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‘Birds of a Feather’

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Someone at our crop was looking for some birdie inspiration and I found this cut file in the Silhouette Design Store. Then while trying to work through my stash of Pink Paislee Moonstruck I found some paper with a feathery design. I’m not a particular fan of feathers or birds but somehow this all came together. The photo is of my boyfriend’s family on a Sunday walk (a very cold, very windy, very muddy walk!). I matted the photo on a peach and dark pink cardstock before adding the faux photo corner stickers, from the Moonstruck puffy stickers. The birds were cut from the usual plain white textured cardstock but I used my beloved Nuvo Embellishment Mousse in Indian Gold to define the edges. I just used my fingers to do this. I cut the feathers from the peach cardstock and a yellow cardstock which co-ordinated with the photo corners. The dies are some of many that can be found for next to nothing on AliExpress . I added some gold edging to the feathers too. Just the title left,
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‘Snow’

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Another cut file that I spotted in the Silhouette Design Store … Snow . Perfect for another picture from my snowy Snowdon adventure. I resorted to my stash of old papers to fill this one in, a combination of patterned papers and a couple of scraps of Bazzill Swiss Dot cardstocks. I also used some of the Bazzill in blue to mat my photo. I then die cut lots of circles from the leftovers and cut them in half before arranging them into the top and bottom borders on my dark grey cardstock. I like to think it looks like snowballs! A couple more phrase stickers from American Crafts Creekside and it was done. Simple but I like to think it’s effective.
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‘Winter Wonderland’

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I saw someone use this cut file in the Hey Little Magpie Facebook group and knew I had to use it asap! We were supposed to go to the Cairngorms when the ‘Beast from the East’ storm hit and we couldn’t get there. Instead we made it to Snowdonia and played in the snow on Snowdon whilst I also learnt how to use crampons and an ice axe. It was great fun. I cut the file in white textured cardstock with my Cricut Explore Air 2 and placed it on this gorgeous cardstock from American Crafts ‘Creekside’ collection, designed by One Canoe Two . It’s pale blue with a subtle silver shimmer patter which you can’t fully appreciate in my photos. I cut the title from this free cut file from Paper Issues – this is a great place to get free cut files – from Centura Pearl Snow White cardstock. Then I went nuts with the Nuvo Crystal Drops;   I love Nuvo Drops, just love them. I added them to all the berries and I put a small dot on the little snowflakes I punched. I used ( from left to right ) Nuvo J
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‘Muddy Puddles’

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Sometimes you have the design in your head but you’re waiting for the right photo….this was the right photo. The Silhouette Umbrella Frame cut file is too cute and I’d seen the papers in the latest Dear Lizzy Stay Colourful collection. I already had the mirror raindrops in my stash and a rain drop punch. The alphas were cut on my Cricut Explore Air 2 and the squiggly lines are made from a wave die. Easy peasy!
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‘Social Butterfly’

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Frequently my designs start with me lusting over a cut file….I have no idea what I’ll do with it until I start to play. I love this Paige Evans Silhouette Butterfly Cut File ! I was still trying to use up my Pink Paislee Moonstruck stash so the core colours in this collection established the colours I would use. It occurred to me that I still hadn’t used my Heidi Swapp Colour Shine sprays, which happened to be in coordinating colours.  I don’t have masses of cardstock so I’m a bit hesitant to spray on non-white cardstock but I practiced on some scraps and braved it. I backed the cut file with a variety of Moonstruck Papers and arranged it on the page. As usual my cut file is cut from white textured cardstock. I matted the photo twice with leftover Moonstruck papers and added some embellishments from the range. Wash tape under the photo and some butterfly washi stickers. I used two different colours of American Crafts Starlight Thickers for my title and used an American Crafts Thicke
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‘Goodbye 2017’

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Another photo where I’m not sure I knew it was being taken! The layout started with the stitched background however. Having seen so many of Paige Taylor Evans’   beautiful stitched layouts I endeavoured to see if I could cut stitched backgrounds using my Cricut Explore Air 2 . It made all the marks needed for this background accurately but you need to punch the holes through to be able to thread through them. Tedious but not difficult. I made up the colour pattern as I went along, using gold metallic (ugh, horrible to sew with!), pink and light pink embroidery threads – three strands at a time. I added pink enamel stars (from a collection of different coloured stars by Papermania ) to each stitched stars. before matting the photo on card. I added two strips of card, one glitter behind the photo before adding my title. Trusty Thickers   from the Pink Paislee Moonstruck   collection I’ve been working through. All done!
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Love, Love, Love (Lego)

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For Valentine’s Day I ordered Lego Minifigures from MiniFigs.me which looked like my boyfriend and I (he loves Lego). It was a huge hit with him and our friends. Having seen this cut file by Just Nick on the GoGoGetaway blog I was inspired to do a simple Lego themed Valentine’s layout. I found some blue Bazill cardstock which had raised dots for my background.  I just cut the cut file from textured white cardstock. Then I had to work out how to make the Lego bricks. I cut small rectangles out of card scraps with a small die (you can just cut card, I’m fussy) and punched small circles with a single hole punch. I started by putting tiny foam squares under the dots… …but it looked naff. It was hard to line up the dots. So I went to my original idea (my original idea but I tried the easier idea first just in case), stacking the punched dots. Five hole punched dots made one ‘knob’ on the brick. It was fiddly and tedious but it does look good. I used my trusty Zig 2 Way Glue.
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