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Friday, August 31, 2012

Free, Free, FREE! LD Friday Freebie and MORE!


Have y'all seen the new Alice in Wonderland sets on LD? SOOO CUTE!!


I'm in Vancouver, British Columbia this weekend (read: limited internet access!) but I totally squealed when I saw the new releases from the hotel room. My kids LOVE Alice. In fact, one of the twins was Alice for Halloween two years ago. Panda Girl was supposed to be the Cheshire Cat but..... let's just say that it didn't happen. I'll save that story for another day.

Anyway, there are several freebies that I'd love to share with y'all today, especially with those of you who are not on Facebook and may have missed them.

First up, the LD Friday Freebie:



Click HERE or the image above to get your Mad Tea Party Printables. Just add it to your cart and checkout. You pay $0!




ScrapNfonts, LD's sister site also has a coordinating freebie. Click HERE to go to their blog and grab the free Alice in Wonderland Quotes.

While you are at SNF's Fontaholic blog, don't forget to pick up the free Friendship Word Art .PSD Brushes and .PNG files. Click HERE to get it.



Two more freebies for you before I head out to dinner:



Click on the images above to get your Freebies-of-the-Month. Just add them to your cart and checkout.

Today is the last day to get the Simple Shapes Super Plus bundle for $49. Don't miss your opportunity to get this amazing collection at an insanely low price. Get your 50-set, 800+ images, Simple Shapes by clicking HERE now.


Have a great weekend, everyone!





Thursday, August 30, 2012

Guest Designer: the Scrapbooking Queen

Hey Everyone, the kids go back to school next week and Hubby and I are taking them on a last minute road trip across the border north. I will have very limited internet access and I will respond to your questions when I return. In the meantime, my friend Theresa, aka the Scrapbooking Queen has kindly offered to make a guest post in my absence. Scroll down to check out her project and don't forget to enter her giveaway on her blog. ~Jin

-----------------------------Start of Guest Post--------------------------------

Today The Scrapbooking  Queen is honored to be
a featured designer over at the fabulous blog
Under a Cherry Tree, my dear friend
Jin is on the road just before her kids go back to school...

So here is what The Queen created for you,,,
This cute card was created using a cloud background stamp
and a adorable punch bug stamp 
The Sentiment Stamp is one of  The Queens own Stamp line
Called "Royal Wedding" and  you can get 
it at The Royal Castle Shoppe {click here}
The Queen use an Action Wobble on the cute
Punch Bug image to give the some wobble motion

Now The Queen has a giveaway to thank you for
stopping by and saying HELLO!
a set of sentiment stamps
Royal Wedding... That right just 
leave a comment  and become a follower of 
The Scrapbooking Queen Blog!



-----------------------------End of Guest Post--------------------------------

Thanks Theresa, for sharing your adorable card! The car is so cute (and appropriate! lol!) I love how you colored the image (with Copics) and adding the Action Wobble was simply too much fun!

Everyone, please note that the giveaway is being held on Theresa's blog. To enter, just CLICK HERE and add your comment.


Wednesday, August 29, 2012

Simple Shape, Pretty Cards


It's 10:15pm. I'm supposed to be packing for a last minute road trip. The kids go back to school next week and Hubby and I are trying to make the best of their Summer Break and yet I can't resist the temptation of a last minute notecard.


"Use me....use me.....", my Cameo beckoned.

Urgh. I'll make something fast.


There are 50 sets in the LD Simple Shape Super Plus Bundle, and I just noticed Garden Fairies. The fairies are so pretty! I wanted to cut something small and I wasn't confident that they would work for what I had in mind so I picked a butterfly instead.


The card design took less than 5 minutes to put together:
  1. Import butterfly and reduce by 50%. Make an offset.
  2. Draw two rectangles, one at 4.25"x 11", and another at 3.75" x 5".
  3. Position everything where I want them to be.


The cutting and drawing took a little longer because I had to change the settings each time I replaced the blade with the pen. I also added a vellum layer to back the card front. Drawing the details on the backing vellum adds an interesting dimension to the whole card.


By the way, if you are new to my blog, please click here to see how I use my Cameo to draw.

 
Making the card took only a few minutes so I ended up making another with a flower image from the same Garden Fairies set. I'm putting these cards aside and leaving them sentiment-less. I like them blank like that but if I want to, I suppose I can stamp in a greeting later.


The Simple Shapes are only $49 for 3 more days and the bundle will go back to its $150 regular price after Aug 31. If you have not purchased your bundle, click HERE to get 'em.

Monday, August 27, 2012

LD Manic Monday: Let's Get Funky $6 (reg. $31) plus Sock Monkey and more!

In case you missed this on Facebook, LD's Manic Monday offer is for the Let's Get Funky Bundle. For only $6, you will get the following 6 sets from the Funky Collection:


Also, the discontinued Sock Monkeys has been brought back to the LD site by request. However, it is available for only 1 day and it will be removed from LD site again tomorrow night. Click HERE to get the Sock Monkeys before they are gone forever.



There are only 5 days left to get the 50-set Simple Shapes Super Plus Bundle at the amazing price of $49. There are over 780 images in this bundle. If you missed my post explaining what the special optional layers in each of these images are all about, just click HERE to read all about it.



Click HERE to get your Simple Shapes before the offer expires on Aug 31.


Stand Out. Be Yourself.



"Be your own person!", "Do your own thing!", "You and your sister are two different people!".

I seem to be saying these a lot to the twins lately. Perhaps it is partly my fault. I have always dressed them alike, I buy two of almost everything for them, and they both do the same after-school activities. They are the same age, born on the same day and only a minute apart. Shouldn't they both be treated exactly the same? Up until they were in Third Grade, I even went as far as to request that the school put them both in the same classroom with the same teacher, so that they both have exactly the same learning experience. But now I think and worry about the trouble they'd have in finding their own friends and worse, their own individuality.



Last year, I finally decided to have them placed in different classes and I was pleasantly surprised that the transition was not as hard as I anticipated. In fact, they seem to relish the opportunity to break away from each other's shadow. Instead of "Here comes C & H.", they are happy to just be "C" or, just be "H". Yet when the school year ended and they got to stay home together, it was "I want to do what she's doing!" all over again.



Today's card is a message to my girls. I printed the base as I wanted to get it out of my head quickly. The colored doll was hand-cut for layering because it was faster to cut that out myself than to print-and-cut. Besides, doing the latter would cause paper wastage due to registration marks.


The girls' classroom assignment for the 2012-13 school year came in the mail on Saturday and the arguments came almost as soon as the envelopes were ripped opened.

"Mom! Are you going to be volunteering in my class this year? It's not fair if you volunteer only in her class."

"Mom! Whose curriculum night are you attending.? They are held in different classrooms at the same time."

And while the twins are trying to outtalk each other, their baby sister came up and said to me,

"Mom, how come I don't have a twin? I'm not special."


OMG! Excuse me, while I go bang my head against the wall.....


-----

Supplies:

Hello Dolly Cut Its (SVGs) from the Simple Shapes Super Plus Bundle
Matryoshka Doll SVG
LD This and That font
SNF Skip and Play (discontinued, from the Kim Hughe-Mongous Bundle)

Designed with Silhouette Studio Designer Edition and printed using my Canon PIXMA MP495 Wireless Inkjet Photo All-in-One Printer on American Crafts white cardstock.

Saturday, August 25, 2012

Excuse me, Miss Swift, did you use a Cameo?


Have you seen the new Taylor Swift lyric video? I suppose not, unless you have one or in my case, three big fans of Miss Swift living in your house. :-)

Here, take a look. It's a fun one and totally relevant to my blog. Seriously.

http://youtu.be/gcMn_Eu-XTE



That's Taylor's new lyric video (a prelude to the official "real" music video) for her latest single. The song is cute and catchy but the video cracks me up. Did y'all see all the paper cut outs? I wonder if the people who put this together used an electronic cutter? Can you imagine hand-cutting all the letters?

Friday, August 24, 2012

LD Friday Freebie: I'm Playing Door Hangers (expired)


 For those of you who are not on Facebook, here is today's LD Friday Freebie:


Click HERE or the image above to go to the LD site, add the file to your cart and check out. You pay $0!


By the way, you can print-and-cut these hangers out easily with your Silhouette Cameo. I imported the PNG files into Silhouette Studio and reduce the images to 24% of its original size. I traced them at a threshold of 100%, and Release Compound Path to remove all the unwanted cut lines.


One more thing, while you are at the LD site, don't forget to pick up the new 2012 Simple Shapes Super Plus Bundle. If you had missed my post about them, just click HERE to read all about it.

Have a great weekend, everyone!



NEW! LD Simple Shapes Super Plus Bundle {Cut Its (SVG) 2012}

It's out! It's out! The new Simple Shapes Cut Its for 2012 are live on the LD site!


Like last year's bundle, each simple shape is basically a single-layer image. No paper piecing is required. However, in this year's Simple Shapes Super Plus Bundle, Lettering Delights is giving us the option to add extra details by using our pens with our cutters. You see, this year's Simple Shapes come with an extra layer that is meant to be drawn instead of cut out. Let me explain in more detail:


If you are using Silhouette Studio (Designer Edition), when you import the image into the program, first UNGROUP the shape. You will find that there are two layers. To use the Pen/Draw Layer, turn the cut lines on, then replace the cutting blade with a pen and pen attachment and send the cutter to "cut".

SSDE screenshot

I use the Chomas pen attachment with my Cameo and for more information on how I do that, please click HERE.


If you are using Make-the-Cut, just Open the eye on the Pen/Draw-Layer to turn it on.

MTC screeenshot
If you prefer not to use the pen-layer, you can still use the image as a regular Simple Shape. Just turn off the Pen-Layer and proceed to cut as you would normally.


This year's Simple Shapes bundle includes 50 sets and over 780 images. The regular price of the bundle is $150 but it is on sale now for only $49. At less than a $1 a set, this really is a steal of a deal!


From cutesy to steampunk to boxes to mini albums, this bundle has something for everyone. Don't miss the opportunity to get this amazing bundle at an insane price. Click HERE to get your Simple Shapes Super Plus Bundle now!



P.S. Use the coupon code KISSme to take 50% off a $98 purchase. If you do not already own last year's 2011 Simple Shapes bundle, this would be a great time to get it. Purchase both the 2011 and 2012 Simple Shapes bundle together and use the KISSme coupon code to take 50% off. It's like buying one and getting the other for free!



Thursday, August 23, 2012

Hints & Tips: Making the Little Teacups Notecard set with Silhouette Studio


I have received several questions about my teacup notecard set that I posted yesterday and so I am going to share some tips to help you make it.



Let's start with the notecard. I imported the Little Tea Cups Number Cards into Silhouette Studio and reduced the size so that the height of the image is 3" tall. Next, I positioned it onto a 3.5" x 2.5" rounded rectangle (drawn with the rectangle tool). By welding two 0.25" offsets of that rectangle, I managed to get a 5" x 3.5" card base. I also added in a score line in the center of each card to help with the folding. By the way, I could fit  a maximum of 3 notecards on a single 8.5" x 11" cardstock.


To make the envelope, I used Lettering Delights' Envelope C svg set (file #7) and reduced the size to 57% of its imported size. I filled it with a patterned paper from the Little Tea Cup-Girl paper pack.



Several readers have asked for more info about these sticker sheets. To make them, I imported the teacups from the Little Tea Cups - Girl graphic set and reduced all the images to about 1"x1" or less. I traced all of them and made a 0.05" offset of each. I didn't want to waste the extra sticker space outside the 3.5" x 2.5" rounded rectangles so I placed some teacups there too. For more info on making stickers with the Silhouette Cameo (including cut settings), please click HERE to refer to my Stickers tutorial.


Last but not least, to make the box, I used the matchbox from the Dear Tooth Fairy Cut Its set and enlarged the size to 185% of it's original size. I filled it with the same pink patterned paper from the Little Tea Cups paper pack and also placed the two "cover cards" from the Little Tea Cup - Girl Number Cards on the box. All that is left to do is to print-and-cut and assemble.



That's it! I hope that you'll have as much fun making this project as I did.  Don't forget that if any of my project ideas or tutorials inspire you to make your own, you are welcome to share a picture of your project on my Facebook page. I would love to see your work.