. I've gotten as far as picking the photos, which was such a task ... to pick the photos that would live on in infamy ... that I took a year off after completing that task. Oh boy.

One of the things that plagues me about the project is that the Pottery Barn album is closer to traditional wedding album size, and I am used to working in 12x12 scrap layouts. So my amazing trooper of a mother, who is willing to do the crap work of scrapping that I hate, cut all my 12x12 pages of pink, brown and cream Bazil paper to the appropriate Pottery Barn-imposed size. Yes, she really does rock.

The wonderful thing about waiting this long is that now I have a Cricut. And a Gypsy. And a Cuttlebug. And an ATG. And Zig glue in every size. So really I think it's much better that I waited (is what I tell myself), but really there's no excuse (except for my Imagine-lust, but that's another Christmas away at best) .... So now all I need is my mom to come down here from the great white north to motivate me to assemble this thing and be glad about it. ha! Then I can show everyone my wedding album and they will scratch their heads while nodding and thinking to themselves "that was so 3 years ago."

And now I have a blog to post my progress, so hopefully this will hold my feet to the fire ... or Cricut, as it were.

Cheers!
-marcia