Dino-mite!

Hi, it's Nikki again! I have a simple 70's style card for you today, can you dig it? ☺ I used the Hippie Surfer Van and chose to omit the surfboard and the cute flowers too. I wanted my van to be more funky 70's rather than surfery. Ya dig? Oh no, I will try to keep the 70's lingo to a bare minimum! Anyhoo, I am happy with how groovy the van turned out. HAHAHAHAHA

I used silver glittered glazed brads to give the van far out hubcaps. The sentiment is from a pun set by My Pink Stamper. I realize that it should be "dynomite" with a y and not an i, but it's all that I had...so I just went with it.

I hope you're having a super groovy day!

☻Nikki ☻

p.s. Feel free to stop by My Blog and visit during the week!

Click here to see the fabulous new shapes from the latest Cottage Cutz Fall Release!!

Thinking of You

It is always nice to have a Thinking of You card on hand. I love this Cottage Cutz Stylized Tree Shape from the June Release because it is so versatile. As soon as I saw this new paper from My Little ShoeBox, I knew my Tree Shape would be perfect with it!

I also used the Cottage Cutz Loops Edger to add the details to the tree so it mimicked the trees from the patterned paper.

Yummy For Your Tummy

Good morning, and happy Friday!  I have a card to share with you today that I put together using the new Cottage Cutz  hot dog and soda pop dies from The Scrapping Cottage.  The minute I saw these, I thought they would be great little additions to of course picnic scrapbook pages, but in thinking a little more about it, I decided they would make a great focal point for a card that includes a gift card for eating out.  As my boys grew up and headed off to college, once in a while I would slip them a little gift card for eating at one of their favorite fast food places, and I would have loved to have these dies to create a card back then.  Oh well, I'm all set now, for the next round of college goers in the family.

I used the dies with white card stock, then colored the hot dog and soda pop with my Copic markers.  The paper is from Cosmo Cricket's Garden Variety Mini Deck.  I thought it gave the card a very 50's retro feel, and I loved the look.  I hope you like it too!

Thanks for stopping by today.  I hope your Friday is amazing, and that you get to enjoy some happy crafting!

We always have such fun with the grandgirls and this summer was no exception. Here Mila poses with the birdhouse grampa helped her make. It's her own design too. She even drew up the plans for it. ;)

I used the happy bird for this page because, after all, he's happy for the home tweet home Mila made for him!


Close up of the title treatment and sweet little birdie.



Grace enjoys fishing and she also likes tying flies. I don't think her creations have ever caught any fish, but she sure is creative when it comes to colors and materials for her 'special' flies!

I mimicked the red and yellow she used on this one and also used the fishing pole, complete with fishing line. The real "fly" in the title is handcut.

Oink Oink and a bottle of Coke!

Several years ago I started a recipe book of my favorite recipes and scrapped them before adding them to my book. It seems I always have a few new recipes to add to my book.

After trying my friends Pork Barbacoa Enchiladas I knew I had to make them for my family.

They were a big hit so I added this recipe to my book.

The Pig Peeker and the Soda Pop bottle worked great for this recipe and of course the ever versatile Rick Rack Edger comes through for me again.

I altered the Soda Pop bottle just a bit to make it look like Coke and used some Distress Stickles on my brown layer and then added Glossy Accents to make it look shiney like glass.

Just an FYI if you decide to try this recipe, it works great to divide up the pork once it's done and freeze it in Ziploc bags to use later. For my enchiladas I simply take a flour tortilla, add some pork barbacoa and some Jack cheese, roll it up and put Green Chile Enchilada sauce over the top and some more Jack cheese. You can microwave a serving at a time or put them all in baking dish and heat through till hot and bubbly at about 350 degrees.
Once the pork is done these are very simple to make!

Presenter Box

This week I brought you a presenter box, I used the Cottage Cutz Gingerbread Doll Die to create a garland style trim around the four sides of the box. The trim on the edge is the Cottage Loops Edger Die.

Each panel is basically the same except for the gingerbread cookies, Don't forget the spiced gum drops that are also on the die. I did them here in purple and orange. . . my favorite flavors.

For this project I wanted to have a box to gift a jar candle. In this case, I cut five 4" x 4" panels. You can use coasters but I generally use Cresent Black Mounting Board (found at a frame supple store). It is very thin, but twice as heavy as chip board. I cut the holes in the side of the chip board panels and used ribbon to tie together.

I tied a ribbon around the jar lid and added a gingerbread, a few cranberries and popcorn.

This type of box is great to give a bag of popcorn (in this case, Carmel popcorn), a bottle of bath gel with a sponge. . . . . just tie you gift up in a cello bag and put in the box.

Run, run as fast as you can!

Hello fellow crafters! I hope you all had a nice weekend. The weather was gorgeous here in Massachusetts!

I love gingerbread men images, especially the ones made by Peachy Keen! For today's card I used the Cottage Cutz Gingerbread Doll, which comes with 2 Peachy Keen face stamps, and the Doll Accessories 1. I also used the Frosted Cookie die and the word "sweet" from the Sweet Sign die. The hearts on the Ginger-girl are from the frosted cookie die. I just love these little cuties! I hope you do too! Thanks for stopping by!

To my beary best friend

Hi! It's Nikki again. For my card this week I used the Tear Bear die and the Sunglasses Mini die. I just kept this simple because I wanted all the focus to be on my little "nerd" bear. I just snipped off the "arms" of the sunglasses to make his glasses. I attached his arms and legs with mini brads.

Well, I hope you like my card for today. Have a wonderful week and I will see you back here next Sunday. Same bat time, same bat channel. ☺

♥ Nikki ♥

Anything goes with Christmas!!

As soon as I saw these adorable sunglasses from the July #2 Cottage Cutz Release, I knew I had to have them. If there is one thing my girls have always loved, it's dressing up. And nothing completes a good outfit like a pair of shades. I actually have several pictures picked out that are going to look great with this sunglasses shape but I picked these first. Since these pictures were taken around Christmas, I wanted to give the layout an overall Christmasy feel. However, the real reason behind the pictures was the fact that my DD put on my sunglasses and thought she looked so cool! So I used the sunglasses mini die to add an accent border long the bottom to help accentuate the sunglasses in the pictures which are the true focus.

I use lots of different cardstocks in my scrapbooking. For me, it is sometimes more about the perfect color match than the brand of cardstock. However, there are definitely differences among the brands. Some cardstock leaves a white edge after you cut out your shapes. Now depending upon the colors in your layout, and the placement of your diecut, that may not matter at all. On this particular layout, my background was off white, plus I wanted my sunglasses to pop a bit. Therefore, I took one of my Copic markers and edged the sunglasses shapes. By doing this, I was able to get rid of the white edge and give a crisper look to the diecuts. This is one of those techniques that when you look at the layout, you don't say, "Wow, that's some good edging on those sunglasses". But if I had not done it, they would not have looked as clean and crisp.

I hope you enjoyed this quick little tip to help you get the look you want with your diecuts! Have a great rest of the weekend and happy scrapping!!!

You're Toad-ally Awesome!!

Good morning, and happy Friday the 13th to you!  Happy birthday birthday to me on this Friday the 13th.  I wasn't born on Friday the 13th, but I've sure had lots of birthday's celebrated on them.  I want to share a card with you today that expresses how I feel about being a part of this wonderful group of talent on The Scrapping Cottage Design Team.  I think they are each and every one TOAD-ALLY awesome, so here's my card for all of YOU today.  For this card I used the Frog on Lily Pad, Marker Sign, and the Zig-Zag Edger dies, all from The Scrapping Cottage.  Oh my goodness, were they ever fun to work with!!  This time I used colored card stock, and then shaded with my Copic markers.  I just couldn't quite get the look I wanted using white card stock, so that's why I changed it up a bit.  I found that it worked wonderfully to color the colored card stock with markers.  Another fun thing I thought I'd try was cutting the fire flies wings with acetate.  I love the way this looks in real life!!  It's such a small, but effective touch.  The sentiment for this card was computer generated, and all the die cuts are popped up with pop dots.

I'm so happy you could drop by today.  I wish YOU a toad-ally awesome day, lots of happy crafting, and again, a very happy Friday!!

 


I

Play on words

Please forgive my lack of projects this week. On top of having two of my grandgirls here this week, I've been super sick and sleeping more than scrapping I'm afraid. I expect to be back on track next week though! :)


I love play on words and the ladybug and watermelon is perfect for a quick thank you card, don't you think! I used the grass clump from the mushrooms for to "ground" the ladybug.

Punny Get Well Card

A couple of years ago I ran across this saying in a craft magazine and thought it was so funny, so I can't take credit for this take on words. I thought it would be perfect for this CottageCutz

Hot Dog die and show you how this can be used for more than just your backyard BBQ's.

I also used the CottageCutz Loopy Edger die.

TIP - When I only need to use 4" of these edgers I just use my Revolution without changing the platform to my 12" one. The 4" platform works by hanging the extra part of the die off the edges right in the middle.

Do you have some fun ways to use this Hot Dog die? Then WEINER you going to leave us a comment and share your ideas - we like to hear from you!

If the shoe fits. . .PARTY

I created an invitation for a Halloween Shoe Party. . If the Shoe fits. . .PARTY. I used the Cottage Cutz 3x3 Witch Legs Die. One set of legs are done like the die shows you and the other set I used a 1/4" hole punch to create Polka Dot hoses and added a jewel in place of the buckle on the shoe. The invitation is 6"x6" with a window cut out in both the orange and the black . This way I could create a window to sandwich the mesh like ribbon in between . (to give a web look).

I wanted the word PARTY to have a slightly different look, so I used an old fashion Fiskars shaped hand hole punch to chip away on the edge of the letters. (in this case, the triangle), be sure to punch at different sizes for contrast. If you try to hand cut the chips by hand, the tip of the scissors will not get a clean cut and you may overlay the cuts. (and way to much work!) This way . . snap . . there is a chip. This also works well with any of the old hand punches. There was oval, rectangle, triangle, diamond, star. . etc. The oval works great for a cheese edge. The rectangle gives you a square mechanical chip.. . . . for a Robot layouts. If the letters are large enough, cut the letter twice each in a different color, cut the shape holes randomly on the top color than glue the "holy" letter on top of the second color letter. That works great for Birthday layouts. . kind of a confetti look. Than you also don't have to glue every piece of confetti onto the letter.

The back I made an easel type card on the bottom half of the card with a simple . . When. . Where . . . etc. The why really tells the story . . . Why: because you look HOT in those shoes.

Have a great party!!!!!

It's Monday! "Let's Do Lunch"

I can't believe it is Monday already! Hope you all had a great weekend. For today's card I used dies from the new summer release. I love the Picnic Basket die! I grew up in WI and my Mom would pack a picnic lunch at least once each summer, and we would head off to Bay Beach for a day of FUN! We had one of those metal coolers from the 50's. I love everything from the 50's, especially kitchen decor.

The finished card size is 6x6. I cut the picnic basket using white cardstock and colored with copics. I used a small piece of gingham paper for the cloth inside the basket. I usually use scraps and place the paper over the part of the die I want to cut. Of course if you prefer to color your die cuts, you will have very little waste. I am so glad Lorie gave me that wonderful tip! It opened up a wide range of possibilities. I never really thought about it. I would choose colored cardstock to cut my images, but now the possibilities are endless! Thanks Lorie!

The Picnic Ant and the Picnic Ladybug are so cute! The drumstick and the slice of watermelon are cute too! You could have them carry different items to switch it up a bit. I could have put the drumstick in the picnic basket and have the ant carry the apple.

I used a small alphabet stamp set to stamp the words, "Let's Do Lunch".

Picnic anyone? Enjoy the day!

Hugs and smiles!
Janice

I love moo!

Hello! It's me, Nikki! I hope you find my card to be amoozing. ☺ Sorry, couldn't help myself. I used the Cow Peeker die and stamps to create my card for today. I think she is just too stinkin' adorable! I decided that she is a blue diva and NEEDED some pretty blue eyeshadow to complete her ensemble! ☺ 

She also has on a blingy blue necklace which can be seen a lot better here...

Well, I hope you like my card for today! See you again next Sunday...Until we meet again...Happy Crafting to you!!!

♥ Nikki ♥

p.s. if you want to see more of my crafty adventures you can stop by over at my personal blog ScrappinNavyWife. ☺