December CC Magazine Contest

Hello once again.  Here is my entry for the Cricut Circle Magazine.  The details for the challenge are as follows:

Contest Rules:
You must create your gift bag or box using a base from one of the many Cricut cartridges available. Embellish it to fit your style! Please use at least 4 Cricut cuts in your design and incorporate something from one of this month’s magazine sponsors. (You can see their ads in the back of the magazine.) Please… only one entry per person. Entry deadline is Friday, December 3rd at 11:59 pm. We will pick a 1st, 2nd and 3rd place winner this month!! 1st place winner will choose from the Wrap It Up, Paper Lace or Quarter Note Cartridges. Then the 2nd place winner will get the next choice and the 3rd place winner will recieve the final cartridge. We hope that is incentive enough to get your creative juices flowing!!

For this challenge I've decided to create a small gift box to put a necklance in.  You can just see the gold chain peeking from the plastic "window" above.  Below is a picture of all the cuts I used to assemble this box.

Cricut cuts used:

* box base (Wrap It Up) welded with 2 scalloped ovals (Straight From the Nest) to make 2 "windows"

* 2 ovals (George and Basic Shapes) cut from old Cricut cart blister pack, then embossed with the Snowflakes CB folder to match the snowflake design on the box

* 2 Picturesqe cart tags welded together to make tag base

*Picturesque tag cut for the front of the tag

*snowflake from Picturesque cart

*tag title from Winter Woodland

*tag title blackout from Winter Woodland

I had to incorporate something from one of this month's Cricut Circle magazine sponsors and I chose to use my Imaginisce irock tool to attach the blue Imaginisce gems onto the snowflake on the tag.  I had fun making this box!  Thanks for stopping by!

Home Sweet Home

My entry for the November Cricut Circle Challenge is a curtain tieback.  This month's theme is "Home Sweet Home" and the details for the challenge are as follows:

NOVEMBER MONTHLY CHALLENGE: HOME SWEET HOME
The theme for this month’s challenge is all about cozying up your home with Handmade Home Decor! Please create a home decor project. Project must be newly created for this challenge and should include the following elements to qualify:

• Use atleast one Cricut Cartridge Cut
• Use the Cuttlebug in some way (embossing folder, Cuttlebug die, Quilling kit, etc.)
• Use Felt in some way
• Use the color GREEN somewhere on your project

This challenge is open to Cricut Circle Members only.

I made 4 of these tiebacks eventhough I'm only showing one here.  For the base of each of the curtain tiebacks I used a burgundy felt purchased from Michaels cut in 3 in x 12 (really a third of the felt piece).  I then cut the swirly images from the Cindy Loo cart in the green moss felt (already had adhesive backing) at 2" each with the deep cut blade, multicut at 4, speed medium and max pressure on the Expression - BTW I'm NOT looking forward to cutting felt again any time soon :) . As you can see in the picture, I even put masking tape all around the felt before I cut.  

 I then ironed the images onto my base felt.  Then I attahed velcro on the ends.  Velcro had adhesives on them already so all I had to do was cut to size.

Showing the back of the tieback here.

Then I attached a flower I made using one of the quilling sets I bought from cricut.com a couple of weeks ago.  I attached the flower using 3M mounting tape.  And there you go!  Thanks for looking!  

Thanks, Angel!

Wow!  A blogger award, really?  Angel over at Owlbeescrappin.blogspot.com sent me a very nice surprise this morning!  My first one, yay!  Thanks, Angel!  It means a lot to me that you thought about me.  She is a fellow Circlet and I am so glad I came across her blog.  She is very talented, so hop on over to her blog and make sure you're sitting down because you'll be staring at your screen in awe for a while!

Now, this award does come with some rules so please follow along:

1. Thank and link back to the person who awarded you this

2. Share 8 things about yourself

3. Pay it forward to 8 bloggers that you have recently discovered

4. Contact those bloggers and tell them about their awards

Ok, so 8 things about myself:

1.  I was born and raised in the Philippines and came to California with my family when I was 14 years old.

2.  I have been happily married now for 13 years to my best friend whom I met in junior high but we didn't actually started dating until after highschool (I ASKED him to the prom! - it paid to be forward LOL).

3.  We have two wonderful kids, a boy who's 7 1/2 years old and a girl who's 5 1/2 years old going on 24!

4.  I really need to learn how to speak Hindi or I need to teach my hubby how to speak Tagalog (besides the bad words, LOL!) so that we can talk about our kids without them knowing we're talking about them!

5.  I could probably lose another 5 pounds (ok, that maybe TMI but I'm running out of things to share about me, hehehe!)

6.  I miss my dog dearly, our first born whom we had to put to sleep back in August because of old age - the house really ain't the same without him :(

7.  I'm afraid to use my Imagine because I don't want to run out of ink!

8.  My hubby gets jealous of my Gypsy :)

Ok, now to give the same award to 8 wonderful bloggers I recently discovered - it was very hard to choose because there are many other wonderful blogs I follow that I wish I could list them all here.  And I guess I'm not supposed to send it back to Angel? :(  Oh, well, here goes and I hope you visit these wonderful blogs too!

http://jrugg.blogspot.com/

http://paperboutique.blogspot.com/

http://sugarpeas-creationstation.blogspot.com/

http://nadialax13.blogspot.com/

http://laneyslegacys.blogspot.com/

http://www.thebugbytes.com/

 http://craftingonhat.blogspot.com/

http://thegreenbeanscrafterole.blogspot.com/

Double Trouble

Here is my entry for the Cricut Circle Blog Challenge #8.  Here are the details for the challenge:

Weekly Challenge #8: Vintage Elements & a Sketch!
What’s old is new again . . . Vintage Elements are so HOT right now in everything from fashion to home decor, and even right down to our crafting supplies! For this week’s challenge we would like you to use the sketch provided below and create a project with a vintage feeling. We will be watching for soft, muted colors, silhouette images, aged metals, lace trim, doilies, ephemera, fabric, vintage buttons, etc. Please include a minimum of three Vintage Elements on your project.
Project must be newly created for this challenge and must include atleast 2 different cuts from any Cricut cartridge to qualify. This challenge is open to Cricut Circle Members only.




I've decided to kill two birthday LOs in one challenge since I've got tons of pictures to scrap.  It is not a requirement for this challenge to do 2 LOs, however.  I followed Jana Eubank's sketch for the left LO then just did a mirror image of it for the right LO.  When I think of vintage I think of "distressed" and old.  I thought a bunch of black and white pictures would have worked better for me but since I didn't have any, I just "aged" my pictures a little by sanding the edges of my photos.  I also "aged" my tags which served as the mat for the photos by crumpling them first before I chalked and inked.  I also thought tearing the edges of a couple of printed cardstock kinda qualifies for vintage look.

"Aged" photos, edges sanded.

Before picture.

After chalking and inking.  Really wish I had Tim Holtz

distressing inks but I though this was not bad at all!

Torn edges.

Cricut cuts used :
*welded candle borders (Birthday Bash)
*prince (Birthday Cakes)
*princess (Birthday Cakes)
*"lace" (Cindy Loo) cut out of vellum paper
*tags (Gypsy Wanderings)
*title (A Child's Year)

Vintage elements used:
*distressed tags
*lace ribbons
*distressed photos
*distressed/torn-edged paper
*buttons (I didn't have any vintage ones but I sanded them a bit to look "old" LOL!)
*prince silhoutte
*princess silhoutte
*candle border silhoutte
*faux stitching
*half pearls

Once again, thanks for looking and I appreciate you stopping by!

Obsessed With Scrapbooking Giveaways!

So I've heard that Walmart gets more Lites this season.  Joy over at Obsessed with Scrapbooking is giving away some awesome prizes to celebrate Cricut's Hello Thursday releases - come and play!

Layered Flowers

Just a quick post.  I couldn't wait until I get my hands on the Cuttlebug Quilling kits I ordered from Cricut.com last week, so I decided to make do with a cricut cart cut for some 3D-look flowers.  Here are my first 2 Christmas cards made entirely from my scrap stash.  The card on the left is 5 x 5 and the one on the right is size A2.  The flower cut was from the Gypsy Wanderings cart cut at varying sizes.  I crumpled the pieces a little before I attached each piece with foam mounts then glued a gem in the middle.  I used the spots and dots and big snowflakes embossing folders for the one on the left card and the swiss dots for the flower on the right side.  The sentiment on both cards are from JustRite stamper, cut out with Nesties.  I also used my irock for attaching the smaller gems on the cards.  I also used MS punches for both cards.  Thanks for looking! 

Happy Birthday Card, No Cricut!

My 12 year old niece, bless her heart, thinks I make pretty nice looking cards - so sweet of her, I know since she has no one else to compare my work with LOL!  She had asked me to make her a birthday card for a friend.  So I have leftover paper from the one I cut out to make my card for this week's CC Challenge I've posted yesterday.  I'm been trying to be good at really using up my scraps - they pile up so quickly!  The card is 6 x 6.  No Cricut cut was used for this project.  The flowers are Prima stacked together, button from Michaels and snaps from Making Memories.  Once again I attempted to sew on my card and messed it up, especially the corners, so hence the use of snaps!  I'm either going to give up this sewing feat or continue to use the snaps to hide my boo boos.  I highlighted the two butterflies printed in the paper with stickles.  The sentiment is a JustRite stamper.  Coordinating scalloped papers were cut using Nesties.

I've decorated the inside of the card with coordinating paper punched on one end with a MS punch.  Thanks for looking!