Recent Camping Trip

Hubs and I have become friends in the past years with a group of friends who we have had so much fun with.  On the weekend before the fourth of July we went camping with them and had a blast.  We loaded up our camping stuff on their boat and headed off to an island--totally deserted.  No electricity, no running water.  No cable.  Just heat and sun and water and fishing and boating and cooking out.  We do bring a lot of the comforts of home with us...like air mattresses, smores,  lots of adult beverages and a duck blind with a self-contained potty and shower.  I mean roughing it is one thing but we gotta be civilized about it!  We called our little piece of the island the "Redneck Riviera"

Redneck Riviera at night with our homemade redneck tiki torches

Sunset

Fishing at dusk

 

Deer that DH was able to capture on pics...how the heck did a deer get to this island?????  It looks kinda weired because he had to zoom in to the max on my little camera to be able to capture this.

 

 

Light Box

I feel almost like Paul Revere...my lightbox is coming, my lightbox is coming!  DH is a fan of online sales and gets all kinds of daily emails on them.  He had heard me grinching plenty of times about how I needed one and knew I had been doing a little research on prices on Ebay.  So...he ordered one for me!  It should be here tomorrow!  WAHOO!!!!

Card with no Cricut

I am a natural born Texan but had missed out on a right-of-passage experience....tubing down the Guadalupe River...until I was in my later 50s.  A friend who is called our "social commander" organized a trip for about 11 of us and we had a blast.  I did this as a thank you card for her back in 2010.  The background image was a free teacher's template on the internet (I have since lost the link).  The sentiment is computer generated and the stamped image is called "Blanche" from Art Impressions (http://www.artimpressions.com/Product.asp?Sku=K1605) .  I love their stamps and have about 20 of them on my "wish list".  After stamping and coloring with Prismacolor pencils, I cut out the image, attached it to a piece of blue paper and then trimmed around the blue, to create my own "shadow" of the stamped image and pop dotted it onto the card.

Pre-Kindergarten Treats

I made these for my youngest grandson's pre-k graduation.  They were so easy to do, using scraps of paper for the bag toppers, a computer generated sentiment and the cute Owl from Campin' Critters.

Cricut Imagine Thank you Card

I did this thank you card using the Cricut Imagine cartridge "Greeting Cards Inside and Out".  It printed out in a kind of brownish-grey, not a pretty blue or red-grey.  So I decided to use a new product (new to  me) called Glitter Dust.  It comes in an aerosol can and in different shades...this is "Iridescent".  It says to use in a well ventilated area as it leaves a sort of shellac finish over everything.  I loved the way it jazzed up this card.  I made the cut just a tiny bit too small for the gift card to fit in the slot so I had to use my scissors to lengthen one end...it doesn't look great in the photo but looks much better with the gift card in it!

Modified cut for Gift Bag

I did this cut from Rock Princess for a friend of mine who loves her Harley Softail.  The bike in this cut isn't a Harley but I don't have any cartridge with a Harley-looking motorcycle (guess I need to get the Father's Day cartridge!).  She loved it anyway.

I modified the haircut because she has short hair...I just cut off the longer hair and that part of the shadow.  Also, I have only seen one picture of her in a dress (at her daughter's wedding) so I did a little bit of modifying...gave her a belt and used a scrap piece of denim paper to do "jeans"

Is Fishing a Sport?

DH and I just had this discussion and he says it is, even if it's not in the olympics.  So, here's my card for the current Fantabulous Cricut Challenge.  I made this for my wonderful Son in Law using Everyday Paper Dolls for the boat, fish, fishing pole and creel.  I cannot remember what cartridge I used for the underwater ferns.  I used pens to outline the cut details on the fish and boat.  The sentiment is computer generated and it's on a shape from a punch.  The netting in back of the sentiment is an old stamp from Stampin' Up, torn and shaded on the edges.

Fantabulous Cricut Top 5 Challenge Winner !

Well, I wasn't the Challenge #123 winner but I was picked by the Design Team as a Top 5 Favorite and that tickles me to no end!!  Doing the happy dance!  Thank you FC DT!!!!  http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=9157388555469845658#editor

Beach Theme Card for Fantabulous Cricut Challenge

This is a card I made for a friend's beach wedding and for the Challenge at Fantabulous Cricut http://fantabulouscricut.blogspot.com/search/label/Challenge%20Me%20Monday. I  used Life Is a Beach for the umbrella and waves, Create A Critter for the palm trees and clouds and Calligraphy for the wine glasses. Those glasses gave me trouble because the outline of the glass was so thin and the size of the glass so small that it didn't cut without tearing so I just cut the glass from white paper and used a fine black marker to go along the outside edge and stem and used a purple marker to color in the "wine". The clouds and palm treees were inked on the edges. The beach was just a torn piece of tan paper, run thru the Xyron and I put real sand on it. I smashed or burnished the sand pretty good and it stuck like a dream. The inside of the card where I attached the gift card was a scrap piece of some paper that looked like beach sand. I used a computer generated sentiment on Georgia Pacific white and matted it on a scrap piece of blue. The flipflops were cut off a scrap piece of scrapbook paper. The envelope was lined with a piece of paper from HL that I've had for ages.

 

 

Enfys August Challenge

I did this for the challenge posted by the talented Enfy's http://going-buggy.blogspot.com/2012/08/august-challenge.html .  I used the wonderful cartridge Kate's ABCs.  I cut two purses at 5", put a score line just a tad below the handle on the cut in the back and glued the handles together.  The "Birthday Girl" is from Storybook.  The flowers on the inside are the ones on the purse and were cut at 3 3/4" and the flower used for the envelope seal is on page 23 and was cut at 3 3/4" also.  After doing it, I wish I would have textured the handle and/or the dark pink purse flap but maybe next time.  The envelope is from Wild Card (last envelope on the keypad) and was cut at 6 1/2" in order to accomodate a 5" card. 

These pictures make me realize how much I need a light box or some good lighting to use when taking pictures