Thanks for your service

Hello! My sailor will be home soon from deployment, so I wanted to make him a card. I used the Rick Rack Edger die to create my flag. I just pieced them together and trimmed off the outer edges to make it straight.

For the stars on the bottom border of my card, I used the Stars Edger die. I just used the "inside" pieces and not the actual border bit. Thanks so much for stopping by today! I hope you will be back tomorrow to see the AWESOME pairing of Cottage Cutz dies with Peachy Keen Stamps! You are going to be absolutely blown away!!!! Have a wonderful day!

Nikki

Sneak Peek #2

We've got our die cutting machines revved up and ready to go! Our designers are working on some super fun projects to showcase these beautiful new dies and stamps! Are you ready for your second peek? You might recognize our fun peach from our Faceless Fruit set, we think she is just PERFECT! Don't forget, tomorrow is our last SNEAK PEEK before the BIG HOP on Monday, July 19th. Our designers are going to have some "peachy" prizes for you and Peachy Keen Stamps will also have AN AWESOME prize lined up for you! You won't want to miss it!

Exciting News!

Exciting News!

The Scrapping Cottage and Peachy Keen Stamps have teamed up to bring you amazingly crisp die sets featuring some of Kathy Jakopovich’s most whimsical and fun {and we like FUN} designs! And guess what? You’ll even receive coordinating Peachy Keen faces with your Cottage Cutz ® die shapes! Whaaaat!? This is so much fun; The Scrapping Cottage and Peachy Keen Stamps have never offered a bundle like this before, and it will be pre-sold exclusively on The Scrapping Cottage and Peachy Keen Stamps’ websites starting Monday, July 19th.

Which sets, you ask? Well, we’re gonna show you. But only a few right now. We’ll show you a few more tomorrow, and then the last bunch on Sunday. Are you ready to see the first sneak peek? Here you go!

Don’t miss our {BLOG HOP} featuring samples from ALL the new packages

Monday, July 19th


These die and stamp packages will be available with a {special PRE-ORDER PRICE} beginning Monday, July 19th on

The Scrapping Cottage

Peachy Keen Stamps

Happy Days and Blue Jays

Good morning!!  I certainly hope it's a happy day for you.  Happy days and Blue Jays are what I'm celebrating today.  This is a card I made with the Blue Jay die from The Scrapping Cottage.  During the winter months here in Missouri, we thoroughly enjoy feeding the birds, and it gives us a lot of enjoyment to watch them.  Beautiful Blue Jay's frequent our feeders on a regular basis, and when I received this particular die, it immediately reminded me of our lovely winter visitors.   I'm so impressed with the amazing  detail of each die cut piece.  As usual, I started with plain white Georgia Pacific card stock, for my die cut.  I assembled the pieces by gluing them together, then I started coloring with my Copic markers.   I always start with the lightest color, and build layers of color from there. 

The second picture below shows you a little closer look at the  coloring, and a tip I'd like to share with you is that after all of my coloring is finished, I like to go over the piece and add tiny details with a pure black Micron pen size 01.  You can see below some of the lines that I added with my pen, and it really helps give the finished project an authentic look.  I played along with the 2 Sketches 4 You Challenge (Kazan's sketch) with this card layout.  I just love sketch challenges, because by having the sketch already prepared, I can focus my time and energy on coloring the image and choosing great paper and embellishments.  It just seems to make my card making life so much simpler.

I hope you've enjoyed my offering for today.  Feel free to stop by my blog, The ThINKin' Spot  for more of my adventures in card making.   Have a wonderful weekend, filled with happy stamping and scrapping!

Mushrooms and cupcakes!

Welcome to my weekly post. I have so much fun working with the Cottage Cutz dies and these mushrooms are perfect for an outdoor page.


For added dimension I popped these with foam tape -- I'm obsessed with foam tape! I also used the loopy edger and cut the little wheat thingies by hand.

Leftover papers and more mushrooms for this quick missing you card.

and more foam tape. Must have foam tape! :)

Another recent love of mine are the October Afternoon papers. These are so so cute! this collection is Farm Fresh . For this baking page I've used one of the cupcakes, the scallop/dot edger, and the loopy edger.

Bling added to the scallop edger.

I matched the flower on the cupcake to the background paper.

Thanks for visiting! Come back tomorrow for more great projects from Design Team member, Lorie.

The Versatile Wise Old Owl

Today I'm using the Stylized Owl. The one thing I just love about owls is that they're so versatile. You can do cards for just about any occasion, male or female, young or old because there are so many cute sayings. I did a post last year where I shared some of my owl sayings, but I'm going to do it again since we have some new followers and a new owl die to play with.

I chose to leave my card without a sentiment so I could quickly add whichever suited my needs when I need a quick card. Here are a few to choose from:

Owl Always Love You

Hooooray! It's Your Birthday

Look Whooos Having a Birthday

You're Such a Hoot!

Owl Always be there for you

Whooo Forgot.....

Thanks for Giving a Hoot

Just to name a few, there are so many more.

Have a great Wednesday!

Friends. . Birds of a Feather

Birds, Friends of a Feather . . . This week I decided to try out one of the new bird dies from Cottage Cutz, They are the most adorable birds. They have a lot of uses. I used the Cottage Cutz, Bluebird, Lace Doily and Flourish #2 Die to create a collage type of look on this friend card.

There is a lot of detail in really two cuts. The bird comes out complete in just one pass in the machine, and a second pass will cut the wing and tail feathers again to create dimension.

When you cut the bird a second time, cut snip the wing out, it is only connected in three spots, and snip the center tail feather in four spots. I cut two scraps of paper, one to fold and use as a hinge for the wing. than put a foam square at the end of the wing. When you glue the wing to the paper hinge, it will create the slant of the wing, than just stick end of the wing down onto the foam. This will give the wing a nice dimention. Than take the really slim scrap and fold once, and glue to itself, than fold again and glue to its self. Than glue to the end of the center tail. When you glue the tail feather down. This will create the lift on the tail feather. (The foam tape/dot is to thick to use on the tail).

The flourish on the card was done by cutting three flourishes, (from the Cottage Cuts Flourish #02) gluing them together to create a chip board thickness. Than using the Sakura Gold Metallic gelly roll pen, paint the flourish really well. Coat with Glossy Accents, If you do it directly after you ink, the glossy accent will pick up part of the sparkle and allow it to swim in the glossy coating. This create a really shinny, almost metallic embellishment. The three layers of card stock keep it from curling as it drys. The Lace Doily was sponged in two colors of inks. Genuine artificial diamonds were added to the doily.

Hang In There!

Good morning friends! For today's card I used Frog with branch, and Snail. I tried Lorie's suggestion and cut out my image with white cardstock. I used Copics to color the die cuts. I freehand cut the clouds with scissors and inked the edges in blue. There are so many adorable dies at The Scrapping Cottage! Click here to take a look.
I apologize for the poor quality picture. The card looks much better in real life.
Have a great day everyone and thanks for stopping by!

Craft Queen

Hello! My name is Nikki and I am really excited to be on the Scrapping Cottage design team. I figured for my first posting I'd just go ahead and let the cat out of the bag...I am addicted to kraft cardstock! So, that having been said, here is my card for today.

I used the adorable Kitty Princess die. Isn't she just the cutest?! She has a little collar with a heart tag, but I chose not to use that this time. I wanted to focus on blinging up her cute crown. A girl HAS to have her bling, right?!

I also wanted to share with you one of my favorite ribbon techniques! I simply cut a slit on the fold of the card to slide my ribbon through. Then to finish, just tie a strand of twine or embroidery floss into a bow to secure it. I always add a little dot of zip dry adhesive to the knot of the bow to ensure it stays put.

I hope you like my card for today. I look forward to seeing you back here every Sunday. If you would like to see more of my work...Please join me over on my personal blog ScrappinNavyWife. I post a project nearly everyday, so pop on over to see!

I hope you all have a WONDERFUL week!

Nikki

Bloom Page

Good morning!  Welcome to The Scrapping Cottage Blog on this blooming beautiful morning!  I have a scrapbook page to share with you today.  I'll be honest with you and say that working on this page reminded me why I don't scrapbook nearly often enough.  You see, I have a hard time knowing when it's time to stop, and my pages kind of take on a life of their own.  I seriously need to learn that I don't have to use every die or stamp made to do one page.  Oh well, I had fun, and that's all that REALLY matters.  Here's my Bloom page ready and waiting for some wonderful pictures to finish it off.

 For this page, I used the following Cottage Cutz dies:  Flower 1 Layer, Flowervine Edger, Daisy with Swirl, Watering Can, and Scalloped 3 Edger.  Yes, I did get a lot of them in there, but I was having so much fun!  The Bloom sentiment was cut with my Cricut using the Storybook cartridge. 

All of the die cuts, except the sentiment were cut with white card stock, then colored with my Copic markers except the sentiment.  The sentiment was cut with pink card stock, then outlined with Copics and highlighted with a white gel pen.  

I added some rain drops as an accent for the page.  I've actually got some pictures in mind that will work beautifully for this page, and if I can only find them I'll be one happy scrapper  Thanks for stopping by today.  I wish you a blessed day filled with happy scrapping!!

For my first trick....

Please let me first thank Scrapping Cottage for giving me the opportunity to join your fabulous Design Team! I'm so thrilled to be a part of such a creative and talented group of crafters and I only hope to be as good as you think I am. ;)

For my first project I've done a fishing layout. (I do a LOT of fishing layouts!) Who likes to fish??? My grandkids do! And penguins do too, of course. I couldn't resist using the adorable snowskiing penguin on this page, giving him a fishing pole instead of snowskis. It's plenty warm so he doesn't need his hat and scarf on this trip. I also used the scallop/dot edger. Scallops and dots are two of my favorite things....could you tell by my choice of papers?

Here the little penguin holds the fishing pole and net from the fishing set and, without his ski cap, you can see the cute little tuft of hair on top of his head (which is actually one of the lily pads from the boat and dock die).

I love this fishing pole. It's fun to embellish. I've used cork paper for the rod handle, silver paper for the reel, and invisible thread/monofiliment for the line. It seemed to work because Mr. Penguin has caught two fish and seems pretty happy with his catch!

For the net, I used mesh I've had in my stash for ages. It's perfect for this use! I love how it turned out. Cute, huh?

Then, to balance out the large embellishment on the bottom of the page, I've added a clump of cattails in the opposite corner. These are the cutest!

After finishing the layout, I used leftover scraps to make this quick card. Simple bracket shape embellished with flowers, bling, ribbon and Cottage Cutz scallop/dot edger.

Add a rubon sentiment and you're good to go!

For this second layout, I used the cute little love birds and tall tree. I also used Ruth Ellen's idea and made the scallop/dot edger a 12 inch length. Great tip, Ruth Ellen.


Added a little stickles to the birdies to make them sparkly, like their adorable personalities.

And for fun, used my eyelet hole punches to make Swissy-looking letters for my cheesy title.

and another card using scraps from the layout. My daughter and son-in-law will celebrate their 10 year anniversary this weekend. The love birds are perfect! Add a heart or two, some ribbon and bling, and celebrate!

I'm really looking forward to my term on the Cottage Blog team and working with some of the cutest dies on the market, not to mention some of the craftiest people out there! Thank you for viewing my first projects and for the warm welcome. :)

Shar

Feeling a little "Krafty"

These are the CottageCutz dies I used for today's post. The Lovebirds, Whimsical, Stylized Tree and the mini Simple Tree.

It's been a long time since I made a card and didn't have at least 2 layers of cardstock and patterned paper behind my design. I just loved the look of these diecuts against the raw Kraft cardstock.
For the trees I inked the edges in a mixture of Walnut ink and Peeled Paint Distress ink.
I cut the leaves out of a patterned paper that matched my cardstock.

For the Whimsical birds I inked them with Walnut Stain also and added some white paint dots to the eyes and a few on the wings.
I thought this would make a cute, but simple Anniversary or Congratulations card for a newly engaged couple or even a baby card with the mini nest die inside the card.


Be sure to check out the blog each day of the week as we have a brand new Design Team that is sure to please!

Cat's in for the Day

Funny thing how this idea came about, The Cat's in for the Day. A Friend asked me to make a sign for the door (that they could flip) so when she and her husband went off to work that they both knew that the cat was let back in for the day. I asked . . why, I thought you had a cat door? Well come to find out, they live on the edge of a wooded area and the cat had decided to bring home presents for them. Opp's twice the cat brought home. . . well. . I just will say it. . SNAAAAKE. The cat door has been closed . . for not.

I started with A card shape, cut a window in both sides. I wanted to use the Cottage Cutz Die with the Cat Front & Back. I thought this was a perfect use. The outside was 4" x 6" and the window is 2" x 3 1/2". I used acetate in the window.

By using acetate I could put both sides of the cat die in the window. I also used the Cottage Cutz Die, Half Daisy on the Front as a full daisy and the back as the half daisy. Mounted on a lattice stripe. The cat die turned out very cute as a orange tabby. I stated with a melon color card stock and highlighted in a burnt orange ink and dabbed a little white. The bow was done in burnt orange card stock. This all pops against the white door.

The half daisy was also added to the cloth ribbon hanger at the top of the front. Remember when gluing card stock and other materials like beads or cloth ribbon, I have found Glossy Accents to hold the best.

I added a dangle at the bottom of the sign using the Cottage Cutz Die, Fish Skeleton along with a few beads.

As an added note, I would also like to welcome all the new DT members, we all look forward to more fun idea's using Cottage Cutz Dies. Thank You B