Colored the main image with spectrum noir markers. Cut the sentiment using create-a-critter cartridge. Stamped gingham background in spiced marmalade.
Sponged the blue background. Cut the fish and the grass using the create-a-critter cartridge. Printed the sentiment on vellum.
Stamped the woodgrain background in walnut stain distress ink. Masked it using painter's tape. Then sponged it in the masked areas. Cut the fish using cricut. Printed the sentiment on white CS and then sponged using walnut stain DI.
The butterflies are cut using cricut. The background was created by watercoloring with distress inks, then embossing and finally burnishing with inka gold.
Another valentine inspiration! Created my own patterned paper by sponging distress inks dried marigold, spiced marmalade and barn door. Then stamp woodgrain background in bar door. I cut out the letters using Cricut but glittered them using the wrong color. Then I’d a light bulb moment – love those! I used the negative of the letter die cut and used it as a stencil. Colored the letters using spectrum noir markers and dotted them with white gel pen!
I hoped you enjoyed the ideas and inspiration shared by the team on day one of the bloghop! Here’s another day full of creativity! Day 2 is devoted to anything-but –a-card!
I’ve had a banner on my to-do list forever! So when deciding what to make for the bloghop I figured that I should make a banner and check off that item from my list after all!
[My apologies for the poor lighting]
Instead of making something very specific like “happy diwali”, I chose to make something more generic based on the theme of diwali and which would also be an inspiration for everyday life. To me Diwali is all about celebration. Celebrate the festival, celebrate the homecoming of Lord Ram, celebrate with friends and so on. “Celebrate” is also an inspiration for me – it tells me to celebrate life. Everyday. As it happens. Celebrate every moment. Celebrate what you have.
Coming down to the mechanics of this banner: I used Cricut and SCAL to cut the triangles and the letters.
This banner is quite easy and quick to make; just that the glitter part takes some time and maybe a little messy but it’s worth it!
My second project is something that I plan to make for my friends this Diwali – little mason jars filled with some homemade treats! These jars are so cute and adorable!!
I used a 5” square of fabric cut using pinking shears. Here’s a closer look at the tag.
I cut the tag from white CS using Cricut and Tags, Bags, Boxes and More Cartridge. Stamped it with a background stamp using versamark and then embossed in gold embossing powder. Sponged it with various distress inks. Printed the sentiment on vellum using Word. Cut out the diya using Cricut and SCAL.
That’s not all! All my other team mates have some wonderful creations to share too:
Supplies
Banner: PTI cardstock, White 4” doilies, 65# cardstock for letters, Martha Stewart brown glitter, brown grosgrain ribbon, glossy accents, Inka gold platinum, Mini mister, Distress Inks – Mustard seed, dried marigold, broken china and peeled paint.
Tag: PTI white CS, Impression Obsession Damask cover-a-card, Vellum, Distress Ink – Fired brick, peeled paint and Dried marigold.
Since I didn’t have any letter stamps I thought I would substitute it with die cut letters. I cut the letters using SCAL and Cricut. The font is (I think) Frank Gothic heavy.
Absolutely love the cleeeeeeean look of these cards!
Here’s another vinyl project I did for our laundry:
It was cut using Cricut and SCAL. The font for “LAUNDRY” is Old English Text MT and the rest is Times New Roman. The ornamental scroll is from a dingbat font that I downloaded. I stretched the LAUNDRY to take up the full 24” inches of width and cut the rest of the text proportionately. I love the end result!
I used vinyl and etching cream to give a pizza bottle a new life. Here’s the transformation:
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I cut out the lettering from vinyl using SCAL and cricut. Adhered the negative of the vinyl to the bottle. Smeared the etch cream all over the exposed glass surface. Followed mfr’s direction on etching. I’d two such bottles so one went to the sugar and the other to the coffee!
Sometimes something as mundane as a white paper bag can inspire you? Or is it that the white paper bag is a clean canvas which is natural to inspire you? Either ways, this Lacoste shopping bag inspired me to convert it into a cute gift bag! I love how it turned out! Don’t you think it would be perfect for a kid?
I cut the following using Cricut:
I design is on both the sides of the bag.
I was perusing through my meager stash of stamps – thanks to my recent de-cluttering – to find some inspiration for my next card. Can you believe it? I found none. None as in zero. Zot. On the contrary it created in me a desire to buy some new stamps. After all I didn’t have ANY masculine stamp…or a text background stamp…or floral silhouettes…and so on. I’m sure most of you can relate to this feeling! I didn’t want to give in to that feeling because lately I’ve been buying a lot of fabric to feed my other addiction – sewing :-). Given all these constraints I figured Cricut and SCAL were my best buds here.
I’d bought the Create-a-critter cartridge because, of course the cuts looked sooo cute, and then lot of people had been praising it; but I hadn’t had a chance to make something out of it. That my dear friends was the inspiration for my next card. Flipping through the handbook, there were so many critters I wanted to go along with but just couldn’t think of an appropriate sentiment. Finally after scratching my head, pulling my hair and searching the internet ( a LOT of that!) I found nice little sentiments for the whale. So whale it was.
It took me a tremendous amount of time to make this card – right from designing to assembling it – so I made two of them. To make myself feel better. That all that time was not spent in making not one but TWO cards. Yep they’re quite similar but hey I tried my best to make changes here and there without investing MORE time!
At the end of it all – I’m SO happy!! So proud of these cards :-)
I recently bought a pack of assorted cardstock from Joann for cutting with Cricut. I must tell you that it has made my life so much easier and made me love my Cricut so much more! I agree that the cardstock is quite thin but since most of the shapes are layered it doesn’t really make a difference. In fact the thinness make it easy to layer. It cuts in one pass (unlike PTI which cuts in two passes) and the cuts are very clean! There are 25 shades so there’s a light and dark for almost every color – love that. Again that’s very useful for layering. I would highly recommend this cardstock pack for use with Cricut!
Looks like the title is just apt for this post! I came up with the title because of the whales involved and had no intention of making this truly a whale of post!!
Somehow reading that title gives me no indication that I’m going to bore you with a card…good for me and bad for you :-).
I love that romantic windows cut file from Heather! And I must say that the card turned out way beyond what I’d in mind! Doesn’t it look gorgeous?!?!? I know I know I’m trumpeting my own horn…but what can I do…I just can’t help admiring it :-)
Cut the romantic window at approximately 3” in width in black. Then cut a “blackout” of it, in a slightly smaller size (around 2.5-2.75” in width) from a white CS panel 4.25” X 5.5”. So that I now had a “window”. Adhered the black window to the white CS panel. On the card base, masked a circle and sponged with distress inks. Popped the window panel on the card base using pop dots.
I hand drew the frame and the black strings and also tried a little rock-n-roll technique here. If you look closely at the green ornaments they’re shaded with dark green ink.
The tree was cut using SCAL and Cricut. Then I stamped it in two colors; first stamping the bands with light color and then with dark color. Scored the frame using a scoring blade. Stamped the sentiment on a strip of red CS. The tree is covered all over with diamond stickles. Added colored rhinestones to the tree.
All of these cards use Hero Arts Swirl Christmas.
I tried to create the outline for the images in SCAL but didn’t get really good results. Anyways, I cut the above images using SCAL and cricut and then stamped them with versamark. The black string is hand drawn. Background is stamped with swirl in versamark.
The labels were cut using SCAL and Cricut. The stars and sentiment were stamped in versamark and embossed with gold embossing powder.
Stamped the tree on Simply Chartreuse and cut the image. Hand drew the snow outline on a white CS and cut it out. Sponged the edges with Broken China distress ink.
November was extremely busy with the craft fairs and then a thanksgiving trip to visit the family! So I haven’t updated the blog for quite some time. Since there are lots of things to share, I’m going to post them in batches starting with the christmas cards.
All these cards have been made using the Cricut cartridge Christmas Solutions.
The house is cut at 3” and the trees at 5”.
The santa claus and reindeers is cut at 2.25”. Moon is also part of the same image.
This week’s sketch is super simple and hope you love it as much as I do!
I realized that I neither have any manly card nor any general occasion like all the best, farewell, etc in my stash. Thus whenever a non-birthday occasion comes up and I want a card – there’s none! So I’m going to try make cards to fill those needs. It’s so so so hard to make a masculine card!!! I find it so much easier to make a girly one – coz I love to add glitter, pearls and flowers! You can imagine how hard my life’s going to be for the next few days/months/etc – however long it takes to add variety to my pile!
I was at a loss of ideas for manly cards so I decided to take some inspiration from a photo.
source: apartment therapy
Argyle is my favorite!! My DH says that I’m a walking advertisement for Argyle! And nothing says a man better than a nice argyle pattern! So there I’d my design! I *love* how my card turned out!!
I cut the diamonds using Cricut and SCAL. It’s probably not easily visible but the diamonds in between blue and green is cut from Soft Stone CS. Are you wondering how I made all those lines? I hand dotted that line! Yes, unbelievable but I did 
This shape card was on my list for a long time. Finally it made it’s way to the top, pushing others!
I took a picture from the web and created my SVG. I love creating these one of a kind SVGs and cutting with my Cricut!
The card was cut at 5.5 inch width. Cut all the circles. Then marked A, B, X and Y on the colored ones with sharpies. I kept referencing the actual picture to make sure it was as close to the original as possible. I tried some color pencil shading to make it more natural but alas my shading isn’t all that great so I backed off. I cut the sentiment in Century Gothic font.
You can download the SCUT file here.
Winner of Simply Sketches #8 is Neha! Congratulations Neha! Your glitters will be on the way to you very soon!
Sketch for this week:
Why do simple cards take soooo long?!?!? It took me one ruined card and some more minutes to reach to this card! It looks so much better IRL. I especially like the way “you” came out. I looked for fonts and fonts and more fonts till I was satisfied with this! Since I’d seen the Papertrey dies for Wonderful words I ‘d been planning to try out something similar with my Cricut! Love how it turned out!
I embossed the circle using the Nestabilities Circle die. Masked the circle using a die-cut and stamped the polka dot background (had to use my new stamp 
If you use the sketch to make a card, please leave me a link and I would love to see your creation!
, I’m giving away these 3 vials of Martha Stewart Tinsel Glitter. The colors are – crystal, garnet and fire opal. 
