Easy Holiday Decorating

It is very difficult to shop for my father, he has everything he really needs, and it's difficult to think of things he really wants lol. He and his wife travel a lot, sometimes they are home for Christmas, sometimes they aren't. I made these decorations so they could remember places they've been, but would be easy to store and easy to put up and take down.

The die cuts all come from the Destinations cartridge, the hanging ornament stamp comes from Papertrey Ink's Holiday Button Bits. I substituted paper circles for the buttons. Merry Christmas comes from Making Memories, Fa La La stamp set. The snowflakes were stamped on the background with versamark. Easy peasy, lemon squeezy... once I decided what to do lol.

Stampin' Up some Thanks

I started with a ready-made blank card, stamped a nearly invisible-on-the-scanner Eiffel Tower (Destinations cart) and then used 2 of the Stamps from "Bon Moments". The flowers are colored in with the watercolor crayons. Another lovely features of the Cricut Stamp Material is that it's thin enough to put on a piece of packaging cut to size and slip in the envelope with a card. Great extra gift for a crafter.

This one is for my Stampin' Up Demonstrator who has really gone above and beyond in terms of support. I was so new to all this I didn't know which side of the glue dispensing snail was up. This is actually the second card, the first one was lost somewhere after the last class was cancelled due to inclement weather. The upside is that I thought to include a stamp for her.

More Eiffel Tower Cards

These are going in the Eiffel Tower RAK. Variations on what I could do with the same embossed image.

A better picture of the card I posted earlier.

This one is the embossed image flipped over so it's a depressed image, then the

Depressed image, light sanding.

All the Eiffel Towers are embossed on the same Core'dinations cardstock.

Birthday Card

I'm just tickled pink with this card, even though the only pink things are the little flowers on the cake. DD's friend is studying French and liked my Eiffel Tower cards so I used one of the stamps I made out of the Cricut Stamp Sheets with a pale lilac (also used to ink the edge of the mat). The stamps are from Stampin Up's Bon Moments that I just got yesterday in the mail and I used colored pencils to color in the cake. Oh yes, the cake is raised up from the card with my brand new Dimension Dots (?) from SU.

It took about 10 minutes from blank yellow card to finished. Faster than a trip to the store : ).

I was starting to wonder if it was possible to cut stamps with the Gypsy (no speed control), and then it happened. Brand new mat, deep blade housing (4.5), pressure 4, speed set to 1 (it seems to slow it down a little bit).

Destination: Eiffel Tower

Ok, I love the Eiffel Tower. I made an embossing folder with the Destinations cart and the embossing folder kit from Provo Craft. Just make sure to set the blade to 6 if you are using the regular blade housing and set the multi-cut to 2.

It was a little tricky getting the correct side to peel off to expose the necessary sticky side. There is a great video on making these folders at Holidays with the Cricut. It worked really well with my Sizzix Big Kick.

A card I made with ready-made card and matching envelope on clearance from Walmart. I used the embossing folder with a piece of Core'dinations cardstock and just sanded the top color off the embossed image, around the edges and to distress the background a little.