Would You Ever Guess Wednesday August 3, 2011 and a Challenge

I would just like to explain today's theme a litte better..... On this day there are several things that you might see. This is the least popular day for my design team to sign up for, So I am adding fun things to it and I am sure it will be a very fun way for Wednesdays :)

Would you guess… Wednesdays- On this day, there are 4 ways to do this day.

We use ONLY the features on the cartridges, this applies to all three ways to do this day
1. . What this means is when you look at the handbook, you cannot use the main image on the left side of the page. But you can use ALL of the other features or layers.

2. Also you can use a CAKE cartridge to make a Paper creation.
3 On certain days we can use the same paper and see what everyone does with the same paper collection

4. You may also pick a 'partner' like Melissa and I have done for today. Basically we partner up and use the same cartridge with the same pages, sizes and cuts.

First Heather F. made something Beautiful to share, as always to see how she made it please visit Heather's Blog.She used the Cake Basics Cricut Cartridge and the Birthday Cakes Cricut Cartridge.

Heather F. blog address

http://www.papercrafteranonymous.com/ 

How beautiful is Heather F. card? LOVE IT! And made with cake cartridges :)

Now on to the challenge that Melissa and I did. We actually did this together, BUT we dont have to do it together, we just have to use the same cartridge and same size cuts, thenw hat we do from there is out choice, we can add elements form other cartridges. Some will do a layout and the other cards. Or both will do cards. It is a very fun day.

The one on the top is Melissa's ( http://pinkpolkadotscrapping.blogspot.com/ )
and the one on the bottom right is mine.

Yes we cut same cuts to make such cute & different cards.

We used the Art Philosphy cricut Cartridge to make these cards. All cuts were at 5 1/2" or 5.5 on the Imagine. I used the Imagine to do my cuts, but i did CUT only, so you can duplicate this on any machine :)

Here was the 'frame' i just used plain colored cardstock that matched the S.E.I. paper I used.

Melissa wanted certian part of the paper used, we used the Imagine jsut like a

Cricut Expression and only used the CUT feature, no printing on the Imagine today.

I wanted a specific flower to show up on my card. So I cut the frame first, it left the cut lines on my cutting mat so I knew where to place my printed paper. This was expensive paper and I didnt want to waste it, I actually did what I call staging the mat. Where I put plain white printer paper on the mat to see where it will cut then I can line up my paper to fit where it cut. This is very helpful to me because I want the part of the paper where I want it.... In fabric we call this fussy cutting. Where you take an image on the fabric or paper and get it to the right place. When using stripes and other things it really doesnt matter where it cuts. But when using a non-repeating patterned paper.... I want what i want, where I want it :)

This was where I decided what I wanted in the frame, I had to decide what part I wanted to be on my card.

I put the paper on my mat and I knew I didnt need it all. If I would have trimmed this just to fit on the 12x12 cutting mat I would have had to cut a large portion off, so instead I put what i knew I needed and I read the screen on the imagine and it showed that I needed paper to go over to the 6" line and down to the 6" line.

I then used an Exacto knife and fit the paper off around the 6x6 area.

here is my cut after. Notice the top shows a stright cut. This was ok, because I checke with the fram BEFORE and made sure that what I wanted would fit in the frame. So this is ok and I didnt waste my paper doing it.

See you cant even tell where the stright line is, the patterned paper fit in the window.

I wanted to cut this for the inside, it was touching the black line, even though I was not cutting AND printing, the Imagine does not like ANYTHING to touch the black lines on its mat,

it passed this through the machine and back out to me.

I fixed it and it cut great!

I wanted to apply the same thing to the inside and outside of the card. So I used my Xyron 5.5 sticker maker to make sure there was a nice even adhesive on every inch of the card to it would stick to the back of the card.

You can see that strip all around these images. The brown ones were cut at 5.3" and the blue/teal was cut at 5.1" I did this to give it a 'nested' look. All that means is one size of the shape fits into another one and then the next size fits into that one.... and so on.

I used the I-top to cut the image for the  center of the flower. This is the back of the teal dot paper.

I applied adhesive to the paper before adhering it to the top of the brad. It works very well when you put adhesive on the paper. It stays in place.

Here is that paper tucked into the brad top. I push the paper down inside nice and tight so I makes a professional looking brad. The adhesive really helps with this process.

I then have the brad bottom on the left of this picture, these 'arms' of the Itop are turned just for the picture to show you.

I turned it then squeezed it together

There is the bottom of my finished brad.

This was the paper that i used for the top of the brad in the Itop

I cut this at 2.2" The was the plain side of the paper.

I decided to ink this to give it a little pop. I justed used a mini ink pad and ran it over the paper. Well it the time I didnt realize that the texture of the print on the other side would show through, you can sort of see the pattern of the paper, the ink only hit where the paper was textured on the other side. An accidental thing turned into a great thing!

I then used the cuttlebug to emboss this. But the frame didnt fit the way that I want it, so i folded the fram at the corners and embossed it, not realizing if something is folded in half, one will be embossed and one will be de-bossed. or engraved persay.

Here is the opposite corner and see how one side was embossed and the other was 'engraved'

This is th einside of the card, it was filled in in the middle but i closed it and cut along the edge of the frame on the front. I like it better this was.

Here are the flower peices, the go together oppostive of the Cricut Flower Shoppe Cartridge.

What this means is the small part or (middle petals) are on the outside of the circles in this picture. So you have to start at the outside to form your flower around the outside peices. the Flower Shoppe cartridge stars at the middle with the small petals and goes out to the larger petals. I had Flower Shoppe first i finally masterd that and tried to apple that to these, so if you have both do the opposite of each other when constructing these flowers. The flowers only called for two peices, a middle the small on on the bottom right and one petal set on the bottom left, but you know me I wanted to do something different so I added and extra set of petals.

This is the one I inked in the earlier photo

I formed each set of petals THEN added them to the other layers. These flowers are a bit tricky, especially if you have used flower shoppe. Tonight's Ustream will show these two cartridges and how to make the flowers with them.

I then saw that it still wasnt enough so I added a set of petals from one of the other flowers are this cartridge, then it was perfect! It pulled in all of the colors. I didnt like the purple flower sitting on purple frame as they were two different purples.

Here is the finished card!

Here is a clsoe up of my finishig touches. There was a little shimmer to the paper as you can see in the upped left of thise photo, BUT it was not enough sparkle for me :) So I used Tattered Angels Glimmer Mist to spray 3 'coats of sparkle. That means I spreayed on, let it dry then srayed it again, let it dry and did it one last time

This is a close up so you can see it on the printed paper and the solid purple paper.

I used the color Bubble of the Glimmer mist.

Here is the side view of my card, it is actualy a heavy sturdy card with all of the layers on the inside.

Here is my card folded out with the cut out in the middle so you can see I made the card out of stripe paper.

I do recommend using a little bit of thicker paper to make cards or flowers. So the paper thin paper doesnt work so well and sometimes tears when taking it off of the mat.

Melissa and I did this together so everything I have done on mine, we did on hers except a few things below.

We saw where on the screen that the paper needed to be, so we placed the paper where we wanted it then trimed it to fit on the mat.

Here it goes into the machine :)

The paper was too thin to use for a card, so we cut a peice of cardstock to apply
as the the inside liner of the card

We used the tim Holtz disress inks in Milled Lavender and Stormy Sky to make
plain purple paper into a beautiful matching paper

First we crinkled the paper, AFTER it was cut on the Cricut

Here you cans ee the difference or the before and after of the plain paper and the inked paper.

Here is the top side, then alot more blue was applied.

When she put it all together here is what she made. 
Stop by Melissa's blog to see this and her other great creations!

Tomorrow is Theme Day Thursday, our Theme is BEACH!