Have a Heart: E.C.G. Valentines (+ Cricut ideas)

okay, so not "ECG" as in electrocardiogram...

(though being Valentine's Day cards there are
a couple of hearts around here)

(heeheehee) ...but rather E.C.G.
as in
Eat Cake Graphics

some teensy weensy stamped
eat cake graphics images on a couple
of Valentine's cards:

One is a standard A2 card (4 1/4" x 5 1/2")...

(with a tiny wind-up mousie)
I've been trying to make more standard-sized cards for
mailability. Which kinds of cards do you prefer: standard,
or square, or round, or strange folds, or fill-in-the-blank?

The other card I made is a littler guy (3"x 3")...
(one of my favourite sizes)

(with a wee bee!)

both cards have scallops and hearts
(which I shall soon ramble incessantly about
in hopes that it might be interesting to somebody) heehee

1...the stamp images & card details
2...digital paper (kitty text) freebie
3...tool talk: Cricut chatter
4...free templates for hand cutting options

-1-


Some big pics of the wee stamped
Eat Cake Graphics images:

The Wind up Mouse stamp can be found here.
(This little fellow measures in at: 1 inch by 0.5 inches)

The heart was cut on the cricut (details below); it's layered with vellum over it, pierced and stitched with black thread.

The sentiment is printed from a word document onto Paris Bleedproof cardstock (which lets you heat emboss out of the inkjet printer, if you are fairly quick. Instructions on digital heat embossing on Paris Bleedproof in my post here.)

The cloud patterned paper is some older stuff from the Prima Marketing Animal Bash Collection called "Eager"

-2-

The black & white kitty text paper is a digital one I made by scanning an old book about cats (I love the look of using real book pages, but printed ones are acid free AND I can share the files with You!) :o)

Here is the kitty text paper freebie,
if you'd like to download it it:


(Click on the image above it will open full size then you can save it
or click here to visit Acrobat.com to Download it)

The Buzzle Bee stamp can be found here
(it looks enormous here, but it's only
a wee 0.8 inch x 0.7 inch)

The sentiment is printed on Vellum
(which also lets you heat emboss out of an ink jet printer)

The patterned papers are: GCD Party it Up collection (dotted paper)
BasicGrey Urban Prairie 6x6 paper-Wild Flowers (honeycomb flower paper)

-3-

Trendy things to make using the
Cricut (and the Plantin Schoolbook cartridge
that comes with it).

Have no cricut? No worries. I've linked up scallop and heart templates as well (for those who enjoy cutting by hand and free stuff.)

Confession time!!! I am ashamed to say that my Cricut Expression cutting machine has been sitting in a drawer unused for a VERY long time (almost 2 years, GASP!) It felt like such a waste to let something like that sit idle when so many people long to own one of their own, but I'd not been feeling well enough for all of the experimenting. I had even received SCAL as a gift but have still never cut a thing with it (I can't figure it out, WEEP!) That's one of my more materialistic New Year's resolutions.

I do have 2 cartridges (the plantin schoolbook that came with it and a farm animals one which was a gift from a lovely reader who is far too generous.) So..... yesterday I vowed to get it out & make it work.

Turns out that there are a couple of "trendy" things that the "old school" Plantin Schoolbook cartridge has on it--that (if you're a little like me) you might not have realized:

1) Scallops (for layers of beautiful lovely fat or wee scallop edges!)

2) Hearts (I've always wanted a heart punch. Who knew?) The hearts above were cut on the cricut, but I wasn't pleased with the way the different Cricut-cut sizes nested, for some reason, so I cut the mat layers underneath them free-hand with scissors.

These little scallops were cut from light-weight white paper:

They were made this way...

1) Cut ten scallops at 3/4" size (if memory serves) I believe that is the measurement of the scallop, but I could be wrong. ;o)
2) Make 3x3 note card (cut some white cardstock to measure 3" x 6" & score in the center
3) Adhere the ten scallops to the note card
4) Trim off the edges with scissors
5) Distress the edges of all the scallops (I used my fingernail) though I did get one wee paper-cut. And I'm guessing distressing with blood instead of ink is not likely to be the new trend. CREEPY! ;o)

Scallop and Heart


If you rather cut things by hand:

my free BIG scallop template is a PDF on SplitCoastStampers here
&
heart template Google image search here

Thanks so much for popping by!

P.S. I'm not affiliated with Eat Cake Graphics. I bought these wee stamps 4 years ago & just had to use 'em on Valentines this year. :o)

P.P.S. Thinking of buying a Cricut? Before you do, might I play devil's advocate and suggest reading this article? I've never used a Silhouette, but long-time meticulous crafter Kristina Werner has me wishing I'd tried one out! (I have no affiliation with Silhouette at all, sadly LOL) ;O)

P.P.P.S. If you wanted, you could use the hearts to make this...

...gorgeous 3D heart banner
Photo & tutorial from How about Orange
(You could use either machine-cut hearts or hand-cut ones, of course)

P.P.P.P.S. Oops, I think I have the chatties, sorry!

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Button Tray

Do you adore buttons? I do...

....so I made a small button tray
(measuring about 10 x 5 inches):

In a former life, this used to be one of those light (balsa wood-ish) trays from the dollar store. It cost 50 cents ($2.00 for a nesting set of 4). The buttons are a mix of cheapos and yummy vintage ones that were a gift from my Mum. They're all happy together, just glued onto a piece of black cardstock.

make a button tray:

1) Sand the wood a little with some sandpaper & wipe the dust off.

2) Paint the tray with white acrylic paint (or whatever paint you like).

3) Adhere a piece of black cardstock for contrast (cut to fit the bottom of the tray). Of course, you could use any colour...or none at all.

4) Arrange your buttons first to be sure you have enough of them & they're how you like them.

5) Glue em down! The easiest way to keep the arrangement seemed to be to pick each button up one by one & glue the buttons into the tray bottom (using clear lacquer glue).
Little note: having some teeny tiny buttons makes it easiest to fill the tray nicely right to the edges.

If you wanted to, you could add a piece of glass to the tray to make it fit for use at a tea party (or for cocktails). To make it level, I would just be sure to have several buttons of the same height (the highest buttons of your collection) in each of the corners so that the glass sits evenly atop them, and then you could affix the glass by gluing on wooden trim, or however you like.

...and that's it!...

And wouldn't it be nifty to make one of these with
a zillion snaps instead of buttons??? sigghhhhhh!

Clickable Blogger pics:

Happy Crafting!

P.s. Got a thing for buttons?

...You might enjoy perusing this list of links

(and a button pushpin tutorial)

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Mouse (the cat) reads Murakami...

Miss Mouse has been busy reading!
(And I--the crazy cat lady--have been at it again) ;o)

...

Mouse can often be found with her nose in a book:



One of Mouse's favourite authors is Haruki Murakami. Here she is
engrossed in his novel The Wind Up Bird Chronicle (for obvious reasons):



She will tell you that she is often enthralled and thrilled by
Murakami's mastery of magical realism:



Mouse gets rather grumpy if you interrupt her reading --
especially if you disrupt her enjoyment of the the last pages of a chapter
(or heaven forbid, you marr the end of the novel!):



She also detests it when you ask her stupid questions
about the narrative and will not hesitate to give you "the look":


Mouse has been known to read until she is
so very very sleepy that....

...she can't keep
her eyes open a second longer:

The End

Hope you're having a great week!

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Déjà vu??? Tiffany Doodles cards!

Have you seen these before? ;o)

I would swear that I have blogged these cards already, but in looking over old posts it seems that I have not. I freaked out when I saw that, since they are all made using images drawn by a dear online friend who is very talented: Tiffany Richards.

...and they were ever so fun to make...

My timing is not horrible though, I suppose, since Tiffany just opened her first official store: Tiffany Doodles. It's looking lovely and I'm enjoying making some new things with other images of hers.

Despite their being older cards, it is really handy to have some cards to post. My duties on the home-front are keeping craftiness from happening (Charles can't walk, of course, and is in desperate need of a nurse, cook, waitress, and chief bottlewasher or general gofer...) which means the half-made new cards will wait a wee bit... He is being a trooper though!

Well, enough of my blah-blah, onto the cards!...

This one was my first inchie card ever:

I bought this set ages ago, but was waiting to get an inchie punch (That's why I'd never made an inchie card before this one.) LOVE this sweet tea cup and the fact that you can print digis wee so you can go crazy with inchies!

To make the little tea bag tag...

A) Printing "TEA" on cardstock in black marker
B) Cut them out (tiny) and edge in silver gel pen
C) Glue them onto tea cup inchies
D) Draw a silver tea bag string

You can find the Teacup & Teapot digital set here
(it has sayings in the classiest font--used here on the "Tea Time" tag)


The next card uses the sweetest little lamp...

Another Tiffany Doodles digi image
that I'm just in love with.

The lamp is available here (for $1)

It's embossed on digital patterned
paper to paper piece it (from TracyAnnDigitalArt on etsy)

The sentiment is a sticker from SRM stickers


the "Thinking of You" sheet available here.

Tiff makes some stunning flowers (real & doodley):

This Mom's day card is made using Tiffany's
photographic flower line art called Velvet Flower.

She even shares a tutorial on how you can make your own digi
like this from your Photographs here (Completely Genius!)



To make the image into 3D flowers:

A) Change the colour of the image to turquoise
B) Print it in different sizes and emboss them in clear embossing powder
(here's a post with a write-up of a quick way to emboss from the ink jet printer)
C) Cut them out (trimming in between petals)
D) Shape the flowers & adhere them to the card mat
E) Stitch turquoise seed beads onto the centers

To make the matching leaves:

A) Colour some of the flowers over with green copic marker
B) Cut into leaf shapes & adhere them around the flowers

The paper is GCD Paris Nights patterned paper stamped with this paisley stamp
in Versamark ink then embossed in clear and distrssed over it with white pigment ink.

Tiffany's Butterfly image is available here (for $1!)
(I cut the butterfly in half to make 2 butterflies--Two for a buck! hehehe)

The butterflies are embossed and their bodies are stitched with seed beads.
(The paper is more digital patterned paper from TracyAnnDigitalArt on etsy)

You can see many more cards with Tiffany's gorgeous images
in the Caardvarks Challenge sponsored by Tiffany in May here:

(Stunning cards by those 'Varks, lemme tell Ya!)

AND loads more in the Tiffany Doodles
gallery on Flickr here.

Clickable Blogger photos (for those who prefer them):

Thanks for stopping by.
Hope you have a gorgeous day!

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