Quick Birthday Card

I never have enough birthday cards in my stash, for those birthdays/occasions that just seem to pop up.  So today I am sharing with you a quick card I made for Cameo Creations Challenge #4 over here on Monica's Creative Madness.  The challenge is to create a square card using a digital stamp and buttons.  Here it is.

The image is from Digi My World, and I used the print and cut feature of the cameo for it - Monica has a great video tutorial on her blog showing the technique I used.

I used a couple of buttons, one on the balloon and one in her hair.

In the bottom right-hand corner is a journalling tag that I had in my stash, all I have to do is highlight the day and month - voila, a personalized card.

Thanks for stopping by today, and thank you Monica for the great challenge.

Michelle

Ladybug Notepad

Last week my youngest, Phoebe was home from college on spring break.  She told me that her room-mate loved the handmade cards and things that I send Phoebe.  Well, it's always nice to be appreciated, so I decided to make this little notepad so her roommate could have it on her desk.

This is a cut file available from here from The Digi Chick.  It can be made into a card or mini album, and although probably more suited to a 'little gir'l, my daughter assures me that the' big girl' who is going to receive this will love it.

The file comes in 3 parts: the body (black), 2 wings (red) and the 6 spots (black glitter).  I used my Cameo to cut and re-size all the pieces, and then made large circles with white paper that were just slightly smaller than the body.  I punched a hole through everything and fixed it together with a brad.  Of course I had to add some googly eyes too!

Each of the notepad pages is stamped with a ladybug image - this stamp is from Stampin' Up and is called 'Very Punny'.

Hope you enjoyed my project today.

Michelle

Use Your Scraps

Here are a couple of pics of my projects for Paper Craft Weekend Challenge blog where I am guest designer today.

Hope you will pop over to Paper Craft Weekend Challenge and take a peek.

Michelle

Heat Transfer Vinyl and Rhinestone T-Shirt (Part 2)

For the next part of this project I went back to the Cameo and pulled up the floral filigree image - as I was only working with the central part I copied this part of the image to another page to work on.  Before starting to fill in the rhinestone design I had to check the size of my rhinestones.

These ones are 20SS.  Next I opened the 'Rhinestones Window' on the Cameo.

I chose the rhinestone sizes, and the 'Draw Rhinestones' option 'Single Click'.

Then I just filled my central image with rhinestone holes.

Once I had filled the image to my liking, I deleted the outer edge (leaving just the rhinestone holes) and cut out the image on rhinestone template.  The next pictures show the setting I used and the template loaded in the machine blue side uppermost.            

Once I had the template cut I peeled it off the backing and stuck it on to a backing board.

Then I sprinkled my rhinestones over the template, using Silhouette brush supplied in the kit  gently brushed them in place.  I will admit here that I found this a bit tedious and ended up picking up some of the rhinestones and placing them where I wanted them.

Once the rhinestones were in place I carefully laid the transfer tape over, and voila my rhinestones are ready to iron on.

To iron the rhinestones on I just positioned them on the shirt, covered them with a thin cloth and with the iron on 'wool' setting pressed down on top for 45 - 60 seconds.  After peeling off the transfer tape I turned the shirt inside out and iron the back of the rhinestones to "pull the glue into the fabric."

Here is the finished design.

Until next time.

Michelle

Heat Transfer Vinyl and Rhinestone T-Shirt (Part 1)

I bought this plain t-shirt last year thinking that it would be good to use for heat transfer vinyl (HTV).  I had lots of different ideas swirling around in my head, and that is where they stayed, because life got busy.  So today I decided to 'bite the bullet' and finally do the project.

I started with just a plain long sleeved t-shirt, and picked out a design from my Silhouette studio.  I started out by cutting my design out on plain paper and laying it on the shirt to see how it would look.

Originally I had made the design 12" x 12", then I discovered that my vinyl was 12" x 9" so I had to make a few adjustments to the size.  Here is the original design, it's called floral filigree.

Because I knew that I wanted to put rhinestones in the centre of the flower, I had to adjust the design to make the centre a blank space.  I had to take each of the shapes from the middle and delete them ( you need to ungroup them first.)

When I had gotten rid of all the little shapes, I took the 'draw freehand' pencil and drew a shape which would be cut out from the centre.

When I was happy with my freehand shape I grouped it with the rest of them image.  This is important to remember as some images need to be flipped before cutting them in vinyl (letters are a good example of this.)

Next I moved on to cutting my image out of the HTV.  I got my HTV from Craft Vinyl - the prices here are great and Nick is very efficient with fulfilling the orders and shipping.

HTV needs to be cut with the DULL SIDE FACING UP and the SHINY SIDE FACING UP (the exact opposite of how you cut regular vinyl.)  Here are the settings which I used on my Cameo.

Once the HTV was cut I started to 'weed' - that is, peel away all the unwanted parts of the image, leaving the main image attached to the backing (this backing acts as transfer tape.)  Here is the partially 'weeded' image.

Now for the fun part - applying the image to the shirt.  First I ironed my shirt, just to make sure I'd removed any moisture.  Next I laid the image where I wanted it on the shirt, covered it with a Teflon sheet and began ironing.  The HTV comes with full instructions for applying, but basically the iron needs to be 280-300F, press the iron down on the Teflon sheet moving it back and forth, not staying in anyone place for more than a few seconds.  This HTV is 'cold peel' which means that it needs to cool down for 30 - 45 seconds before trying to peel off the backing.  Here is the image applied.

Tomorrow I will post pictures of the finished shirt with instructions for adding rhinestones.

Thanks for stopping by.

Michelle

Bright Ideas Notebook (using vinyl)

I decided on a very simple project today - blame it on a lack of sleep plus a dog, who despite my tiredness, still insisted on getting up at 6.00am for breakfast!

While I was in Florida I received this cute little note book from my friend Kymberlee  The Paper Midwife,  (well actually from her mom,) - thank you so much.

I just love it, and whilst it is very cute just as it is, I still want to have some kind of simple decoration on it.  Then I had this 'bright idea' of using some vinyl - this is what I came up with.

I cut the vinyl with my cameo (I used the recommended silhouette settings for vinyl with the exception of upping the blade depth to 2.)  The polka dot lamp is a Silhouette file and and font is called DokChampa.  I love how it turned out.

Michelle

Just a 'little' note

Well, I can't believe I have been back from Florida since Sunday and this will be my first post - what a 'slacker'!

My project today is this cute little box from  Kelleigh over at The Digi Chick.  I just love the design of this top heavy box and couldn't wait to put it together so that I could embellish it.

The paper I used is from K & Company (I'm not sure which line it is), the flower is cut from a Silhouette file and the butterflies are a Martha Stewart punch.  Here is a close up of the flower, which has been sprayed with Perfect Pearls Mist and finished off in the center with a pearl brad.

I wanted to make some little note cards and envelopes to go inside - these are very small (2.25" x 3.5").  They are just the right size for writing a quick 'hello' or 'thank you' to put with a gift.  The stamps I used for these are from The Angel Company ('Just Because' and the Russian Proverb) and Stampin' Up ('Hello' - Elementary Elegance.)

And of course there have to be matching envelopes.

Here they are all together in the box.

Thanks for stopping by - I promise not to leave it too long until next time.

Michelle