A Skull Onesie

What do you do when your attending a baby shower and the theme is gray, teal and skulls? You create a totally awesome baby shower card!

I knew that the Artfully Sent cartridge had a baby onesie swing card, it would just need a little tweaking. I used some chevron gray Geogie paper on the inside and backed it with some lagoon paper to meet the colors of the theme. Then I cut the onesie piece out of some red textured paper so it would stand out on the card. I used the skull image from the Cricut cartridge, but was really uncertain if it would cut so small and intricate. Luckily the Cricut Explore machine is the bomb and got the job done perfectly!

We gifted the soon to be parents a gift card for where they were registered. Placing the gift card inside of the card was not an option as the swing design does not really hold it securely. So instead I cut a chevron sleeve from the same cartridge and dressed it up with another onesie and a welcome baby sentiment. However, instead of another skull I placed the letter 'A' on the front because the babies name will begin with that letter.

I recently created another chevron sleeve card for school this week as we celebrate Dr. Seuss' Birthday! Be sure to follow me on Instagram so you don't miss fun projects like this one!

Haunted Escape in a Volkswagon!

Here is a fun Halloween card idea for you! I used one of the Pop-up cards on the Artfully Sent cartridge to create this card. Instead of using the Volkswagon bug on the inside of the card, I cut it out to create a Haunted scene on the front of the card. I stamped and colored the little characters and added a spring under the skull to make him more animated!

I love making Halloween cards fun and whimsical, it makes me think back to when I was a little girl! Go ahead, be silly with your cards and scrapbook pages this Halloween!

For You Dad!

It's almost Father's day! Time to treat Dad on his special day, whether he's a classic or more contemporary. My cards reflect the different personalities of the important men in my life.

I am also playing along with the Man Oh Man challenge on the Heart 2 Heart Blog. Hopefully these cards give you a couple different ideas!

This first card was inspired by the Make It from Your Heart Blog and the Artfully Sent Cricut cartridge. I used the Jackson papers and some canvas sticker letters I had on hand.

The front of the card is fairly simple and straight forward.

However, when you open it your greeted with a pop-up classic car! {vroom~vroom!}

To achieve the layers of the car you will want to cut it out on your Cricut 2-3 times in different colors. Then decide what colors you want to show where and do a little further cutting and piece it all together. I used a brad for the door handle and some bigger brass brads for the center of the wheels.

While on my Cricut Design Space I saw this free Dad's day card. It was very clean and modern, I couldn't resist trying it. The Cricut cuts everything out on the base card. I simply filled in the tie with some older LaterSk8r papers and backed the interior with some black cardstock. (these cuts are also included in the free download)

My final card is also found on the Artfully Sent cartridge. Just like the previous card, all the cuts are made on the base card. I used some more Jackson papers behind the deer and backed the inside with a chocolate brown. Just a few more strips of Jackson papers and some metal brass baubles and this card is done.

Hopefully you've been inspired to create something cool for that special guy in your life! Thanks for stopping by!

Think Pink Bicycle

The challenge this week on Heart 2 Heart Challenges is to think pink!! What is your favorite Close To My Heart pink? This could certainly be a tough choice. CTMH offers a wonderful variety of pink hues, but my favorite has to be Cotton Candy.

I choose this color in my clothing too, even down to my saucony running shoes. My beach cruiser is even this color. I think that is why I love this card so much! This pop up bicycle card is made from the Artfully Sent Cricut cartridge. I added in some banners and clouds to the inside of the card. On the outside I used some polka dot Washi tape and glitter paper.

For the outside of the card I cut a PML card on the cartridge to fit the 5x7 base. I layered some glitter paper behind the image to make the bike pop! Just a few banners and embellishments finished the front.

As you open the card the bicycle pops out in the center. I also popped the little cloud and the bike and banners were cut on fundamentals paper giving them a little bit of a shiny texture.

Too much pink you think?!! Yeah....I don't think so either!

Get EnTWINEd with H2H

The challenge this week on Heart 2 Heart Blog is to be enTWINEd. This can be interpreted in so many ways, however I liked the idea of birds entwined in love. That thought led me to feathers and the older Free to Be Me paper collection.

I was in need of more 3x3 mini card sets for my customers and one of them in particular loves feathers on projects! I bundled the set of 4 cards with some Olive twine, adding to the theme. Look close and you will see the cute feathers I cut out on the Cricut with some special shiny paper that was included in the paper collection. The simple sentiment "hello" is one of the stamp sets included in the Artfully Sent Cricut collection.

Be sure to visit H2H Blog to see how the design team members got enTWINEd!

Artfully Sent Getting Lots of Love!

On Heart 2 Heart Challenges blog this week, we are asked to show our CTMH love! There are so many things I love about Close To My Heart and their amazing products. How do I choose a favorite? I don't, instead I am sharing the product that has been getting the most love from me lately. That would definitely be the Artfully Sent Cricut cartridge! I hosted a class last week and we all had a blast playing with this newest cartridge. Here is one of the bonus cards that I shared with the ladies.

Loving that Heartstrings paper too right now!


Here is a swing card for Mom using some Brushed paper.

Finally, while the ladies were playing on their machines, I was trying out this cute deer & rabbit scene card. I just continued cutting the card in different colors of cardstock, then pieced them together.

I'm loving that cartridge and can't imagine getting through all the cards within the year. There are just so many possibilities! What are you loving right now? Do you have a favorite CTMH product?

Please click on the Cricut collections tab at the top of my blog for more information on this newest cartridge. You can order yours here.

Artfully Sent Spring Card Class

Yesterday I held a class to teach some of the fun Spring themed cards on the Artfully Sent Cricut cartridge. This class helped the ladies get more familiar with this cartridge, it's features and the endless possibilities it holds. One of the participants was also getting to know her machine for the first time, as was I since I never worked with an Expression 2 before! We had a ball and everyone went home a little bit more confident and ready to play!

Here are the 3 cards I had for examples, but as the day went on I would surprise them with another variation of it or a different style!

Here are more variations of the adorable birdcage cards.

A simple flower pot swing card.

For the bicycle card I had pre-cut several little bicycles and banners in an assortment of colors. Here are some detail pictures of the sample card.

As I mentioned before, throughout the class I continued to surprise them with another card. I was having a little bit of fun revealing each card as I pulled it out of my Lagoon Chevron shoulder bag! After receiving instructions to make a card they would start experimenting on their own. During this time I was also playing on my machine and would reveal a completely different card that I just cut and assembled. I will show these cards in upcoming posts so stay tuned....You want to know what I had in my bag don't you?!!

Home is Where {love} is!

I was asked to be the guest designer this month at Heart 2 Heart Challenges. I love to play along with their challenges week after week, so being their guest is an honor!

The first challenge this month~ Home is where the heart is! My first thought immediately went to an Artfully Sent swing card that I saw in the booklet. {page 19} With an upcoming Cricut class this week it would be perfect to display giving the ladies more ideas and inspiration!

This card cuts out beautifully, is simple to decorate, but not so easy to photograph! I took a few pictures so that you can see it from all angles.

Be sure to visit the H2H Blog to see the other wonderful creations from this challenge!

Truly Original!

Happy Monday! Today I have some time to get caught up on a couple of projects and challenges that I have been wanting to do all week! I rarely create manly cards or projects, so it is always great to be challenged into doing some!

First, I am playing along with Heart 2 Heart's Tic-Tac-Toe challenge. {see board game below}Within that challenge is to use a sketch which leads to the second challenge at Freshly Made Sketches! It is also a manly theme with some stamping, completing the tic-tac-toe, 3 in a row!

I used some Paper Fundamentals with a great shimmery arrow pattern on the front. I then die cut a circle through the entire front so that the message was revealed on what is the inside of the card. That curly mustache is simply floating in the circle. I finished it with just a few pewter sequins, not too blingy for the guys, just a metallic color to match their machines!!

Curious where the mustache is from?! It is actually found on the new Artfully Sent cartridge. I used the negative cut from a pocket card found on page 40. Here is what the project should look like when used as directed in the booklet.

I am always holding on to those negative pieces to use on another project. In this case I was seeking out the mustache alone and then completed the project as directed. So save your negative cuts....or look at a project completely different in the first place!

Christmas Card Display

During my Holiday Open house I had lots of cards on display. Some of the cards used some newer stamp sets and products, however many of the cards were made using the newest Cricut collection Artfully Sent. I think the ladies were inspired and got a few ideas!

Here I showed a simple bottom border card {Ho Ho Ho}, the new adorable scooter card with some gold bling and washi tape, a gorgeous deer card and peeking in the left corner a nativity scene card.

Hey look!  There's that Holiday Happenings Kraft mini book that I posted earlier!

On this display I had a couple swing cards and I also turned some PML type cards into full size Holiday cards!

Here is a close up of just a few of the cards.

This cheerful deer card is one of about 20 or so?! This was the card I designed and sent to family & friends for Christmas. The deer comes from one of the images intended to be used in a Holiday pop up card. The antlers cut beautifully even though they were so delicate and those birds were so tiny! I used some older cream paper, but down the center of the card is the gorgeous paper from the new Heartstrings collection. A tiny holiday cheer sentiment and some grosgrain ribbon finished the card perfectly. Oh! Don't forget the red glitter for the bird!

I love how this nativity scene card turned out. It was actually suppose to be cut larger, but it still came together perfectly. I kept it simple with neutral colors and a message stamped inside.

This noel card is intended to be used like a PML {Picture My Life} card for your scrapbooking pockets. However, with some layering, a velvet poinsettia and some sparkles, it becomes a traditional 5x7 greeting card.

Finally, some swing cards. These can be created fairly quickly and can be left simple or dressed up as you wish. I can't decide which one I like better...the adorable snowman or the ornamental tree?!

I hope you found some inspiration here today and will try some of these ideas for your own Christmas cards!

Over the Hill

The "No"vember challenge last week on Heart 2 Heart was to create with NO embellishments! An Artfully Sent card was perfect for this type of challenge. The cards are all cut out so beautifully that truly no embellishments are needed. However, a little paper piecing is required!

I made this for my Brother-in-law who turned 40 last weekend. I like the bold sentiment across the center of the cake and all the colors peeking through the image.

inside

Only one more challenge left this month on Heart 2 Heart! Be sure to stop by and see all the inspiration!

An Artfully Sent Halloween

I am having so much fun playing with the Artfully Sent Cricut cartridge. Oddly enough, I've only explored a few pages and the possibilities are endless!! Here are just a few cards I've created using the Halloween themed keys.

On this first card I created a simple front using the ghosts that were cut out from the inside of the card and the sentiment "BOO"  was actually cut from the Artbooking cartridge. It's a pretty plain front, but the star is the scene on the inside of the card.

I told you the inside was the star! How cool is this haunted scene inside? The house is popped up as you open the card along with the fence.

Not only does this cartridge cut cards, but it can also cut out the PML cards for scrapbooking. Here I cut out one of the 4x6 sentiment cards. Being frugal I saved all the cut out letters and then started rearranging them to make up other words. Finally, I decided on the word "candy" and a card was created! Isn't that what Halloween is all about?

Then I created another card with the PML sentiment card. For this I simply added some background papers and few other embellishments to the front of a 5x7 base.

Candy corn kisses is a sentiment card that is super easy to make. I mounted the entire card on white daisy card stock but only after I pieced some colors for the candy behind. I wanted the word "kisses" to stand out more, so for this I simply filled it in with a yellow marker.

Here is another border card as you saw earlier with the "candy" sentiment. This was my demo card at a recent workshop. I wanted to show how fast and easy creating one of these cards can be. It just requires some cutting on your machine, a paper piece behind, some stamping and a couple embellishments.

Once you get a hang of the simpler cuts, you can then get a little more adventurous! Here I combined two different cards to create one. I love the bold colorful sentiment on the spider web. Just a few spiders to dress it up. Even though it looks fancier, it really was not that difficult as the Cricut does all the work for you still!!

I hope you enjoyed all these Artfully Sent Halloween cards. I can't wait to create Christmas cards next!