Skating Party Card

My foster daughter really wants a roller skating party for her birthday, so we made the reservations and she decided who she wanted to invite, and then I spent this morning making invitations to her party! Since I didn't have a Cricut cartridge with a roller skate on it, I found a cute die-cut pattern on the Silhouette site, and used that as my focal point. We're inviting boys and girls, so I tried to make the invite not too obviously girly but still included some pink.

Recipe:
AP Celebrations stamp set
Dotty for You level 2 papers
Lagoon, Smoothie, Chocolate, Creme Brulee & White Daisy cardstock
Lagoon & Sunset ink
Chocolate brads
Pattern: Retro Sketches 157
Challenges: Clear It Out Birthday & Polka-Dots challenge; Heart 2 Heart Opposites Attract (I used shades that are opposite each other on the color wheel - blue/orange, yellow/pink)

Celebrate Easter Layout

Hmmm. . .  Have you ever created a layout and couldn't quite decide whether you liked it or you wanted to tear the whole thing apart and start over? This is one of those layouts for me. I was kinda stuck for paper since I didn't have anything that perfectly matched that bright pink dress, so the Sweetheart papers were the closest I could come. I wanted to use my Cricut to cut out the egg shapes and have the background paper showing through, but I'm not sure that really worked either. And the yellow. . . There's lots of yellow in my pictures, but I don't know if it looks quite right on the layout. Is the big journaling strip right in the middle too much? Should I have framed the two 4x6 photos on the left page and the 4x6 on the right page in light pink? This is one of those "Let me have it, ladies" layouts. Should I leave it as is and call it done, or are there small fixes I can do to make it much better? Help!

Recipe:
Eastertime, AP Celebrations & Felicity stamp sets
Sweetheart Level 2 papers
Colonial White, Buttercup & Black cardstock
Black, Cotton Candy & Creme Brulee ink
Black marker
Bitty sparkles
White embroidery floss
Cricut Art Philosophy cartridge: eggs, butterflies
Pattern: EMS Sketch Challenge 30b

Elemental Card Class

I was recently asked to created a card workshop using the papers from the Elemental paper pack. Although I was initially hesitant because this was not one of my favorite packs, I started working with it and ended up enjoying the creative process. I love the cards I dreamed up. My CMTH upline loaned me her Cricut machine so I could try out the new Art Philosophy cartridge from CTMH, and I couldn't stop cutting! Every card features one or more (in some cases several) die-cuts from the cartridge. Here are my cards, which also meet the weekly challenge from the Heart2Heart challenge blog: show off artwork featuring die-cuts.

The whole set:

A detail from my favorite card.I cut out a dragonfly in a frame first, then an empty frame. Using the empty frame, we masked the frame part of the frame/dragonfly combo and sponged the dragonfly's wings with Sorbet ink. We then sponged a second dragonfly of the same size, and colored the body black using a marker. We glued the second dragonfly over the first, leaving the wings free, and applied Liquid Glass to the body to make it shiny. Love that look!

For this one, we masked the bottom of the cupcake and stamped the frosting portion first, and then adhered the cupcake liner to the image.We then sponged Pacifica ink onto the frosting, and added Liquid Glass to the swirls. We also dry embossed a line around the Cranberry rectangle, flipped it over, and sanded the cardstock to reveal the white core along the embossed line.