Shabby Tea Room Rustic Elegance Challenge Card

Shabby Tea Room Rustic Elegance Card
Serendipitious Scrapper

It's been a super busy week - the kind where kids get sick, something breaks, you have a million errands to run and the laundry has taken over the coach (in truth, I'm not even sure that the coach is still there). That being said my creative juices were absolutely gone so I'd thought I try a new challenge site to help jump start my card making efforts.

So this was my interpretation of challenge 136 "Rustic Elegance" at the Shabby Tea Room.

Here is their inspiration photo and we were given the prompts of using something elegant and rustic.

I love how the wood grain embossing came out. I wanted to really stress the texture so I used both Versa Mark ink and Creamy Caramel Stampin' UP! ink to highlight the details.

The frame was made with one of my new favorite tools - Martha Stewart's paper clay and silicon molds.  The rosette is from my shop and there is lots of Snow Queen glimmer mist over everything.

Have a great day,

CarrieAnne

InLinkz.com

Milk Bottle Birthday Treat with Cricut Craft Room

Cricut Craft Room Milk Bottle Birthday Treat

 Have you played with the new Cricut Craft Room yet?  I requested a login to be a Beta Tester and I LOVE IT!!!!

It's great that I can search for an image on any cartridge using a regular search engine function. I popped in "milk" and it gave me anything having to do with milk on every cartridge ever made. You can limit your search to Imagine Cartridges, Cricut Cartridges and other parameters.

The Craft Room welds whenever items touch instinctively (unless you set it not to) and manipulating images is SUPER easy. Every project saves in a file that preserves not only the cut sizes, but your cut settings as well.

Have I mentioned I LOVE this product yet - especially that it is completely FREE!!!

Milk Bottle Treat Side

I made this little milk bottle birthday treat by welding the milk bottle from Create a Critter together and putting a bone in at the bottom between bottles to create a piece to fold. The bottle is made from transparency and then I did chocolate layers, because the treat is one of those straws you place in white milk that turns it into chocolate milk when you suck it.

There is a bit of Epiphany Crafts goodness in the form of a round 14 epoxy and vintage setting as well.

Recipe
Cricut Cartridge: Create a Critter
Embossing Folder: Cuttlebug: Swiss Dots
Tools: Epiphany Crafts (Shape Studio Tool Round 14)
Epoxy: Epiphany Crafts (Bubblecap Round 14)
Setting: Epiphany Crafts (Vintage Settings: Tea Room)

Patterned Paper: October Afternoon
Stamp: Craft Secrets
Ink: Stampin' UP!
Pearl: Recollections
Cardstock: Stampin' UP!
Stickers: October Afternoon (pennant), Webster's Pages (alpha)
Ribbon: American Crafts
Border Punch: Stampin' UP!
Adhesive: Beacon Adhesive: ZipDry, Stampin' UP! (glue dots and dimensionals)

Milk Bottle Treat Back

Transparency: Office Max
Floss: DMC (pink)
Straw Treat: Got Milk?
Buttons: Stash.

Cuts

Milk Carton: 4.7 inches 
The "Milk" cut from Create a Critter - cut four times (twice from transparency, twice from brown cardstock)


Dog Bone (hinge between bottles on bottom): 1.7 inches
"Terrier" cut from Create a Critter with shift and Layer 3 selected

Learning to Bowl Mini Album

"Learning to Bowl" mini album made from Nifty Fifties Cartridge

I truly enjoy creating mini albums, and my Cricut Expression always me to make my albums in any shape or configuration I like. These pictures of taking my older two daughters bowling are several years old (we didn't even have the younger two yet!) It was their first time bowling and my husband was trying so hard to get them to use good fundamentals and all they wanted was to marvel over the "cool" two colored shoes they got to rent.

The idea of setting up this mini like a set of bowling pins has been kicking around in my mind for a while. When all the pages are closed the album looks like a fresh set of 10 pins just being set up. Some of the pages are on rings and some of them are on ribbon hinges so as you progress through the "steps" of bowling and more pins are "knocked" down you move through the album and see different pictures and journaling.

The entire album is based off a single bowling pin and ball cut from the nifty fifties cartridge. I cut the pin 10 times and removed the ball from each cut. I then set the pins up like a group of 10 and made a tracing of where each pin would go so that as I made moveable pages in groups of 3 or more pins they would all line up again at the end of the day. This pretty much ate up ALL my scrappy time this week, but I am happy with how it turned out so I included several pictures.

There are lots of Epiphany Crafts buttons, epoxys and findings on this and I love how I could use just a few papers and ribbons with Epiphany's tools to create a cohesive look.

 
Recipe

 Cricut Cartridge: Nifty Fifties
Patterned Paper: Glitz Designs, Pink Paislee
Tools: Epiphany Crafts (Shape Studio Tool Heart 14, Shape Studio Tool Round 14, Button Studio Tool Round 14, Shape Studio Accessories Bubble Caps Heart 14, Button Studio Tool Round20)
Epoxys: Epiphany Crafts (Shape Studio Round 14 Bubble Caps, Shape Studio Heart 14 Bubble Caps)
Buttons: Epiphany Crafts (Button Studio Round 14, Button Studio Buttons Round 20)
Settings: Epiphany Crafts (Vintage Settings - Club House)
Pearls: Want 2 Scrap
Adhesive: Beacon Adhesive (ZipDry), Stampin' UP! (Dimensionals, Glue Dots)
Alphabet Stickers: American Crafts (Black Canvas Thickers) Glitz Designs (Tiny Alpha - Burnt Orange)
Twine: The Twinery (Black and White)
Ribbon: May Arts (Red Pleated)
Pen: Copic (Mulitliner .01 Black)
Embellishments: Lil Davis (Bottle Cap), American Crafts (Chipboard Arrows, Heart), Die Cuts (Basic Grey)
Paint: Apple Barrel
Misc: Chipboard (Cereal Boxes), Jump Rings

Cuts
"Bowling" (with ball removed) on page 33 from the Nifty Fifties  cartridge cut at 6.5 inches.

Cutest Gator Fan Ever

In our family football is serious business. Well, I should clarify - University of Florida - football is serious business. I took these pictures of my baby boy watching (sleeping) through his first game on his daddy's chest. His 4 day old eyes just couldn't stay open for all four quarters though. I based the layout on this week's Sketchy Thursday's sketch.


Recipe:
Patterned Paper: Little Yellow Bicycle, Making Memories, The Girls Papiere
Embossing Folder: Cuttlebug: Argyle
Ink: Stampin' UP!
Brads: Sassafrass Lass
Cardstock Embelli shments: Sassafrass Lass, American Crafts
Alphabets: American Crafts, Making Memories
Buttons: Misc


Thanks for looking,

CarrieAnne

Life Saver Card & Giveaway

My four month old son has a thing against sleeping. He hates to sleep! The only way we can get him down is to put him in his swing. He now weighs an astounding 22 pounds and has outgrown our swing. A friend of mine had a swing with a much higher weight threshold and has lent it to us (THANK GOODNESS)!

I made her this card as a way of saying thank you. The inside says "you are a life saver."

Recipe

Cartridges: Cricut Lite: Splish Splash, Cricut: Tags, Boxes and More
Paper & Border Punch: Stampin' UP!
Embossing folders:Cuttlebug: Swiss Dots, D'vine Swirl
Ribbon: Basic Grey
Ink: VersaMark
Sentiment: American Crafts Rub Ons and my word processor

How To's

1. The base of the card is the circle tag from Tags, Boxes, and More cut on 5" inches using the mirror function. Because I hate a flat hinge showing on a circle shaped card, I cut the polka dot paper at 5 1/4 inches to cover the entire base of the card and give it a clean look. This circle is also from Tags, Boxes, and more. It was cut using the Blackout function.

2. I cut the blue cardstock circle and a striped patterned paper circle at 5 inches using the functions described above. I then dry embossed the blue circle with Cuttlebug's D'Vine Swirl Embossing folder. The blue circle was then distressed with VersaMark Ink. I cut the striped circle in half and layered it on top of the blue embossed circle.

3. The border punch was punched out twice, once from the yellow check and once from glossy white cardstock. They were slightly offset then adhered together.

4. The life preserver was cut from white cardstock using the Cricut Lite Splish Splash cartridge at 3 inches. It was then embossed with the Cuttlebug Swissdots Embossing Folder.

5. The finishing touch was added by the "ropes" I adhered over the red sections of the life preserver. These were made old school - ala friendship bracelet with dmc floss.

Don't forget to celebrate reaching 200 followers with me!! I am giving away the Thanksgivings Blessings Cricut Cartridge to one lucky winner.


I don't normally require readers to become followers for a prize or challenge, but as this is to say Thank You to my followers to enter you will need to:

1.Be a follower
2. Leave a comment on Friday's post.

You have until Tuesday, February 1st to enter at 8am EST. The contest is open to all followers, but a winner outside of the United States will be responsible for their shipping costs.

Thanks for looking,

CarrieAnne

The Gargoyles of Notre Dame

When I was in Paris a few years ago I fell in the love with the architecture, the sculpture and the beauty of the city's many classically designed buildings. Notre Dame was no exception. I found the gargoyles of the cathedral especially inspiring as they managed to be stunningly beautiful and almost scarily ugly at the same time. I based this layout on the Sketchy Thursday sketch challenge for this week. I wanted to mimic the "pretty ugly" of the statues so I combined flowers with a strong yellow and black color combination - not one I would normally use. I think it came out pretty neat though.


The patterned paper is a mix of Pink Paislee, Making Memories, and October Afternoon. I made the lollipop flowers using a variety of circle punches from Marvy Uchida and Stampin' UP! The title is done with Thickers from American Crafts and stickers from Making Memories. The bling and pearls are Prima.

Thanks for looking,

CarrieAnne

Whoo Loves You?

Even though my blog has only been up and running for a month or so, it is probably obvious to you by now that I LOVE shaped cards. I have had the two Disney Princess Cartridges in my possession for quite some time now, but had failed to do anything with them (Horrible - I know). So I decided that I would either have to use them or sell them at my semi-annual scrapbooking consignment sale (My personal rule is if it doesn't a least get shuffled around the scrap space once year - out the door it goes).

When I saw this cute little owl in the Sleeping Beauty section it was instant inspiration (and relief - my hoarding instinct was thrilled that I could rationalize holding onto these carts for another year!)

The "Happily Ever After" Cartridge, does not have a card making feature, so I cut the owl once and then traced it onto folded brown cardstock so the card opens from left to right. I then just cut the owl out by hand. I ran the original single layer owl through the Cuttlebug with a herringbone designed folder and cut out different sections to add dimension and depth. The stomach is created from rows of a Stampin' UP! border punch, punched from Basic Grey's "Urban Prairie Paper." The heart was cut from an old school original's Sizzix die and run through the Cuttlebug in the Swiss Dot folder.

The interior of the eyes are blue dew drops that I obtained from the Robin's Nest. Their baubles come in a variety of amazing sizes, shapes, and colors so if you are looking for something a bit different check them out.

Thanks for looking,

CarrieAnne