Stocking Banner

Happy 2012! Hope you have had a happy beginning to the New Year. I also hope to be able to scrapbook, create and share with you more this year. 2011 was k-razy! Here's to a quieter 2012 for me.

OK, I did not manage to share this with you before the holidays, so let's just pretend that I'm sharing early for Christmas 2012. :D

Seems like everyone has been making banners lately and I wanted in on the fun. I wanted one on my mantle for Christmas but didn't want to use pennants. As we use a stocking hanger for our stockings instead of hanging them from the mantle, I thought stockings might be cute. But I also didn't just want to say Merry Christmas. Finally--Happy Birthday Jesus.


I used stocking1 from Christmas Cheer for the base and its shift for the detail (both cut at 5 3/4"). However, I only needed the top cuff so hid the nail, toe and heel pieces. I also hid the toe, heel and cuff lines on the base stocking as I didn't want these to cut. I probably could have welded those instead of hiding.


Calligraphy Collection has become my favorite font cartridge lately. I didn't want a lot of layers and wanted to be able to see the letters from across the room, so I just used the shadow of the basic font for my letters cut at 2 1/2".


I would have added glitter or cut from glitter paper for the white except for the fact that my son has a glitter phobia.


For his sake, I try to avoid glitter when I know he is going to be around.


Here's the fireplace on Christmas Eve after Santa made an early stop to fill our stockings and before everyone arrived. If you click on the photo, you can see the silver letters I found to attach to our stockings. Everyone loved the banner.


I plan to add something at each end next year to "hold" the string. I just ran out of time this year and couldn't decide what I wanted to use.

Have a great week!

BTW, while not using my blog in almost a year, I have lost the connection to upload my files. You should be able to recreate this file on your own if interested, but you can comment on this post and leave your email address if you would like for me to email it to you.

Thanks,
Jill

Santa Hat

Yes, I am a little out of season. Sorry for the delay.

Rose Mary was working on a cute layout of her granddaughter back at our crop in January. The lighting wasn't great in the photos, but the pictures were precious.

She had bought a Santa hat embellishment but didn't like it after all, so we proceeded to see what could be done. I found the Santa with suit on Christmas Cheer which was close to the hat she had. I hid everything we didn't need and cut the hat in Cranberry and the trim in Colonial White. Rose Mary inked the edges and added Prisma Glitter to the trim. Then she removed the decoration from the one she bought and added it to the one we made.


But the layout still needed something. Rose Mary really wanted a 12 inch border, so I used the same elements only smaller to make a border. I created it with the view on 24x12 mat so that I could get it long enough and then rotated the design to fit on a 12x6 mat. Lots of hiding selected contours! Again, she inked the edges and added Prisma Glitter.


We thought it turned out pretty dang cute!


You just might see this design again if I ever get around to scrapping my Christmas pictures. I hope you can use the Santa Hat file.

Jill

Coffee Anyone?

This is a gift card I made back in March but wanted to do some revisions to get it ready for you. And I wanted Sherry's OK to post it.

A small group of us get together when we can, and we were late celebrating Kay's birthday because "when we can" hadn't happened in a while. So we celebrated both Kay and Dawn's birthday at the same time, and I was in charge. haha As usual, I had waited until the last minute to get it all together and was trying to make cards and pack for Ferncliff at the same time.

Kay's gift was a gift card to Starbucks and needed an appropriate holder. I remembered Sherry's from our gift card swap (http://www.cricut.com/messageboard/tm.aspx?m=3592445 - post #67) and emailed her requesting the file. Once received, I realized that I didn't have any acetate and no time to get any, so I proceeded to revise her file to work for me. See Sherry's blog here.

I was very pleased with the outcome. More importantly, Kay loved it!


The base of the card is a blackout coffee mug flipped for the back and a coffee mug for the front. I used 2-sided paper so that the inside of the cup and the back both looked nice. Be careful how you glue the pieces together so that the card can slide in and out.

I needed the steam and the coffee to be attached in order to use them to pull the card out of the holder. And we know how I like to have an additional card to fold over for the sentiment or what have you. Between the steam, the coffee and 2 cards, it was longer than the mat. Since I didn't want the steam to be the same color as the coffee anyway, I chose to cut the top of the steam off. I then cut a front and a back (flipped) steam in white to lay over the attached steam and cover up the missing part.

That's the only way it works on the Baby Bug. I've done another file for the Expression and included 2 different pages for the card. One will cut the top off as explained; the other is laid out diagonally and will cut the whole thing. You'll only need to cut one or the other.

You can place your paper so that the swirl cuts in a different color.


George was used for the cards and Plantin Schoolbook for the flowers. You can substitute as needed.

Dawn's card was much quicker as I decided on Debbie's cell phone gift card holder (http://www.cricut.com/messageboard/tm.aspx?m=3592445 - post #51). She received a Hobby Lobby gift card but had just gotten a new Blackberry, so I thought it was appropriate.


I think they both turned out pretty cute!

Cut file for Expression

Cut file for Baby Bug

Latte,
Jill