Sympathy Card

I really hate making these kinds of cards but it seems like I'm needing more and more of them.  I need to spend a week making up a batch to have on hand.  I saw this card with the dogwood and branches on a website and looked and looked for a digital image that would resemble the stamp but didn't find anything.  So...I grabbed my pencil and drew what I thought would pass for acceptable.  Its not great but doesn't look too bad.  The background paper is from AC, the silver is some I've had for eons.  My first thought was too just use it to see how the branches printed off and I liked the look so well, that I just kept it.  I did a double cut of a few of the leaves to hang over the frame.  The frame was a SVG cut I had in my stash when I still used the Cricut.  The font is Great Vibes.  The black rhinestones I picked up at the convention and wish I'd spent more money at that booth.  They were selling a huge sheet of rhinestones for $1...I got about 6 different colors.  The grid paper is from Studio Calico.

Thanks for looking!

Celebrating You

Just finished up this card this morning.  Need to get it in the mail before the post office closes for the day.  All the paper is from the kit Studio Calico except for the teal color and it was some I printed off using Pink Petticoats color swatch.  The flower was cut on the Silhouette as well as the label.  I think I'm starting to figure out this print and cut...and I do like it!
Buttons were from my stash, probably Wally World buys.

Off to the post office!

>>>>

The Rest of the Halloween Stuff

This is it....I don't want to do anymore Halloween stuff this year. It is time to move on to the next holiday! I made these up for 3 adorable little kids! My best friend, whom I lost to cancer over 15 years ago, never got to meet these little people...in fact, she never met any of her grandchildren or her new daughter-in-law or son-in-law. But we do a good job of spoiling them for her...LOL... These were nothing special..I just bought the cut file from the Silhouette Store and basically followed the same design as this lady did...Laurie Schmidlin

The first one is for little Breyden.   He is the oldest of the three. As you can see, its almost exactly like Laurie's. I used some black striped paper from Echo Park and the black is American Craft...it really cuts lovely in the Silhouette.  The Spooky stickers are from a paper pack I bought at the convention called This & That by Lori Whitlock.  Lori also makes really great cut files too. In fact, she made the pumpkin bag below and it went together perfectly.  The ribbon and squiggly eyes are from my stash.

Next up is Chloe....isn't that a pretty name?  She looks so much like her grandma....I did this as a print and cut...I imported my paper from Echo Park again and then opened the cut file and did a fill with pattern...boy do I LOVE this feature, saves a ton of ink!  Filled, printed and then ran it through the Silhouette and it cut it perfectly on the lines, plus gave me great score lines.  Course, this is where I separate the score lines from the cut lines so that I can 'cut' it twice...once with the blade deeper for the cut lines and again with the blade shallower for the score lines.  The spider is some I had left from the other Halloween stuff, the BOO stickers are from the same This & That kit and I made my tag with a Spellbinders die cut using paper from KCompany.  The ribbon was some I salvaged from a gift package I'd received.  Or, BTW...forgot to say, I made all these files as big as I could on the 12 x 12 mat, so they hold a fair amount of candy.  Not so much that mom gets upset but enough to please the little ones. When I first cut out the bat, I just used the size as it was and it would have done good to hold 2 candy kisses...LOL  Now it holds a Reeses snack size, a Hershey snack size, a snack size bag of Starburst and some kind of candy that looks like a hamburger. 

and last, but not least....one for Brianna.  I didn't want anything scary or spooky for her so she got this adorable kitty.  This is another cut file that cut perfectly and it is by Samantha Walker.  I cut it out of AC Black, just used some pink color I had in my stash, cut out the eyes, glued them together and then put Crystal Laquer over them to make them shine....can't be cat eyes if they don't shine...the ribbon and buttons were some I picked up from Wally World and the BOO is from the same This & That kit. 

That's all...still don't have the birthday card done.  Hopefully I get it finished tomorrow.  Bill is home for the next two weeks.  Deer Season!  I might have to shoe him out of the house...LOL

....

Halloween Projects (finally)

I know its a week after Halloween but I'm so slow and I am a world class procrastinator!  Anyway, first up is the treats I made up for the grands up north.

The sliding boxes are for the girls and they have necklaces inside of them.  The poison jar is for Jack and its full of candy and then each one of them got a Hershey bar wrapped with a skeleton.  The poison jar is a cut file called Toil and Trouble from SVG cuts.  It was a bear to assemble but once I made this one, the second one was much easier.  I think all the images are cut files from the Silhouette store. The paper is mostly from Echo Park (I think). The skeleton came in pieces that you cut out and put together with brads but I welded them together instead...didn't want to brad 44 of them...LOL...the label on the wrapper was bought from the Silhouette store but I had to do some massive re-working of it to get it to print and cut nice.  The first print and cut was jagged and uneven.  I re-worked the borders around it and once I'd done that, it printed out perfectly and cut exactly on the lines.  The girls loved their boxes...mom took one to work and her co-workers are wanting to buy some but I don't think I want to do it for money....like doing it for fun instead!
I found out, with the Potion Jar cut file. that I had to set my blade pretty high so it just barely scored the score lines.  If not, it actually was cutting through the cardstock and I did not like that look.  I did an ungroup and ungrouped the score lines from the cut lines...fed the cardstock through the cutter twice, once to cut and then once to score, changing the height of my blade for each pass.  The second jar that I made for Gavin came out much better.

This next image is of the Potion Jar I made for Gavin and a card I made for my friend.  I ended up making 44 of the skeleton bars...20 for Gavin's class, 15 for Jerri Ann's co-workers and the rest for me to give to friends of mine.

and a close up of the three projects.

I had to draw my own boots....couldn't find any that I liked. I just drew them on paper and then colored them and cut them out. Don't look real close...my cutting was not too good and my boots are different sizes....LOL..

I made this label with stuff off the internet...bird, the skull was a font and so was the swirl at the bottom.  Printed off on white stock, aged with distress ink and mounted on black.  The spider web was a cut file from the Silhouette store. They were running all their Halloween files at 75¢ so I bought quite a few.  This was one month when I should have paid the monthly fee of 9.99 but didn't!

I welded the skeleton together, then off set him so I could have the black background and ran him though my Xyron to apply adhesive.  Gavin stuck him to the background and he did a really good job!  Used paper from Echo Park the Apothecary Emporium. I had a 6 x 6 pad of this paper but you can buy it from Jessica Sprague as digital plus the kit for the label. This is the label I had to re-work to get it to print and cut properly. 

And this little guy?  Well, it would be Gavin back in the stone age...Jerri Ann and I made the costume.

and last...I needed a birthday gift for my beautician.  She is a cowgirl at heart so I wanted to do something along that line.  I got this idea from Lisa Johnson

I found a horse font, used paper that I printed off from Albums2Remember by Barb called Summer Fun and used a cut file for the stars.  I was running late for my appointment (on her birthday) so had to hurry up and write the inside message by hand...LOL..

That's all for now!  Going for my walk and then work on a birthday card.

....