Hogs and Kisses

These cute piggies are from...you guessed it...SVGcuts.com. They are from the Cuddly Animals set which is so cute and, you guessed it again, cuddly. I love all Mary's Cuddly Characters. I punched the inside corner with a heart photo corner by Fiskars for a dress up. The paper is American Crafts Craft Fair collection.

WMD - Wisdom of the Aged

Years ago my mother recognized that with 7 children and 34 grandchildren, keeping track of birthdays and holidays was going to be increasingly difficult as families grew and age took her memory. So she solved the problem by a) sending money rather than gifts and b) delegating distribution to the parents. It's a brilliant plan really, no one has ever returned the gift because it was the wrong size or color or age appropriateness. 

So each year at Thanksgiving Mom writes checks to my siblings and I as the current year's Christmas gift and birthday giving for the following year. When the kids were young I just used the money to buy gifts. Now the kids are on to me; they want the cash. Figures. So I try to find some clever way to gift the money to the kids. This year I made these adorable Toy Soldier Boxes. The cut file and assembly video are free on SVGcuts.com.

I also remind the young uns to send Grandma a thank you card, which has never happened. Lightbulb!...This year I'm going to give each kid an addressed, stamped Thank You card and tell them when they give it back to me with a nice note, ready to mail, they can have their Grandma Gift. I'm feeling a new tradition blossoming. Too bad it took me 30 years to think of it. This is why I talk to myself... I'm only brilliant in complete sentences.

A Wed Wose - How Womantic.

I found this beautiful, perfect Valentine rose SVG free at Miss Vickie's CuttingCrazy Blog. Go snoop around her blog and store. She has some super cute cut files. (I love the Angry Turkey SVG just in time for Thanksgiving. I see him on a card with the caption: Eat More Pork.)

The lacey oval frame is free at SVGcuts.com.

Reverse Nestablilites

Have you met Gina K. at GinaK Designs/ StampTV? No? Well now's your chance. As I've cruised YouTube, astonished at the amazing things people do with paper, Gina's videos keep popping up. She makes beautiful cards and makes it look so easy. For example, in  this video she demonstrates a technique she calls Reverse Nestabilities. Turns out I don't own any Nestabilities, but I do own Make-the-Cut. So I just used similar shapes to create a cut file for the same effect.

The card on the left is the Reverse Nestabilities technique. If you look closely you can see that the whole card front is popped up so only the bottom layer of the butterfly and the sentiment are actually on the card. Pretty cool. The card on the right uses the leftover cutouts. Easy, clever and I got 8 cards from 3 sheets of paper, butterflies included.

Credit where credit is due: Paper and Ribbon is American Crafts. Stamps are Fiskars. Butterfly svg is SVGcuts.com from the Cheryl's cute bugs collection.

WMD - Witchy pops

With Christmas cards done in September and Spring Cards on my desk I was starting to get a bit season confused. I thought a quick Halloween craft might fix me right up.

This cute and easy to assemble Witch hat SVG is free over at SVGcuts.com. I cut 8 per 12x12 sheet of double sided cardstock. I made 24 of them in an evening. Three sheets gave me lots of variety.  Inking the edges took most of the time but is totally worth the effort. It's a treat that looks like you fussed, only without the fuss. How can that be bad?!?

It's a brand new Season! SPRING!

It's time to start a new season of Operation Write Home cards. The "Christmas/Winter" box is filled to overflowing which gives us a little head start on the new box. I know it seems a little odd to be setting aside Christmas on the First day of October, but here we go anyway.

This is the first set of cards I've made for the "All Things Spring" box that will be shipping out in December. You can get the SVG for the Doily (posted 9/21/2012) and the Happy Birthday 2U (posted 9/10/2012) at birdscards.com. I welded the circle sentiment inside the doily and multi-layered the mat so the sentiment sits up off the card. Bird has great FREE cut files and digi stamps on her site. And she makes FABULOUS cards. It's worth going to her site just to look at her beautiful work.

My goal is to learn to use digi stamps so I don't have to try to cut sentiments. I got quite frustrated with these. I blame much of it on the off brand cutting mats I used (by Simply Crafty) which have proven disappointing beyond words.

Enjoy this lovely Fall weather...but make cards for Spring.

Fat Penguin...something to break the ice.

So you know that snowman I was frustrated about a couple days ago? Yeah, I ended up making my own cut file, along with the penguin and robin. I'm not in love with the robin so look at him as a work in progress. And if I make them again I'll make the penguin not as fat and tuck his feet in farther.

I used the arms from the frustrating download. The wings for both birds are flower petals, as are the penguin toes which I welded to circles for gluing. I borrowed the hat band from the Mad Hatter which is a free file over at SVGcuts.com. Everything else is just from the basic shapes file on MTC. Even the hat was easier than I expected. It's just two ovals and a trapezoid that I mashed, squashed, stretched and welded until it made me happy. It doesn't take much to make me feel accomplished.

WMD - Don't try this at home

I missed WMD last week, but I had a very good reason. You see... the girl child made me do it. A friend recommended she watch the previous seasons of Vampire Diaries. That sounds like a show that I could enjoy so I watched it with her. We watched 2 seasons last week. We couldn't help it....we just got SUCKED in!!! Bwahahah! see how I did that? Vampires...sucked in!

Yeah I know...go work on cards.

I'm astonished and a little embarrassed at how often my computer keyboard becomes my crafting workspace. I guess that's because I love svg's but I also like to look at what I'm building after I get the bits cut out. I'm absolutely positive that one day I'm going to be really, REALLY sorry I do this. Once again, another project for another day: make room on my desk for my computer AND my crafts.

I got this adorable free SVG Reindeer from DieCutGirl.blogspot.com posted April 1, 2012. The original doesn't look as angry as mine. It has to do with the placement of the eyebrows. In spite of the reindeer wearing his angry eyes, I think the cards turned out adorable.