Butterflies

The butterflies are cut using cricut. The background was created by watercoloring with distress inks, then embossing and finally burnishing with inka gold.

• Paper: PTI and TPC
• Distress inks, watercolor brush, inka gold platinum, cricut, SCAL.

MOO-velous card!

Cut the cow and the barn using the Create-a-critter cartridge at 2” and 1.5” inch respectively. Created a sunburst pattern in Inkscape and cut it out on yellow CS. Hand cut the grass hill. Printed the sentiment on the computer.

• Paper: The paper company and PTI orange
• Create-a-critter cricut cartridge, SCAL, Cricut.

Diwali bloghop–Day 2

I hoped you enjoyed the ideas and inspiration shared by the team on day one of the bloghop! Here’s another day full of creativity! Day 2 is devoted to anything-but –a-card!

I’ve had a banner on my to-do list forever! So when deciding what to make for the bloghop I figured that I should make a banner and check off that item from my list after all!

[My apologies for the poor lighting]

Instead of making something very specific like “happy diwali”, I chose to make something more generic based on the theme of diwali and which would also be an inspiration for everyday life. To me Diwali is all about celebration. Celebrate the festival, celebrate the homecoming of Lord Ram, celebrate with friends and so on. “Celebrate” is also an inspiration for me – it tells me to celebrate life. Everyday. As it happens. Celebrate every moment. Celebrate what you have.

Coming down to the mechanics of this banner: I used Cricut and SCAL to cut the triangles and the letters.

1. The triangles are 5” X 5” and cut on PTI cardstock.
2. The doilies are 4” white doilies. They’re sponged with various distress inks and then sprayed with glimmer mist made using Inka gold. Just add some Inka Gold to water in a mister and shake well. Then spray. If you don’t have anything to make glimmer mist, then don’t worry. This banner would look as good even without it.
3. For the letters: I used a double-adhesive sheet. Applied it to one of the cardstock. Then cut the letters. The letters are cut using the Samarkan font. From the cut letters, remove the liner from the other side of the adhesive sheet. Sprinkle glitter on it. Seal the glitter by rubbing glossy accents all over it.
4. I adhered the one doily to each triangle. Then glued the letter on top of it. Made two holes on either side of the triangle for the ribbon.
5. Thread the ribbon through all the triangles. Voila! Your banner is ready!

This banner is quite easy and quick to make; just that the glitter part takes some time and maybe a little messy but it’s worth it!

My second project is something that I plan to make for my friends this Diwali – little mason jars filled with some homemade treats! These jars are so cute and adorable!!

I used a 5” square of fabric cut using pinking shears. Here’s a closer look at the tag.

I cut the tag from white CS using Cricut and Tags, Bags, Boxes and More Cartridge. Stamped it with a background stamp using versamark and then embossed in gold embossing powder. Sponged it with various distress inks. Printed the sentiment on vellum using Word. Cut out the diya using Cricut and SCAL.

That’s not all! All my other team mates have some wonderful creations to share too:

• Chaitali (Chaitali also has the linky to link your creations!)
• Smriti (You are here!)
• Gayatri
• Pooja
• Piali
• Isha
• Sanketi

Supplies

Banner: PTI cardstock, White 4” doilies, 65# cardstock for letters, Martha Stewart brown glitter, brown grosgrain ribbon, glossy accents, Inka gold platinum, Mini mister, Distress Inks – Mustard seed, dried marigold, broken china and peeled paint.

Tag: PTI white CS, Impression Obsession Damask cover-a-card, Vellum, Distress Ink – Fired brick, peeled paint and Dried marigold.

Stretch Your Stamps – Letter Stamps (day 3)

Since I didn’t have any letter stamps I thought I would substitute it with die cut letters. I cut the letters using SCAL and Cricut. The font is (I think) Frank Gothic heavy.

Absolutely love the cleeeeeeean look of these cards!

More vinyl…

Here’s another vinyl project I did for our laundry:

It was cut using Cricut and SCAL. The font for “LAUNDRY” is Old English Text MT and the rest is Times New Roman. The ornamental scroll is from a dingbat font that I downloaded. I stretched the LAUNDRY to take up the full 24” inches of width and cut the rest of the text proportionately. I love the end result!

Life of a pizza bottle

I used vinyl and etching cream to give a pizza bottle a new life. Here’s the transformation:

I cut out the lettering from vinyl using SCAL and cricut. Adhered the negative of the vinyl to the bottle. Smeared the etch cream all over the exposed glass surface. Followed mfr’s direction on etching. I’d two such bottles so one went to the sugar and the other to the coffee!

Up-cycling a shopping bag into a gift bag

Sometimes something as mundane as a white paper bag can inspire you? Or is it that the white paper bag is a clean canvas which is natural to inspire you? Either ways, this Lacoste shopping bag inspired me to convert it into a cute gift bag! I love how it turned out! Don’t you think it would be perfect for a kid?

      

I cut the following using Cricut:

• blue background label using Shapelies.
• The hippo and phrase using Create a Critter cartridge. The hippo is cut at 3.5” and the phrase at 2”. I added goggly eyes to the hippo and glossy accents to the flower and the hearts in the phrase.

I design is on both the sides of the bag.

• Paper: PTI blue and generic paper from Joann
• Googly eyes, glossy accents, Cricut, SCAL, Create a critter cartridge.

A whale of a post!

I was perusing through my meager stash of stamps – thanks to my recent de-cluttering – to find some inspiration for my next card. Can you believe it? I found none. None as in zero. Zot. On the contrary it created in me a desire to buy some new stamps. After all I didn’t have ANY masculine stamp…or a text background stamp…or floral silhouettes…and so on. I’m sure most of you can relate to this feeling! I didn’t want to give in to that feeling because lately I’ve been buying a lot of fabric to feed my other addiction – sewing :-). Given all these constraints I figured Cricut and SCAL were my best buds here.

I’d bought the Create-a-critter cartridge because, of course the cuts looked sooo cute, and then lot of people had been praising it; but I hadn’t had a chance to make something out of it. That my dear friends was the inspiration for my next card. Flipping through the handbook, there were so many critters I wanted to go along with but just couldn’t think of an appropriate sentiment. Finally after scratching my head, pulling my hair and searching the internet ( a LOT of that!) I found nice little sentiments for the whale. So whale it was.

It took me a tremendous amount of time to make this card – right from designing to assembling it – so I made two of them. To make myself feel better. That all that time was not spent in making not one but TWO cards. Yep they’re quite similar but hey I tried my best to make changes here and there without investing MORE time!

At the end of it all – I’m SO happy!! So proud of these cards :-)

• The following was cut in Cricut:
  1. Cut the whale at 2.5” and assemble it.
  2. Using SCAL, cut the clouds at 1.5” and 1.75”.
  3. Using SCAL, cut 3 wave borders (downloaded it from internet somewhere).
• Cut a white CS 4” X 5.25”. Die cut an oval in the center of the white panel using the largest of oval nestabilities.
• Sponge the clouds with Broken China Distress Ink.
• Sponge the wave with white pigment ink.
• Adhere one wave border to the white panel with the oval die cut. Adhere the other two to the card base. Stick the clouds to the cloud base. Glue the bottom of the whale and pop the top of the whale on dimensions. Pop the white panel on top of the card base using dimensionals.
• Print the sentiment using Microsoft Publisher. I used to print my sentiments using Word but I read about somebody on SCS who did it in publisher and realized how easy it was! The placement and everything is so much better! Pop the sentiment using dimensionals.

I recently bought a pack of assorted cardstock from Joann for cutting with Cricut. I must tell you that it has made my life so much easier and made me love my Cricut so much more! I agree that the cardstock is quite thin but since most of the shapes are layered it doesn’t really make a difference. In fact the thinness make it easy to layer. It cuts in one pass (unlike PTI which cuts in two passes) and the cuts are very clean! There are 25 shades so there’s a light and dark for almost every color – love that. Again that’s very useful for layering. I would highly recommend this cardstock pack for use with Cricut!

Looks like the title is just apt for this post! I came up with the title because of the whales involved and had no intention of making this truly a whale of post!!

Romantic night

Somehow reading that title gives me no indication that I’m going to bore you with a card…good for me and bad for you :-).

I love that romantic windows cut file from Heather! And I must say that the card turned out way beyond what I’d in mind! Doesn’t it look gorgeous?!?!? I know I know I’m trumpeting my own horn…but what can I do…I just can’t help admiring it :-)

Cut the romantic window at approximately 3” in width in black. Then cut a “blackout” of it, in a slightly smaller size (around 2.5-2.75” in width) from a white CS panel 4.25” X 5.5”. So that I now had a “window”. Adhered the black window to the white CS panel. On the card base, masked a circle and sponged with distress inks. Popped the window panel on the card base using pop dots.

• Paper: PTI White, The Paper Studio Black
• Inks: Distress Inks Broken China and Faded Jeans
• Cricut, SCAL.

…more christmas cards

All of these cards use Hero Arts Swirl Christmas.

I tried to create the outline for the images in SCAL but didn’t get really good results. Anyways, I cut the above images using SCAL and cricut and then stamped them with versamark. The black string is hand drawn. Background is stamped with swirl in versamark.

• Stamps: Hero Arts Swirl Christmas, PTI Holiday Blessings
• Paper: PTI Kraft, Poppy red and Bazzill green
• Others: Versamark, Memento black ink

The labels were cut using SCAL and Cricut. The stars and sentiment were stamped in versamark and embossed with gold embossing powder.

• Stamps: Hero Arts Swirl Christmas, PTI Holiday Blessings
• Paper: PTI Poppy red and pine feather
• Others: Versamark, gold embossing powder

Stamped the tree on Simply Chartreuse and cut the image. Hand drew the snow outline on a white CS and cut it out. Sponged the edges with Broken China distress ink.

• Stamps: Hero Arts Swirl Christmas, PTI Holiday Blessings
• Paper: PTI Blueberry sky, Simply Chartreuse, White
• Others: Versacolor green and cocoa ink, liquid pearls, Memento black, Diamond stickles

Simply Sketches #10

This week’s sketch is super simple and hope you love it as much as I do!

I realized that I neither have any manly card nor any general occasion like all the best, farewell, etc in my stash. Thus whenever a non-birthday occasion comes up and I want a card – there’s none! So I’m going to try make cards to fill those needs. It’s so so so hard to make a masculine card!!! I find it so much easier to make a girly one – coz I love to add glitter, pearls and flowers! You can imagine how hard my life’s going to be for the next few days/months/etc – however long it takes to add variety to my pile!

I was at a loss of ideas for manly cards so I decided to take some inspiration from a photo.

source: apartment therapy

Argyle is my favorite!! My DH says that I’m a walking advertisement for Argyle! And nothing says a man better than a nice argyle pattern! So there I’d my design! I *love* how my card turned out!!

I cut the diamonds using Cricut and SCAL. It’s probably not easily visible but the diamonds in between blue and green is cut from Soft Stone CS. Are you wondering how I made all those lines? I hand dotted that line! Yes, unbelievable but I did and it’s so totally worth it looking at the card. Maybe I could’ve made my work easier by drawing a solid line instead of a dotted one but you know what – I don’t think it would’ve been the same! Then I cut the happy using the vladimir script just like here and used the “for you” part of a sentiment from the “Cuckoo” Hero Arts stamp set on vellum. Attached the vellum to the card base using brads.

• Stamps: Hero Arts Cuckoo
• Paper: Papertrey Ink white, New Leaf, Enchanted Evening and Soft Stone
• Others: vellum, brads, brilliance in, black pen, cricut, scal

Video game controller card

This shape card was on my list for a long time. Finally it made it’s way to the top, pushing others!

I took a picture from the web and created my SVG. I love creating these one of a kind SVGs and cutting with my Cricut!

The card was cut at 5.5 inch width. Cut all the circles. Then marked A, B, X and Y on the colored ones with sharpies. I kept referencing the actual picture to make sure it was as close to the original as possible. I tried some color pencil shading to make it more natural but alas my shading isn’t all that great so I backed off. I cut the sentiment in Century Gothic font.

You can download the SCUT file here.

• Paper: Papertrey Black and miscellaneous others.
• Others: Cricut, SCAL.

Simply Sketches #9

Winner of Simply Sketches #8 is Neha! Congratulations Neha! Your glitters will be on the way to you very soon!

Sketch for this week:

Why do simple cards take soooo long?!?!? It took me one ruined card and some more minutes to reach to this card! It looks so much better IRL. I especially like the way “you” came out. I looked for fonts and fonts and more fonts till I was satisfied with this! Since I’d seen the Papertrey dies for Wonderful words I ‘d been planning to try out something similar with my Cricut! Love how it turned out!

I embossed the circle using the Nestabilities Circle die. Masked the circle using a die-cut and stamped the polka dot background (had to use my new stamp !) with versamark. Using the negative mask I stamped the flowers and leaves. Cut out “you” on Cricut. I used the Vladimir font. Stamped the sentiment in black.

• Stamps: Hero Arts Blossom Art, Hero Arts Frames and messages
• Paper: Papertrey Spring Moss, Enchanted evening
• Others': Versacolor inks, Versamark, Cricut, SCAL

If you use the sketch to make a card, please leave me a link and I would love to see your creation!

Simply Sketches #7 + a giveaway!

Here’s the 7th sketch in the simply sketches series! I’m having a lot of fun designing these sketches – they prevent me from getting into a rut! Without these I’m sure I would be following the same sketch for weeks. It’s like that for me. Once I like a particular sketch or color combo I keep using that again and again and again… Anyway coming down to the sketch, here it is:

and my sample…

Apart from the change in sketches I’m also making myself use new colors. So I decided that come what may I’m going to use the green CS. Trust me it was SO hard to figure out what colors would go with it and how to make it alive.
I created the border template in SCAL and cut it with my cricut using Ocean Tides CS. Stamped the small doilies in palette black on it. Cut circles with SCAL and Cricut using Terracota tile CS. Stamped the medium doilies on it with Versamark and embossed in white embossing powder. Adhered them to the border using foam dots. Scored two lines towards the bottom of the card base and a little above. Stamped the flourish using Versamark. Adhered the border to the card base. Stamped the sentiment in Brilliance black. Adhered rhinestones to the center of the doilies.
Tips:

• I found that with detailed images like the small doilies palette black works better than Brilliance black. The latter being too juicy obscures the details.
• I didn’t have the matching rhinestones so I colored them using sharpies in orange and dark green and voila! I had matching rhinestones!

• Stamps: Maya Road doilies, Hero Arts Framed Messages (flourish), Studio G (Sentiment)
• Paper: Papertrey Ocean Tides, Terracotta Tile, Pine Feather
• Others: Cricut, SCAL, Rhinestones, Foam dots, Sharpies

Giveaway
Now for the giveaway , I’m giving away these 3 vials of Martha Stewart Tinsel Glitter. The colors are – crystal, garnet and fire opal.

To be entered into the giveaway, you have to:

1. Create a card using the sketch above and post it on your blog/gallery July 4-16. Yes you have almost two weeks!
2. In your blog/gallery post, provide a link to this blog post.
3. Add a link to your post (not to your gallery/blog but the exact post) in Mr Linky

The giveaway is open to all! So fire off your creativity!

Simply Sketches #5

Note: There were some issues with the scheduler in blogger (yet again!) so this post is late.

Onto the 5th sketch in this series!

Here’s my sample. It looks as if I also got inspired by the colors of the sketch but that’s not so I seem to get in a color rut – once I pick a color, I just can’t seem to get out of it. That seemed to be true of Hawaiian Shores! So I figured I would pick something radically different. There were so many colors in my stash which haven’t seen the light of the day but I was a little partial to the orange

I cut out the label using cricut and SCAL. The SVG file is from Penny Duncan Creations. Stamped the clock and the sentiment in Brilliance black. Covered the clock face with glossy accents.

• Stamps: Hero arts Cuckoo
• Paper: Papertrey Ink Orange Zest, Bazzill blue
• Others: Glossy Accents, Brilliance black ink.

Cupcake card

This cupcake template has been sitting on my hard disk for a long time. I’d created it long back but wasn’t getting the time to use it.

Except for the cherry, all the cuts were made using Cricut and SCAL. I cut the cupcake base at 4.25 inches. Then cut the wrapper and the icing appropriately. The cherry was die cut using circle nestabilities. For the sentiment, I cut out cream CS, attached it to printer paper and then printed the sentiment on it using a computer and a printer. Then glued it using foam dots. The icing was outlined with diamond stickles glitter and the cherry was “glazed” with glossy accents.

• Paper: Papertrey Ink Hibiscus Burst, Cream, Spring moss, K & Co Sweet Treats adhesive backed paper.
• Others: Glossy accents, Diamong Stickles, Foam dots

Download the SCUT2 file for cupcake, wrapper and icing click here. Please do not sell or distribute the file.

Graduation cards

I made these graduation cards using Simply Sketches #2.

I used Cricut and SCAL to do all the cutting. For the guy card, I embossed with Cuttlebug Argyle folder. Doesn’t it look lovely?!?! I love argyle!!

Files (SVG/SCUT): Boy and Girl silhouette, Congrads sentiment, Boy label/mat, Girl label/mat.

• Paper: PTI Hawaiian Shores, Black, Kraft, Berry Sorbet.
• Others: Cricut, SCAL, Cuttlebug Argyle embossing folder, rhinestones

Simply Sketches #2

Here I am with the second round of Simply Sketches!

For my sample I wanted this thick and thin stripes, I don’t know if there’s an official word for it. They’re so popular these days, I saw them on some outdoor cushions on the pottery barn website and several other places. To me they looked perfect for a masculine card!

I cut 4 stripes from Lemon Tart with width – 1”, 3/4”, 1/2” and 1/4”. Then glued them to the Enchanted Evening base. The good thing about this pattern is that you can place them randomly – no measurements required. I cut a frame from white CS using Cricut and SCAL. Printed the sentiment on it using computer and adhered it using foam dots. The printing didn’t come out really perfect.

You can download the SVG file for the frame here. As usual, do not sell the file.

• Paper: Papertrey Enchanted Evening, Lemon Tart, White
• Others: Cricut and SCAL.

Cricut and SCAL–overview, review and every other view

ETA: Here's a review of the top 10 electronic cutters for 20

So long time back I posted that I’d received Cricut as a gift. Since then I’ve been saying that I would post a review of it; but there are always so many projects to show that it would get sidelined. Then recently a blogger asked me if I’d any opinion on the different electronic cutters. That’s when I realized that I’d totally forgot to share my experience. So here it is.
Let me first start with my story. If you want to skip the details and explanations then go to the next paragraph .
Honestly when I received Cricut I wasn’t aware of other electronic cutters and especially not that there were others in the same price range. Yes I was that uninformed – I still can’t believe it. I’ve always been one who would research and research about things before buying them. Anyways…I was over the moon when I got the Cricut. Then I realized that I needed cartridges. So I bought 2 that I was drooling over – Christmas Solutions and Tags, Bags, Boxes and More. After buying the cartridges I realized that in terms of the images that I could cut, there was very limited choice since I’d only two cartridges. Frugal that I am, I couldn’t justify buying more cartridges. So I found out about SCAL (Sure Cuts A Lot) software which lets you cut SVG files and other images that you can design in SCAL. That was my last purchase for Cricut, 6 months back. There’s been no looking back since. Now, when I come up with a card design and need a particular image, either I search for it on the internet or design my own using SCAL or Inkscape. Inkscape is a graphics editor which lets you create images that you can save as .svg file (just like you have .jpeg/.gif files) which can then be imported into SCAL. Cricut together with SCAL has let me express my creativity without boundaries. Before I’d either of these, if I thought of a card design most of the times I wouldn’t have a stamp for it. Now I simply create an SVG file and cut out the image using Cricut. A great example of that is this guitar card.
So that was how Cricut, SCAL and I started living in harmony. Trust me we didn’t reach where we’re today without any troubles. There were many a scratches on the mat, torn papers and ruined images before this. So if you encounter these issues just bear with them. There’s a learning curve. Once you cross that, you can live like a happy family!
Cricut uses different settings of the blade and pressure for different CS and these have to be set manually. So I’ve found that it’s best to stick to one kind of CS (at the max two) so that you’re familiar with what settings to use and don’t have to waste your time and energy every time getting the perfect cut. For example I use Papertrey Ink CS and I’ve found that blade=3, pressure=3 and multi-cut=2 works best for this cardstock. Since 95% of the time I use this CS I don’t have to worry about changing the settings nor ruined cuts.
Likes and dislikes:

1. With Cricut and SCAL together I can practically cut any image that I want. It has opened up a totally new world.
2. In it’s price segment, I think it’s fairly good. The only other competitor is Silhouette SD but I am not sure whether it can cut chipboard or not.
3. Cricut doesn’t cut intricate cuts very well – especially in smaller sizes and thick CS.
4. It needs multi-cut for 110 lb CS (which is what papertrey is) with the regular blade. I haven’t tried the deeper cut blade.
5. Without the SCAL, you need to buy cartridges for various images. I think even at $30 for each cartridge it’s expensive because I find that I’m only interested in a few images in a cartridge. Not just money, I think it’s a hassle to then store all the cartridges that you own.
6. Without the SCAL, I find positioning the blade every time a little troublesome. When you use a paper smaller than 12 x 12, then you need to position the blade to the top right corner of the paper so that the machine knows where to start. With SCAL, I just position my paper on the mat to where I put it in the UI of SCAL.
7. You need a different blade to cut chipboard and such thick materials.

So armed with my experience I now know what I would look for in an electronic cutter if I were to buy another:

1. No cartridge business. That's only typical of Cricut, others do not have this.
2. Should support cutting SVG files or some other image format which is widely available. So that you can download images from the internet and cut them. If not then there should be in the box software that lets you create images and has a library of images too.
3. Preferably universal blade that can cut cardstock as well as chipboard. Both Cricut as well as Silhouette require multi-cuts to cut Papertrey CS.
4. Should be able to cut intricate cuts. Cricut is not good at that. I've heard Silhouette is.
5. The lesser the number of accessories the better. I like that Ecraft doesn't need a mat.
6. The lighter and smaller, the better.
7. Should be able to connect to a computer.
8. The accessories are reasonably priced. With cricut I’ve found lot of homemade/economical solutions for prepping the mat. So that helps. My mat had lost stickiness within 2-3 months; but with some Zig glue and baby wipes it was as good as new.

Whoa! I know…that’s an overload of information! I thought it would be nice for somebody who was in the market to buy a new machine to read different experiences. If you have any questions, I would be happy to answer them.

Buggys/Baby Carriages

I made these buggys for a friend. If you have a manual die cutting machine then you can get the instructions here. If you have an electronic cutter and SCAL, then you can download the SCUT2 file here. Please do not sell the file.



Aren’t they the cutest?!?! I also made her a tag. The picture doesn’t do justice to the tag.

I cut out the bottle shaped tag using SCAL and cricut. The shape comes with SCAL. I cut it at approx. 3 inches wide and 5 inches tall. Then I cut the flowers using SCAL too at 0.75 inches. I printed the poem using the printer. I attached the cut shape to a copier paper and then inserted into the printer. Adhered buttons to flower centers. Punched a hole with crop-a-tile at the top of the tag and then tied a ribbon. Embellished the flowers and the tag with Stickles Diamond stickles – not quite visible in the photo.

• Paper: Papertrey Harvest Gold, Raspberry Fizz, New leaf, Lavender Moon, Lemon Zest (for flowers), Spring Moss (for flowers), DCWV Sweet Treat (for buggys)
  
• Others: Cricut, SCAL, buttons, Stickles Diamond, foam dots, ribbons from Michaels.