love you!

This is a card I made for my husband but haven't give to him yet.  It's fairly simple, just a cut out card with patterned paper behind it.

another birthday card

This is one of the first cards I ever made.  I really, really love it.  I modified a banner shape and then cut our triangles of glittery sheets to put behind them and the words.  It really sparkles!

birthday card-female

Here is a card I made my for my MIL's birthday next week.  I used one of the 3 D flowers on it as well as a basic frame and a border piece.  The dot on the exclamation point is a brad and there are brads in the center of the flowers.  

I used a photo from the silhouette photostream on flikr as inspiration.  Hers is so much nicer but I like mine too!  

http://www.flickr.com/photos/la-nina/8020482941/in/pool-silhouettemachine

We're headed out of town tomorrow for a last visit to my parents.  A totally impromptu visit (as in we started discussing it at 7:30 tonight and we might leave in the morning if my husband can get out of work and I stay on call tonight)!  So off to craft a couple projects so I'll have something to share the next 2 days!

Sailboat birthday card

October is birthday month-my dad, my MIL and both of my nephews all celebrate their birthdays in Oct.  Dad's is the first and he isn't local so I need to get it and his annual amazon gift card in the mail (he likes strange books-church development etc so I let him buy his own stuff!).  He is actually changing jobs in a few weeks to move to the Coastal Carolina Presbytery (they are in Philly now) and so I created this sailboat card for him... for one, he loves to sail and the house they are hoping to buy is on a lake.  Secondly I felt like it was a way of showing that he is sailing into new possibilities and a new job.  Anyways, here is the card and matching envelope.  There are some issues but it is almost 10 pm, I've had about 3.5 hours sleep (worked last night and then the people came to do insulation at 1:15, then my son got off the bus at 3:45 with a sore throat, earache and a temp of 101.4.  Luckily I was able to get him an appointment at the pedi and he has strep.  Then the dog got into some trash that I left on the back steps and forgot about (some very old meat from the freezer) and is having diarrhea.  So... he gets what he gets!


So first I selected the sailboat and the words happy birthday and had the silhouette draw them with the sketch pen.  I picked black.

Then I unselected those and had it cut out around the card and the sun and the words happy birthday. (I rand out of room on the table and started using chairs!)  DH is taking up part of the table with an antique computer.  Sigh

 

Then, I made sure I could see my mat on the page (go to page view and increase the % on "reveal cutting map" and laid out various scraps of paper.  The blue for the water (the cutter did NOT like this paper.  It's very thin and textured.  The red for the sails and the yellow for the sun.  For the sun, I had drawn a circle around the sun so it would be about the size I needed and then moved it off to the side with the water and the sails to cut out.

 

Then I placed the circle for the sun underneath the card (I love the way the embroidery looks), colored the sailboat in with the kids' skinny markers and glued on the sails and the water.  The water turned out to be kind of a disaster.  I ended up cutting out a set with some white scraps and coloring them with colored pencils because the textured paper tore so badly.  But then as I was gluing the water strips on, I wiped some glue off and it smeared the marker so I had to add MORE water, so I ended up salvaging the textured strips and free handing some. 

For the envelope, I swapped out the bird for the sailboat but forgot that when I copied the sailboat I didn't have the sails turned on to cut.  So I ended up hand drawing them in, and then having to glue paper underneath to make the mast show up... ugh.

So there you have it.  A perfectly ordinary card and a few more lessons learned!

Paper Dolls with the 4 year old! (now with pic!)

I love paper dolls.  Always have.  I had a friend growing up that I would see occasionally (we were missionaries and she was in another town so we would see each other 2-3 times a year) who did paper dolls.  You know, with the book and tracing paper and cuting out scraps of colored paper and colored pencils.  So when I got the silhouette I had to try out the paper dolls.  So my 4 year old and I spent a happy afternoon playing with scrapbooking paper scraps and the paper dolls.  She really hasn't played with them a ton since-but she is kind of on the young side!

Just a quick tip.  If you resize the doll, then have the clothes in the same window and resize them all at the same time so they match! 

So I was sure I had a picture of this somewhere.  Evidently I do... at home on my camera!  So... stay tuned, I'll put the pic up when I get home in the morning!  In the mean time, try it for yourself!



I went ahead and glued the swimsuit and shoes to the doll and my daughter drew in her face and decorated the swimsuit and the dress.  

baby shower cards

So I survived my first night as a tiger cub den leader!  We had a lot of fun.  We didn't end up doing the masks so I'll save them for next week or some time.  But they did do their scrapbooks and we played a lot of games etc.

So to finish off the presents that I made for the 2 people having babies I made 2 of these super easy but cute bib cards (seen at the bottom under the flower cards-why did I not take a pic of them by themselves???).

The bib card has all the pieces you need and does girl or boy cards (the inset options are a flower a butterfly or a car (bib card #12170).  I cut it out of plain paper with the cut out and had the sketch pen write congratulations where the hole would be (I layered the top over the right side like it would be to check my area.  Then I cut the card front out of scrapbook paper and the flower etc out of white and colored them with markets and used a brad to fasten them.  It took literally 5 minutes to make 2 cards.  So much cheaper!

tiger craft

I've spent this evening working on stuff for the first tiger meeting on Thursday.  The first thing I worked on was these tiger masks. I used the tiger mask from silhouette and ungrouped the image enough to turn the background color to white.  I then added registration marks and printed them on the computer and had the silhouette cut them out.  Yeah!  It even cuts out the holes for the string.  I'm planing on having the kids color them in as a starting activity.  I also printed out some stuff for their scrapbooks... more on them later!

a shaped 3D card!!

This is a shaped card that I made following this tutorial
http://blog.silhouetteamerica.com/2012/05/shaped-card-bases.html

this shape is the marigold #19699.  I cut all of it out of plain yellow paper.  And it looked, well, plain.  So after looking at it a few days (and trying to get to my drawer of brads upstairs).  I finally worked on it some more.  I simply used my kids' skinny markers to add flecks of orange and brown to the petals and it really made them pop.  They are finished with a simple gold brad.  It's been a busy week here.  Between working, kids, volunteering and trying to get stuff organized to become a tiger den leader it's been crazy. Expect some tiger crafts soon!

fall pumpkin and leaf hanging

I love fall and the kids love to decorate for holidays!  I was looking at fall ideas (mainly for leaves but that isn't the direction I ended up going!) while babysitting the hash browns I was cooking for supper.  I hate cooking hashbrowns because of the babysitting factor but I'm working on clearing out the random bits and bags of stuff in the freezers and cupboards.  Meals this week have been...interesting.

Anyways.  I fell in love with these pumpkins.  I found a piece of cardstock in my stash that was pumpkin colored on the top and greenish orange on the bottom.  I ungrouped the images and cut the shapes in the pumpkin color.  I then cut out the stripes etc out of black.  The backs were solid orange cardstock with the cut outs of the shapes (except the stripes which I just drew in with a sharpie).  The stems I cut out in black.  After I glued them together I laminated them.

For the leaves I cut them out of yellow/gold cardstock.  I took the same image (outline only) and made it a little smaller and cut it out of black and used it to make the cut outs pop.  I laminated them as well.  Then I punched holes in the leaves and pumpkins and hung them with black yarn.  I love the way they look and how they sway in the breeze when the windows are open.

This project probably took me a good 3-3.5 hours.  I started after kidlet bedtime (8-8:30 and worked until midnight.  At that point I had all the pumpkins done and laminated and the leaves cut out but not weeded yet.  But at that point my eyes were too tired to weed so I finished up the next day.