Another Monday night making cards

Here’s some cards that one of my younger girls made and allowed me to take pictures of her cards to share with all of you. She did a very good job…be sure to comment below and let her know how good she did. Enjoy!

Make a card Monday

So we had another Monday night class with 7 wonderful ladies, and 2 sweet younger ladies attending…each one making a few beautiful cards. Our first card of the evening was a scraplift that I saw, and modified it a little with files that I already had, and then I had to even change them a tad to make it the way I liked it, using Make the Cut software, (have I said lately how much I love this program)?

So our first card of the evening was entitled “Snail Mail”, a perfect card for those of us who procrastinate and forget to mail that birthday card or if you always send email, how about a card for that special someone, cause we all know a card in the mailbox would be a great pick me up! Enjoy!

Snail Mail

 

 

Our second card of the evening was supposed to be using a technique called “faux bleaching”. It is a really neat technique, however, I thought when it called for glossy cardstock, I thought the writer meant photo paper. Although embossing on photo paper is really pretty, it didn’t work for what I was trying to accomplish. So we decided to table that card for another week and we did a fall card, still using Tim Holtz reinker dyes. We used the Maple Leaf Cuttlebug die cut/embossing folder, photo paper and reinkers. Sentiments for the cards were picked from a variety of stamps that our dear friend Ruby had brought with her…she is a Close to my Heart demonstrator and she has hundreds of beautiful stamps. So enjoy our cards as each one came out a little different.

Laugh Scrapbook Layout

So I found some pictures and when I looked at them, they made me just start laughing, so I thought, I needed to scrap them and that just had to be my title…I hope you enjoy!

On this layout, I wanted to do a class with no paper piecings, a title that was fun and easy to do page for even a beginner and yet still be very eye catching. We used a crimper on the title giving it the corrugated appearance, the title was cut using MTC software or if you have SCAL it can be done with that also, and we placed journaling blocks above our photos, and then the girls were to add their own embellishments to the page.  Let me know what you think…we love to read your comments.

Hoping to post my layout and maybe a couple of the other girls layouts on here soon. I hope you like this one that Anne N. made…love her embellishments!

Cardmaking

So this summer has been pretty busy for me and an emotional one. So jumping back into my classes is really helping me.

Some of you may not know, but my mom passed away in June. It was a very difficult time for all of us as she had only been not feeling well for a few weeks. Actually, she had been recovering from 2 strokes that she suffered about a year and a half ago, but she was doing so well.  I thank God that I was able to make it their (to Florida) and spend just  4 1/2 hours with her before she passed from this world to her Heavenly home. I miss her so much, but I know she is with the Lord she loved and with her sons and also my son and I know that one day I will see them all again.

So with the summer months, we have really slowed down as far as classes as everyone is busy, but with that said I have had a couple of my faithful ladies want to keep going and so we have done some cards and crafty projects, also a few layouts. We’ve been doing the classes right here in my home as I never know if there will be 2 ladies or 8…so it makes it nice to be here and have everything right at hand!

This week we did two projects! We made a card accordion box  which can hold several types of cards, such as Hello, Thinking of You, Thank You, Happy Birthday, Sympathy, the box holds up to 4 tab dividers and probably could hold about 8 to 10 cards. We also made a sunset card using inking techniques and a brayer, adding a stamped image and sentiment, as well as piercing and brads. So I hope you like our projects. Enjoy!

So I was trying to get the pictures online tonight so you could see what we’ve been making, unfortunately, I didn’t have good lighting so you can’t see the detail on the cards, but they came out so good, and then on my cardbox, I decided to added a button to the one on the right to dress it up a little, and it wasn’t quite dry and just as I snapped the picture, the button started to slide off. So luckily it was still holding on when I snapped, it sits in the middle of the front pannel, and I added some natural hemp to the middle of the button, it really added detail to it. Enjoy!

Last weeks class, we also made two cards that were not only beautiful, but fun to make…I have one lady, who the past 2 weeks has said “I think this is the most beautiful card I’ve ever made” and then this week, she finished her card and again said, ““I think this is the most beautiful card I’ve ever made” too funny…love having her and the encouragement to keep on learning and sharing with all of them. So I hope you enjoy our cards!

Window frame card.

Easel Card

Sharpening Cricut Blades

So I was curious today and thought: there has to be a way to sharpen Cricut blades and so I began a search today. I own a Craftrobo and users on their sites have always told us to use heavy duty aluminum foil, and it has worked for me. I still have my original blade with my CR. But my Cricut, I have bought in two years over 20 to 30 blades! That is about $150 just in blades, so today we went to Walmart and I bought some heavy grade sandpaper and heavy duty aluminum foil and I am going to experiment and see which is better. But on the web today here is what I have found from several sites:

Blades can be sharpened with heavy duty aluminum foil. Simply cover your mat with the foil. Create a file with several straight lines, a couple of circles, and a few squares. Set the speed to slow. Set the thickness to 1.
By sharpening them occasionally, you can increase the lifespan of the blades.
Lint can sometimes get caught up in the blade. Remove the cap and check the blade under a magnifying glass to see if any fibers are present. If so, use some compressed air to get rid of it.

So my idea of sandpaper, definitely did not work…so it was worth the try, but unfortunately it didn’t sharpen my blade, but made it worse. I think my mat needs to be stickier to use the aluminum foil…so I will try it.but like the website suggests, is to sharpen before the blade gets dull.

My goal is to find a way to sharpen these blades, because I go through so many. If you have found a way to sharpen your Cricut blades, be sure to post it here and I will definitely try it.

Thanks! Enjoy!

Blog Candy

So I was checking out some new sites and came upon this site and she is fantastic! Her work is top of the line..I love her colors and her techniques. I plan to keep following her blog…so check it out…I hate to say it…but I am probably going to do a little scraplifting.

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So go and check it out and sign up for her blog candy it ends July 31st.

Another Beach/Pool page with adorable penguins

This weeks class ended up being on a Tuesday evening because my beautiful baby girl had her 20th birthday on Monday and wanted to spend the day with me without my having to leave to teach a class, so I thought that was pretty sweet of her. But guess what? As the day went on, she received an invite from a friend she hadn’t seen for a while to go to dinner, so I told her to go and have fun. So class took place on Tuesday evening and it was a reunion of sorts. Our friend from Florida is up for the summer and her and her daughter who lives here both came, and another dear friend who hasn’t been for a while also came, and of course one of my regulars came and so we had a wonderful evening and everyone’s pages came out beautiful.

I hope you enjoy seeing our pages, and how when made with different paper and rearranging the layout, each taking on their own personalities. Enjoy :)

Jamie had some beautiful Close to my Heart paper that she used. I love this paper.

These next few layouts are Nina’s, Annette’s and Rubies, here we used photo copied cardstock for our mats. This paper came out of a pack and we didn’t have enough for everyone so we photo copied it!

Usually we chalk or ink all our pieces but this week we only did a little on our tree and used micro black pens and a white gel to add some detail to some of our pieces…they came out so cute, and the added little extra was some hemp for the bow on the bathing trunks, it just added that little extra.

Our Palm trees were missing the coconuts…and so with a pair of scissors, not the Cricut, the girls cut these cute coconuts and added it to the layout…how cool is that?

These cuts were made using Myscrapchick penguins…I own everyone of their files! Literally! I used the Make the Cut software to do all of our cuts. I love this program. Learning new things everyday on what it can do.

Be sure to leave a comment…we love to hear from people!