Waltzing Through The Great Outdoors

It's that time of the month when all Waltzingmouse fans come out to play and this month the blog party theme is the great outdoors http://waltzingmouse.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/july-2012-waltzingmouse-stamps-blog.html

I couldn't resist the urge to get the new stamp sets out or to try the cutting files that go with them on my silhouette.  I used the sketch from last week's Waltzingmouse Sketch challenge as my starting point and this is what I came up with.

I started with some yellow DP with some distressed dots and created my own background using the large palm tree from the "My Island" set using pistachio and peanut brittle momento ink.  I wrapped some wide striped ribbon around the bottom as per the sketch.  I then used the freebie cut file that matches the North Shore main image and cut it out kraft card on my silhouette.  I simply stamped the image on top in black (almost lined up straight too!) and then stamped the flowers again onto the yellow background paper and cut them out to add a tiny highlight.  I finished with one of the sentiments from My Island.

Time to waltz around the rest of the blog party and see what other outdoor inspiration everyone else has come up with.  Thanks for stopping by :-D

Tara

CASual Circles

This week's CASual Friday challenge is to use 2 circles on your card -  http://cas-ualfridays.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/cfc59.html  This proved to be a difficult challenge for me - I prefer my focal elements to be in odd numbers not even, and I played around with lots of circles in pairs but didn't like the look of any of them!

However, I got myself a new toy last week - a Silhoutte Cameo and I finally got it hooked up and had a play on Friday night and over the weekend I managed to put together a pair of cards, both with 2 circles that I was happy with. 

For my first card I downloaded this pretty floral circle from the silhoutte store, and the Happy Birthday text and cut them, along with a round base card (I managed to weld that myself) all from white card stock. I had a bit of an issue at first with the weight - 80lb - the US measurement used by the machine didn't translate to gsm the UK weight so I had the blade depth too shallow.  Seem to have cracked it now though.  I then coloured the parts with pink and black copics, glued them down and added a few black gems to the centre of the flowers.  A very quick and simple card but a good start to using my cameo.

I wanted to play some more so I cut another image from the store - this time a "hello" in a circle frame.  I lifted the positive carefully from the cutting mat and then used transfer tape to remove the negative as I noticed it made another perfect circle.  I coloured the positive with copics and layered it over the negative on a tall black card.  As the text was very "loopy" in style I decided to add some loopy DP and some matching green cardstock punched with my MS loop punch.

All in all, not bad for a first outing for the cameo - I think it will do great things once I get my head around it all....

Logo CASing

This morning's lucky dip challenge at Less is More at first seemed impossible to me - use the logo as inspiration - it's quite a complex thing but then when you look at the elements - flourishes, music, flowers, gems - it started to spark an idea.   I needed to make an Anniversary card for my SIL and thought that flourishes were very anniversary like so I took that as my starting point. 

 
The flourish frame was cut on my new toy - I finally caved and ordered a Silhoutte Cameo - and I have to say it may well be the best crafting decision I EVER made.  I already have a cricut and there is just no comparison to the ease of use (if you're OK with a computer that is).  The software is very intuitive and the machine itself is brilliant - quieter than the cricut too.  The flourish was downloaded from the online library but it wasn't deep enough to fit my sentiment in, so I "subtracted" a bit in the middle to allow me to lower the bottom flourish and then drew an oblong back over and "welded" it back together to make the flourish wide enough.  I then sized the whole image to 4" so it would fit across my card nicely (and unlike the cricut it comes out just as you expect it!).  For my 2nd attempt at using the cameo - I'm personally pretty pleased with what I've accomplished (the first thing will be blogged later as that worked out fine too!)

I embossed my favourite anniversary sentiment from Waltzingmouse into the frame and mounted it over a stamped musical panel stamped in the new momento colour "peanut brittle" which I love the tone of.  To finish I cut a couple of small hearts from kraft paper (PTI die part of the flip flop die set) and added a tiny pearl heart into each of those.

I have a mountain of cards to make for birthdays coming up and orders today along with a tiara for my friends impending wedding so I'd better go and get busy whilst keeping one eye on the tennis (come on Andy!)   I'll be back just after midnight with our new challenge for St Lukes.

Has anyone else found that the spell checker in blogger isn't working?  Nothing happens when I use it anymore.  Any tips on how to sort it?