"Hello Kitty" Card

Ran across this idea on a Stampin' Up page.  The bow is done with the retired Butterfly punch and a 3/4" circle punch.  The eyes are 3/4" punched circles and the nose is a Small Oval punch.  I drew the whiskers with a Stampin' Up water based marker.

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.

Hello Kitty Mug

My granddaughter asked me to make something with Hello Kitty on it for a co-worker's daughter.  From start to finish, this took about 30 minutes with Make the Cut software and my sandblasting cabinet.

It takes longer to remove the vinyl stencil than it does to do the etching!

When she asked me to do this, I was only working with vinyl.  Now that I've learned to etch glass, this is totally permanent and can be run through the dishwasher which makes it much more practical.

Hello Kitty Card

THe Hello Kitty was cut at 3 7/8".  I would not recommend cutting it any smaller or you'll never get the little pieces off the paper! LOL!

The background paper came from the clearance section at the LSS.  Wish I had several more sheets of it because it's perfect raindrops!

"Cheer" was cut with Plantain Schoolbook and the arrow is from Accent Essentials.

A new year, a new technique

Yesterday I picked up a copy of CardMaker magazine and read an article about Gina Krupsky from Gina K. Designs.  One of her favorite stamping techniques is called emboss resist.  You emboss an image and then sponge ink over the top.  The embossed area won't absorb the ink so it makes it stand out from the background paper.

I had never tried this so, using her example in the magazine, here's what I came up with.

Background is SU Ballet Blue and Old Olive cardstock.  I ran the blue through my Swiss Dots Cuttlebug folder.

In Microsoft Word, I typed in the sonnet How Do I Love Thee?  by ELizabeth Barrett Browning and printed it out on white cardstock. 

The butterfly image is embossed with white embossing powder and then I used MS inks to cover the image.

I computer printed the "miss you" and punched it off center with an 1 1/4" punch, mounted that onto a blue 1 1/2" scallop and a 1 3/4" green scallop.

Since I used the white embossing powder, the butterflies have sort of a yellow-green tinge to them.  I like the way this card turned out!  This is a technique I'll have to keep in mind.

This next card's just a fun one I made last night.  The sun image is from Hello Kitty Greetings.  The sentiment inside is " you brighten my day".