Thank You card #2 for swap

Hi again!  As promised I'm showing the second thank -you card I made for the online swap.  I also added a new badge to my blog for Close To My Heart (CTMH) products.  I'm learning like crazy here!  I joined up for the great consultant package.  The products are really nice quality and the catalogues are beautiful, friendly and products are reasonably priced.  Maybe I'll even make a sale?  I won't be nagging people to go look, but if anyone is interested, I did post my first and possibly only picture of myself there.

Enough about that, back to the card!  Oops I did it again!  A new super sticky cricut mat, paired with thin-ish quality paper = time scraping the mat for one stinking useable cut, grrrr!  I should know better, nothing like  an impromptu refresher course!

The one on the left is what I was aiming for, but didn't work out.  I dug through my paper stash & found a sheet of "little yellow bicycle" brand paper called "blue linen" and it looked better, but not with the dark blue contrast bits.  I used a soft blue recollections brand paper for the base & talk bubble.  I cut the bird & its components from the "3Birds on parade" cricut cartridge at 3.32" x 3.52".

 Using the gypsy really helps make quick work of this.  We won't talk about how the first prototype was also sized too small on that chewed up blue sheet will we...  I will note that leaving all these bits on the mat until assembly is the best trick ever.  So much better than hunting down bits during assembly and wondering if something is forwards/backwards, or MIA with these itty bitty pieces of paper.

 The white scallop base is from "the cricut "art philosophy" cartridge, exclusive to CTMH, sized 5"x4".  I used a "7 gypsies" brand roll-a-stamp for the "greetings."  I hadn't thought this through very well until I saw the bird looked mysteriously floating.

So I dug back into my stash & found some brown paper, ripped it into roughly 1/2" strips, rolled them around a chopstick & twisted them a bit.  I used a glue pen for the little bits and my big pink ATG gun for assembly.

That's better, birdie has a perch!  I added recollections brand iridescent blue rhinestone sticker for the sparkle in the eye.  No lottery kiosks were visited to find little pencils.  Well, maybe just one?   Honest, Dollar stores all over town did not have small pencils.

The inside is printed on white paper, and complements the cover nicely.  You will have to go here to see the free-printable-thank-you-card inside!

Happy Easter everyone!

Sympathy card swap returns

These are my return mail from the sympathy card swap.  I did not create these cards, but you can see mine here my sympathy card swap entry..

There's only one blogger and I do not know who created which card to give credit to them so I will respect their privacy and just say, THANK YOU!

The inside is blank.  details Feb 7, 2012 post  I really like the punched edge detail.

The inside is blank.  The doily has been gently coloured robins egg blue.  The top layer looks to be an Imagine machine creation.  This would also be a lovely blank sentiment card, "thinking of you" or "missing you."

The inside says, "When the joys are still remembered But the sorrow has quietly gone, There will always be a special place In the hard - where love lives on."  Lovely divided embossing, very elegant looking.

The inside says, "Our caring thoughts are with you during this difficult time."  Its so simple and genuine looking.

The inside says, "Praying for friends to comfort you, faith to uphold you, and loving memories to heal your heart."  Each of those squares have been glued on individually.  If I had done this, I'm sure they would all be cattywonkers!

The inside says, "May you find comfort in God's love."  This is very sweet and genuine looking.

Again, big thank you to everyone for letting me join in.  This was a really nice challenge.

Another card swap

I joined another card swap on the cricut circle message-board.  Everyone is creating 2 cards.  I chose thank you cards, since they're handy to have.  I dug out my old Fiscars "Scrapboss" manual embossing system, and the stencil template "Whimsical letters"  to hand emboss the word Thank you on the negative cuts of the butterfly. I did do a practice emboss to gauge the size, and found I could place 2 at a time between the stencil layers.  Once I set the centre letters, they were fairly quick to do.  A lucky find was I accidentally embossed the "y" not quite right, so I redid them right over the mistake & its not obvious at all.

 I used coordinations colour core paper, 3 are sanded, the one in the lower left corner is only half sanded to show before & after.  These are for the inside of the cards.  Can you see which one is goofy?  hint, look for the "h."

 I used gypsy wanderings cartridge, butterfly top layer cut out at 3.68"x3.53" and the corresponding base layer cut at 3.87"x 3.47".  The base layer is embossed using sizzix brand  "dotmatrix" embossing folder and sanded before the top was glued on.  The lil bows are "peapod" coloured twine, a gift from a sweet friend.  Its a lucky bonus that the same twine looks nice with both colour variations of this card.

I'm a bit blocked about the second card, I have the inside all planned out but the outside is not cooperating.  hmmmmm, I'll have to show those when they're done.