Voyager Box and Ultimate Organiser

Recently, I finished a project I had been working on for a while. I found the design at www.paperphenomenon.com for both the box and the Organiser and bought them to have a go! With the design you get the measurements for cutting and instructions for making them up. The designer, Kathy Orta Files, also has very good videos on YouTube showing each step in the process.

The photos show the finished box and the organiser that goes with it.









This is the organiser closed, showing the front cover and the closure, which is just a D-ring attached to a grosgrain ribbon using eyelets. The ring slips over a hitch post.


Inside the organiser, there are a number of fold out pieces that have pockets attached to the fronts, and have slide-in pockets on the sides. There are also envelope type pockets.






This picture shows the file top pockets/folders that are in the back of the organiser.





This is the back of the organiser with a pocket for the diary (below). The ribbon is attached to the back with a metal flower from Prima (one of the left-overs from the class I did with Finnabair earlier this year).


Really enjoyed making this project and hope to make some more of Kathy's projects soon.




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Such a long time...

I have just realised that it is a very long time since I have blogged any of my recent work! I have actually been quite busy out in the craft room and have just not gotten around to adding anything to my blog.

While I was in the UK, I picked up some little calendar tabs at a craft shop and made some of them into little calendars.








To make the backgrounds, I used some coasters that I bought at IKEA (the round ones) and some blank coasters I have had in my stash for a very long time! I covered the square coasters with papers from my stash (again!) then matted the calendars and added some brads before attaching to the coasters. To make them stand, I used another coaster (again covered with paper), punched 2 holes and added ribbon to tie them together. This enables the coasters to stand up.

For the round ones, I cut some stands from the Fancy Frames cartridge on the Cricut and attached them to the back of the coasters. Added a cute doily that I cut using a Marianne's Creatables die before attaching the calendar.

For all of the calendars, I edged the coasters with vintage photo distress ink and added some flowers to each. These will make cute little gifts for Christmas Stockings this year.


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Creative Chemistry 102 Day 2

Day 2 of CC102 focussed on using stencils - thank goodness I bought some while I was away!

Enjoyed playing with the inks, paints and stencils today and quite pleased with the results.




One of the stencil techniques today was one that I had used before. It was described in the last Craft Stamper magazine. Here are some of the cards I did using the same technique.






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Location:Christchurch, New Zealand

Creative Chemistry 102 Day 1

Today was the first day of the on-line Creative Chemistry 102 class with Tim Holtz. It follows on from the classes a year or so ago in using the Ranger inks and paints.

Below are the tags I made as part of the first day's lessons. I was surprised how much fun it was to make the tags as I have not done a lot of distress stuff for ages. It was also good to have a play with the distress paints I have bought but not really used!









I used distress paints, crackle paint, distress stain, distress inks, embossing folder, TH dies to produce these tags.

Looking forward to tomorrow's class now!

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Location:Avonhead, Christchurch, New Zealand

Travel Mini Album

Before we went away for our trip to the UK, I made a mini album for the friend who was going to travel with us. This was her first trip to the UK so I wanted to help her to remember it with a special journal/album.
I have been very inspired by Anne at www.annespapercreations.com as she makes the most amazing mini-albums, specialising in using Graphic 45 papers.
Having watched many of her videos - which are fantastic as she goes through every step involved in making the albums, I decided to have a go at creating one for myself.
I took several photos of the finished album for my friend, and decided to make these into a video instead of putting every picture on the blog.
The papers I used were mainly from Kaisercraft and I used several Tim Holtz stamps and dies as well as using the Cricut to cut several little mini-books and folders to put into the album.

The video is short but it shows all the pages and inserts I made for the album. Each page has two different sides as well as an envelope between to insert a bigger mat for photos and journalling.

Back from a holiday!

Yes, I am back from my holiday. We were away for nearly a month and had a lovely time travelling around in the UK, visiting friends then to Paris for a couple of nights and a night in Los Angeles, where I had to visit Joann's to stock up on some craft supplies!

Finally got into my craft room in the middle of last week and made a start on some cards that I have been wanting to do for ages. The problem was that I was not that inspired and had to flick through a few magazines to get some inspiration.

Before we went away, I made gelli pad using a recipe I found on the internet. I tried it out and made some background papers that I was reasonably happy with.



For this background I used flesh colour and olive green acrylic paints. Was very happy with the end result. Used a new die to cut the grasses, stamped the dragonflies and added a birthday greeting.

For the next 2 cards, I used red, blue and yellow acrylic paints - quite a different end result!








I still have a lot of experimenting to do with this technique, but it is interesting and you can do some amazing backgrounds. I bought some stencils while I was away and I want to try using those to make the backgrounds a little more textured and interesting.



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Location:Avonhead,New Zealand

Slider Card Tutorial

At a recent Crafty Girls meeting, we made a slider card and I promised to put the tutorial on the blog. Here it is:

1. Take a piece of A5 (half an A4 sheet) cardstock and fold. Punch a half circle from the centre of the top of each half of the cardstock.



2. Cut 2 pieces of the same cardstock approx. 7.5cm x 12cm. These will be the pieces that slide in and out and will be decorated. Only about 2/3rds of the slider will actually show. Decorate these before putting the card together. Make sure your decorations are at the ends of the card that will slide out. They will be opposite ends.


3. Cut another piece of cardstock 9cm x 14cm. This will form the base of the sliding mechanism. Take one of the smaller pieces and line it up at the bottom of the 9x14 card and make a pencil line on the larger card at the top of the smaller piece. Do the same at the opposite end of the card.
4. Find the centre point of each of the lines and measure 2.5 cm from the centre point to each end of the line. Do this at both ends of the card. Using a ruler, draw a line from one end of the card to the other end, matching the pencil marks 2.5 cm from each centre point. You will see a rectangle drawn in the centre of the card now.

5. Using scissors, cut out the small rectangle at each end of this card, making it into an H shape.



6. Take a piece of plastic almost the same width of the centre part of the H and twice as long plus about 2cm. Wrap it around the centre of the H-shaped card and tape it together loosely - it needs to be loose enough to slide around easily.



7. Place the join of the plastic at the left end of the H-shaped card. Tape the right hand slider to the top of the plastic facing you. The decorated side will be upwards. Now place the second slider part underneath the H-shaped inner piece at the left hand end with the decorated part facing up. You will only see a part of this piece. Turn the whole lot over, then tape the second decorated piece to the plastic. Note that you are taping it on the right side and will place it face down on the plastic slider. Check to see that your slider works by pulling each end out.



8. Turn the whole piece over and place DS tape (1/4" wide) along each long side. This is to attach to the inside of the card. Place the H-shaped inner on the card with the half circle punched out piece on the right and stick it down. Check to see that the slider mechanism works by closing the card and pulling the tab that shows through the punched half circle.



9. Place a narrow strip of DS tape along the open side of the card then stick it down. Check the slider again.

10. Finish your card off by decorating the front.




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A Quick Mini-Album

Mary from SVG Cuts designed this beautiful clutch purse as part of a new set of luxury bags and this one was a freebie during the weekend.

Because I have been fixated on making journals and albums lately, I had a brainwave with this purse - make it into a mini album!

My daughter is winging her way to the USA this week to visit her cousin in New York. She loves shopping as well as travelling, so I thought this would make an ideal mini album for her to record her quick visit (only 2 weeks).

 To make it into an album, I designed some pockets to fit into the bag and attached them on the base of the bag. The pockets were made by creating a hinged piece (as you would for a book album) and adding the pockets to the hinges. (I will do a brief tutorial on how to do this later)

I then made a series of tabbed cards and tags using the leftover pieces from the bag and added plain card for journalling, so she can record her trip to New York.

I also added a magnet closure to the flap of the bag so it would stay closed.

Happy Birthday Mum

Tomorrow is my mother's 88th birthday, so I made this card for her.The design is from SVG Cuts new set - Thank you for the Music. Just love it! If you want to see what is in the rest of this gorgeous set, check it out at SVG Cuts by clicking on the link at the right hand side of this post.

I cut all the parts from a variety of cardstock, including Dreamcatcher from First Edition Papers.

The sentiment was drawn on the card using the Cricut with a gel pen and SCAL2. The font is Trotline. I then used a thicker pen in the Cricut to draw around the shape before cutting it out with the Cricut.

Now I need to make an envelope for it as it measures 18cm x 17 cm and there are no envelopes in my stash that it will fit into!

Final CWC Project

Today sees the final project for this term for CWC over at My Paper Crafting. It has been great fun being part of a fabulous team of very creative people doing projects using the Cricut and the huge number of cartridges that are now available for the Cricut.

Anything goes for this project, and while I had great plans for a complicated one using lots of cartridges, unfortunately, time has got the better of me.

So, without further ado, I used the Everyday Pop-Up cards cartridge to make this card for one of my crafting buddies.

I cut the card and the teapot from some My Minds Eye designer card (Garden Tea party). I loved the wavy edge on the bottom of the card (one of the cards on the cart). I created a shadow for the teapot as well, so it stands out a little more from the card.

The flowers were punched from coloured paper andadded with some bling for the centres. Added a large gem to the top for the lid of the teapot.

On the inside, I added the Smile pop-up. The photo has shadows because of the light - but you can see how it works!



I have really enjoyed being part of Melin's little band of designers for the last year or so. It has challenged me to get more use out of my cartridges and the Cricut and I am very grateful to Melin for the wonderful designs for digital images and cutting files she has shared with us all over that time.



I hope you have enjoyed looking at the various challenges, and hopefully participating in some of them as well.

Just for Dad

This week's theme over at My Paper Crafting is Dad - Father's Day is coming up again!

For this card, I used the Simple Cards digi cartridge on the Cricut Craft Room when it was available as a free trial.

The background was cut as part of the actual card base and I added a patterned paper behind it along with a strip of the same paper on the top.

The easy chair is from the Father's Day cartridge and I used 2 colours/layers for this cut.

The sentiment is stamped using Gina K stamps and cut with a Spellbinders Fancy Tag die.

Please pop over to see what the other members of the DT have done and admire their stunning work!

Any Cartridge Beginning with S

 This week the challenge over at CWC is to use any cartridge beginning with S. As I only have 2 beginning with S, I chose the Serenade cart as it has so many lovely images on it. I used the Cricut Craft Room to design the card this time, instead of just cutting the random elements of the card separately. I know I should have been doing this process years ago, but I never really got around to doing it that way.

So I started by setting the scalloped rectangle from the CCR Basics on my mat then added the elements from the Serenade Cartridge to fit the space.

The clouds, tree and bird are all from the Serenade Cart and I sized them to fit the picture I wanted to create.

For the words, I used the CCR basics font. Serenade has a fot but I didn't like it so much with this particular layout!

I created a shadow layer for the letters and welded it so I could add the top layer of letters separately. For the top layer of letters, I used a black pen to create some faux stitching. I added the layers to the card to which I added faux stitching on the outer edge.

Please pop over to the CWC page and check out the lovely designs from the team.

Pearl

Another challenge at My Paper Crafting - Crafting with Cutters this week and the theme is Pearl.

For my projects, I decided to use a white on white theme and used two cartridges - Songbird and Serenade.




I used the Cricut Craft Room to put the words together using the font from Songbird and then to creat a shadow layer for the words.

The pears were from the Serenade cartridge and I cut a shadow layer for these as well.

The flourish is a Spellbinders flourish die.

I also used the Cuttlebug and Swiss Dots folder to emboss the elements on the card. The pearls were added to the corners of the card.

Please join us over at the challenge for this week and check out the beautiful designs from the rest of the design team.


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Location:Christchurch, New Zealand

Pink

 Wednesdays seem to come around vry quickly and it is time for another challenge at My Paper Crafting - CWC Wonderful Wednesday.

The theme this week is Pink!


I chose to make this cute little pink elephant using the Paisley cartridge. I used two shades of pink for the layers and purple for the sunglasses. The sentiment is also from the same cartridge.

I added a black layer to make it stand out on the card. I used Kindiglitz to bling up the sunglasses and sentiment.

I embossed the top layer of the background using my Cuttlebug and a Craft Concepts embossing folder.


There are some beautiful projects on the blog this week, so do pop over and take a look. Please enter the challenge as well - some fab prizes up for offer this month.

Owls!

Got these cute little owl stamps as part of the set on a magazine I picked up in Melbourne recently.

They were so cute that they were begging to be made into some cards!

Stamped the owls onto card and the wings separately so they could be attached later.

They were all coloured using Copic markers then attached to backgrounds and layered on the card bases.

I found the little shaker eyes at the local $2 shop yesterday and thought they would be really great for the eyes of the owls, and they do make them stand out a little more!

Tim Holtz Dressform

Was watching some You Tube videos the other day and came across an interesting use for the Tim Holtz dressform on the Sewing things Bigz die.

So I tried it out.

Cut 2 dress forms with the die, then painted them with antique broze distress paint. Cut one in half and attached each half to either side of the other dress form.

Cut several dress forms from book pages and trimmed off the neck and stand parts to leave just the body form. Distressed the edges with vintage photo then folded in half. Attached them to the inside parts of the dress form then decorated it with lace, paper roses and pearl strings.

The sentiment is a TH one as well.

The base was made from 2 circles of card attached to a tube that I found in the craft room.

Was pleased with this for a first off!

Another Wednesday Challenge at CWC

Hi again. This week the theme over at CWC is Lace.

I checked my cartridge for the Cricut and found that I had the Winter Lace cart, so I decided to do a paper lace trim on a simple card.

I used my summer seasonal distress inks - picked raspberry, salty ocean and mowed lawn to create a colourful background. I used post it notes across the top and bottom to leave a "white" space.

Stamped the sentiment in black archival ink.

Added some colourful ribbon to the edges of the cut out lace, then added these to the card front. Finished it off with some lovely bling!


Do go over to see what the others have created for this week's theme challenge at My Paper Crafting.

Wednesday Challenge time again

Time for another Craft with Cutters Challenge.
This week, the theme is Flourish. There are some beautiful projects over at My Paper Crafting so please do go and check them out.

My project this week is a little different from my normal cards or 3D projects. I recently got my hands on some vinyl and tried cutting it with the Cricut. Amazing - it cuts like a hot knife through butter!

I was looking for something to "decorate" with this vinyl and spotted my iPad in its keyboard cover. Perfect!

I used 2 cartridges this week - Home Accents for the butterfly and Fancy Frames for the swirly frame.

The frame measures 5.5" by 7.5" to give you an idea of the size.

I love the butterfly with its gorgeous flourish on the wing and trailing behind. I can see this image on a larger scale decorating a wall or mirror.

The beginning of my shopping expedition!

Arrived in Melbourne at 8.30am and by lunchtime, we had travelled out into the countryside and I had found a wee shop that sold all these goodies. They were so cheap - most of them being $2 each. Bought the magazine at a bookshop and it had some lovely freebie papers and a neat owl stamp.

All together, I still got change from $50!



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Location:Victoria, Australia

Wednesday Challenge at CWC

 This week's challenge over at CWC is all about Office Stuff. The office and craft room at my house both have so many pens and pencils around that I am always looking for places to keep them.

So this theme was a perfect opportunity for me to make a pen holder!

 I used the Tags, Bags, Boxes and More 2 cart with my Cricut. I chose the coffee mug design and used the Cricut Craft Room to do the design.

I didn't want the handles on the mug so I removed the slots in the cutting file by using the Hide Contour feature of the program. To add some stability to the top of the pen holder, I cut a strip of card that measured slightly longer than the circumference of the holder and folded in half before attaching to the inside of the rim.

I cut the letters at 2" tall from different colours of card, then embossed them with the swiss dots folder and my Cuttlebug.

To finish off, I added some fancy ribbon to the top and bottom.

It would be great to see you over at the CWC challenge at My Paper Crafting this week. You have loads of time to get your entry linked for this challenge too.