Scrapbook Saturday with Erica's Cricut Craft Room!

Welcome to another Scrapbook Saturday with Erica's Cricut Craft Room Design Team!  Once you are done checking out my layout, hop back over to My Cricut Craft Room for more scrappy inspiration!  And if you want to be temped... click on Erica's shop link for some awesome Cricut deals!!

This week's page is about my son, Alex.  My goodness is he silly.  And the kid won;t sit still for a picture, if he does, he's making a face.  And I'm ALWAYS catching him in the act of doing goofy stuff like what is captured in these pictures.  Letters are cut using Opposites attract (silly) , Ashlyn's Alphabet (quirky), and Alphalicious (happy, fun).

Thermoweb pop dots behind fun for dimension.

Thermo web pop dots behind "happy" for dimension.

Chalked over white paper.

As always - thanks for looking!  Have a great day!

Scrapbook Saturday with Erica's Cricut Craft Room!

Hi!  Welcome to Scrapbook Saturday hosted by Erica's Cricut Craft Room!  If you came here because you are one of my followers, please stop back at Erica's page and check out the other fabulous pages from my Design Team Sisters!   Erica also offers AWESOME deals on Cricut Cartridges... check out her shop by clicking here : )

Here is my page I wanted to share with all of you today.  This was made for my honeymoon album chronicling our time on the amazing island of Oahu, Hawaii.  I really wanted to show you these two pages to show off those hula girls.  Aren't they CUTE!!!?!?!!  LOVE them!  Also, I wanted to share an idea about what I did with the tropical flowers for this book.  I made a large number of cuts from several different sheets of patterned paper (all from the same book for consistency), and then just put them all together at random - different flower tops with bottoms, different papers, one with another - just whatever I thought looked good.  I made tons of them and then used them as embellishments at will throughout the book, helping me to create a consistent theme.  You'll see on one of the pictures at the end, that I used several flowers layered together to make a page border.

Like my Raven's nails?  He he he.  As always - THANK YOU for stopping by!

Would You Ever Guess Wednesday! October 12

Welcome to Would You Ever Guess Wednesday!  The day of the week where we, the member's of Erica's My Cricut Craft Room Design Team, create projects using nothing but the creative features on our cartridges, helping you find the full value of the catridges we all love to spend out hard earned cash on : )  Once you are done here, hop over there to see more projects!

Today I'm excited to share with you an invitation I made for my daugther's 13th birthday party.  We have a local tea house that serves a proper "English High Noon Tea", complete with scones and tea sandwhiches.  Its a lovely place - and we wanted to create just the right invitation.  I found just the thing on "A Child's Year" - not the first place you'd go to look for a 13-year old's party invitation.

A Child's Year features a card making button!  Choose the proper size (I chose a 5 x 7 card, and cut at 5") and embelish at will.  I also thought it would be neat to cut the image again using patterned paper and hand cutting the tea pot away from the card for a layered look, but thats not what my daughter wanted. 

The letter is from Sophisticated and the bows are handmade with a bow easy.  I really liked that when you open the card, there is a little tea pot icon inside as well.  We printed the party info on velum and placed that inside using vellum tape (can't see it).

Jesus Knows Me This I Love canvas work

So excited to get to share this with all of you.  A few months ago, my mom found this play-on-words-phrase and asked me if I would make her a sign with it.  I conveniently forgot and decided I would make it for her birthday or for Christmas.  Turns out I found the mojo to make it for her birthday.  Armed with cheap canvas and a box of old paint, some mod podge, and my Cricut, I set to work.

I used Cricut Craft Room to weld the words "knows" and "love" and to create the general shape and feel of the canvas layout.  I started with a blank canvas not knowing why some canvases cost more than others (so I bought the cheap stuff... worked fine), I learned though that the lesser quality canvases "drink in" the paint more and it took several coats to get even adequate coverage.  The first layer was done with a tan color, then I took a lighter cream color and kind of swirled it around the corners to give some variation and deph to the color.  Once it was dry, I took my cuts crom my cricut that I made on vinyl and layed it out on my canvas.  I made sure it was stuck down very well and then painted over the vinyl with the tan again to create a "seal" of paint around the letters.  Then I had at it with the blue.  Painted the whole thing then let it dry.  Then I peeled off the vinyl, exposing the tan letters.  I still felt that the overall look was a little bland and needed more depth, so I took some Walnut Ink, sprayed it onto a paper towel (not recommended, I'm certain I wasted a lot of ink...  felt next time maybe?) and brushed the brown ink across the whole canvas, giving it a varied-aged-coffee-stained effect.  ThenI gave it a generous coating of Glossy Mod Podge.  While that was drying I decided to make some flowers to give the work some dimension.  I LOVE the Flower Shoppe cartridge - there are so many options with it!  This is the "fun" flower cut at 4" and at 1 and 3/4"  Each flower piece was wet, crumpled, inked, heat dried then pieced together.   Lastly, the flowers were hot glued to the canvas.

As always, thank you for looking.  Have a great day!

OCTOBER CRICUT 100 CARTRIDGE BLOG HOP DAY TWO

Welcome to DAY TWO of our monthly hop around the block and visit a wide range of wonderful Cricut crafters. SO MUCH TALENT on this Design Team that I am honored to be on, and on your travels you will see over 100 different Cricut cartridges in use!

You should have come from the super amazing Laura's blog.  If you did not please start at the beginning of the hop at http://mycricutcraftroom.blogspot.com/  
Too many great projects we don't want you to miss!   NOT TO MENTION THERE ARE PRIZES INVOLVED!!!  WOOO!  Should you get lost the entire lineup can be found at the bottom of this post.

Onto my cartridges for this month.  I was recently asked to make a banner and card set for a John Deere themed birthday party.  I thought...  sure... I could do a green tractor, but how cool if I could get the logo on there somewhere.  So here's how I did it:

Using Cricut Craft Room (trust me, its worth the wait.  The kinks are annoying and the program seems to work better every time I use it) I selected the tractor from "Everyday Paper Dolls" and then found the perfect deer shape on "Going Places", tilted it, and dropped it ontop of the tractor engine area.  I cut that from green.  I cut one of the same without the deer in yellow.  Once cut, I trimmed the green seat, wheel and bumper away to further show the yellow.  Then I custom created ovals to match the wheel sizes to cover over the tractor wheels.  Once it was put together it looked a little too "clean" to me so I dirtied it up with some walnut ink brushed on with a piece of felt by hand.

Not sure what to do with my new little creation, I decided to give it a sceen on a card.  Not sure if I will put a child's age in the clouds?  Either way, its blank for now.  I used Plantin Schoolbook for the grass and Going Places for the clouds.  The sky and grass hill are hand cut.  Chalking completes the detail. 

My next project was made for a friend of mine named Amy.  She has a business called Forever In A Flash Photography and she is incredibly talented.  Her pictures literally make me gasp sometimes.  If you are in the Baltimore area, you should check out her work.  MY photography, on the other hand, leaves a little to be desired.  Sorry for the poor quality here....

Once I saw this posted photo on Amy's page, I wanted to show what a custom mat could do to enhance the photograph.  I wanted to compliment the soft browns and reds of the photos and add some femininity with a soft purple.  I used CCR to create a mat, and a plum border for the mat opening.  I chose a little sentiment from "Sugar and Spice" and cut it at 3.25" in a dark gray color and used the plum cardstock for the heart.  For a variation, I made a second mat "accessory" cutting "S" from Ashlyn's Alphabet  in black and used a prima flower on the bottom right side.

Thank you, as always, for stopping by and honoring me with your visit today!  I hope that along this weekend's hop that you have found some great project inspiration from the fantastic gals on this team!

Your next stop on the hop is on Lezlye at  http://lezlyes.blogspot.com

In case you get lost, here is the lineup:

18. Erica – http://mycricutcraftroom.blogspot.com

19. Connie - http://conniescraftycloset.blogspot.com

20. Lucinda Gibson - http://thegrowinggibson.blogspot.com

21. Tanya Adams - http://nonnascraftcorner.blogspot.com

22. Karey Jeans - http://www.creativecraftcorner.com

23. Jenny R http://myimagitivity.blogspot.com

24. Gayle Schrader- http://gscraptime.blogspot.com

25. Laura - http://laurascraftsandmore.blogspot.com

26. Heather S - http://operationcricutdesign.blogspot.com   YOU ARE HERE

27. Lezlye http://lezlyes.blogspot.com

28. Rosa http://kleymanr.blogspot.com/

29. Autumn Willis - http://autumnsbuggycreations.blogspot.com

30. Lisa Newton-Orensky - www.allmadebylisa.blogspot.com

31. Sharon http://simplysweetbysharon.blogspot.com

32. Kat http://katscrapfever.blogspot.com/    

33. Laurie http://lauriecandoit.blogspot.com/

34. Blog Candy http://ericasblogcandy.blogspot.com/