Letting the Cricut and Paper Do The Work...

Thanks so much for the encouraging comments about my cards and my chattiness. I'm glad I'm not too annoying with all the chit chat I engage in. When I type, I feel as though I am chatting with you, that's for sure!

We just got home from dinner and a quick visit with Dave and Tracy. Steve is trying to figure out his new Wii game, so I thought I'd post the cards I was able to make today when Steve and the girls went to the Museum of Nature and Science for a bit.

Since I was able to use my new cartridge, I guess I'd better reveal which one I got. It's a Martha Stewart version called Elegant Cake Art. Yes, it's designed for use with the Cricut Cake machine, but you can use the cartridge in any machine! I had never really looked at the Cake cartridges, not realizing you can still use them in the regular Cricut. Martha Stewart punches are really great and this cartridge has a ton of great designs you can use for papercrafting. So, without further delay, here are the FOUR cards I made today! {If I was smart, I'd space them out, but I can never do that so you get to see them all in the same post.) They aren't super complicated, but I'm pleased with how they turned out. Also, I didn't stamp at all, I just used paper from Cotton Bloom and Green Tea. I did ink a lot of the edges to cut down on the white you can see in the cuts. Hope you like!

This first card uses a part of a sheet of the Green Tea paper with that design in the corner. I cut the butterfly with the cartridge at 2 1/2 inches. You can probably guess when I saw that butterfly, I had to have the cartridge, right? This card is 5 x 7 in size and I just added a few pearls to "finish" the card. Wasn't sure what sentiment I wanted to use on it, so I left it blank.

This next card is my version of the design of one of the tiers on the cake on the cover of the box/booklet the cartridge comes in. I like that you can cut the borders either 1 x 6, 1 x 9 or 2 x 6 (or 9). They fit together really nicely. The paper is from Green Tea. And the pearls got quite the work out today. *Ü*

Another tier on the cover cake has this similar design. I liked the border running across the accent piece. I cut two sizes of the "square" because I wasn't sure which would fit better. I really liked how they looked stacked, so I kept them after inking them with Honey ink. The flourish is what I chose to use rather than a monogram on my inspiration picture.

And finally, there are doilies on this cartridge too!

This paper is from Cotton Bloom. This doily is cut at 4 inches and I almost put it on a 5 x 7 card. But when I was punching out the pieces I realized the one scallop area didn't cut all the way through (not sure why, could be my mat or maybe the blade I just changed didn't seat itself at first), so rather than trash the piece, I cut off the errant part and decided I liked how it looked on the smaller card. I almost added some ribbon, but in the end decided I liked the look of the doily too much to hide part of it with ribbon.

And there you have it. I think this cartridge is going to be a go to one for lots of cards. Yay! I can tell you I never used my Cricut all that much prior to the past few months. Why? Well, some (okay, a lot) of the images on the first cartridges are a little goofy, and I bought several font carts thinking I'd use them for paper scrapbooking. Those carts don't have much beyond the letters. But in the past few years, the designers have been putting together some really fun stuff. And it helps to get inspiration from blogs that showcase projects using the Cricut and now they have the magazine. Lots of inspiration around nowadays, which is what I definitely need to get my juices flowing.

Thanks so much for stopping by. 

I'm a little bummed that the Broncos ended the season with a loss, but I'm relieved the season is over so that they can work on rebuilding the team to be one worthy of cheering about. Tim Tebow (the rookie quarterback) has flashes of great skill and he sure gets the crowd into the game, which is good, but he's still pretty raw. Even when I get bummed, I remember it's just a game and there's always next season, right?

(and aren't you glad you won't have to listen to me talk about the Broncos for a while?...LOL...)

Have a great start to your week!

The girls don't go back to school until Tuesday as tomorrow is a Teacher Work Day (not sure the smarts in planning that right after they've had two weeks off, but I'm not on the calendar creating committee, so I guess I shouldn't complain, right?)