A Little Inspirational Flourish

I made this card a few months ago, but life has just been so busy that I am just now getting around to posting it.  I was made at a time that families all over the country were celebrating graduations.  This year my family attended the college graduation if our oldest daughter, and of course, this special occasion called for a special handmade card.  However, I wasn't particularly feeling a traditional graduation card - I wanted a much more feminine and slightly elegant feel. This is what I ended up with and I couldn't have been more pleased.  And who would have thought a stamp set from Inspirational Flourishes would be perfect for a graduation card?  It is amazing how versatile many of the stamps really are.

 I followed the Make It From Your Heart, Vol. 2, Pattern #22 with only minor adjustments.  This is a list of what I used to complete this card:

• Card stock (Kraft and Blush)
• Ivy Lane Paper Pack, X7178B
• Ruby Chevron Ribbon, Z1846
• Ivy Lane Assortment, Z3001
• My Acrylics Stamp Set, Inspirational Flourishes, C1581
• My Acrylics Stamp Set, Causal Expressions, D1525
• Exclusive Inks Stamp Pad, Smoothie, Z2196
• 3-D Foam Tape
• Opaques, Mocha (a retired item)

Here are a couple of pictures to give you a close up view of some of the details on this card.

This is a quick peak inside the card - which is always a fun place to add a bit of additional embellishment detail.

Lollydoodle - You're Amazing

Being a lover of everything pink, I was drawn to this pink B&T paper in the Lollydoodle paper pack.  It made the perfect background for this page, even though pink was no where to be found in my pictures.  Our schools have school uniforms, which severely limits the wardrobe choices to three main colors.  For my daughter's elementary school the colors were red, white and blue.  These are truly wonderful colors, but sometimes a girl just needs a little pink.

These are the basics that were used to complete this page:

• Lollydoodle B&T paper, as the base of this layout
• Art Philosophy Cricut Cartridge
• Artiste Cricut Cartridge
• Slate, Cotton Candy, Daisy White cardstock
• Cotton Candy Exclusive Inks Stamp Pad
• Word Balloons, D1531, one of the Artiste Cricut Cartridge stamp sets
• Kudos, D1530, one of the Artiste Cricut Cartridge stamp sets
• Hooray Bouquet, D1491
• In the Background, D1340, retired
• Universal Borders, D1477, retired
• Bitty Sparkles
• misc contraband flowers from my stash
• 2 inch Scallop punch, retired 

The CTMH Art Philosophy Cricut Cartridge cuts:

• <Flower6> at 1.25 and 2 inches, page 29, from White Daisy cardstock
• <Flower3> at 1 and 1.5 inches, page 57, from White Daisy cardstock

The CTMH Artiste Cricut Cartridge cuts:

• Accent 2 <shift> at 1.75 inches, page 65, from White Daisy cardstock

 Here are a couple of close up pictures of the some of the stamped cricut cuts...

Lollydoodle - Be Yourself

The Lollydoodle paper is full of fun colors and you can easily emphasize whichever one suits your mood and the colors featured in your pictures. The subject matter of this layout was my daughter's mis-matched clothes day for school and she was wearing practically every color in her closet. Because I simply love pink and orange, they were the colors I chose to emphasize. 

This was a fun layout to make and it came together really quickly without a lot of fuss.  I used a couple of cuts from my CTMH Artiste Cricut Cartridge, stamped a few images/sentiments and added a couple of items from the Lollydoodle Assortment.  Easy, peasy...my page was done :-)

These are the basics that were used to complete this page:

• Lollydoodle B&T paper, as the base of my layout
• Lollydoodle Assortment
• Artiste Cricut Cartridge
• Cotton Candy, Sorbet and Juiper cardstock
• Dimensional Elements (which are packaged with the Artiste Cricut Collection) 
• Pear Exclusive Inks Stamp Pad 
• Enjoy the Little Things, B1451, only available as a Hostess Reward

The Close To My Heart Artiste Cricut Cuts used on this layout:

• Overlay, page 42, from Cotton Candy cardstock.  Used the Hide/Contour feature (which is available in the Cricut Craft room) to tell my machine not to cut the 3 holes, that are in the original overlay.
• Border, page 48, from Sorbet cardstock.  Used the Weld feature (which is also available in the Cricut Craft Room) to get a segment wide enough to cover the 12 inch page width.
• Title <shift> (my journalling box), page 41, from Sorbet cardstock.  Used the Hide/Contour feature to only cut the exterior of the word balloon.  
• Title, page 41,  from Cotton Candy cardstock to cut my title.
• Title <shift>, page 79, from Sorbet cardstock. 

Detail of the dimensional element arrow that has been covered with a stamped cricut cut.  The stamp is from Enjoy the Little Things, B1451, which is currently available as a Hostess Rewards Stamp.

Detail of additional stamped images from Enjoy the Little Things, B145.