Saturday Card Challenge

Once again Shirley posted a card challenge on the Old Cricut Community page.  We were to use the margarita image and sentiment.

The paper printed with the limes seemed like a logical background to use.

Since the card is so simple I decided to embellish the inside also.

It's Your Day Card

This card was done for a challenge on the Old Cricut Community page.  Shirley (Okieladybug) Thompson has been posting a sketch for the challenge and providing the cut file for the elements.

I used the retired motorcycle stamp from Stampin' Up and added the gear cut outs to the front.  The papers are from a Halloween pack from Stampin' Up.

#2 Card for Okie's Saturday Card Challenge

The chicks are from the Silhouette store,shadowed and cut with Make The Cut.  The flowers are Bitty Punch shapes.

Okie's Saturday Card Challenge

Challenges are just that for me!  A challenge.  This morning, my friend Shirley posted on Facebook that she and Carmen, another friend, were doing a card challenge.  Shirley designed and shared the cutting file for the chicken wire.  The challenge was to do a "chicken card" and post it into an album on Facebook.

I modified Shirley's file for the chicken wire using Make The Cut software and cut it on my Cameo.

The chicken as well as the sentiment are clip art images found online.  I printed the inside of the card first, then measured and determined how large the square should be for the image to show through and hand cut the opening for the window.

 This is the inside of the card.

Stamp Club Challenge Card

I hope the page of Graphic 45 punch outs is a part of the papers we got last night at stamp club for a card making challenge.  Graphic 45 is one of my favorite lines of paper but finding a use for punch outs is always a challenge for me!

The card base is a pale pink.  I removed the oval from a frame on the Elegant Edges cartridge, then set the scalloped edge piece inside a rectangle, joined the shapes and used that to cut the green frame.

Stamp Club Challenge Card

At stamp club last night, we were offered two sheets of cardstock and some tags along with a challenge to make some cards.  We're supposed to bring them back next month and see what ideas everyone comes up with.

Because I do all my cards with Operation Write Home in mind, when I saw the sheet of Happy Campers cardstock with the roads, I immediately thought of someone going home. 

I printed the sentiment onto the tag that I trimmed to fit onto an A2 card and punched the hearts with a Martha Stewart punch.

My Personal Challege

Almost all of the cards I make are copied or based on ones online or in publications.  Recently, I've been participating in some card challenges and have been learning how to better combine colors. But, these challenges have a sketch to use and I wanted to really test myself today.

I gave myself a challenge today to do a card from an image in a Cricut handbook that I did not choose.

The cartridges that I own are on a numbered list in an Excel spreadsheet.  There are 75 cartridges on the list.  I asked my husband to choose a number from 1 to 75 and the cartridge with that number was the one I'd use.  Then I looked at the handbook for the cartridge to see how many pages it contained and asked him to choose a number within that range.  By this time he was totally confused! LOL!

The cartridge was Paisley and page number 65.  That silly old paisley has 7 or 8 layers, depending on how you want to cut it. When I realized that's the image he'd picked, I almost scrapped my whole idea and was going to find an easier image to cut.  But, I persevered!

Choosing colors is a real challenge for me.  I can pick  three or four, but to come up with colors to coordinate for FIVE layers?  It gave me a headache just thinking about it!  I used a fantastic website,  Design Seeds.  This site is a lifesaver for color challenged folks like me!   There are hundreds of color combinations with gorgeous photographs that contain all the colors on there so that's how I came up with the ones I used for this design.

For lack of better names, I'll call the colors teal, peach, rust, purple and olive.  Who would have ever thought you could put them together on the same design?

This was definitely a challenge for me! Not only was picking colors difficult, but it's been a long  time since I've used all the features in Design Studio.  Just figuring out all the layers that I needed to cut probably took me at least 30 minutes!

Once it was assembled, it looked too plain so I used a Signo gel pen to add the doodles.  This reminds me of a Pennsylvania Dutch design.

Now, I've satisfied my need for a challenge!  And, I'm off to find another card inspiration---online!

Stamp Club Challenge Paper

The first Thursday of each month Okieladybug and I go to a stamp club.  We're offered the chance to buy sheets of paper and challenged to see what we can make out of it.

October's paper had swirls on it that looked like steam coming off a coffee cup so I knew as soon as I saw it that I wanted to use some coffee cup stamps I've had for some time.

This one uses the cut. file from one of the beautiful retirment cards I received.  It took me some time to re-size it in Design Studio to make it small enough to fit onto the card but it's a simple enough file that there weren't too many shapes that had to be resized.  I think it works perfectly!

I chose to stamp the sentiment on the inside of the cup and leave the inside of the card blank since this will go into my Cards for Soldiers box.

The geometric design paper is one of the challenge sheets.  It just did not inspire me and this was about all I could decide to do with it. 

This month's papers are two sided cardstock.  The back side of this one is the lime green that I used to mat the center onto. I still have a metallic stripe with red on the back that I'm trying to decide what to use it for.

Again, this is a CFS card so it's left blank inside.

The only challenge paper on these three cards is the brown!  I felt guilty not having made very many with our papers this month so this afternoon I got out my SU stamps and the paper with the trees on it.  I found it at HL during their last paper sale and immediately thought about using the little pickup with it.