Mickey & Minnie St. Valentine Card

Hello friends, welcome to this week's Bitten By the Bug 2 Cricut challenge, and my first St. Valentine's Day card of the year.  My sweet and talented Design Team sister, Maureen is hosting this challenge, Valentine or Love - Anything Goes. 

As I said above, this is my first Valentine card of the "season".  My darling little Avaleigh LOVES Mickey and Minnie.  One of her favorite TV shows is The Mickey Mouse Clubhouse.  Even GranDoug can sing the opening song! I know that Avaleigh is going to be so excited when she sees her St. Valentine card.  I can hardly wait to give it to her!

When I saw the new Mickey Mouse Love at First Sight Cricut cartridge, I knew I just had use it to make Avaleigh and Jude's cards.  Best of all, the cards I made, this one and one other, are in the "make it now" section of Cricut Design Space.

I saved the project with the "Customize" button, and made a few edits to the card.  Mostly I just changed a few colors and resized an element or two. Otherwise I thought this card was just perfect as it was designed.

There are a few layers to cut, but the Explore cut the pieces so nicely that everything went together very easily.   I finished the card with a few pen dots and some Stickles accents on Minnie.

This is the final week that you can enter our giveaway at BBTB2.  Anyone who enters one of our January challenges goes into a random drawing to win a box of Cricut goodies provided to us by Cricut.

Get your Valentines or Love projects going and please do join us this week. We will be announcing the Cricut giveaway prize winner next Monday.  So head on over to the Bitten By the But 2 blog and check out the Valentine/Love projects that the Design Team made to inspire you.  Then get going on your own Valentine/Love projects!!

Hello Kitty Ice Skate Shadow Box

Hello friends! Are you ready for another chilly winter Cricut challenge?  This week at Bitten by the Bug 2 we are celebrating my favorite wintertime activity, Ice Skating.  I loved ice skating when I was growing up in Michigan. I skated all the way through my college years.  I thought because much of the country is having real winter weather, unlike South Carolina, that we might make projects featuring my favorite winter activity.

I decided to try something different - challenge myself - and make a shadow box card.  The shadow box could be used as a card, with the sentiment and message applied to the back.

I did not have a file for the shadow box base, so I used basic shapes in Design Space and designed my own box cut.

I realized that I would need a method for layering the cuts into the shadow box that would allow for dimensional placement.  I created an accordion fold piece to fit in the bottom of the box with a square and scoring lines.  

The next hurdle I faced was a need to add length to the planned elements so that they would be visible from the front of the box, but would still be attached to the accordion piece. I welded long narrow rectangles to the base layer of Hello Kitty and the penguin from Hello Kitty Holiday cartridge.  This allowed me to attach the figures between the layers at the bottom of the card, but still allowed the entire figure to appear in the front opening.  

Once I created the box and the accordion, and edited the skating figures, I began designing the scene for the shadow box.

For the background with the snowy hill and snowflakes, and the title, Baby it's Cold Outside, were from the Family Album cartridge.  I made a couple of changes to the background and I added the frozen lake.

Other cuts and cartridges used in creating this shadow box include:  a frame from Artbooking to serve as the front of the box, the cups of hot chocolate and donut cuts are from the Go Canada cartridge, the Brrrrr cut is from Winter Woodlands.

Have you been by the Bitten by the Bug 2 blog this week?  My design team sisters have made some really cute ice skating cards and layouts. We also have a giveaway going this month.

Everyone who joins one of our challenges in January will have the chance to win a box of wonderful supplies generously donated by Cricut:  mats, more mats, two cartridges and a brand new scraper!  We will still have our regular project of the week winners - who receive a hardy congratulations - but all of the January participants will go into a random drawing for the Cricut prize box.  For more chances to win, plan to join our challenge every week in January!!

 

Snow Fun with Hello Kitty

Hello friends!  Are you ready for a chilly Bitten by the Bug 2 Cricut challenge?  My amazing design team sister, Michelle, selected this week's challenge - Snow Much Fun!  Because I felt I had not used the new Hello Kitty Cartridge enough since purchasing it, I have been on a Hello Kitty roll lately.  I thought Kitty would be perfect for this snow fun layout, which I plan to use for my granddaughter, Avaleigh.

I used three Cricut cartridges to create this two page layout:  Hello Kitty Holiday, Art Philosophy, and Winter Wonderland.  I really like the Hello Kitty Holiday cartridge.  It has 25 images, and each one is adorable.  I chose the snow skiing Kitting and the ice skating Kitty.  I also used two adorable penguins and the fun dotted "evergreen" trees.

The snowflakes were all cut using Art Philosophy.  I used the layered cut and a single layer snowflake.

The phrase Snow Fun was cut using the Winter Woodland cartridge.  I also used basic shapes in Design Studio to create this layout. 

I had hoped to use my new laser layout tool, but I discovered as I opened it that it requires two 9 volt batteries.  Our battery draw was loaded with batteries, but not a sing 9 volt.  Ugh.  I am not sure that my photo mats are exactly straight on the layout.

I finished the layout with washi tape and silver sequins (to match the metallic silver snowflakes in the background paper).  I think Avaleigh's winter photos are going to look amazing on this layout. 

Have you been by the Bitten by the Bug 2 blog this week?  My design team sisters have made some really cute Snow Fun projects to inspire you.  We also have a giveaway going this month.

Everyone who joins one of our challenges in January will have the chance to win a box of wonderful supplies generously donated by Cricut:  mats, more mats, two cartridges and a brand new scraper!  We will still have our regular project of the week winners - who receive a hardy congratulations - but all of the January participants will go into a random drawing for the Cricut prize box.  For more chances to win, plan to join our challenge every week in January!!

Hunk of Burnin' Love Valentine

Hello friends!  Have you been by the Bitten By The Bug 2 blog yet today??? My Design Team sister Laurie is hosting the most awesome Cricut challenge ever this week!  In honor of Elvis' birthday, Laurie has challenged us to create an Elvis related project - something about Elvis or a project that represents an Elvis song title.  I made this Valentine - Hunk of Burnin' Love!!

Crazy as it seems, I used four Cricut cartridges to create this card:  Block Party, From My Kitchen, Wedding, and Life's A Party.  Hubby saw the card already and thought the flames were very cute!

There are two layers of hearts, both cut using the Wedding cartridge, the scallop rear heart and the regular hearts on top.  The regular hearts are welded at the top and open to reveal the inside of the card.  

The BBQ-ing man is from the Block Party cartridge, while his grill was cut using From My Kitchen.  The flames were cut using Life's A Party.  

I added the sentiment using the text element in Design Space and a pen in my Cricut Explore.   The card was finished with penned dashes and dots.  

I think Laurie's challenge is so fun.  I hope that you will join us this week at Bitten By the Bug 2 and create your own Elvis song inspired project!!  

We have a special giveaway going at Bitten By The Bug 2 during the month of January. In addition to our usual project of the week winners, this month EVERYONE who participates in our challenges will be eligible to go into the random winner drawing for a Cricut Sponsored giveaway.  Cricut has donated a box of Cricut supplies which includes mats, cartridges, etc.  that will go to one lucky January participant.  You must participate in our January challenges - one or all - to be entered for the giveaway.  The more often you join us the more chances you'll have in the random drawing.

Hop on over to Bitten By The Bug 2 for ideas to get you started on your Elvis project.  Then link up with us this week!!

New Year New Day Planner

Hello friends!  I'm ba-ack!   I am going to confess that I enjoyed the first week of my Holiday blog-cation so much!  Christmas Eve and Christmas Day were delightful.  I especially loved time with our family members.  The second week of the two week blog-cation has not been nearly as much fun. I have the cold from Hades, or as my friend Marcie aptly named it, the death plague!  The congestion, coughing, fever, CONGESTION (!) are so bad that I wondered if I actually had the flu.  But no.  I have the dead of winter death plague upper respiratory icky thing.  And ironically I am not alone.  Two other Bitten By the Bug 2 team member are also dealing with this horrid plague!

So now let's move along to today's Bitten By the Bug 2 project. My dear Design Team sister Maureen came up with this week's challenge. Maureen asked us to create a New Year or Something New project as a way to kick off the new year.  I chose to create the January divider page for my day planner.

I am using my pink leather planner book again this year as I still really like it, it is still in perfect condition, and I am cheap!  I did purchase new 2017 filler pages and the Prima Doll stamps for my monthly/ weekly page decorations and to create my divider pages.  And while I like the Prima stamps, I felt that the divider pages needed jazzing up a bit.  

Last year I created printed divider pages featuring magazine cover photos of Audrey Hepburn.  And while I loved those dividers, I wanted something more hand made this year.

I used four Cricut cartridges to cut the elements for my divider page:  Snow Day, Days & Dates, Paper Trimmings, and Phrases.  Clearly the children playing in the snow and the snowman were cut using Snow Day.  The original 2017 date cut was from Days & Dates, however I did edit the cut to fit the them of my page (I removed the center of the zero and cut out a snowflake shape instead). The Happy New Year layered phase was cut using the Phrases cartridge.  And finally, the snowflakes were cut using Paper Trimmings. 

I really like the overall effect of the divider page and I look forward to sharing eleven more pages with you throughout the year.  I had hoped to show you how I use the mini stamps for organizing the monthly two page view, but the death plague caused that to be less of a priority!  Ha.

Have you been by the Bitten By the Bug 2 blog yet today?  You are going to love the NEW projects the Design Team has created to inspire you.  Plus, you are going to want to read about a special Cricut sponsored giveaway we have for one lucky participant from our month of January link ups.

Thank you for stopping by today.  I will be back tomorrow to tell you all about something fun going on at Close To My Heart this month also.  If you cannot wait, take a peek HERE.