21

My youngest daughter turned 21 this past month. A milestone. Legal to drink all over the world. "Adulthood". Sigh, how did my babies grow up so fast?

I wanted to make a special box card for her and this exploding present turned out really cute. 

As usual, I bought a file from the Silhouette store and assembled the basic cut parts. 

I added a stamped tag to attach on the front, keeping with the same color scheme.

Inside, I stamped a large birthday stamp from Hero Arts and embossed the numbers 2 and 1

Look how cute the cake is, it fits a little tealight candle (battery operated for OBVIOUS reasons)

I embellished the cake with liquid pearls and some more little numbers. 

Happy Birthday my dear Josie. You are an amazing young lady.  Love, Mom

Thanks for taking a look, see you soon with some Easter and St. Patrick's day projects.

Winter Lodge

Whaaaaat?! SVGCuts Winter Lodge kit is gorgeous! You can check it out here.

How did I do the stone work?  If you have Silhouette Design Studio, open your file, click on Fill pattern and there should be a "pebbles" pattern in your choices. click on it and increase the scale to however large you want your rocks to be. You can also Pan the pattern to move the dandelion out of the way.
I am lucky enough to have a large format printer, so it's easy for me to print off the whole 12x12 sheet,
I did the same thing for the facade/chimney and the roof.

The Stucco was a parchment color, and I added charcoal and brown distress markers, using the spritzer tool. (Tim Holtz)

the copper accents were cut on black paper and I dabbed bronze Distress Paint on the pieces.

the kit comes with 2 cute little planter boxes, but while I was at Michael's, I picked up these little wooden ones, I think they were $1.50. I added some twigs that I had in my stash.

Here it is all lit up, so gorgeous. Thanks Mary, for always continuing to inspire me. Your kits are outstanding. ( and no, I don't get paid to say that hahaha)  See you all soon...

12 Tags of 2016 - February Remix

Welcome to the February remix of Tim Holtz' 12 tags of 2016. Like I said in January, my goal is to make all 12 tags/techniques into 8x8 layouts. When I'm finished, I will make a hinged folio to hold them all. I'm kinda stoked about that. It's all about the journey, right?
You can check out the original post from Tim here.

photo credit: internet via my Jigidi app which led me to a Wallpaper site Wallpino.com

iPhone Valentine Text Message

pop culture, it's fun to make cards that incorporate modern, on trend elements.

This card was designed (for the most part) on my computer using the print 'n cut feature on my Silhouette Studio software. I made these when my Silhouette machine died, so everything had to be hand cut.
I started with the Trendy Heart Phone. I ungrouped it a couple times and added a fill pattern on the "screen".
Next I offset the phone to create a case for the iPhone. I filled that with a chic Burberry pattern and printed the page on my large format printer.

I needed some text message elements, so off I went to Microsoft Word. There are call out shapes that you can add messages to - perfect for this project. Lastly, I added my favourite stamps (Bird Crazy/Tim Holtz)

Here's another variation of the same idea ...

Happy Valentine's day my crazy birdies. See you soon.

Gear Up for Valentine's Day

Here's one for the guys, or the industrial steam punk lovers in your life.

The basic design is from Snapdragon Snippets which I bought on the Silhouette Design Store. The full assembly tutorial can be found here.

I added some little extra pieces to add to the overall finished project, such as:
lady cupid, Cupid, extra gears here and here, and Memory Box dies.

I can't believe it's made out of paper - looks pretty industrial cool.
I cut everything with black cardstock and then dry brushed Silver acrylic paint over top (Dina Wakely)

gearing up for Valentine's Day...

Flamingo Mingle

Flamingo a go go... these 2 are so cute.  It all started with the paper.
I cut the flamingos and XandO's on my Silhouette. here and here

I added a pink and black vertical border and some extra hearts I had on my desk. 

So cute...it makes me smile.

Cupid & Co.

In the mood for more Valentine Cards?
This one was a folded red card, embossed with one of my favourite folders from Tim Holtz. I sanded the raised part slightly to reveal just a little white.
The main part of the card was printed and embossed the foam taped to the base. Before I did that though, I marked where the frame would be the added a border of Sookwang tape and Glitzed it up with red glitter.
I added some die cuts I had laying around on my desk (Memory Box x/o's)

Love You Deer

Now that I have my new Silhouette machine, I have been on a paper cutting frenzy.

I love reindeer and this card went together pretty quick.

The deer and love heart are 2 separate files from the Silhouette Design Store.here and here

I used the birch tree embossing folder for the backgrounds. Can you see the great texture? I used faux leather paper, love it! Add a little distress ink and some foam tape...done.

See you soon 

Wrapped in Love

Here's a quick and pretty card for Valentine's Day.
The background was a print and cut file from Silhouette here and the card and "love" were cut files.
here and here

super easy, but super elegant, I think.

see you next time...

Cupid's Tree

Love is in the air, or at least in the trees.
I seem to be on a birch tree theme lately. I made this table centerpiece entirely out of paper (except the chain)

It started with a piece of birch bark paper that I made into a "tree trunk" (ok it's a box, but just go with it). Next, I needed some branches, so I ripped pieces of a paper bag, twisted them and then wrapped the twisted pieces with masking tape.

There are various cut files used on this project, I made the Cupid and Co file (here) into a Print 'n Cut. Mainly because my Silhouette machine decided to have a loud and painful death. 3 weeks without a Silhouette was absolute torture. The sign was printed on white cardstock and over stamped with Tim Holtz' large background stamp.

I used Spellbinders dies to make the sign post (multiple layers glued together). The heart and snowflake die cuts are from Memory Box.

I had these awesome silver balls (from Michael's craft store) in my stash, so I used them to line the "ground"

Thanks for taking a look today. I appreciate all the visits. See you soon...

Urban Scrapbook's Monthly Challenge - February

February already?! Normally, I would be out of the country by now, but holidays had to take a back seat this year due to financial and personal reasons.
Urban Scrapbook's February kit is chalk full of romantic "Valentiney" goodness
The paper line is Graphic 45

First, as always, I chose my picture, keeping the color scheme in mind.  I have 2 Jack Russells and I love them to death, so I found this great photo on Pinterest. How adorable is this? I want a whole ranch full of Jacks.

next, I cut the paw print heart on my Silhouette machine. The cut file is this one
I ran part of it through my big shot with an embossing folder then sanded the edges and embossed part.
It was looking too "blah" so I focused on the birch trees, I found my birch tree embossing folder and ran it through the big shot a few times to give me a nice background, highlighting the raised part with Frayed Burlap, Walnut Stain and Smoke distress inks
Finally, I added some die-cuts on the left hand side (Memory Box, Spellbinders) and embellished the rest of the page. I should mention too, the rose on the bow was made with the tattered pine cone die (Tim Holtz)

You can pick up the February kit at Urban Scrapbook. They will also be posting the design teams pages throughout the next weeks. You can see all the ideas at the Urban Scrapbook blog. See you soon with some Valentine projects...