Another circle weekly challenge

This week's challenge was to use a sun cut out and the word summer in the project. I used the gypsy wanderings sun and used my gypsy to hide the inside swirl to the sun so it was a solid image. I used the sun image three times, one for the background of a second one for journalling. I also used the sun with the number 17 (numbers cut from Cricut Alphabet) to indicate the birthday year. My youngest son has a summer birthday - in fact, it is on the first day of summer! Last year I snapped the photos of our celebration and the happy feeling of them gave me the idea to say "summer birthday's rock" The only bummer of the layout is that I don't have DD in the pics because she was working at the time of the party. The word summer was cut from Stretch Your Imagination and the border on the top left photo is from Paper Trimmings (two images welded together). The chipboard letters and all the paper are by PiggyTales.

Dress your bug

The magazine challenge for the Cricut Circle is to dress up one or more of the little collectible guys. I have two of the buggers, blue for the Expression and red for the Cake. I also have two sons(18 yrs., and 21 yrs.) and they are both planning on joining the Army. To honor my boys, I decided to dress my little Cricut figures as Army dudes and the first item to make was the "brain bucket" helmet. Most cuts are from the Stand and Salute cart. The dog tags used for the banner on the truck were done with the gypsy, I hide the image on the dog tag then added the font from Cake Basics. The patriotic hat is from Over the Hill cart, cut with white card stock and then I colored it with ink (red-festive berries,TH, and the blue LePlume marker). The truck is cut from some adhesive backed 12" x 24" paper from DCWV and the canvas layer (light brown) is paper from my scrap stash. The weapon in the red bug's hands is also cut from the DCWV dark brown card stock. The camo background paper are two pages I have waiting to use in DH's Army scrapbook that I have horded for a few years, hummm maybe I'll just save it now for the boys!

Billy the Kid layout

The circle monthly challenge is to do a layout of a recent event...well without a specific definition for recent I decided to do my son's 3rd birthday...it sure seems like only a few months ago he celebrated his 3rd birthday! The journal writing on the page tells the story of how he felt when being called "cowboy" during the family party. It was fun the first 5 minutes but then he wasn't sure if people knew who he really was...so after Grandma Barb (the gift giver of the cowboy get up) called him cowboy (the umpteenth person to do so!), he said in no uncertain terms - "I'm Billy -- the kid!"

So what did I use for the layout... lots of scraps and the back ground paper is from crate paper and I splattered it with Adirondack color wash - Espresso. The cuts I did on my Cricut E2. "Billy" and "the" are from the Making the Grade cart, "Kid" is cut from Old West as well as the cowboy hat and bandana. I jazzed up the cowboy hat with Viva pearl pen -chrome silver. The white accents on the cuts are with the white gelly roll pen and the journal-ling was written with Bic Mark-It ultra fine - woodsy brown (love my set of Bic mark-it pens I won from Joy's Life - thanks again Joy!!) The journal-ling block is border punched with Fiskars border punch, notebook.

My Cat in the Hat

I just purchased the Over the Hill cartridge and when I saw the top hat (3-D!) I just had to make it. I played around with some cheap white card stock and it took me three hats to finally get it right...of course each hat was a different size so I could get a feel for the ratio to finished size. While working in my nice cool basement crafting cave, my attention starved (not!) cat had to visit. I decided to make her a special napping place while in the craft cave, in hopes it will save my projects from her furry fluff sticking to the adhesives. She adored her blanket lined crate and I just couldn't resit putting one of my sample hats on her head. Of course the first thing to pop into my head...The Cat in the Hat!

Art Inspiration Challenge

While riding in the car for a couple hours this weekend I designed a layout with inspiration from some framed art. The Cricut Circle blog had posted the picture of a rose with some interesting blocking around the edges so I used the blocking/layout as my inspiration. I also use the butterfly boarder idea and some vertical lines from the art piece and incorporated that into the layout. It was fun to have my gypsy with me in the car to play with shapes and ideas and I was pretty sure what photo I wanted to use in the layout.

Of course we had to use at least 3 Cricut Image cuts and mine were: butterfly boarder from Paper Trimmings; blue patterned cut out back ground from Ornamental Iron 2; and Spring from Gypsy Wanderings. The stripes turned out to be more of plaid paper but I love how everything coordinates. The paper was from piggy tales except for the spring image which was cut from bazzle paper.

Recipe Challenge

This weekend was national scrapbook day on Sat but I wasn't able to play all the much. We attended a first communion service and celebration but that didn't stop me from creating...party means gift which means I get to make a card! I did a quick peek on the Cricut Circle blog and found a challenge I could do while still making a card for my niece. The challenge was to use at least three Cricut Image cuts (cross from Indie Art, banner out of vellum from Christmas, butterfly from Gypsy Wandering);

use three patterned papers (check out the layers on the cross!); stitching...used the machine around the edge; and the color yellow (on the cross and butterfly) Gypsy font was used to make the sentiment "blessed day" with the letters welded.

Cricut Craft Room Challenge

The Cricut Circle blog has some challenges and I have been sneaking off to my craft room trying to create. Here is a layout I made that used the Cricut Craft Room Basics cart and and exclusive craft room cart - Germany.

The challenge was to only use the craft room to do the project. Recently I purchased the Germany cart to make some layouts of my son's trip last summer (and daughter's from a couple year's ago!) This was just the challenge to get me started on Bill's Germany pages! The blank white paper is just a place holder for the pictures to be added after I get the bunch of photos back from my DS (he's been sharing in his German class). The blank center cut on the bottom is ready for Bill to journal about his trip and include info about how he celebrated his 17th birthday while over seas, hence the cupcake with the moth and date on it.