Canadian Online Swarm ~ Challenge 3 of 4

The Challenge:
Sunday Oct 2, 2011.  Silly pet or animal scrapbook layout ,
A favorite stuffed toy is okay too.
Using all 3 criteria:
1. Use texture: fuzz, fibre, ribbon, string, thick paint, emboss/deboss…
2.  lumps/bumps: lace, buttons, folding, popdots, pop-ups…
3.  Use at least one cricut cut, your choice of image.

I intend to do the rest of the challenges, but I am running out of time, the deadline is October 10, 2011.  Some of you know I have been in slow motion from a bad cold for September so its very nice to be doing a little more now that I'm feeling better.

 Using the cricut, gypsy, and "French Mannor" cartridge, I cut out the scalloped sheet from "coordinations" paper.  It is 2 sided, but it has a coloured core so the paper can be manipulated different ways to allow the core colour to show through.  I started off doodle embossing on the 12x12 rubber sheet I got with the embossing tips from Amy Chomas Creations product line.  Check out my posts labeled "cricut tricks" if you are interested.  I used my old Fiskars dry Embossing table kit, aka "Scrap Boss" as the base surface.  I couldn't find my distress tool kit so I improvised with the cricut tool kit, the little spoon tool has a very sharp tip, perfect for doodle scraping the paper.  I will definitely try that again.

 I used the gypsy to cut the kitty from "four legged friends" cartridge at 6.4" x 3.55"   See the grey star paper, it was a nice surprise to see it made the perfect accent for Boomer colour.  I used some of the trendy twine I won from the last swarm, "blueberry" colour, some thread for whiskers, and foam dots to lift it off the page for some dimension.  I doodled the checkerboard pajamas with cricut markers after running the tip of the marker around the cut to dull the bright white borders of the cutout.   I'd never used cricut markers this way and highly recommend it.  The stubby end and thick plastic holding the nib makes it almost impossible to scribble the marker off the edge. 

 Boomer is modeling some cool socks that I made by running some dollar store socks through the serger to make narrow tubes 2 years ago.  I saw them blogged as an April fools joke a few years ago & thought it was so funny!  He did not prefer the closed toe socks and became adept at pulling them off very quickly.  Conversely, he didn't mind the leg warmers since he could still walk and climb, however hysterical his gait was initially, hee hee!  He's such a good sport, he really doesn't mind.

 "The cat's Pajamas" was from "meow" cartridge, but I reduced the right & left border manually with scissors.  

It took the whole afternoon puttering along but it was so relaxing to make this fun layout.

Happy Thanksgiving!