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I just love these little tea-cups because they remind me of my Grandmother who used to paint teacups and other pieces of china. The stamp is “Teacup Parade”, from Hobby Lobby, and the manufacturer is www.printworkscollection.com.

The saying at the bottom is from a clear sentiment “scripture” stamp collection by the same company.

I did this very quickly one night while visiting with my MIL who had to stay the night with us because the road to her house was flooded out. The black doodled steam marks and dotted shadows were the perfect finishing touch.

This card was for my 5 year old’s pre-k teacher. My daughter was so proud to give the teacher the card her mommy made.

The card uses the My Community cart, and Zoobaloo for the grass. DCWV’s Old World Luxury stack gave the perfect antiqued adult mood to the schoolhouse and of course the glitter stack made the bell glisten.

I used the Inkadinkado stamp by Dawn Houser because as a Mom I remember so many moments that I can’t pin on a calendar and I think teachers probably experience that feeling a thousand fold. I just hope when she sees my daughter walking down the hallway in 5 or 10 years that she’ll remember some moment where my little one put a smile on her face!

While the card would have looked fine without it, this rhinestone dragonfly was the perfect touch!

When you are doing a pocket for holding a gift card don’t forget to put the holes where they’ll land when it is all folded up! I was in a hurry on this one. The easiest tactic is to punch the hole in the top layer, then take a pencil and mark where you want the punch on the next layer.

If I was to do it over again today I’d add some distressing on each piece, but this DCWV stack is already distressed, so it looked great without it.

I got lucky because I’d been planning on doing a card like this and someone (JamieB if I remember correctly) on the Cricut board beat me to it. It probably saved me an hour in trying to figure out how to make this card. I scraplifted her technique. I like the lack of uniformity in the triangles, but the downside is that the window panes had to be cut by hand. Another Cricut board member made a uniform triangle version where the triangles can be cut by the machine.

I used a variety of Cuttlebug embossing folders. The circle sentiment stamp is by Autumn Leaves.

The card took a little while but the result was well worth it!

Here is the Cricut file if you need it: Window pane Cricut cut file But, you have to right click on it, then choose “save-as” and type “.cut” after the file name. It should open right up in Cricut Design Studio software.

I’ve been to two weddings this year. My husband was a groomsman in one, my niece a flower girl in the second. And in June my daughter will be a flower girl in a third. Can you believe they were/are all black and white weddings? Well there was a touch of red in the first two. Anyway, I created this card for my babysitter’s daughter, Heather. The Bride and Groom are from Stretch Your Imagination and the doorway is from Happily Ever After.

I just love these Basic Grey ribbon sets. I didn’t have any ribbon when I bought six sets. I can usually find something to match any project.

Here is the card I did for Heather’s shower, it was a quickie. The pink background is embossed with the Cuttlebug. “Love” was made with the “Stamped” cartridge. I used Tim Holtz’s Tattered Rose ink to add dimension, I use this dusty pink color for distressing the edges all the time. The sentiment is a Creative Memories sticker.

Joyce’s birthday isn’t until mid February, so don’t tell her you saw her card!

Here is an eSnips link to the Cricut “.cut” softcut file.
Kitty: Smile It’s Your Day

Step-By-Step Tutorial

First you will place all the elements of your design on the first “page”. Name that page by right clicking anywhere on the mat. You’ll see here I’m naming the page “The Design.” This design only has 5 elements on it. In this close up you are seeing 3 of the 5…the streamer from the balloon, the cat, and the word smile.

Welding
Once you get the hang of what “welding” is meant to do it is pretty easy. Basically all you do is overlap the edges of your design elements and make sure each element has “welding” checked in the bottom left corner of the “Shape Properties” box. It is a little tricky getting the hang of inserting elements individually so that the program doesn’t insert them side by side as with letters in a word. If this happens just click “control z” to “undo” or hit backspace while the handles are visible to delete the last shape added. I’ve found it is easier to work with if each design element is separate. (Letters in a word excluded.) Click your mouse outside the element somewhere else on the mat to place the cursor. Then insert your next element again.

Here is an example from the shadow mat where “its your day” is selected. You can see by the handles it is its own element. And, you can see “welding” checked. Just make sure each element has that box checked.

Creating a Shadow
Once your design is done you can start on the shadow. In my design the shadow is the only item welded and I didn’t actually cut the “my design” page. Those elements were to be cut in all different colors. So, I copied and pasted them on new mats later.

1)Create a new page by selecting the “View” menu and clicking “new page”.
2)Right click on it and label it “shadow”.
3)Go back to your design tab and select “include page in preview.”
4)Then go up to the View menu and select “Keep preview as mat background.

Now you are ready to create your shadow.

5) Go to your empty shadow tab and you’ll see the design is there as a preview. Use this outline to place shadow or blackout images of your design element by clicking the appropriate buttons in your cartridge “overlay.”

When you finish it will look something like this:

Note the two cut lines. Now you’ll want to zoom to 100% or even 200% in order to make sure your cut lines are welding correctly. Look at the close up below. I’ve unchecked the “Keep Preview as Mat Background” option under the View menu. So, we are just looking at the completed shadow cut lines. Notice how some lines are bold and others are not? Only the bold lines will cut.

You may have to waste some scrap paper in order to get the hang of this. In my card you’ll see there is a triangle between the “y” and “d” that didn’t cut right. I left it so you could see what happens. In the image below I’ve adjusted it so that the area will cut out correctly. Initially the middle whisker was invading the triangle and on my card the tiny cut area was the corner of the whisker. So, I merely clicked on “its your day” held the “ctrl” button down for fine tune incremental adjustments and clicked the right arrow 3 to 5 times. I checked the preview after each adjustment and kept moving it until the triangle had a bold cut line.

Preparing to Cut
When you are happy with the welding of your shadow you can start planning your cut. I noticed my shadow was only using 3/4 of the page and chose two items that would fit in the top of the mat. I went to my design page and clicked on “smile” then select “copy” from the “Edit” menu. I then went to my shadow page, and pasted it. In order to get it to fit in an empty area, maybe to fit a peice of scrap paper, you can rotate it by clicking “turn 90? in the shape properties box. If you need to fine tune it to get it to fit, use the “handle” in the lower left corner. Just be careful not to use the handle in the lower right corner which will re-size it…or your cuts won’t line up!

Now you are ready to cut this mat. I used an old black sheet w/ white polka dots, but I’ve included a “Black Bling” paper link below that would also work. On the top of the mat I used a red paper from the Creative Memories Celebration kit.

I LOVE that with Design Studio you can plan out your layout and get the cuts done in less than 1/2 the time by cutting your items in groups. Here you can see the cutting mat with the “Smile” and “party hat” elements on top and the “Shadow” (which is all the elements’ shadow layers welded together) on bottom.

And here is how you would place the paper for the cuts.

Here is my second cutting mat with the rest of the elements.

And here is how I positioned the paper. You can tell exactly where to put the paper! It can’t get any easier. I used scrap paper to for the photo shoot as this was an after thought, and the grey piece is a little small, but you get the idea.

Assembly and Embellishments
Next I used the Cuttlebug to create the orange embossed background and the kitty’s embossed nose. Doesn’t it even look scratchy?!

For those that don’t know what a Cuttlebug is I’ve included some pictures so you get the idea. Basically you put the paper in an embossing folder. Then between two layers of plastic on top of another plastic base. Stick it in the Cuttlebug and turn the handle to send it through. The orange sheet required two passes, and it leaves a seam but this design covers the seam.

For the Kitty’s face I first embossed it, then applied Jim Holtz’s “old paper” Distress Ink to the edges to try and add some dimension.

I just eyeballed the nose and cut the triangle.

Things start moving a little faster from here on. Your elements are all cut and you can start adhereing everything together. I use a Xyron for most of the adhesive. But the ribbon was a little trickier. I finally settled on using a glue gun. I’ll have to search for something easier to work with though.

Wait to apply the stickles until the end because you’ll have to wait for it to dry. I applied “Platinum” stickles for his “fur”. His whiskers were rubbed more heavily w/ the Distress Ink before I assembled the card, then I applied “Frosted Lace” stickles. I just love the contrast in real life, though it is tough to appreciate in the picture.

I didn’t like the way the holes in the “S” looked so I put “Candy Cane” red stickles in the holes for a stitched look then applied it to the middle of the other letters. I’d never worked with Stickles until recently and they are a breeze to work with. Just keep a sewing needle or pin handy because they clog occassionally.

The rest of the Stickles colors are listed in the shopping list. The eyes are rhinestones from some “Whispers” flowers because that is all I had on hand. So, they are not on the shopping list, but I think they’ll be easy to find.

Hope you enjoyed the demonstration. Be sure and let me know if you are confused on anything and I’ll fine tune it!

Briksten is my dear friend’s daughter, who died of leukemia almost two years ago. I created this stationary for my friend in Cricut Design Studio (CDS). She does some fundraising events for leukemia and I thought it would make a sweet thank-you card.

CDS is a really neat program and this card is a good illustration of what it can do with “welding”. I think I used 5 different cartridges for this. The initials are All Mixed Up. The paisley is from Stretch Your Imagination. The body is from Walk In My Garden. Then the antennas and upper wing piece are from other carts that I’ll look up.

The purple card is all one piece of paper. Then I backed it with the green marble paper. The ribbon is by Basic Grey. The Stickles accent is mostly Lime Ice with some Lavender. The Lime Ice is the more chunky Ice Stickles, that is why it is showing up so well in the photo. It looks even better in person.

Uses Paper Dolls for the bra and DoodleCharms to round out the bottom of the “shell” top from Paper Dolls…so if you don’t have DoodleCharms you can just use a Circle/Oval from another cart. However, the two hearts for the panties are also from DoodleCharms…since I don’t know of another cart w/ scalloped hearts you may need at least these two carts.

Lisa has the Cuttlebug hearts embossing folder in stock, the whole bra will not fit in there at once so I turned the folder sideways and did one side at a time.

The ribbon I used was just the right touch, Lisa also has it in stock! It is the third spool from the left. There was just exactly enough to do the card, so measure first!

WIMG is used to create the lacy effect…just use commas from another cart. And ZooBalloo is used for the inside saying, it was also what I used for “Be Mine” but that is in my “25 Valentines” .cut file.

This would also make a great birthday card for dh!

Here is the .cut file.

I wanted to make something that would be quick and easy to assemble. I’m not sure how quick it turned out for me, but for anyone who wants to download my file it sure will be quick for you! There are 8 mats ready and waiting to be cut. You just need paper!

I used three sheets of pink paper, three sheets of brown paper, and one sheet each of red and white. The Monkey was on Zoobaloo and the Puppy can be found on the Paper Pups cartridge.

I also used Copper and Diamond Stickles. The copper was used to create the dog’s eyes and accent his nose and ears. Plus it was used for the monkey’s face and tail. For those that have time the Lime Ice Stickles looked good on the vines, but I didn’t take the time and thought it already looked cute enough for a bunch of 4 and 5 year olds!

Be Mine was applied w/ glue dots. The rest is assembled with a red brad. I used the Crop-A-Dile.

Have fun!