Summery Watermelon Card

I was inspired by a card I saw on Pinterest this evening and decided it would be a great summertime card for OWH.

The watermelon was done with 3", 2 3/4", and 2 1/2" circles, layered and cut in half.  The hearts were done with a Martha Stewart punch.  The yellow scalloped border was made with an EK Success border punch and the sentiment was printed with my computer.

Forever Card

I named this one "Forever Card" because it took me FOREVER to get the cuts done and assembled!  It was seen on Pinterest and I tracked it back to Claire Creates Cards.  Had I read all of her description, I'd have saved myself a lot of time and effort.  She has a link to a video for making the star burst behind the flowers which is super simple.  I used a quilt block clip art image, traced and cut it with Make The Cut.  Each of the rays had to be numbered so they'd fit back together properly. 

Would you believe this card, including the base, has 22 pieces?   Since there are six different papers in the star burst pieces, I completed six of these.

The top border is from the Elegant Edges cartridge and was embossed with a Cuttlebug folder.  I used a Flower Shop stamp and Pansy Punch for the large flowers.  The centers were done with a Boho Blossom punch and secured with brads.

Butterflies On A Vine

Inspired by a card seen online

The larger leaves were cut with my Cameo.  I layered some shapes punched with a Martha Stewart punch over those.  The butterflies were done with a Stampin' Up embosslit and the background was embossed with a Cuttlebug folder.

Pastel Butterflies Card

The butterflies, scalloped borders and the piece for the sentiment were done with Stampin' Up punches.  I added some baby blue liquid pearl dots and pen stitching with a Stampin' Up marker.  The base for the butterflies and the yellow border were embossed with Cuttlebug folders.

Popsicle Card

Inspired by a card seen online

The Popsicles were made using a half round rectangle in Make The Cut.  A rounded rectangle was used for the sticks.  A tear was used for the melted droplet.  All those shapes are built into the software.

I added Peachy Keen stamped faces, a cut out "hi" and a little shading and pen work.

Sunflower and Butterfly Card

Sunflowers are from the Bloom cartridge
Flower centers were done with a Bitty Punch from Stampin' Up
Greenery is from Accent Essentials
The butterfly is an EK Success punch
I used a rotary cutter to deckle the edge.

Bird Cage Card

The large priority mail box for Operation Write Home is just about full.  I've been concentrating on doing cards for Father's Day since the cut off date for those is April 30th.  But, making the same theme card after card gets boring to me.  Today I went online and searched my Pinterest boards of card ideas and saw one similar to this layout.  It's a nice, spring looking card so I made eight of them.

The narrow pink strip was embossed.  The birdcage is from the Sophie cartridge.  I punched the bird and branches with a Stampin' Up punch and embossed the bird's body.  The sentiment was stamped and punched with their modern label punch then I created a shadow for it using images from their software and cut those with Make The Cut.  The border was done with a Martha Stewart punch.

Hello Spring Card

The retired Stampin' Up set, Hello Spring, was used to make this card.  A Stamp-a-ma-jig made it simple to position the  tulip stamp where I wanted across the white strip.

Inspired by a card seen online a couple of years ago.

3 Hearts Card

Kraft cardstock makes great card fronts.  This is a re-make of a card I did a couple of years ago.  The hearts were sized and cut using Make The Cut software and my Cameo.  I inked the edges of the card front insert and the hearts and added some pen stitching.

"Hello" card

Stampin' Up's pansy punch and flower shop stamp set were used.  I printed the sentiment using Brannonboll Fet font.

The flowers were stamped with tuxedo black Memento ink then the centers were sponged with Dandelion yellow ink.

I saw this card on Dawn Griffith's blog.  She made hers as a gate fold card; I made mine as a standard A2.

Word Search Card

I printed the grid of letters using Hallmark card making software.  The red marker is a clip art shape in the software program.

Blue Daisies Card

I used some clip art of the pearls for the background. Added some silk flowers and put pearl drops in for centers. 

Just For You Card

Daisy Card

Just My Type Card

The typewriter is a clip art image that I imported into Hallmark card making software and added the text.  It's pop dotted for dimension.

An embossing folder by Paper Studio was used on the base.  I inked the letters with some white craft ink to make them stand out on the black background.

Another Graphic 45 Father's Day Card

This morning as I woke up, a card layout popped into my mind.  It was crystal clear.  I knew exactly what I was going to cut and how it would be positioned onto the base.

This is what I wound up making.  It's sort of like the idea I had in mind, but not exactly.  I just couldn't find the "right" paper for my layout!

Double Stamped Card

This technique was seen on a Stampin' Up demonstrator's blog.  I used white craft ink to stamp on the black paper and tuxedo black ink on the white.

Gingham Card

I embellished a Martha Stewart thank you card.  Found several boxes of these on clearance a couple of years ago and liked the punched border on the edge.  They work up really quickly and make nice cards.

The sentiment is from Stampin' Up.  I used one of their bitty punches for the flowers and centers then added some pen lines with a Bermuda Bay marker.

Monochromatic Daffodil Card

I made this with the image colored and without coloring.  I like the monochrome card best.

Masculine Collage Card

Graphic 45 Good Ol' Sport stack was used for this collage card.

More Graphic 45 Father's Day Cards

 These collage cards were all made with Graphic 45 Good Ol' Sport stack. 

Hello Kitty Card

When  my granddaughter was born twenty-one years ago,  (I find it so hard to believe that she'll turn 21 this year!), I looked forward to doing all sorts of cute Hello Kitty things for her.  Well, she turned out to be a tomboy and could care less about Hello Kitty, Barbie and most other girly toys.  But, that doesn't keep Grandma from enjoying Hello Kitty. 

Provocraft sold two Cricut cartridges of Hello Kitty images and I wound up with both of them so now I get to use them on my cards.

I imported the image into Make The Cut and tweaked it just a little.  Making multiples of cards means I streamline things as much as possible to speed up assembly.  The Hello Kitty images have a lot of tiny pieces that I choose not to deal with. 

For the bow, I highlighted the multiple pieces from the Cricut cartridge and made a shadow so it would cut as a single piece rather than five tiny ones.  Then it was simply a matter of adhering it to the back of the black outline.

The ribbon is some I found on clearance a couple of years ago and had forgotten about.  It worked quite well as trim on this particular card.  I just put in a couple of pleats and secured them to the base with a brad.

Three Daisies Springtime Card

The daisy is from the April Showers Cricut cartridge, cut on my Cameo.  I hand embossed the petals on the daisies.

I used Swiss Dots and Divine Swirls Cuttlebug folders to emboss the background.

Father's Day Card

Quick simple card using a clip art image of a motorcycle.

Graphic 45 By The Sea Cards - Part III

 This is my least favorite of all the cards made using this stack.  Wish I had not put the row of pearls around the oval.

The flower centers are Pearl Pen dots; the border is a self-adhesive strip I found at the Dollar Tree when I first began card making.

 The only thing different on this one is that I added some border strips to the top and bottom edges.  Just couldn't think of much to do with an octopus!

 Used a different background paper and added an extra embellishment on this one.

 The seagull and the shells are fussy cuts and pop dotted for dimension.

Well, this one seemed like a good idea when I laid it out.  Not at all happy with the way it turned out.

The By The Sea stack is going into my JetMax cubes for a while.  Frankly, I've run out of ideas on how to use the images.

I'm sure these cards get separated and sent to various units overseas, otherwise one unit will have a lot of sea side themed cards to use.

Graphic 45 By The Sea Cards - Part II

 Some are quite different from the ones posted yesterday, some are similar.  I'm running out of ideas!

So far, there are 21 completed cards from the stack and I have over half of the sheets left.

 I'm trying to not duplicate any of the layouts.  By doing fussy cuts, there's very little waste..

 I used a Martha Stewart punch to layer the hearts.

 The shell was fussy cut from a scrap.

Graphic 45 By The Sea Cards

 Some of these use the same basic images.  Each one is a little different though.

This one has a clip art anchor and a border piece from the collection.

 So far, all I've done is work with the large images found in this stack.

The starfish is a clip art image.

I added two small borders on the sides and trimmed a piece from one of the sheets of linear images.

 Super simple layout.  I just cut the image to size and added another piece from a border strip.

I fussy cut the shells across the bottom of the card as well as the sentiment and put them onto the striped card base.

 On a few of these I added some clip art images and pop dotted them for dimension.

 Just so this one wouldn't be a total duplicate, I added a pop dotted starfish.

 The lighthouse was just the right size for an A2 card.

 This is one of the images cut from the sheet of post cards in this stack.  I fussy cut the stamps and mounted them on top of the stamps printed on the post card.

 Another of the post card images trimmed down.  I cut the stamps from another sheet from the stack.

I fussy cut the children and then pop dotted the clip art starfish and anchor.

Each of the cards were inked with Chestnut Roan ink.