Hello Circle Card

I used the negative "hello" cut, added some pen stitching around the outer edge as well as around the letters.  To me, this looks more like a fall themed card than one you'd use when it's mid-summer.

Negative Space Butterfly Card

This card was inspired by one seen on Two Peas in a Bucket.  The creator, Julie Campbell said,
" Sometimes I like to make several die cuts of the same image and am left with a sheet of patterned paper full of the remaining negative space.  Instead of throwing this paper out....I'll show you how to create a fun card using these remnants.

If you don't have a die cutter, you could also use this same technique with a hand-held punch."

This card appealed to me and gave me an opportunity to try a new technique but it took a long time to make! Since the butterflies are 1", there were 54 of them on the page so that took over 5 minutes just to cut. 

 I had to go out into the garage and (1) find a sewing machine, (2)  clean the dust off the case, (3) service the machine and test it before I could even start to use it.  That machine's been in the garage over a year, just gathering dust so I had to get it to room temperature before it could be used. Last night out temperatures dropped to the lowest we've had this winter and that poor machine was like a block of ice.  So, the quickest way to warm it up was with a blow dryer! Once it was serviced I had no problems stitching on the paper.  Guess I'll leave the machine handy so I can incorporate stitching on more cards.

I used Design Studio and the Indie Art cartridge to lay out a sheet full of butterflies.  Then mounted one of the butterflies on the scalloped ovals.  There's stitching around the outer edges of the card front and I embellished the oval with a Pearl Pen. 

 

I do like the way it turned out, but I'm reserving this technique until I have a need for another entire sheet of butterflies.  There are now fifty-one, one inch high, blue butterflies on my cutting mat.  Hmmm....now I need to go find a project for these too!

Halloween and Fall Cards

This photo sure came out dark!  I used chocolate chip SU cardstock for the background and ran it through the Cuttlebug.  Cut out the leaves with my E and used the negative cut out for the border.  The glittered leaf came from the floral department in a bag of loose leaves.

I always like to find striped paper inside a stack then tend to struggle to find

a good way to utilize the stripes.  Two shades of brown cardstock were used to accent the stripes.  Copper colored brads are in the center of the squares.  I added a Studio G sentiment and a ribbon.

The ribbon is chocolate chip but looks like a deep burgandy in the photo.

The next card is one that I saw online last year.  It's strips of cardstock cut about 1" wide, edges were inked and then I layed them over an orange card base.  Used my E to cut ovals for the eyes and used the negative cut of the word "Boo".

I like the effect of the negative cut outs on these two cards.