Paper Cupcake Blog Hop

If you are coming from Patty Smith's blog, your right on track.  And you'll know that we are working with the "Happy Father's Day" key (page 75) on the Artiste Cricut Cartridge. I've been inspired so far!  My project is the bag (in Sky cardstock) cut from <3D Object><FtherDay> (or C5R5 - 5th column, 5th row)

After I cut it out, I scored the front and the back every 1/2" to make a pinstripe pattern.  Make sure you score on the backside (although the bag can be folded in either direction so in this case it doesn't matter).  I then stamped my saying on the front (in Pacifica) -- this is the part of the flat bag that does NOT have the collar on it.  Next, I sanded the stripes, avoiding my stamped image.

The inner part of the saying was stamped a second time on White Daisy, and then "grandpa" was added with Sky ink.  I went with Grandpa, honestly, because my "DAD" was defective and I needed this sample to be completed.  I did get a hold of Close to my Heart and received my replacement stamp by the end of the week (thanks, Mirissa)!

I digress.  The inner part of the stamp was cut out and then popped up with 3D foam tape.  I stamped the tie in Sweet Leaf and cut around it.  I know, the Artiste cartridge has the tie image, but I wanted the entire tie in one piece.  The top part of the tie was stamped a second time. I used Scor-tape to adhere the top part of the tie to the flap part of the collar, then glued the whole tie aligned with the top part.  Our velcro dot keeps the collar down.  The shirt was finished off with some White brads in the collar.  As you see from my picture, I hadn't snipped the excess brad yet -- you will.  ;-)

Okay, enough said here.  Now continue along to Katy Martin's blog.  See you soon!

That was soon!  I forgot to tell you the size of the bag was cut at 8.25".  Also, I used the stamp set Perfect Fit -Dad (C1542) which has several great stamps.  Now go!

Mother's Day Key Artiste Cricut Blog Hop

Welcome back to another Paper Cupcake Blog Hop!  If you've come from Heather Plotzke's blog, you are moving in the right direction!

This month our challenge was to use the "mother's day" key found on page 74 of the Artiste Cricut book.  If you have the Expressions 2, that key is the C4R5 key (4th column 5th row).

The box top and bottom were made at 3.25" (<Card>) and the inner background paper was cut at 3" using the same image.  The sides of the box were 1.5" (<3D Object>) which, when folded, created a (half) box of 2.5" x 2.5".  "Happy Mother's Day" was cut at 0.75".

One of the things that struck me when I looked at the book, was "Why did they include two identical images on different keys?  Why didn't they just mark it as 'x2' like the lid?"  Since there were two images, I cut each out separately.  As I was assembling the box, it occurred to me why there are two!  The first image is slightly larger than the second (<3D Object><shift>) image so that the box nests nicely!!  Just remember to mark the smaller one so it can be on the bottom (if you care)!

I chose to use Claire paper and colors that coordinate.  The stamp set I used was "Girls Rock" (C1538).  To create the flower, I stamped the flower in several different colors, cut around a different part of the flower in a different color, then stacked them up with 1/2 mounting tape between the layers.

The colors I used were (from the outside inward): Cranberry, Outdoor Denim, Blush, and Sunset.  The leaves are Sweet Leaf, the saying is Hollyhock, and everything was put onto Champagne.

Put a little goodie or note inside.  Give one to your sisters, grandparents, and girl friends -- their a mother too!  :).  Tomorrow I'll show you how colors can make a difference, so come back!

Jump on over to Patty Smith's blog for more inspiration!  Thanks for stopping by!

Graduation and Wedding Money Flower Pot

Yesterday I showed you the graduation money flower pot for Paper Cupcake's Blog Hop.  Today I want to share the sizes and techniques I used to create the "garden."

Graduation Bouquet

I am going to be sending this to the Close to my Heart Corporate office.  I hope they enjoy it.  Oh, and just so you know, I'll be sending fake money.  ;-)

The "f" key is the star today.  This is found on page 54 of the Artiste booklet.  I like to note where on the Cricut keypad any key is located using a Column Row numbering system.  So for most of these images you'll find the key at Column 5 Row 4 or C5R4.

The pot (3D Object) was cut at 6.25" which, when it's put together, will be 2.5" high.  It's not that big, but you know big things come in small packages.  As I mentioned yesterday, our two sided background and texture paper are ideal because of the contrasting lip without any extra work.

The single leaf is from Accent 4 and sized at 0.75".  I cut two leaves per flower.  The vine was cut at 1.75" and is found on 3D Object <shift>.  I think 6 vines fill in the pot well.

The flowers consist of three flat flowers from Accent 3 <shift> sized at 2.5" (cut two per flower), 2", and 1.5".  The center of the flower is the spiky 3D flower from Accent 1 <shift> and measures 3".

Last prep is cutting the congratulations from the Art Philosophy Cartridge.  The image is from one of the three stamp sets included in the bundle.  Found at C1R2 (and page 30), the <circle2> was cut at 1.75".  The background  and texture paper was cut at 2".

Wedding Bouquet

On to assembly:

Money ~
The individual bills are rolled longwise.  I made them as tight as I could knowing they would loosen up after I tied them.  But in order to tie them, I placed a paper clip at each end of the rolled bill.  I tied 9" of Twine around the bill and then removed the paper clips.

Flowers ~
You want to glue 4 petals of the 2.5" flat flower together.  This will form a pocket for the money to slide into.  Make sure you only put glue on the petals or you won't be able to slide the money in.  I then sponged all of the flowers, including the 3D flowers.  Form the 3D flowers into, well, 3D flowers, then glue the 3D flower to the flat flowers.

The graduation flowers I left plain.  The wedding flowers I jazzed up a bit with Opaque Pearls for the center.

Single Leaf ~
I attached them to the money with one glue dot per leaf.  Money is made from paper so there was no problem getting the dots to stick, and they came off too.

Vines ~
Four of the vines I glued directly to the pot edges.  The remaining two I placed into the pot along with the flowers.

Extras ~
For my graduation pot, I used 24" of Cranberry twine for the pot.  I liked having something tied around the pot, but it isn't necessary.  The wedding pot, on the other hand, I dressed up with Color-Ready Ribbon colored with Honey.  The ribbon would not stick to our Tombow tape runner.  It also doesn't stick really well to glue dots.  I didn't want to use Liquid Glass because that would leak through the ribbon and show.  What worked well was Scor-Tape (red tape and the likes should work equally as well).

Congratulations ~
I kept with the round theme and used the stamp I did.  For the graduation card I only added two bitty sparkles to the word dividers (I don't know if that's what they are really called, but it's obvious where I put them when you look at the stamped image).  The wedding ensemble was dressed up with a Black Glitter Button tied with Black Hemp to the skewer.

Wedding dressed up with a bow tie

Making everything stand up:
I put bird seed into the pot and put the flowers and extra vines into the pot.  We are done!!

Summary:

	Graduation	Wedding
Pot Paper	Scholastic	For Always
Flower Cardstock	Cranberry	Honey
Flower Sponge Color	Barn Red	Goldrush
Leaf and Vine Cardstock	New England Ivy	Olive
Congratulations Color	Cocoa	Black
Twine Color	Cranberry	Creme Brulee

Paper Cupcake Artiste Blog Hop

If you've come from Tasha Valdez's blog, you're on the right trail!  I hope you've been enjoying all of the samples from Close to my Heart's Artiste Cricut cartridge.

The "f" key (found on page 54) is really awesome! I might be biased, so you should discover for yourself how good it is -- oh, wait, the whole cartridge is awesome!!

Back to inspiring you! I started thinking about how to do something different with the "f" key.  Flowers in a pot are always a nice thing.  A bouquet would make for a lovely teacher, co-worker, and/or boss gift and liven up an area.

But then I thought about the upcoming graduation season.  How about a unique way to give money to someone?!

If you look closely you'll notice the stems of the flowers are money.  In this case $20 bills, but you can use whatever denomination you'd like.  And as many flowers as you want to make.

I took our Scholastic paper (this is for graduation after all) and cut the pot.  The best thing about our background and texture paper is that it is two sided so I only had to cut out one pot and got the lip with a contrasting pattern and color -- PERFECT!  Next, I cut the leaves and vine out of New England Ivy and the flowers from Cranberry cardstock.  The flowers are made from two cuts.  The back part is the flat flower cut at 3 different sizes.  The center is a 3-D flower.  I glued them together and whaalaa, a beautiful flower.

The final cut was the saying for the "garden" and that came from our equally awesome Art Philosophy Cricut Cartridge.  The saying came from the included stamp sets.  It says "congratulations".

Since I've taken so much of your time, you should come back tomorrow to see more of the step by step method I used to put these together.  And I have another sample for a wedding!

Hop on along to the beginning of our trail at Bren Yule's blog!  See you soon!  :)

CTMH Artiste Noel/HoHoHo Key Blog Hop

I hope you've been enjoying this month's blog hop.  We've been exploring the Noel/HoHoHo key found on page 79 of the Artiste Cricut Collection.  And if you've come from Tasha Valdez's blog (http://www.rabbithillranch.com/blog), you are on the correct path.  Just joining, no problem!  This hop makes a loop, so you won't miss any of the fun by jumping in here.

This month, for me, was about getting the most bang for the buck.  I used 4 different images (not to mention several sizes) from the same button.  I am more of a winter type gal so the mittens suited my project beautifully!

The bag was cut at 5.25" (the largest cut) from Whisper cardstock.  The overall height is 5" as mentioned in the booklet.  The mittens were cut at 2.5" using Champagne (overlay) and Chocolate (base) cardstock.  And the snowflakes were cut from Sky cardstock at 0.75", 1", and 1.25".

To distress the paper, I used the Whisper ink pad directly on the paper.  I like moving the pad in a circular motion to create the movement you see (especially in the third picture).

Final touches makes my project special.  Adding snowflakes to the back of the bag is one thing.  I added the neutral Baker's Twine  to the mittens is a second way.  You can't see in the picture, but I tacked the twine down with Liquid Glass so that when the bag is upright, the twine won't fall over. And finally, since I wanted the bag to stay closed, I added a Velcro Dot (love the size!).

Though this key is named Noel and HoHoHo, your project doesn't need to be red and green. This bag can be used as a birthday gift bag through the month of February.  Don't be afraid to change things up!  Before you go see another inspiring project at Rebecca Nelson's blog (http://craftnitup.blogspot.com/), bookmark my blog and come back again.

Now go... :)

Details to Artiste "Thanksgiving/Give Thanks" Blog Hop Napkin Rings

Thanks for coming and checking out how I made the napkin rings.  The first thing I did was cut out the rings on Kraft cardstock at 2".  I was able to five per page.  Once I cut the desired number, I changed to the Flirty background and texture paper (B&T).  I used the Autumn Terracotta leafed side, and cut the same number of napkin rings as before.

Next, I cut the Maple leaf at 3/4" from Ruby cardstock.  I used two per napkin ring.  I can't do anything too simple, so I mirrored the image for half of them.  Once those were cut out, they were sponged with Ruby ink.

The Oak leaves are next.  These leaves were also cut at 3/4" out of Flirty Yellow cardstock (found in the Flirty paper packet).  And then the leaves were doubled sponged.  The first layer was Honey ink, followed by Ruby ink.  To me that gave the leaves a great fall color-changing effect.

One more image to cut... The words "Give Thanks" also comes from page 78!  Cocoa cardstock was cut at 3/4" to fit the face of the napkin ring.  I turned my cut speed down to 2 because the image size was so small and the saying so detailed.  It took a little longer to cut, but the image came out clean.

Final preparation step was to take the Flirty B&T napkin rings and trim off the "arms" of the ring.  I curved them to match the contour of the center. I was left with only the center of the ring (as shown in the picture).

CONFESSION: I just realized that I did stamp on this project.  If you look really closely at the center ring on the left side, you'll see some color past the Flirty paper.  Why this is important is because of the next step -- stamping -- which is optional.  If you skip this part, it's no big deal, your rings will look like the right sample.  I took the large swirly stamp from the Instant Memories (C1466) and stamped it in Ruby ink going out onto the arms from the center of the the ring.  The second side is upside down, but you won't really notice, so don't worry about it.  The Flirty B&T will be covering the center of the ring so I didn't bother masking the center.  Finally (for this optional step), randomly place Bitty Sparkles (Z1263) along the swirls.  I used three per arm (remembering that the arms will overlap when assembled.


Assembly comes next.  I used Bonding Memory glue to adhere the Flirty B&T paper to the center of the Kraft ring.  They should match up perfectly!  Since the rings will be handled, I used the Bonding Memory Glue for the leaves too.  These were kept at the bottom.  And I used that glue for the words that went on top of the leaves.  Done.

A bitty Opaques - Mocha (Z1333) was used as the dot on the "i".  Two final steps remain.  The first is to carefully round the ring so that it becomes round.  I rounded mine in my hands until it was circular.  I had to go back on some rings and add more Bonding Memory glue to keep the Flirty paper down (must have missed those spots).  And finally, adhere the two ends together.  My rings overlapped by 1/2".

Throw a napkin through your ring, and you really done.  :)  Not too bad!

CTMH Artiste Cricut Cartridge "Thanksgiving/Give Thanks" Key Blog Hop

The Paper Cupcakes team is at it again this month with another blog hop.  This time we're featuring the Artiste Cricut Cartridge, but more directly, those cuts from page 78.  That's the 16 images which include fall leaves, a napkin ring, leaves cupcake liner, the words "Give Thanks" and "Thanksgiving", cards, and more!

If you've come from Tasha Valdez's website, you are on the right track.   Don't worry if you just started, the cool thing about this hop is you'll get to go see everyone's artwork who participated by following the links.  And if you'd like to start at the beginning, hop on over to Bren Yule's blog.  She's the fearless leader of the Paper Cupcakes.

My family's Thanksgiving Day tradition was my inspiration for my top sample.  Every other year ('cuz the other year is an in-law turkey day), my family (sisters' families and parents) of 15 descends upon a family friend for the big day.  With her family, there are now 25 of us in the house.  The four grandparents eat in the living room.  The "childults" eat in the dining room, and the young grandkids (4 of them two years ago) in the den off of the kitchen.  I'm not sure what the seating is going to be this year, but we're going to have a great time!  Anyway,  what I came up with...are napkin rings!

Come back later today and see what went into making these napkin rings.  ONLY ARTISTE CARTRIDGE, PAGE 78, FOUND HERE!

I also made this pumpkin using the same key.  I used the stamp set So Grateful (B1395) with Autumn Terracotta on Sunset.  One nice thing about this cartridge is that when you choose your size for the pumpkin, the leaf and vine are automatically chosen to be proportional!

But enough about me and my creations, go check out what Karen Barber created!  Don't forget to come back after lunch to see how I made the napkin rings.  :)

"It's Your Day" Paper Cupcake's Blog Hop

If you've come from Tasha Valdez's blog you are on the right path!  If you're starting with me, welcome aboard!  Jump on in and continue (or go backward and catch up).  I hope you've enjoyed what you've seen so far.

I enjoyed playing with this stamp set so much, I've made it into my card workshop for the month of August.  More details about how to participate in the workshop even if you're far away can be found on Monday's post.

So here are 5 card samples using the "It's Your Day" double stamp set.  You can earn this stamp set for $5 with a qualifying purchase of $35 or more.  Don't wait too long because it's only available August 15 - September 30, 2012 while supplies last!  You can purchase it through an open gathering found on my website in the lower right corner.

More details pertaining to these rockin' cards will be posted throughout the month of September.  Bookmark this blog so you can come back and check it out.

If you've filled your senses enough here, hop on over to Linda Taylor's blog to see what she's created using the "It's Your Day" stamp set.

Thanks for stopping by!  :)