Challenge Card - New Arrivals

I have spent a good portion of my day in the kitchen baking bars and cakes for retirement party tommorrow that I am co-hosting. I already made a card for the school community to sign and realized I had not made a card to go with the gift I am personally giving.

I made this card after finding two challenges I can submit it to... CCCC (Cricut Cartridge Chaos Challenge) #19 at More Than Favors blog and the Wacky Wednesday #39 challenge also at More Than Favors. Hummm. So The CCCC was to use the cart New Arrivals and the Wacky Wednesday was to use the colors Pink, Brown, Teal, and Cream. Of course the sun has set and I had to photograph the card with a flash so the colors don't show true but I did use the correct colors! The Congratulations layered circle (brown with beige layer) are from the New Arrival cart and the baker's twine is teal. The gold square was cut with Fiskars border punch to give it the stitched look. The pink pattern was dry embossed with the moroccan screen cuttlebug folder and in person you can see just a hint of teal on the pattern that I chalked on the folder before embossing. Now I think the card looks like it's ready to give as a baby girl card but it does look nice with the white gift bag for the retirement gift!

Retirements

Two friends are retiring at the end of the school year and I have been busy creating cards and one special book for my Para (one of the retirees-I'll post pics later)



Today's post is of a card I made for a teacher and she loves to fly, she has her pilots license and gives lessons on the weekends. I made a special card for her retirement celebration on Tuesday
(I'm in charge of the center pieces!
here's a pic of the mock-up!)

On Friday I received the cricut circle cart - Pop-Up Neighborhood and when I saw the airplane I finally had an idea for the card.

And, with a challenge on the circle member's only blog I was inspired to create this card. Here is the front or cover and the fancy part is inside (white gel pen to add the "dots").

I used several carts, Pop Up Neighborhood(PUN), Alhpalicious(A), Life's a Beach(LAB), and Cindy Loo(CL) and three requirements (in addition to at least two cuts) chosen from a tick-tack-toe board. I incorporated, a sun shape (from LAB), used my gypsy to weld images (two welds, the word Enjoy from CL and Retirement from A) and buttons were part of the flowers from the PUN cart with the Airplane. I used two PUN, the one from the balloon was designed to be bushes but I turned is upside down to be clouds in the sky, and of course the airplane pop-up cut

and the flower/ grass layer. All the paper is from my scrap stash and I don't know the company or line with the exception of the green grass background, that is coredinations. The buttons are from my stash, many from old shirts that I removed the buttons before tossing.

New Cricut Blog

Coming soon...a new cricut blog! from Provocraft - Check it out :)

Me in my Scrappy Place

On the Cricut Circle blog they asked we post a pic of our self in our crafting space...so with DD's help, here I am with my wall of tools behind me (maybe some day I will post pics of the whole space!) and my cricut it off to the side not in the photo. But, if you look close, you might see my Gypsy :)

Above the tools/rail are the calling cards I posted previously from a swap and if you were to continue to look to the right, the is a counter/table with my new E2, but of course it isn't included in the snapshot!

My E2!

I ordered the 5th year cricut anniversay Expressions 2 machine from HSN when it launched last week and it arrived on Monday while I was at work. I was so excited for the E2 I buzzed home earlier than normal (in other words I only stayed half hour past my scheduled end time instead of the normal hour and a half!) and the four preloaded cartridges but before I could dive into the box I had to make supper for the family and DH wanted to make applesauce cake (he'd been talking about it for a few days, sigh).

So I took a shot of the cat, Willow,

having fun with my package, did my KP and headed for the craft room.


I also made myself clean off the table and area where the new bug now sits (had to pack my old E in the travel bag - now ready for crops!)

I had to try one of the preloaded carts and made a cat, seeing as how Willow played with it more than I did that day.




Then on Tuesday I used the machine to make a stencil for some glass etching. I attended a bridal shower for a teacher in my building and wanted to make her something special, so I etched her soon-to-be last name initial in a set of four wine glasses.

Originally I designed the B and frame using Cricut Alphabet (new E2 cart) on my gypsy but I can't link the E2 carts yet so I had to change the B to a cart I have loaded on my Gypsy. The frame is from Jasmine cart and the B is Blackletter.

Circle Calling Cards

Yesterday I received a lovely package I have anxiously been waiting for...it was full of Circle member's calling cards. I signed up for a swap of the 3"x3" beauties, worked diligently to make 45 of them and sent them off then began waiting for the return package. It was so much fun to see everyone's ideas of what to put on the calling cards, each one is a work of art! The next challenge was to figure out a way to display all the pretties.

At first I thought I would create a clothesline grid with wire in a large picture frame but alas, I didn't have a frame large enough to hold all the cards so I improvised. I found a few push pins, pushed them in the wall, then wrapped some florist wire around them. Tada! A clothes line for artwork. I didn't have any clothes pins (well I found one tiny one - I wondered where the rest of the package went 15 years ago!) so again I improvised and tried it with small plastic coated paper clips. It works! Okay the colored clips don't add anything to the art but hey - they're hanging! I must confess, before pushing the pins into the drywall, I had to do a bit of painting.

You see, my craft room is in the unfinished portion of the basement. I mean really unfinished, only part of the wall has drywall and it has seen some abuse. My son decided to tape some posters a few years back (mind you this wall was never taped or primed!) and the walls look atrocious. I knew I wanted to take a photo of all the pretty calling cards so I decided to quickly prime the un-taped sheet rock before putting up the display.

So, there is my disclaimer for my raw, unfinished room. But it is my little piece of crafting paradise and I love being in my crafty space, especially now that I have some lovely artwork from fellow circlets to gaze at. If you look closely at the second picture in the top left, you will see the pink fleur de lis, my calling card, and in the last picture on the top right there is a teddy bear card made by my wonderful SIL, marebare. I had to bookend the top row with our two calling cards so I could easily point them out!

E2 layout entries

HSN debuted the E2 and Provocraft had a contest to win a new E2 machine...it was simple (not!), create a birthday themed 12 by 12 layout (up to three different layouts), send in by April 22 and watch the cricut facebook page to see if you're a winner. I created two layouts and mailed them in with Marebare's three layouts - to see Marybares, visit her blog at marebaresscraps.blogspot.com..
Here are my two...

All the papers on this first layout are from Stampin Up. The cuts are from the Celebrations cartridge. The balloons are embellished with hemp twine for the string.

The oval is cut from Father's Day seasonal cart and all the flowers are from Mother's Day Bouquet seasonal cart. The few green leaves are from accent essentials cart. All the paper on the floral layout are coredinations with the exception of the vellum oval cut. The Happy birthday was cut from Wild Cards cartridge.

This final picture is a close up of the paper flowers I lightly misted with water to make them pliable and shaped/curled them with a bamboo skewer.
Over all I liked my layouts and was hoping to win an E2 but instead I ordered the machine 10 minutes after the debut on HSN and then promptly fell asleep. I was hoping to watch the shows to see if any of my layouts were shown (many layouts were shown quickly) but I just don't know. Maybe I can find a video on the internet so I can see mine (if indeed they were shown!) and all the other wonderful creations by fellow cicuteers that sent their layouts in for the contest!