Some flowers for thought

This week's Circle Blog Challenge was to create flowers so I finally had time to create some projects I had been wanting to get to for a while. I made headbands for my daughter!

 

The details: 



The first looks rather simple doesn't it?? Well, it was a huge PITA!! In case you were wondering if Adhesive Backed Felt would cut cleanly in your Cricut, the answer is NO!  However, I have decided instead of chucking it in the garbage I would call it shabby chic! Yep - that was my plan all along.



But anyway, the flower is from Mother's Day Bouquet and cut at 3 inches. I cut it once in pink and then twice in white with the contours hidden inside the petals. I stuck the two white layers together so that there was no adhesive on the outside, and then added the pink layer with a gem on top. It is attached to the plastic headband with a circle from George cut in the adhesive felt. If I hadn't had to go back and had cut all the petals because I couldn't get a clean cut I would like this a lot more.

Now this masterpiece (oh  it hurts to actually pat yourself on the back) was inspired and created a la Teresa Collins style and I have to be honest  - I saw it in a couple places so I don't have a direct link right now. When I find it I will link it here. What I did was use the 8 petal scallop-y flower from Mother's Day Bouquet, and cut it at the following sizes:

• 6 flowers at 3.5 inches
• 1 flower each at 3, 2.5, 2, and 1 inches

Then I scored 4 of the large flowers and folded into quarters, then stapled them on to one of the other large flower as a base.

Now I did manipulate the paper so the petals would curve up but I just could NOT crumple up my beautiful K&Co paper from the new Brenda Walton Spring Stack. That would just be.....WRONG! *shuddering*
Anyway then I layered the other size flowers on top, alternating the with the pattern on the opposite side and offsetting the petals for each layer. I hot glued all the layers together (getting in touch with my inner Kathy Orta tonight) and added a gem to the top. Then I hot glued that baby to an old beat up fabric headband and voila! Instant makeover! A closeup from the side so you can see the dimensions:

Well, I hope you enjoyed this post as much as my daughter enjoyed her headbands - she is quite the diva so she loves her flowers and bling! (Don't we all??)

Victory!! I found the original post I was inspired by - Teresa actually uses a different flower and it not so linear as I am but what can I say? That is just the way I am! Here is her guest blogger post on the Creating Keepsakes Blog.

Birthday Layout for the E2 contest

Hi everyone! Allison from Goody Bag Diva thrilled to be back at The BugBytes today. I decided to share with you my entry for the contest Jinger AdamsJinger Adams (spokesperson for Provo-Craft) is holding a contest for E2 (Expression machine 2) launch on HSN, which premieres April 26th. The only requirement really was that it was a birthday theme. I immediately wanted to incorporate some kind of pop-up, which didn't really turn out to be a realistic expectation, so I decided to incorporate a cut from Everyday PopUp Cards, and add a "pop-down" twist.

The details:
For the printed papers I used Basic Grey's cupcake line, and the rest is Bazzill cardstock. I used my favorite scalloped square from Elegant Edges cut at 11.30 inches for the background, which is layered on top of two more pieces of cardstock. The photo mats are 4.5 by 6 and 3 by 4 inches. The title is from Stamping and is sized at 2.80. The cake is from the aforementioned Everyday PopUp Cards and is sized at 4.30 inches.
A closeup of the cake:

Instead of cutting out the sprinkles that are supposed to go on the top layer of the cake I used brads instead and added some chunky glitter. I hid contour of the lines for the sprinkles and also skipped one of the extra layers for the flames.

The twist is located behind the cake, it flips down for some hidden journaling:

I did this by cutting two layers of the shadow piece, and on the top layer I welded a rectangle from George, scored at the bottom of the cake and adhered it to the back of the second shadow layer.

Some more details:

I added some doodling to the title and some faux stitching around the mats. I added some ribbon and brads to the bottom mat, and anchored the corner of the top mat with brads as well. I have no expectations of winning, but it was fun to try. I did make one more but at this time not sure if it will make it into the envelope as my children decided to give me their germs for Spring Break! Thanks for looking! 

Piglet meets Elegant Edges

I just adore this layout - it was definitely my favorite from the last swarm I had and this is actually the first time I used Elegant Edges - it was love at first cut!

The details:

The scalloped square is cut at 10.80 inches, while Piglet is cut at 5 inches and the title is 2.60 inches. This is another layout where I had prepared a sketch ahead of time and then went and changed my mind! As you can see once I had everything cut and matted I decided to put Piglet on the other side and skip the ribbon and move the flowers.....you see I am not very good at following my own plan!

In spite of what my notes say I did end up using only the ATD cardstock (although the matting paper may be recollections cardstock), while the flowers are Prima with a jeweled brad from OTC in the center. I won't promise this time to stick solely to layouts as I have some other things planned but I am glad to be on a scrapbooking streak!

Baptism Set & why I hate making cards

I need to just accept the reality that I am not a great card maker and give it up. I just obsess way too much and make a huge mess and end up hating the result. And it takes way too long - I can spend a whole day on one card - and I just don't find that productive. Below is my case in point. This is what I made for my godchild's baptism.

card and bag:

closeup of card:

inside of card:

The details:

This is a 5x7 card and the front layer is cut from Damask Decor that I sized to a 5x7 block. The cross is from the Easter seasonal and embossed with the Divine Swirls Cuttlebug folder. The cross is cut at 4.5 inches. The stamp is from Fiskars and it is supposed to be one line so I have to tweak it to fit it in that space. The box I had for the gift (an engraved cross) was very plain and so that is why I came up with the paper wrapper and stuck a smaller 2.5 inch cross on it to coordinate with the rest.

For the matching gift bag I used the Silhouette feature of the same cut at 5 inches, and I have to be honest - weeding that sucker was a PITA! I had no idea which piece was supposed to stay or go - definitely going to take some practice. I used adhesive pearls in the center of the cross and the gift bag.

So why do I hate cards? well let's see - this was how the card started out at the end of the morning.

Then I begin my usual obsessing about it and thought "gee I haven't used Damask Decor yet" so I had to pull that out - and then the cut didn't work with the original size cross and I thought the Divine Swirls cuttlebug folder would be a better choice than this one....do you see where this is going?And of course I had already adhered it to the front of the card and finished the inside so I had to peel it off....pretty soon my table looks like this....

.....and then before you know it the day is almost over and I have spent all my crafty time on one stinking card. It is just not effecient which drives me batty. I could have done a whole two page layout in the time I spent on one card. Oh and I know I promised getting back to layouts so I will kick my own butt to finish writing the blog posts for the layouts I already have done.

Altered Gift Bag

We interrupt these layouts with a quick craft that I have of late found more necessary to create, especially since this weekend will be the second Saturday of this month with back to back birthday parties *SIGH*. Both Joy from Obsessed With Scrapbooking and Nadia from With Glittering Eyes featured bags in recent posts so this is one of my attempts. The party is to go see the movie Hop so I wanted to incorporate that into the bag.

The details:



The egg is (obviously perhaps) from Easter 2010, cut at 5.30. For the letters I used Mickey Font but I did some major tweaking to them on the G to get them to fit in the egg shape and look like the movie logo. I unlocked height and width, played with the skew a little, and rotated them slightly. Then I still had to do some "cricut surgery" and trim the H and the P with scissors. Then of course I had to use Elegant Edges for the background, and that is sized at 7.20 inches. The name is spelled out in a stickers from an old pack of stacker stickers I got at Michael's for 99 cents.  A closeup:

I don't think you can see in the picture but the egg is cut on DCWV glitter cardstock, and the background paper is DCWV Blossoms & Butterflies stack. The letters were cut with papers from my scraps. Well, I hope you enjoyed this brief commercial break, as I believe we will be back to layouts soon!

Eeyore's Elegant Layout

So the Disney and Elegant Edges layoutscontinue with Eeyore. These are pictures from our lunch at the Crystal Palace and I still can't get over how tiny my daughter looks next to Eeyore - she's so tall now! I also love this Eeyore because he looks happy (well as happy as he can get!).

The details:

This is another layout that started life as a sketch. This time I took a picture that included my notes as I planned the layout. Actutally I am just now noticing that I had thought to add flowers to this layout but that didn't happen. See? I told you I can't stick to a sketch or even my own notes.

Eeyore is cut at 4.5 inches and I decided to attach Eeyore's tail with a brad instead of just gluing it on - so it could swing back and forth if I was so inclined. The title cut is 2.50 inches.

Once again I used Elegant Edges for the photo mats. The square mat is Hearts2 on page 41 cut at 5.40 inches and the other is Hearts 2 but the Oblong feature cut at 7.00 inches. I decided the pictures need a little bit something more to stand out so I matted them on the pink paper before adding them to the larger mat.

The printed paper is K and Company, the purple from the Floral Dreams stack and the turquoise from the Life's Little Occasions stack. The other papers are Recollections cardstock. More Disney to come!

Mary Poppins meets Elegant Edges

This layout really is an ode to one of the newest cartridges released by Provo Craft - Elegant Edges. I have been pretty good lately about resisting the new releases until this cart! It is one of the best carts that PC has to offer - it is completely full and offers so many possibilities. I brought it to my swarm with me and used it on every single layout I made that day.

The details:

This layout started off as a sketch challenge on the Circle board and this is the sketch (courtesy of Page Maps). My biggest "thing" with a sketch is I find them a great starting point but I can never stick to them completely, even I am the one who drew the sketch!

And when I say, this really is about a layout dedicated to Elegant Edges, every single cut is off the cart. This was the first layout I did with it and I just played away! ( I won't tell you that I only brought a few sheets of the papers and had to make every cut count.)

 The red scalloped "border" page (with the white daisies) in the background is actually one of the borders (page 65 border + shift), sized it at .64 inches and laid it on the gypsy mat 3 times, welded it together and then to a large rectangle, and then flipped the border piece and welded it to the bottom of the rectangle. Now the Cricut doesn't cut all the way to the edge so when it was done cutting I had to do a little snipping but it worked!

The piece behind the large picture is the Eyelet cut (page 52) cut at 8.20 inches with both layers cut out. The smaller pictures are matted on the same cut from that page, but the Frame cut option with the inner frame line hidden. The journal mat (or where the journaling will go when I get around to it) is I believe from page 49 - the shift cut and the shadow layer - cut at 5.20 inches.

The flowers are from Prima, the twine is Divine Twine and the brads are from Oriental Trading (I think).
I hope I have convinced you to add this to your "need" list, if not I have more to come!

If you are stopping by from the circle board and Pam's blog comment post, welcome!

Mickey Ears - From Sketch to Layout

I have been slowly but surely planning and working on my Disney album  and so while I may not have been diligent about posting I have been working. This week's challenge at the Cricut Circle Blog is to work from a sketch and since that is the way I work anyway I thought I would share my process for this layout and how I design my layouts in general.

The details:
I usually begin by sitting down one night with my pencil and paper and a stack of pics. Then I group my pics together by theme or event and begin to sketch. I sometimes use my Becky Higgins book of sketches or ones I have cut out of magazines or sometimes I just move the pics around until I come up with an order I like. Then I begin to sketch my page layout - and what I have started to do is next to the sketch make a list of the possible papers and cricut cuts I want to include as well.

My inspiration for this particular layout was I wanted to model it after the pair of Mickey Ears my daughter picked out and designed for herself at Disney World. Here's a closeup so you can see:

And once I have done a few of those (or on a different night) I pull out my Gypsy and use the first layer as my design layer - I layout the cuts as I want to see them on my page. I might use more than one layer if I have to plan welding and shadow cuts.

When I do get around to start cutting (usually after a torturous afternoon trying to pick out papers - oh the decisions!) then I simple copy and paste the images to a different layer for cutting.

For this particular layout, the big Mickey shape is cut at 9.5 inches, the font is cut at 1 inch and shadowed, and the little Mickeys in the corners are cut at 2.90 inches and then I trimmed off the excess that hung over the edges. The printed background paper is DCWV Blossoms & Butterflies, the holographic pink is from Target, and the rest to the paper is Recollections. The gems are from Michaels too - from the kids crafts section and adhered with glue dots.

I hope this is the start of more layouts to come - and if you enjoy looking at the sketches too please let me know - I will be happy to include them.