Busy with the Cricky: C-Winter Woodlands

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Hello friends it is December first, Cyber Monday, the first day on my Advent Calendar, AND Bitten by the Bug 2 day!! I have a lot going on today so buckle in and let's get started!

My amazing design team sister, Jayne, selected this week's BBTB2 Cricut Challenge. Sadly, because I am a total bone head sometimes, I tweaked her challenge. Jayne asked the team (and you) to craft a Christmas card with a Cricut cut Christmas Tree. Miss "I can read" here spent a few hours creating a two page layout, complete with Christmas Trees, only to discover when I added my photo to the Bitten by the Bug 2 blog that I was supposed to make a card!! I was too tired after a weekend of Christmas decorating, house cleaning, and finishing my Christmas shopping to start over again at 7:30 pm Sunday night! So in a most high-handed manner, I tweaked the challenge to include my layout!! (Sorry Jayne!)

As you already know, Doug and I went to the Candlelight Christmas at Biltmore to celebrate our anniversary the weekend of November 22. We purchased a 5 x 7 inch photo package after our tour - a photo of us and a photo of the house. The Christmas Tree challenge (since I missed the word CARD) seemed like the perfect opportunity to get this two photos scrapped and the pages booked!

I used my Cricut Explore and three cartridges to complete the two page layout. The cartridges I used are: Winter Woodland, Family Album, and Holiday Cards 30. I really liked the Merry Christmas layout on the Family Album cartridge but I wanted to edit the layout a bit. I deleted one of the two ornaments and one of the strands of lights. I also deleted the shadow layer of the Merry Christmas phrase.

I cut the layout page elements twice, after the edits. I thought the plaid Graphic 45 card stocked looked great as a matting and matched my Christmas colors well. By using only two of the four ornaments I would have had if I cut all of the elements twice, I made room to include my elegant Christmas Tree cuts.

The Christmas Trees and the Jingle Bells are both from the Winter Woodland cartridge. I thought the elegant embellishments worked with the colors and the photos. I did use two of the strands of Christmas lights from the Family Album layout just to add a touch of fun.

The final element of the card was cut using Cricut's Holiday Card #30. I took the house and tree cuts as an overlay on the Biltmore House page. For a final touch of elegance, I trimmed the pages to 11.5 x 11.5 inches and matted the pages onto black card stock.