Cricut Christmas Card & A BIG Announcement!

Welcome to day #2 of White Christmas week! (Just FYI, day #3 will be Monday, not Saturday.)  Don't forget that you have up to 5 chances to win one of at least 2 Christmas stamp sets.   To enter, please be a follower (or email or feed subscriber), and just leave a comment on each White Christmas post.

Today, in addition to sharing my favorite of my 5 cards, I have some BIG (and I mean BIG) news to share!  Be sure you continue reading after the card post!

Now, check this awesome, elegant card:

 

This card turned out so great for being so simple and fast to make.  I might even mass produce this one for the majority of this year's cards!  Size is 5x7, since we still tend to send a photo of the kids in our cards.

That wreath is the highlight of the card, and is simple to do if you own a Cricut Gypsy. First, I selected the wreath from the Joys of the Season cartridge and set it to 3.5" high.  Next, I created a second layer and selected the wreath shadow, being sure to place it in exactly the same place (the zoom feature comes in REALLY handy here, lol) on the mat.  Once hooked up to the Cricut, I used my brand new Amy Chomas gel pen holder with a green mini gel pen from Staples and "cut" the first layer on some Sweet Leaf cardstock.  When it was complete, I made sure to select "return to design" on the Gypsy screen, then I pressed "load mat" on the Cricut itself.  I switched out the gel pen holder for the cutting blade, then cut layer 2 from the Gypsy.  Next I colored some Opaques Pearls using a Lipstick Red Copic marker and adhered them to the "berry" spots.

I embossed my main white panel with a Cuttlebug Swiss Dots embossing folder, matted it with Holiday Red cardstock, and adhered it to the front of my card base.  I popped the wreath up on the card front  using foam adhesive tape.  My bookplate panel was cut using the Calligraphy Collection cartridge.  I stamped my sentiment using a stamp set from my stash (coordinating stamp on inside) using Sweet Leaf ink, edged the panel in the same ink, and adhered it and gold ribbon from my stash using Scor Tape.

Here's a quick supply list, then on to the BIG news:

• all cardstock & ink, foam adhesive tape, and adhesive pearls from Close To My Heart
• Cuttlebug Swiss Dots embossing folder
• Copic Marker in Lipstick Red
• Cricut cartridges Joys of the Season and Calligraphy Collection
• Amy Chomas gel pen holder
• Scor Tape

Now, finally, here is the BIG news!  I am so excited to share with you that Close To My Heart is finally getting their own Cricut cartridge!  Beginning August 1st, the Cricut Art Philosophy Collection will be available for purchase.  I'm told that the cartridge contains 700 cuts, including 2 fonts, stamp-compatible cuts, and 3-D items.  The cartridge will only be available as part of this collection, which contains the cartridge, 3 D-size stamp sets (retail value $17.95 each -yes, a price cut on stamps is coming!), and 3 different 9"x12" sheets of white Dimensional Elements (retail value $4.95 each).  Retail price of the collection is only $99.00!  If you subtract the value of the other items, that means your cost for the cartridge is $30.30 - how cool is that?!

I can't wait to get my hands on this set, so I can show you everything possible.  I will TRY to at least get a picture posted sometime later today of the contents of the collection, once the online catalog is available for consultants to view.  There are other changes coming as well, including Hostess Rewards on a single-person order - I don't know what everything is yet, but I will be sure to update as I find out!

UPDATE - here's a picture from the upcoming catalog:

 and here's a link to a video from CTMH with a few details on the cartridge: http://youtu.be/OdUV0y4RFDI

Beautiful Blue

So, I belong to my local Woman's Club (which my oldest brother, bless his heart, says I'm too young for).  Each club year, we host a reciprocity meeting, which is when we invite members of other clubs to join us.  This year, the chair has asked me to make our invitations, so I made up a sample.  It's based on what she told me her decorations will be.  This may or may not be the exact final product, depending on feedback, but this is what I came up with.

Believe it or not, it took me several hours to come up with the final result.  I kind of knew what I wanted to do, but kept getting creative block.  So I'd stop & work on something else for a while, then search for an SVG, then find the right color of ribbon in my massive stash, you get the picture.  The easiest part was choosing the stamps.  I had it in my head before I even got off the phone.  Total time was really only about 20 minutes, my brain just didn't want to cooperate!  Making the remainder will take no time at all, now that I know what I'm doing...

I started by stamping the cup from the A Sip stamp set in White Daisy pigment ink on some Moonstruck CS.  After heat embossing with white powder, I cut out the cup.  Next, I stamped a group of flowers from the Flower Pot stamp set in White Daisy pigment ink on White Daisy CS.  I then colored in the image using markers in Sunflower, Cotton Candy, and Topiary and cut it out.

After wasting time hunting through my Cricut cartridges, I discovered I didn't have anything with the shape I wanted to cut out without making it myself.  So I opened up my trusty Make The Cut software and searched the gallery.  I found the pretty scalloped circle shape with the cut outs, which was exactly what I wanted.  I sized it on my virtual mat, making sure that the  inner area would be large enough for my image plus a little.  After cutting it from Moonstruck paper, I pulled in a circle from the Basic Shapes and sized it to fit inside the scalloped circle.  I cut that from Baby Blue paper.

I used the Swiss Dots embossing folder from Cuttlebug for the front of my card, using a technique I got from Lisa Stenz, another CTMH consultant.  You just emboss the upper portion, then turn it around and emboss the bottom portion, leaving a width plain for your sentiment.  Using my Scor-Pal, I scored a line at the top & bottom of this strip.  I stamped my sentiment from the discontinued Simple Invites stamp set in Moonstruck.  I adhered my circles to the front of the card, then adhered my cut out stamped images using foam adhesive tape.  I pulled some bright pink ribbon from my stash, and adhered it around the inner front edge of the card to finish it off.