Favorite Things

This month, the Cutters Creek Design Team is showcasing our favorite products.   I LOVE stamps and copic markers.  Coloring a great stamped image can be very relaxing and I don’t think anything makes a stamped image look as good as copic markers do.  For this card, I used one of my favorite stamp companies- House Mouse. 

House Mouse has so many adorable stamps it’s hard to pick a favorite, but I think this one called You Snooze You Lose is really sweet.  The image is of course colored with copic markers.   I chose the background paper I used because it reminds me of ice cream. 

Patterned paper is another one of my favorite things.  I can’t get enough of it.  I especially love this Echo Park paper.  The pack is called Dots and Stripes and it is the Candy Shoppe collection.  This pack is awesome!  It is full of different colors of stripes and polka dots and to make it even better- it’s double sided!  I used the front and back sides of these papers to showcase the stripes and the dots. 

Another one of my favorite things is Nestabilities.  I just can’t get enough of them.  I love how easy it is to mat your image and make it look great.  This image was actually a little large and if I matted it, it would take up almost the entire card front.  I cut the image, embossed it, and then went over the embossing with some pink chalk.  This not only highlights the embossing, but it kind of makes the image look matted.

My final favorite thing is embellishments and one of my favorite types of embellishment is flowers.  I love flowers and there are so many different types available.  The new Cutter Creek Flowers are my current favorite.  They come in several different types, sizes, and colors.  I never have a problem finding the perfect one.  For this card I used one of the gardenias up in the left corner and two of the lillies down on the bottom.  I love how these flowers are not flat and add decoration and dimension to your projects.

I hope you have enjoyed reading about the design team’s favorite things as much as we have enjoyed sharing them with you. 

Happy Birthday Matey

It's time for another digital stamp challenge on Papercrafting World. This time our theme is to create a masculine card. This is not my forte. I make a lot of girl cards. I love frilly, but that doesn't work for masculine cards. I chose this cute little pirate bear stamp and colored him with my copic markers.

I would love to say I spent hours coloring the background image with my copics too, but I didn't. I printed the image on my cricut Imagine. It is from the Buccaneer cartridge. The sentiment Happy Birthday Matey is also from Buccaneer. I pop dotted the sentiment and the bear up off the background. Since the background paper had so much detail I decided to leave the card alone and not add any embellishments. I think it's pretty masculine looking. What do you think?

BBQ Time

I hope everyone had a fantastic Memorial Day. I know I did, except for the mild sunburn. It's time for another Paper Crafting World Challenge. This time the theme is Memorial Day of course.

I used the BBQ Time cut file for my layout. This file is adorable and it is one of my favorites.I love the little chicken on the tray. I cut the piggy out of pink cardstock and inked around all the edges with some brown chalk ink. I cut the apron and chef's hat out of some patterned paper from Die Cuts With a View. To finish off my layout, I cut the title (also included in the cut file) with some red and blue cardstock and added some ribs and a chicken leg. I have to say it took me a while to buy Make the Cut, but I am so glad I did. I love these adorable cut files from Paper Crafting World. I can't believe I waited so long to start playing with them.

One More Birthday Card

Ok, I have one more birthday card to share with you. This one is for papercrafting world's Birthdays and Glitter challenge. I used the Birthday Turtle digital stamp.

I colored my birthday turtle with copic markers to match the colors in my Echo Park paper. Since the challenge was birthdays and glitter, I added a little bit of crystal stickles to the pom pom and trim of her hat and the hearts on her shell. To finish the card off, I added a flower and put a brad in the center that I made with my Itop out of some of the background paper. If you get a chance, stop by the Papercrafting World blog and join in our birthday glitter challenge!

Inking Cuttlebug Folders

Today I want to show you a way to use ink with your cuttlebug folders to get a couple of different looks. Here are the cards I made using this technique.

I used the Rock Princess cricut companion set for my cards. I don't think Kim has these in the store right now, but I'm sure she could get them for you if you asked nicely :)

To make these projects, you will need a Cuttlebug, a Cuttlebug folder, some paper, a brayer, 2 shades of ink, and some baby wipes to clean up with later.

For the larger pale pink card, I stared with the side of the cuttlebug folder that has the cuttlebug writing on it. Get you brayer really inked up and run it all over the inside of the folder. Put your paper in and run it through the Cuttlebug. For this I used pale pink ink. This left all of the embossed areas white and the background areas were all pink. Then I took a black ink pad and rubbed it over the card turning all the raised areas black.

For the smaller card I inked the other side of the folder (without the cuttlebug logo) with hot pink ink. This gives you more of a letter press look and puts the ink down into the debossed areas. As you will see in the video, this does not work well on a folder with words because they will be backwards. I will show the opposite of the light pink skull card in the video. I went over the little high top card with my black ink pad and all the background areas that weren't debossed turned black.

The brayer and the folder can easily be cleaned with baby wipes when you are done.

Happy Birthday!!!!!

It seems like I am keeping with my theme of making Birthday Cards. For the New Papercrafting World Challenge, we are sponsoring a birthday challenge for you.

I used the adorable dog from the Jules and Jack cutting file as my main star. These dogs are so cute and I thought Jules would look great holding some birthday balloons. I cut Jules on Make the Cut. I used textured brown and cream cardstock. I sanded all the cardstock and I embossed the cream parts with my cuttlebug and sanded that a little also. I wanted to choose some paper that had a bright fun birthday party vibe to them.

I think this Echo Park Walk in the Park 6 x 6 paper pad has some great patterns in it. Each piece is double sided giving you even more choices! I cut some balloons out of some of the other patterns and and tied them together with a floss string and put it in Jules' paw. Every well trained dog knows it's proper to bring balloons to a birthday party. This time I have stamped Jules' eyes with a stamp set from Peachy keen. I'm still trying to get the hang of the eyes when I'm paper piecing. My final embellishment was to add a little rhinestone to her collar so she would look fancy at the party.

When it came time to choose files to use for this challenge, it was hard, Melin has so many great ones. I really encourage you to and find a feebie or 2 and join us in the challenge.

Time to Celebrate

It's always great to have some extra birthday cards on hand for when you need them. I try to make at least 1 out of every 4 cards I make a birthday card. I love this Birthday Anya image from The Greeting Farm.

The little cake on her head reminds me of Alice in Wonderland. I colored Anya with my Copic markers. The price on copics will be going up soon , so grab them now while they're still cheap at Cutters Creek. I matted Anya onto to a labels fifteen nestabilitie and then matted it again with a larger size label 15 nestie in a nice dark brown shade. I took two patterns of paper and sewed them onto a dark brown square to serve as the base for the image. I also used one of the patterns for Anya's skirt.

I wanted to keep this card simple and not get too fussy with it. There are levels of birthday cards. The highest level cards (level 4) are the ones that are so fantastic and you spent so much time and money making them that you don't actually want to give them to just anybody. If your neighbor's birthday was the next day, you know you're not giving her that card. This is why when I make birthday cards, I try to make them level 2- cute, but relatively simple and room for improvement. That way I can give it away and not feel like my heart is being ripped out of my chest. when you find out your BFF's birthday is coming up, you don't want to give her a plain card, but since there is so much unembellished space left on the level 2 card, you can add some flowers and bling and take it from drab to fab (otherwise known as level 3).

Cutters Creek Shopping List

Copic Markers

BG15, BG13, BG11, Y02, Y11, R35, R32 E02, E00, E000, E0000R20,

E35, E33, YR23, YR21, Y11, Y000

Birthday Anya stamp from the Greeting Farm

Spellinbinders labels 15 nestabilitie

Bazzill cardstock