Baby Carriage BBTB2 Challenge/Blog Hop

Happy Monday morning and welcome to the monthly Bitten by the Bug 2 blog hop.  If you are following the blog hop, you probably arrived here from awesome Jeri's awesome blog where you oooh'ed and aaaah'ed over Jeri's project.  This week is just like a regular week at BBTB2, with our fabulous design team co-leader, Carole, selecting the weekly challenge cut, except this week you get to visit each team members' blog to see how the challenge cut was used.

For those new to the world of Cricut, each week the BBTB2 design team is presented with a single cut that we must use in a single project.  We then ask you, our readers, to consider playing along and creating your own project using the Cricut challenge cut. 

This week Carole chose the baby carriage from the New Arrival cartridge.  And even though I do own New Arrival, I decided to use the sweet silhouette cut from A Child's Year cartridge and create a baby girl show invitation - because let's face it, I have been into the invitations in the last two weeks!

I used two cartridges to create these cut baby shower invitations: A Child's Year and CTMH's Art Philosophy. (I have NO IDEA what I did before Art Philosophy was released!).  I used Art Philosophy to cut the oval and scalloped oval used to mat the silhouette cuts.  I used A Child's Year to cut the two silhouette layers.  I did minimal embellishing of the silhouette, simply adding two buttons on the wheels.

I cut two background layers, one in dark brown card stock and the other in craft card stock.  I then added a sweet tiny pink floral print card stock to the top of the craft card stock.  I topped this layer with clear vellum printed in hot pink ink.

I finished the entire card by adding a pink and white striped bow accented with a jeweled hat pin.  I thought the pen was the perfect feminine finishing touch.

I did mention the BBTB2 blog hop this week, right.  The next stop on the hop is at the blog of very talented and very nice Theresa - Tree Frog!   I hope you enjoy the blog hop and that you drop by later in the week and check out my additional posts for this week!!!

*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *

While I have you here, I would like to remind you that tomorrow is the last day to order Close to My Heart's Stamp of the Month set, Little Reminder.  The 25 piece stamp set is available only through 1.31.12 for the special price of $17.95.  Or with a $50 Close to my Heart order, you will be prompted during check out to purchase the Stamp of the Month set for only $5.00!!  For more information on the Stamp of the Month set or any Close to My Heart products, visit my CTMH on-line store.

Bridal Tea Invitation

Hello everyone!  I have FINALLY finished the invitations which I have worked on off-and-on all week.  This invitation is for a bridal shower for MFK's (My Friend Kathy's) son Kyle's future bride, Ashley.  Kyle's aunt Kimberly and I are co-hosting a bridal tea in two weeks.  I had to finish the invitations in order to get them in the mail today - and I succeeded!  The last thing Doug and I did before leaving Aiken for the weekend (we are in Chattanooga visiting his mother) was stop by the post office.  AND YES, I did pay twenty cents extra per envelope because of the bow!

I used Cricut Craft Room and three Cricut cartridges to create these invitations:  CTMH's Art Philosophy, A Child's Year, and Kate's ABC's.  The most time consuming part of the cutting and assembly, as you might have guessed, was cutting and assembling the little girl with the tea cup.  She did take a while, but the details were worth the effort!  In the original cut the little girl is reading a book (I think).  I used scissors and trimmed away the book area and added in the tea cup.

I printed the pastry layer cardstock using the Yummy Imagine Cartridge (oops, I guess that means I used four cartridges).  I then printed the invitation information on vellum and added the vellum layer over the pastry cardstock. 

I finished each invitation with a a two inch wide striped ribbon bow, attached with large glue dots. The only problem that I foresee is that the bride to be does not like pink!! Oops.

I will be back with a new post on Monday morning for the monthly BBTB2 blog hop.  But in the meantime, I am in Chattanooga enjoying my in-laws.  Anyone know any good scrap stores in the Chattanooga/Hixson area???  :-)

Theater-Drama Class Bulletin Board with Cricut

Several months ago I mentioned that I had assisted my future daughter-in-law with bulletin boards for her Theater classroom.  Crissie wanted to post photos of her students performing and as well as have a place to post auditions and other information and I agreed to help her. 

I cut medium size tickets and in an effort to assist with her "word wall", a wall with words of study for her courses, I cut the word wall words inside the tickets and Crissie used them as a border on her board.  She was thrilled to have the words displayed in a way that added to her board visually, yet was decorative and represented theater!

I also cut large tickets, with cut outs of the phrase "Admit One" included on one end.  Crissie used this large tickets as matting for photos.  She posted photos of her students performing.  The large tickets were cut initially in red cardstock with gold backgrounds.  However on her visit this week Crissie asked for a few more large red tickets as well a some large gold tickets.

I also cut a stage scene for Crissie's bulletin board.  She placed this in the center board and added some title cuts that I gave her after these photos were taken.  I apologize for the low resolution of some of the photos, but they were taken with Crissie's phone camera.

Crissie told me that she has received a number of compliments on her bulletin boards and was quite happy that her co-workers and students noticed the changes to her classroom.

3-D Flowers with Cricut and BBTB2

My goodness that weekend went by quickly, but yes, here it is already Monday.  And you know what that means - It's Bitten by the Bug2 day.  This week's challenge cut, the Cricut cut used by the BBTB2 design team to create the projects for the week, was selected by my fabulous design team sister, Jeri Thomas of Bug N Me Creations.   Jeri chose to use the six petal flower on the Bloom cartridge.   Jeri requested that the team use the flat cut flower to make 3-D flowers to share this week. 

I do not own the Bloom cartridge so I used an eight petal flower from the Serenade cartridge and created my 3-D flowers.  I used the same technique that I used to make flowers for my mom's birthday party.  I cut five flowers the same size, and one smaller flower.

I folded four of the flowers into quarters and secured the folds by placing a small glue dot on the inside of the flowers on the second fold.  I then adhered the four flower quarters to the fifth flower, which remained flat.  I then used a smaller cut of the same flower to create the centers and I finished the flowers with button gems available from Close to my Heart.  If you would like detailed info on assembling these flowers you can go to this previous post of mine for details.

I topped the flowers off with a 3-D butterfly cut from Close to my Heart's Art Philosophy cartridge.  This is my favorite butterfly cut, ever!

I used the Sweet Boxes cartridge to cut my box.  I used pink cardstock for the bottom of the box and white cardstock for the box top.  I wrapped the box in a pink and white striped ribbon before topping the box with the 3-D flowers.

I want to remind those of you who like to collect the Close to My Heart Stamp of the Month sets that you only have one more week to purchase this month's Stamp of the Month, Little Reminder.  I especially love sentiments that come with this stamp set.  You can purchase the stamp set on it's own for $17.95, or with a $50 purchase you can get the stamp set during checkout for $5.00!  You can purchase the Stamp of the Month set, the Art Philosophy cartridge and all CTMH products at my Close to My Heart on-line store!

Thanks for stopping by today and please do remember to go by Bitten by the Bug 2 and check out the design team's awesome work!

Baby Boy Shower Invitation for Everyday Cricut

Hello everyone!  I am finally back to the joy of crafting!  And when I return to crafting I do it with a bang!  I spent many hours on Friday cutting the elements for this adorable baby shower invitation - fourty-four baby shower invitations!!  However, the timing was perfect as this is my day as Saturday Designer at Everyday Cricut. 

For details on the cartridges I used, visit the Everyday Cricut blog.   As a bonus, Everyday Cricut's Friday post features wonderful photos of the TEN new cartridges released this week!

To download the Cricut Craft Room cut file, look for the list of craftroom cut files in the left column of my blog and select the title, Baby Invitations. 

Not Quite Ship Shape Layouts

I wanted to give you a quick up date.  The root canal went as well as humanly possible.  My dentist is a god amist mortal dentists!  I should be completely back to normal by the tomorrow.

I am so looking forward to sharing the layouts from my cruise scrapbook but I need just a day or two more.  I found a ton of things to do today and did not finish the scrapping or the journaling.   Also there are still a number of pages yet to finish.  On the up side, I really like the way the cruise scapbook is coming together!

Soon, very soon I will have projects to share!