Nuts About You Card

Hi everyone,

I have a special guest designer on my blog today. His name is Leo and he is eight (sorry, nearly nine - he told me I had to say that!) years old. Here he is:

We decided to enter the card in the PDE Linky Pary. You can see all the other fab entries and amazing design inspiration by clicking on the picture below:

I'll hand you over to him for the description of his masterpiece, which is pictured below:

"The inspiration for this card was mostly nature and outdoorsiness. I wanted to cut something out with the Cricut Explore and Jennie said "why don't we cut something out, like a rabbit or a fish", so we did a rabbit - which was blue. I loved it so much I wanted to do something much bigger than a little rabbit, so we got some ideas from the free stuff on the Cricut website. There was some writing that said "nuts about U" and it really brightened my day. After that we found a nice little peanut with a top hat so we put that on. Then we took a little while to cut them all out on the Cricut Explore. After, we decided to discuss what colours we could use for the card and it turned out that we would use some patterns. One was spotty and one was a very nice brown wood.

We cut some shapes out with the Cricut Cuttlebug. We decided to do a heart and a banner. The heart had stawberries on and the banner had the outdoors on it. To finish it off we got some string that was gold patterned and made a bow. Next I wrote "love you" on the banner and I gave the card to my mum and my sister, who has just come back from university :-)"

Thanks for stopping by to take a look at Leos card. Please write him a comment - I know he'd love it!

Lobster Birthday Card

This birthday card was made for my little brother - he loves fish and anything to do with the sea so I thought this card would be great for him (I also thought he'd enjoy the daft joke!). I started out with a kraft notecard from Hobbycraft. The striped patterned paper in the background is from Crate Paper. I stamped ink splotches using an old Kaisercraft stamp set and clear emobossed them using Versamark ink and Papermania clear embossing powder, for a distressed effect. I tore one edge to create a sea foam effect next to the seablue paper. The wood effect paper is from the Crate Paper DIY Shop collection. I cut several pieces and distressed the edges with my Stampin' Up distress tool - I hoped to create the look of driftwood you might find on the beach. The wave effect on the right edge of the card was created using my Cricut Explore and the First Few Years. It was cut from blue and cream solid smooth cardstock from Papermania. The lobster was also cut on the Cricut, this time from the Brooklyn Iron-on cartridge. I matted and layered cream and yellow polka-dot scraps from my stash and adhered the lobster over the top. I only applied glue to the centre of the lobster, allowing the pincers and tendrils to move freely, creating texture and dimension. I stamped the sentiment with Dovecraft mini alphabet stamps and Stampin' Up Pacific Point and Early Espresso inks - I love how inexpensive these mini stamp sets are but they're a bit fiddly and I managed to smudge a couple of letters. As luck would have it, I really liked how this turned out, even stamping a few letters back-to-front, inkeeping with the distressed overall look of the card.

lobster card

There isn't much to show you on the inside, just some more stamping and that great Crate Paper wood effect patterned paper - but I couldn't tell you half the joke and leave you without the punchline now could I ? :-)

Washing Line Birthday Card

I really love how pretty and feminine this card I made for a close girlfriend, turned out to be. The card base is a 6x6 kraft card from Hobbycraft. For the background to my card I used blue-grey paper from a DoCraft Home to Nest decoupage Kit, overlayed with photo-real grass paper from Kaisercraft. The rainbow border at the bottom of the card uses paper from the Cosmo Cricket Summer Love mini deck, punched with a Tonic Simplicity Dotty Border punch. The clothing and 'happy' word were cut on my Cricut Explore using the First Few Years cartridge. I cut 'Birthday' using the font from the Noah's ABC Animals cartridge. I used various patterned paper scraps from my stash including paper from Maggie Holmes and Dear Lizzy collections. I strung a peice of pink bakers twine from the Dovecraft Riverbank Revels collection, across the front of the card and clipped the clothes to it using mini clothes pegs from Hobbycraft. Finally, I created a hand-drawn border using my Uniball white gel pen.

Retro Gaming Birthday Card

This fun card was made for a friend of mine who's a massive computer geek - sorry Matt, but it's true   ;-p It was really simple to put together. First I mat and layered red and brown Papermania solid smooth cardstock onto a 6x6 kraft card blank from Hobbycraft. I rounded the corners on each layer using a Tonic 5mm corner rounder. The 'joystick junkie' sentiment was cut into the brown cardstock using my Cricut Explore and the Brooklyn Iron-on cartridge, prior to adhering it, allowing the red cardstock below to show through. The joystick image was also die-cut from the Brooklyn Iron-on cartridge. The Zap! image I created myself using Cricut Font and Basic Shapes. The rest of the sentiment was embossed onto black Dymo tape using the Dymo label-maker.

On the inside I used more dymo tape and another die cut from the Brooklyn Iron-on cartridge. I stamped the letters on the keyboard die cut using a Dovecraft mini alphabet stamp set.

Fairytale Pop-Up Wedding Card

This card means alot to me as I made it for my little brothers wedding. I used a white notecard from Papermania as the card base. 

The centre of this card is by far my favourite part. I had so much fun creating the pop-up. For the landscape I used various green patterned paper from my stash. I created the look of hills and grass using the Mama Elephant Landscape Trio and Lawn Fawn Grassy Border dies. The rainbow and heart were die cut from more Lawn Fawn Let's Polka paper, using my Cricut Explore and an image from the Create-a-Critter cartridge. The remaining images were stamped using Memento Tuxedo black ink. I used the knight, princess and castle images from the Royal Cuteness stamp set by Paper Smooches and I used the drago, unicorn and second castle images from Critters Ever After by Lawn Fawn. Again, I coloured the images with Spectrum Noir pencils and blended with pencil stubs and blending solution. I used a Uniball white gel pen to create cute freckles on the images. Finally I added a sentiment, also from Critters Ever After, and a few more mini flowers punched from paper scraps. Magic!