Gnome Birthday Fun with BBTB2

Happy Monday!  Welcome to another Bitten by the Bug 2 weekly challenge!  This week's challenge cut was selected by my design team sister, the lovely Theresa Kelly, and  is any Gnome from the Freshly Picked cartridge.  I decided to have a bit of birthday fun with the Gnomes - creating this Gnome Pyramid birthday card.  The design for this card was inspired (and by inspired I mean ripped-off) from my friend Donna Mundinger's FABULOUS Penguin Card, which can be found here at her blog and  here at Custom Crops with design studio cut file and complete instructions.  Donna is one of THE MOST AMAZING paper crafters E-V-E-R... and I am thrilled to be able to say I know her! 

This card features six Gnomes each dressed in his favorite summer party outfit!  And just as we women match our shoes and purses (in an ideal world!), the Gnomes have matching hats, belts and shoes.  The well dressed Gnome likes for his outfit to coordinate!  The Gnome faces were stamped in light brown ink with Peachy Keen stamps.  A cherry Copic marker was used to highlight their lips. Their beards were cut in white cardstock, then heat embossed with white with touches of grey embossing powder.  Their ensembles were finished with tiny pom-poms at the top of their hats.

I used three cartridges to cut this card, Freshly Picked, George and Basic Shapes, and Christmas Cheer.  The banner above was cut from Christmas Cheer, then stamped with a rubber stamp from Michaels. 
The photo below is a screen shot of the card top in Cricut Design Studio.  I welded the six Gnome shadows together in a pyramid shape, adding birthday gifts from Christmas cheer.  I cut this layer in red, affixed it to the base card, and built the card front on top of this layer.

Below is the inside of the card.  You can see the red base cut (above) is the upside down red layer in the photo below.  I attached the red layer to the open cut triangle top.

The base card was created using George and Basic Shapes.  I sized and welded to triangles together, then inserted a NON-welded triangle into the middle of the top layer.  This created the cut out so that the blue swirl print shows through the holes in the front of the card.

I used metallic cardstocks to cut the packages and the belt buckles.  I finished the card by using pop dots to attach Happy Birthday banner!
 

Thanks for stopping by today.  Be sure to head over to Bitten by the Bug 2 and check out all of the designer's awesome projects!  And, if you have time, please consider playing along with us this week!!

Christmas Berry Card & Blogger Up Date

Hello again blog-land. For those two hermits out there that were not aware, Google Blogger has been down for the last two days.  It "ate" comments and scheduled future posts, in addition to locking out the blog owners.  For those of us who are far too involved in our on-line lives (can you say, Get a life, Susan?), this was very stressful!  And worst of all - It interrupted my Berry Week!  I guess you will get yesterday's berry project at some point in the future.

Today's berry card is "Christmas Berries".  And no, this is not a real plant.  I took one of the Christmas berry cuts from the Christmas Noel cartridge (which can be referred to as Christmas or Christmas Solutions) and crossed it with a pine stamp, creating a hybrid Christmas berry branch!  I then topped the branch with this sweet little red bird (wonder if he ate too many red berries?).

I went back to the Preserves cartridge and found this great shaped matting.  I cut the shape in dark brown cardstock and white with green print cardstock.  On top of that I added two oval mat cut with George .  I stamped the Merry Christmas sentiment with a Stampin' Up stamp and SU ink.  I tied a red Christmas tree ribbon around the card topper before attaching it to the cream colored base card.

Inside the card I used another Stampin' Up Christmas stamp to add a message.  There is still plenty of space to sign the card and add a personal message.

The base card was cut in speckled cream cardstock and red, green and cream stripes.  I used mono adhesive and attached the stripes to the cardstock BEFORE cutting the base card.  I then positioned the cardstock on the mat so that 3/4 of an inch of the stripes would cut with the card.  The base card was cut using Christmas Cheer.

I am hopeful that blogger continues to function properly and that this post does not get lost.  If there are no service interruptions I should be back tomorrow with another new project!!

Sweet Chrismas Card with JustRite Stampers

Thanks so much for all of the super-nice comments on yesterday's Advent Calendar.  I am pleased that you liked the calendar as much as I did.  But let's be honest - that is a tough project to follow!  I realized that anything I posted today would be a let down.  So, I decided to cop-out and continue with the Christmas theme and share a fun Christmas card!

While this card does not begin to compare to yesterday's project, I really like this card.  It is sweet (ha ha ha - I crack myself up) and simple and fun.    The card was created using Spellbinder's nestabilities (label eleven and circle and scalloped circle dies), JustRite Stampers' Merry Little Christmas stamp set, and a candy cane cut from Cricut's Christmas Cheer.  The other card elements - Bazzill cardstock, snowflake paper, and the ribbon - were from my "stash". 

The candy cane was cut on the Cricut expression using smooth white and red Swiss dot cardstock.  After being tied with bit of Merry Christmas ribbon the candy cane was attached to the pink label with pop dots. 

The JustRite Stamp images were stamped onto smooth white cardstock and then cut out with a circle nestabilities.  The scalloped circle was cut in the same Swiss dot cardstock.  The layers were adhered together and then affixed to the card using pop dots.  The card was finished with a strip of Merry Christmas ribbon and bow and white dots and doodles.  

I will be back tomorrow with a new project to share - probably not another Advent Calendar - sorry!  :-)

Christmas with Nesties and Cricut

I was a bit of a slacker yesterday and did not post a new Christmas card or project.   I thought more people might see Samantha's wonderful stamps if the post remained at the top of my blog for two days.  However, it is time to move on to another fun Christmas card.  This card features fun paper with Christmas candy!

 

I am going to confess that this card began as a pile of leftovers on my desk.  I had leftover maroon cardstock, sheer pink ribbon, and the white nestie label all leftover from previous projects.  I decided to free the leftovers from a life on "the Island of Misfit scrap goods" (think Rudolph and the misfit toys) and combined them to create this cute card.  

I created a card from a half sheet of leftover pink cardstock and affixed the fun Santa & candy paper to the base card.  The ribbon, tag layers and corner gemstones were added.  Finally I added a cut candy cane to the front of the label and blinged it out with pink gems.

The inside of the card should satisfy anyone's sweet tooth; it is filled with candy and stamped with two Stampin' Up sentiment stamps.

I will be back tomorrow with a quick post showing you some of the Christmas cards I plan to send out the year.

 In the meantime, I will be spending the day with my son has he turns 25!  Happy 25th birthday Aaron!!

Christmas In July at Custom Crops

Have you been by Custom Crops and viewed the new projects (with cut files and directions) that were released on Monday? I have Christmas in July Package Tags!!!

I used brads on the Snowman to represent the coal buttons.


The Ornament is accented with silver paper trim - isn't it nice on the topper and the scrolling detail?


The Christmas Tree was accented with different colors of the stickles. I thought the stickles represented the tree lights.


And finally the Joy tag; I love the joy tag! I just love the word JOY!


To view the directions and download the cut file, follow this link to my page at Custom Crops and click on the project title. I would appreciate it if you would leave a comment at CC, they really do track the comments!
http://www.customcrops.com/articles.php?authors_id=3