I'm Back

I have been gone for a looooong time!  I was so busy last semester with school, I had over 100 books to read.  I am working on my masters in library science so I enjoyed it but it was a lot of work!  For Christmas I made cards as gifts for family and friends so I hope to be sharing a lot of those ideas with you.  As gifts I received a PaperCrafts magazine subscription and a Cuttlebug, let the inspiration begin!!

And the winner is....

Congrats to Sue Thurston!  She won the JS Handcrafts prize during the Card and Invitation Blog Hop.  Thanks to everyone who stopped by, left a comment, and/or became a follower.   Stop back by again this week for more project ideas!

My Cricut Craft Room's Card and Invitation Blog Hop

Welcome to My Cricut Craft Room's Card and Invitation Blog Hop!

You should have come from http://simplysweetbysharon.blogspot.com/

If not please start at http://mycricutcraftroom.blogspot.com for the beginning of our blog hop.

My card for today is made with the Walk in My Garden Cricut Cartridge

Isn't the snail too cute?  The patterned papers are from a K&Company Super Paper Pad. 
I once again tried my hand at using my sewing machine to do the stitching, a straight stitch and a zig zag.  Here are the steps:
1. Cut card from red card stock
2. Cut pink card stock 1/4 inch smaller than card front, adhere
3. Cut patterned paper to match the size of the card, tear edge, and zig-zag stitch opposite edge, adhere.
4. Cut square from pink card stock, straight stitch edges, ink edges in red, stamp "friends", adhere
5. Using the Walk in My Garden Cricut cartridge, cut snail body from red card stock, cut snail shell and body from patterned paper, adhere shell, cut off patterned antenna tips, and adhere, draw on face and adhere whole snail to the front of the card.

A quick tip for stitching on your sewing machine: as soon as you are done stitching, with a small piece of tape, tape the loose ends of thread on the back of the paper, this will prevent them from getting pulled out.  Once they are taped you can then snip off the extra thread

Here is what the inside looks like:

The sentiments on the front and back are from a clear stamp set from Hero Arts called Thank You For Being My Friend.  This was my first experience using clear stamps and I loved it!  I bought a bunch of clear stamps at Archivers recently when they had a one day 40% off sale. I try my best to buy items made in the USA and I was pleasantly surprised at how many stamps are. 

I do have a small prize to give away, all you have to do is become a follower and leave a comment below about what you liked or didn't like about this project or post.  This is my first blog hop so some feedback would be great!  One person will be randomly selected by Monday August 22nd at 12:00 noon

Thanks for hopping by!

Jennifer

Next you should go to 

http://pinkpolkadotscrapping.blogspot.com 

If you get lost along the way, here is the entire line up.....

http://mycricutcraftroom.blogspot.com  

http://www.micraftygal.blogspot.com/

http://katscrapfever.blogspot.com

http://autumnsbuggycreations.blogspot.com/

http://scrappingwithpirkie.blogspot.com/

http://www.crazyaboutcricut.blogspot.com/ 

http://britkdesigns.blogspot.com/

http://scrappingrookie.blogspot.com/ 

http://cuttinandstampin.blogspot.com 

http://conniescraftycloset.blogspot.com/

http://simplysweetbysharon.blogspot.com/

http://jshandcrafts.blogspot.com  --------you are here----------

http://pinkpolkadotscrapping.blogspot.com
Http://mycricutcraftroom.blogspot.com (special post for blog candy)

Love and Marriage

Two Cards to share with you today.
My husband and I just celebrated our 6th wedding anniversary at the end of July so I made this quick simple card for him:

The inside was really sappy, I wrote ....married to my best friend.  Awww, makes you want to gag right? :o)

I used the Cricut George and Basic Shapes cartridge for the letters (silhouette function) and the hearts.  The xo is a stamp that Tim bought me while we were dating.  He actually bought stamps, made me a card and gave me the stamps as a gift..awwwww.  Ok enough of that.

My other card for the day is a wedding card.  I make a bunch of these to have on hand because I love this Cricut cutout.  

I used the Wild Card Cricut Cartridge for this one.  It is hard to see in the picture but I added a velum wedding dress and veil.  Glue Dots makes an awesome product that is a sheet of adhesive for velum, it works great! 

The sentiment I stamped inside of this one is from Stampin' Up that I use a lot.

Hope you enjpyed the creations for today!

Card Inspiration

I was looking through the July/August 2011 issue of Paper Craft that I got from the library and saw a beautiful card so I tried my hand at it.  Here is my version:

 Basically you just cut 12 1 1/4 inch squares from double sided paper, staple the bottom, glue them on (I used hot glue) then glue the button in the middle, so fun!  I used some 1 inch squares to add some dimension to the bottom of the card and covered up the tops of the squares with a coordinating paper.  The Thank You stamp is from Stampin' Up

I have started making copies of ideas that I like from paper crafting or stamping magazines and keeping an "idea binder"  the butterfly card below came from there.  It is fashioned after an idea from the July 2009 issue of Card Maker magazine (page 29)  I like to take an idea, tweak it, and make it my own with the supplies I have on hand.

This penguin card is an original design inspired by Andy Warhol art.  I used the Cricut Christmas cartridge to make the cute penguins.  This card is one of the ones I am giving to Erica from Cricut Craft Room http://mycricutcraftroom.blogspot.com/ who is trying to collect 5,000 cards for St. Jude Children's Hospital.  Check out her blog for more info.



Hope these cards have inspired you, take the ideas, and make them yours!



Rub-On Transfers

Somehow in grade school I got my hands on these:

(yes I have a saving problem)

They were not at all easy to use and didn't give good results.  When I jumped into the world of scrap booking I was hesitant to try the rub-on transfers because of my bad experience in the past.  When I finally tried them in my sons scrapbook on some paper I was pleasantly surprised!

I then got a little more brave and tried them on photos and I was very happy with the results:

My next step is to try some rub-ons that have glitter in them.  I found these ones at Hobby Lobby and made an impulse buy, I thought they were so pretty!

I will post the results of that one as soon as I try them out.
What are your favorite was to use rub-on transfers?  Post in the comments below or send a pic to jshandcrafts@yahoo.com by noon on Wednesday June 29th and I will post your ideas.

Here we go!

A friend convinced me to give this blog a go. (Thanks Tina!)  I would like to share my passions for crafting and giving.