Do you YUDU?

Now I DO!

Yes, I jumped at the chance to buy a Yudu for $99 at Michaels a few weeks ago.  I had heard mixed reviews about it, but when I told my boyfriend I could make him customized t-shirts for his photography business, he went out and got it for the both of us!  Isn't he the best??  Sorry, I'm not sharing him ;)

There she is!  My beautiful baby :)  I did A LOT of research before I tried to burn my first screen.  I read some HORRIBLE reviews of the machine, and the emulsion sheets, but luckily I had very few problems when I used my Yudu for the first time.  My emulsion sheet burned pretty perfectly on the screen.  The only mess up I had is that when it came to rinsing out the burned emulsion sheets, I scrubbed a little too hard and one corner of the design washed off.  Luckily, I fixed it with tape and we were good to go.

Here's the front of my first Yudu shirt!  I used Speedball Opaque white Fabric ink, as I was worried about the Yudu ink on black.  My own regret is that I didn't pull white through the icon first, and then pull yellow over the white.  The color would have been much brighter had I done that.  But besides that, I think it turned out great!

Here's his URL screened on the back of the shirt (shameless plug, LOL).  I didn't get it entirely straight, but he loves it so I'm OK with it.  I also made him another shirt that is white with black ink.  He's also asked me to make him a sweatshirt, and I can't wait to try it!

In a few days I'll have another Yudu post for you.  I wanted to try screening on canvas, and I can't WAIT to show you the results!  I also hope to have a Yudu video tutorial for you guys soon!

Have a Doggone Good Birthday!

Hello everyone!  I hope you had a FABULOUS Easter weekend.  I had a very busy few days filled with family, friends, and fun, and now I'm EXHAUSTED!  I wanted to share a birthday card with you I made a few weeks ago.

I bought the Four-Legged Friends Cricut Lite cartridge on Black Friday and I've only used it once since I bought it.  I really wanted to break it out and use it again, and the perfect opportunity came when I needed to make a birthday card for my boyfriends mother.  She has a little Yorkie named Molly, and I thought the Yorkie from Four-Legged Friends would be PERFECT on her card!

This is an A2 size card made from craft cardstock.  I matted the card with white glitter cardstock and a green plaid paper from the DCWV Dots, Stripes and Plaids stack.  I used an EK Success border punch and inked around the edges of the plaid mat with Peeled Paint Distress Ink.

I cut the yorkie at 3 3/4" out of Recollections cardstock.  I gave her a little shading with my white gel pen and also gave her dots for her eyes.  The metal flower is from Making Memories and gives her the perfect feminine touch.  The dogs from this cartridge are pretty easy to layer.  The only con is that the cartridge booklet gives them really strange color combinations so it's hard to see what colors go where.  But I think she turned out really cute!

"Have a Doggone good birthday!" is from the Pink By Design Furry Friends stamp set.  I punched it out with an EK Succes punch, matted it with the white glitter paper, and stitched around it and the base of the card.  I finished the card with a really cute ribbon that continues the stitching in pink.

But I didn't stop there!

I really got into decorating the inside of this card as well.  I added a little border strip along the top.  All of the paw prints are from Furry Friends as well.  I love the travelling paw prints!

I continued the paw print theme on the matching envelope and the back of the card.  I love my little personalized stamp from my Martha Stewart stamp kit!

That's it for today!  Have a fabulous week friends!  I have a few more things for you this week, including some things from my newest obsession: my YUDU!!

A few cuts from Damask Decor

When I first heard about the Damask Decor cartridge, I LOST MY MIND.  I am a damask FREAK.  I have damask plates.  Damask bowls.  Damask cups.  Damask coffee cups.  I'm pretty sure I own every piece of damask patterned paper known to man.

So, when I wandered into my Michaels earlier this week and saw one, lonely Damask Decor cartridge behind the registers, I HAD to get it.  I rarely ever buy carts at Michaels, simply because I can usually get them for cheaper online, but right now the newer carts are going for almost $60 on eBay so I decided to go for it.

I teach a few scrapbook and paper crafting classes at Michaels, so while I was waiting for my students to arrive last night I broke out the classroom Cricut and did a few quick cuts from Damask Decor, and I fell in love.  They are all absolutely gorgeous.  Here are a few of the cuts:

This is the "Heart" image with the shadow.  They have special damask flourishes for every season (Christmas, Thanksgiving, etc) and this is one of them.  So elaborate and gorgeous!  The cart has layering options, but I think it looks so elegant in all one color.

I love love LOVE the card and envelope feature on this cartridge.  I cut the card and card front at 4".  I also cut the matching envelope but forgot to include it in this picture.  How gorgeous would these be for little thank you cards?  They have corresponding tags as well!

Expect a lot more from me and Damask Decor soon.  I have SO MANY ideas!  

Party 'Til the Cows Come Home!

Hi everyone, and can I get a TGIF???  I can't WAIT for the weekend!  I have a quick card to share with you today.  My younger sisters birthday is next weekend, and I was asked by my mom to make her a cake (pics to come when I make it), so I decided to make a card to go with it.

I should preface this by saying my sister and I are POLAR opposites.  I'm the girly, crafty, book smart, musically inclined one, and she's the sporty, tomboyish, nothing-fancy type.  One of her life goals is to life on a farm and raise cattle, and I am a CITY GIRL through and through.  So I knew I would need to make her a simple card without a lot of embellishments and "girly" stuff.  My sister raises and sells cattle on my family's 40 acres (which I have never visited, like I said, farmwork is NOT for me), so I made a cow shaped card using my Gypsy for her.

I used the shadow feature on Create a Critter and welded two cow shadows together to form the base of the card.  Then I just assembled the cow like normal on the front.  I love using my Gypsy to make shape cards , she makes things so easy!:)

I used pink Core'dinations Gemstone cardstock for her nose and udders, and ran them through my Swiss Dots Cuttlebug folder to give her a little something extra (I know my sister likes simple, but I HAD to do something!)

For the inside, I cut the main part of the cows body again in white to give me somewhere to write.  "Party Til the Cows Come Home" is from Pink By Designs "Take the Cake" stamp set.  I punched it out with an EK Success punch and added a little stitching with my white gel pen.  No inking or anything.  Trust me, I was DYING to break out my distress inks but I had to keep reminding myself that this was for my sister, NOT me ;)

I added a little stitching on the front, and that was it!  I hope she likes this card, and the cake I'm making next week.  I've been told I need to make a simple white cake with very simple decorations and no fondant.  Soooo not what I usually do.  The things you do for family ;)

I'm BACK! (with a card too!)

Hi everyone!

I just want to apologize for being gone for so long without an explanation.  To make an INCREDIBLY long story short, my life got pretty crazy back in February and is just now getting back to some sense of "normal".  I'm fine, but there was a time where I just did NOT have the time (or energy) to craft or blog.  My poor Cricut was terribly neglected.  I also felt like I was losing a lot of my "crafty mojo", and didn't really have any good ideas.  I was doing a lot of crafting for design teams, challenges, etc but none really for ME.  Last week I finally booted up my Cricut again and everything came rushing back, so of course I had to bring my blog back to life!  I PROMISE to keep blogging as much as I can, hopefully 2-3 projects a week for awhile.  Once I'm able to move and put my craft room back together (another long story) it will be much more then that! :)

Also, I FINALLY HAVE A NEW DIGITAL CAMERA!  No more shots with my iPhone!  That, and I discovered my boyfriend has a super AWESOME professional light box so now I can take MUCH better pictures.

The card I wanted to show you today was one I made MONTHS ago for a Design Team that I never got around to posting, but I absolutely love it so I wanted to make sure I posted it.

We had to create a card based on a movie.  One of my favorite movies is Moulin Rouge, and I love the quote "The greatest thing you'll ever learn is just to love, and be loved in return".  I wanted to create a very vintage looking card with red as the main color that focused on this quote.  This is what I came up with:

The patterned paper is from the DCWV Black Currant stack.  Iinked everything with Vintage Photo Distress Ink to give it that aged look.

The quote is computer generated, and I punched it out of cream colored cardstock using an EK Success punch.  I inked the edges, popped it up on Pop Dots, and added two gems using my i-Rock.

In the movie, they call Satine the "Sparkling Diamond", so I knew I wanted a diamond somewhere on my card.  I found this heart shaped "diamond" on the Hannah Montana cartridge and thought it would work perfectly.  I both layers from red Core'Dinations cardstock, then ran the first layer through my Xyron and added red Martha Stewart glitter.  The red flowers are also from my stash with gemstone brads in the center.

The word "Love" is from the Martha Stewart Elegant Cake Art cartridge.  I used my i-Rock to add the "..." in bling after the word love.

Here is the rest of the quote on the inside of the card.  I punched this out using the same EK Success punch, then glued it to a piece of red cardstock and cut around to create a shadow.

I LOVE how this card turned out.  It looks vintage and lush, which reminds me of the Moulin Rouge.


I'm so happy to be back!  I want to thank all of my subscribers that emailed me over the last few months making sure I was OK.  I'm sorry if I didn't get back to all of you, but I really appreciated you thinking about me!  I promise I will have more cards and projects to come very soon!  :)