Mortar Board!

This week at Sweet Sassy Diva its all about "Graduation".  In a way, its also a graduation for me as I complete a year as part of the Sweet Sassy Diva Design Team.  One year ago Bobbi Jo gave me the opportunity to be on my first Design Team and I have learned so much and had a great time this past year.  However,  I have decided to step down at this time to design on other teams.  Thank you Bobbi Jo and all my design team buddies for inspiring me this past year.   I hope you will continue to follow me and keep in touch on my blog cricutcraftingrammyblogspot.com. 

So for my graduation project I made a neighbor for a family friend that is graduating from High School in June.  Since my girls and I all went to the same school I decided to use the school colors.  The mascot of the school is a Bulldog so I selected this great ribbon I had in my stash.  

Here is the front of the card.

Here is the inside.  I covered over the top and bottom 1/2 with dotted black and white paper.  This covers the pieces you taped in place.  

The graduation cap is the card cut from Wrap it Up page 67 cut at 5.75 width.  

I covered the tassel with some white crinkly paper on the back side of the card.

I then cut out 1/2 inch strips of this foil paper from Recollections.  

I taped the strips together 9 in total and then adjusted until I liked how it looked and taped it down over the cutout of the cap.  

Here is how it came out.  

Next I doodled around the edge of the card and added the center button piece.  

I then made a tassel out of white crochet thread ti give the card more dimension.   

For the inside the Happy Graduation was cut at 1.5 inches from MS Seasonal Cart.  

The pocket for the gift card was cut from Tags, Bags, and More page 112 at 9 inches. 

Thanks for stopping by and please come back and check out what the other designers have in store for "Graduation." 

Happy Craftin.   

-- Suzanne

Kids, Kuts, and Kurls!

Hello everyone  I hope you all had a wonderful Mother's Day this past weekend.  

This week for Sweet Sassy Diva Design Team we were challenged to use three or more Cricut carts on our project.  I decided to work on a layout of my oldest granddaughter getting her first haircut.  

The paper I used is from Mambi and was purchased at Joanns.  

I wanted to make a bright cheerful layout and use the red in Katie's shirt. 

The pictures were taken in February when Katie was 25 months old.  

As most of you know who have seen my layouts before, Katie has the most gorgeous curly hair which runs in our family.  Everywhere we go people want to touch her hair but as you can imagine it gets quite tangled at times.  

My friend Liz is a beautician so we asked her to do the honors.  We weren't certain how she would react but she sat on Mom's lap eating her goldfish crackers and was fine through the whole process.  

The title Kids, Kuts, and Kurls I found in the awesome book Inspiration Station by Betsy Flot.  

This is an excellent book if you make a lot of layouts.  

I used the Plantin Schoolbook Roly Poly font cut at 1.5 inches and glued to 2 1/2 inch strips of yellow polka dot paper.  

The hair dryer comes from the Paisley cart page 59 cut at 5 inches. 

The comb and brush from the Slumber Party cart cut at 5 inches.

I added a few doodles to the cuts using my Spectrum Noir Alcohol Markers.  

I hope you enjoyed my layout and will come back this week to see what the other Design Team members create with their Cricut carts.  Happy craftin!  Suzanne

Best Mama!

Hello crafty people!  This week for the Sweet Sassy Diva Design Team post are "All About Mom".  For my project I decided to make a card for one of my daughters.

  A pretty quick and simple card so no tutorial this week.  

 I used Car Decals to give the card a little personal touch this  year.    

The little girl was cut from page 53 at 3 inches and the pregnant mom is cut from page 47 at 3.5 inches.  I then added some ribbon, buttons, a MS flower punch, Stickles and googly eyes.  

This is the inside cut from the Floral Embellished cart page 53 cut at 3.5 inches. This phrase was perfect as my granddaughter who is almost 18 months old calls her mom Mama.   I added a flower to the center and cut more flowers with my MS punch.   Floral Embellished is an awesome cart for phrases about Mom, grandmas, etc.  

Here is a picture of my oldest daughter Danielle with her daughter Kenzie.  Aren't they just two peas in a pod?  Danielle is expecting her second child in October so we are quite excited.  

Hope you will stop by all week to see what the DT members have in store for you.  I am wishing you all a very Happy Mother's Day.  Big crafty hugs- Suzanne

Iris love a Diamond!

Wow April is ending and May is here.  Before we know it Summer will be here.  This week at Sweet Sassy Diva the challenge for the Design Team  is to use a Diamond shape or gem.  I decided to use an idea I had for awhile but hadn't tried.  Last year, I took some monthly classes at my local LSS to learn Iris Folding.  I have always thought it was so pretty and the teacher is also a Cricut fan so she designs many of her cards with Cricut shapes.   Now I don't expect anyone to learn how to Iris Fold by reading my tutorial.  I am just trying to introduce it to you and if you are interested encourage you to get a book or take a class.

The last class we had at the LSS the teacher  showed  us how to make our own Iris Folding designs.  

So I decided for the challenge to practice the things I learned and make a card with the ring from page 56 of Once Upon a Princess.  For the ring I cut the shape in the middle of a 5 x 7 rectangle and then used the ring portion of the ring.  

Here is the completed card

The stamp "A Cut Above the rest " is from a huge set of sentiment stamps I got at HSN.

Here is what the card and shape looks like cut out with the ring below it.  

The ring is cut out of silver shiny paper.  

Next you trace the shape out  regular paper.  

There are then patterns that are common to Iris Folding.  There are a lot of great books on Iris Folding that have not only completed patterns but shape designs you can use.  

I lay the triangle pattern under the diamond tracing and copy the lines.  I then number the spaces starting at the right and going around and around till I get to the center. 

My pattern is then placed below the card face down  and taped together so it doesn't slide.  

I then cut different strips of paper to fold over and tape to design. The triangle design used 3 papers. 

This is how you start.

As you continue the pages overlap and you tape each down.  

At the end you tape a hologram piece of paper in the center.

I use pieces cut from gift bags or paper from the 99 cent store.

I tape down any lose ends.

This is what it looks like when it is turned over and I finished the card.  

I hope you found this interesting .  It really is a fun technique.  

I hope you will come back this week and see what all the designers at Sweet Sassy Diva create with the diamond shape challenge.  Happy Craftin!

Hello Dragon Fly!

Sketches are always a great way to get one's creative juices going. This week for the Sweet Sassy Design Team we were asked to use a card sketch from Moho Mondays.  Right away I got out my DCWV Chateau Lavendar Stack I got from one of my dear crafty friends for my birthday last month.  It is the most gorgeous paper and can be found at Joann's.  All the papers came from either this stack or the matching cardstock stack.  Don't you just love the colors?  

The card was glued to a card base of cream cardstock which I inked with green ink on the edges. The green and cream stripe is also another page and I cut the V into the end.  

Even the little tag was from one of the pages with the cute flowers.  I added ribbon, MS punch leaves, a shiny flower from my stash, hello stamp, 3 brads and a K and Company dragon fly from an embellishment kit. 

The background fancy circle was cut from Paper Lace 2 page 23 with the shadow at 3.5 inches. 

Here is the sketch we used.

Here is the inside.  I used some of the scraps from the front and another dragon fly from K and Company.  

I left it blank so I could write on it when needed.  

This picture shows that I lay my ribbon out and attach to back with ATG gun.  Next I added brads before attaching the entire thing to my card.  That way the brad backs and ribbon do not show.  

I

I am looking forward to seeing what all the designers make with this wonderful sketch.  

Happy Craftin!

-- Suzanne

Chick Tri-Fold!

Happy Easter everyone!  This week the challenge at Sweet Sassy Diva is to use hens or chicks.  I decided to make an Easter card.  I hadn't made one of my favorite kind of cards for awhile so I decided to create a tri shutter card.  These are the directions for sizing and cutting I use from Splitcoast Stampers.

The Easter Spring paper was from last year and the rest of the paper was from my scrap container.  

The cute chicken with the cracked egg and the basket were cut at 2.89 from the Cricut cart Celebrate with Flourish.  

Here is the completed card closed.

Here is the completed card open.  The little eggs and the Happy Easter sticker were from a set I got at Michaels.  The flowers were from my stash by Recollections (Michaels.)

Here are the chicken cuts laid out on my Gypsy.

Paper laid out 

Here are background cuts laid out to glue.

Tri shutter cards are really a lot of fun and great for using scraps.  If you haven't tried one I highly recommend them.   I can't wait to see what the rest of the designers create this week with their hens and chicks.  

Hope you will come back each day and see what they create. Happy Craftin!

Suzanne

Rain Rain!

This week for Sweet Sassy Diva the Design Team was asked to create a project with an umbrella or rain boots on it.  I decided to make a layout with the cute little Hello Kitty Cricut cart.  The Hello Kitty in her cute little rain slicker and umbrella were cut from page 54 at 6 inches and the rainbow from page 51 at  4 inches.  

The rainbow paper came from a DCWV stack from last year called Flower Power.

I embossed the cloud and some of the Hello Kitty cuts.  

I added a few cardboard phrases and some gems 

Rain, rain was cut from Sesame Street Seasons for the title.   

I hope you will come back this week to see what all the designers create to share with you.

Happy April and Happy Craftin. 
Suzanne

Bloom!

I am keeping with the Spring Blooms theme from last weeks DT challenge for Sweet Sassy Diva.   I made a Spring layout of my youngest granddaughter.   I had this wonderful stack of flowered paper from K and Company from last year.  

I used the daisy and striped page.  I also cut and used the page with the large  butterfly and daisies for the bottom corner.  I used a flower punch for border strips and added MS flower border trim from my stash.

I used my Gypsy to search the word bloom for the title. I used this cut from Just Because.  There were several different ones but I choose the cursive flowy one instead of block letters.  

I then doodled on the letters to make them pop with a Sharpie.  

I think sketches are a lot of fun and can't wait to see what the other Designers create with the sketch this week.  Hope you enjoyed the post and Happy Craftin. 

I

Signs of Spring!

This week at Sweet Sassy Diva the Design Team was asked to create a project for 

"Spring Blooms"

Hopefully the signs of Spring are starting to show  where you live.  Here in California we had very little winter weather even for us.   The flowers and strawberries are coming out way early around where I live.  

I decided to make a card using a cart I haven't used yet.  This is one of my goals is to make sure I have used every cart at least once and posted it on my blog.  

I made a 5 1/2 inch twisted easel one of my favorite cards to make.  

The base is cut at 5 1/2 x 11 and folded in  1/2.  

The square for the card front is 5 1/2  x 5 1/2.  

Here is the picture of the front when it is folded closed.

Here is the card in open standing position

This is my paper on my mat. I later decided to add yellow flowers due to the background paper I selected.

This is what it looked like on my Gypsy

This is flowers and  background mat cut out.  Then you have to poke out pieces.

These are pieces which I layout on mat.  I then chalk edges with matching chalk to keep from having the white show.  

For each flower I used double flower cuts.  The bottom one was kept flat and the top one I pinched inward to give dimension.

To finish off the card I added bling flowers for centers and regular gems in matching colors.  I also took some of the leftover cuts to frame the bottom.  I then added my stamp on a piece of cardstock, layered it and pop dotted it so the card would stand up.  I think I will add some of the extra flowers in for confetti.

So please join us each day at Sweet Sassy Diva to see the other creations the DT makes.  Hopefully they will get you in a cheery spring mood.  Happy craftin!  

Word Collage St. Patrick's Day!

This week at Sweet Sassy Diva the challenge is "Luck of the Irish"- design something using green, rainbows, leprechauns, shamrocks or anything Irish. Being  a good bit Irish this is right up my rainbow.  I decided to make a subway art project using my Cricut  "Word Collage" cart.  I selected the cut and then filled it using green from the Better Together Imagine cart.   I used my Imagine Print only feature and printed this to fit in an 8 1/2 x 11 frame I had on hand.  I think from the $1 store.  I added St. Patrick's ribbon around the edges of the page.  For the frame I rubbed Tim Holtz green ink into the frame and then covered the frame with Tacky Glue and added pot of gold and star confetti, shamrocks and a little green leprechaun hat I have been saving from a party.  Now that I tried this I plan to do now is get a larger frame that I can print Word Collages for each month or holiday and change them out.  It is so quick and easy to print these with the Imagine.  

                                 

I hope you enjoyed my project.  I can't wait to see what the other Sweet Sassy Diva Designers create for the project this week.  Please come back each day to leave them some bloggy love. -- Suzanne Y. Pipitone

Oh So Very Happy!

This week at Sweet Sassy Diva the challenge is to use Buttons.  I love using buttons on my layouts and cards.  I have a stash of vintage buttons from my mom and grandmothers old button tins.  I also buy different colored buttons (when they are on sale) in different sizes 

and keep them in cute little jars above my desk.  

So when I thought about the button challenge I decided to do a rainbow.  I found this cut my using my Gypsy search on the Create a Critter Cart.   The cut is from page 52 cut at 4 inches.  

I laid the buttons out on the rainbow before gluing.  I actually was going to put buttons on the heart too but didn't like it so removed those.  I used some teeny tiny buttons to keep theme on tag I stamped with a $1 stamp from Michaels and added a little wooden ladybug.  

Here are the cute pieces. 

I used some paper from my stash and some rainbow ribbon.  

Here are the pieces glued together.

Glued buttons down with Tacky glue and then I cut out a heart to put on top with glitter paper.  

I pop dotted it to raise it up and give it dimension.  

Simple and quick and love the way it looks.  Please join all the DT members this week to see how they use buttons in their projects.   

-- Suzanne