This is a note-book I made to keep in my purse. I am always making lists, so having them in one place — and with me in my purse!! — is very handy.It was the first project I made with the Bind-It-All, and I am looking forward to lots of playtime after the wedding. I love the binded projects, and will come up with a few things to put in the December craft show.

The cover was made with 4×4″ chipboard coasters. I didn’t really want a square notebook, so trimmed about 1″ off and used the Zutter Corner Chomper to round the corners. Went through the chipboard like butter — well worth the expense of this tool!  (I had coupons, or would never have been able to cough up the $$ for it, ha ha).

Because it is going to be rattling around in my purse, I didn’t want a whole lot of embellishments to be sticking out. The flourish is paper (K&Co) and glued right to the stamped and inked cover. I used a metal punch alphabet and a scrap of Tim Holtz Grunge Board for the NOTES, and it is attached with glue dots to keep it secure. I also played with his Distress Stickles and Crackle - just for fun.

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This is the February tag I sent to Sue … it doesn’t sound like she has received my March envelope yet, so will post that one later this month.  I won’t add a lot of chatter, since there are so many photos. This tag is about 6-1/2″ tall. I used the Cricut to cut the envelope … probably from the Wild Card cartridge.

I have NO ideas in my head for the April one, so will have to get my thinking cap on. Have a great week - thanks for stopping by!

I send a St. Patrick’s Day card to my pen-pal Mary Jean every year, because she is Irish! I know it means a lot to her, so I really make an effort to make a completely different card every year. This year I used my Cricut to create her card:

The cool layered shamrock is from Amy’s blog (see my blog-roll at right) — she has such cute files, and makes some really neat items! (Thanks for the file, Amy!!)  The scalloped card base was created in Design Studio, by welding two scalloped rectangles from the ‘Storybook’ cartridge together.

Sounds like we are going to have some beautiful Spring weather here today — yeah!  Thanks for stopping by.

Thought I would post some photos today … the before and after of our kitchen and powder room … G had already started unloading cabinets when I came into the room. I had him stop until I could take a couple of pictures!

Above shows the ‘before’, with the black TILE counters and backsplash … and the next one shows how much lighter the kitchen is now!  (I didn’t buy any new accessories — everything went back where it was originally).

Now for the powder room:

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When I got the Mother’s Day cartridge, I wasn’t sure how many cuts I would actually use. There were a few that I really liked (this card uses one of them), but since I got it for such a good deal it was worth the whole cartridge.

I have already used this cut several times, so wanted to try it larger as a focal image for a card. While I had this paper out, I cut some different things off the cartridge, so I’ll be be posting several cards this month that all have the same feel as this one.

This was also my attempt at faux stitching, and - while I need practice - I think I like the look! I used the remaining (negative) piece to create a 2nd card. Usually the paper comes off the mat in no shape to re-use, but this one came off nice and clean. I matted it with dark brown, wrapped some fibre around the bottom, attached the stamped & inked pieces, then attached the whole thing to a folded orange card.

Gotta love getting two cards out of a single cut!

Have a great Friday - thanks for stopping by.

I have a thing for birdcages. Paper ones - not real ones, and this one came out of nowhere. Sort of like my love of pink. One day I could care less, the next day I LOVE pink.  Go figure. I saw a few cute Cricut cards on the Everyday Cricut site last year, done with the ‘Serenade’ cartridge. Which was only available in the US, with certain machines at certain Wal-marts I think. At any rate, I couldn’t get my hands on that cartridge. They were selling on Ebay for over $100. !!  I didn’t want it that bad, even though it has some darling cages and birds on it.

I have the new Tim Holtz birdcage die on pre-order, as it will cut through chipboard … but that won’t be here until sometime in June. Last week however, I stumbled upon a font site — scrapNfonts — and they had a font with birds and BIRDCAGES!!  For $3!!!  I was some kind of excited.

Because I have SCAL (Sure Cuts A Lot), I can cut any True Type font with my Cricut … so this is the card I came up with. I haven’t had time to play with these images as much as I want to — but I did get this card made.

The cage, stand, bird and wing were cut using the font ‘DBLadybird’.  I am going to have SO much fun with this font!!! (And the others that managed to make it into my shopping cart)  

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I ordered these fabulous long, narrow lined paper pads from Papertrey Ink, thinking they would make into cute gifts. There was even a template to create the cover, so I HAD to try them out.

OK, I just did a (long) search of Nicole’s Blog to find the post … you can find it HERE.  

Unfortunately, their shipping costs to Canada are EXTREMELY high, so I won’t be ordering much from this company. It’s too bad - they have great stuff! Anyhow, the photo below shows the Note Pad Cover closed, and I used one of those K&Co chipboard butterflies as a decoration.

I plan on making up a couple of these to have on hand for next year as they do make nice little gifts. Especially when you aren’t doing them at the last minute!

Thanks for stopping by today.

 This is the first card I made using the ‘Sentimentals’ cartridge. I love the vintage cuts on this cartridge! The card (with the flower cut out of the bottom right and curved bottom) is right on the cartridge, and it cuts the matching envelope. The card is lined with cream cardstock. I had a spare flower and leaves from the test cut, so coloured them with Copic markers and attached them over the cut out.

This envelope was cut without the flower, so it could actually go through the mail. It’s nice that Provocraft gives you that option when you want to cut the envelope … you can do it with or without the cut-out. There is also a card (and envelope) with the same hand/envelope cut out!

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Today’s “Clean And Simple” challenge at SplitCoast is to make a square card. I just happened to have made one last night, so that worked out well!  I LOVE the “Sentimentals” cartridge, and wanted to try out some of the cards on it. Hmmm … this is where patience comes into play with the Cricut…

The card is smaller than I like. A-2 is about as small as I like to go, and this one is about 4-1/2″ square. So not TINY by any means, but it just feels small to me. I also cut the card and envelope out of paper, which was probably my first mistake. I should have used cardstock for the card. Plus, the card cut about 1/2″ smaller than the envelope, which was strange. So the first card ended up being slightly less than 4″ square. But I liked the envelope, so used a piece of cardstock to create this card for the paper envelope. I embossed the cream shape with the “Distressed Lines” Cuttlebug embossing folder, stippled on some ink and added a K&CO 3-d butterfly sticker.

I used the flower pieces that cut from the envelope to decorate the inside of the card…

Not a card suitable for mailing (unless you put it in another envelope), but it will be good for one to tuck in with a gift or for hand delivering.

I have seen a couple of challenges online, where paper crafters are challenged to USE some of the card features on the cartridges. My impression is that they are often overlooked, so I wanted to try and really get some use out of them. I can see that they are going to require some practice cuts in order to get the size etc correctly, but I’m up for the task. 

Tomorrow’s post will show the card that I initially cut to go with this envelope, that I used a cut from the ‘Sentimentals’ cartridge on as well.

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These are the invitations I made for HJ’s Bridal Shower! It was fun to do them, although a lot of work. I made 25 of them total!

(Leara - thanks for the little pearl embellishment for the dresses … that box of bridal type goodies is coming in handy!!)  I used the Sweethearts cartridge to cut the dress out of white cardstock, then embossed the skirt part with the Victoria C/Bug embossing folder and my Big shot. The vellum skirt layer was also on the cartridge … and the skirts were embossed with the Swiss Dots folder.

Stampin’ Up’s Top Note die and pink Bazzill (textured) cardstock helped create the panel to attach the dress to. I thought a gate fold would be nicer than a regular folded card, and I used my SCOR PAL to do all the scoring for it. I have contacted them a couple of times for a banner to put on my blog, but they only have an image … nothing linked.

Before attaching the dress panel I embossed each side of the gate fold with the Swiss Dots embossing folder.

Here is a group shot showing some of the invites … I hadn’t added the decorated text panel to these ones before taking the picture. That was done digitally, using pink swirls & black text, then a pink bridal flower was attached to the bottom right corner. The text panel was cut slightly smaller than the gray panel inside, so everything layered nicely.

This morning after all three dogs had been outside (on leashes) to do their morning business, I put them back in the cabin and went out with my plastic bag to pick up after them. All of a sudden Brandi starts barking like crazy through the glass door  and once I check to be sure she isn’t barking at something INSIDE, I realize she is barking at something outside. Behind me. !!    Big Coyote. Beautiful, but I only had that thought once I had turned around and he was heading away from me, ha ha.

Every once in a while, something like this happens to remind me WHY I keep them on leashes on the yard out here. Sometimes I think “oh, it will be OK … we’re only out for a minute”, or the neighbor will say something about how sad it is that they are on leashes all the time out here and we never let them just run.  This morning could have turned out very differently if I had had even one of the dogs outside without a leash.

Spending as much time with the dogs as I do, I am pretty good at interpreting their different barks and reacting accordingly.  This was definitely Brandi’s protective, territorial barking. Her urgency set off the other two, but they were just running around in circles in the rec-room, having NO idea why they were barking. But they knew they should be. Man, what a crew.

Thanks for stopping by today - hope your day includes a FUN adventure!