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Post Card Album

I got this idea from a very talented lady on Scrapbook.com named Laurink. She collects postcards and did an album on her trip to Hawaii.

Mine is a little different. I made my postcards and 4x6 pics into pockets by gluing 3 sides and leaving the top open.

Then I did my journaling on both black and white tags.

Each tag got a ribbon stapled to the top.

Ticket stubs and receipts were also stapled to the tag.

Some pages have paint on them, this one has some doodling around the paint.

I did not include pics of each page as there are 25 pages in this album.

Rubons were used on this page. I didn't have enough postcards for all the pictures I wanted to include so I made additional pages by using black card stock

The arrow has been colored using colorbox ink and then sprayed with pearl glimmer mist. And yes, that's a shark!

I love this picture so I included a ghost heart, inked with stazon and then wrote on the heart with a Signo pen.

There was this pool where you could touch a sting ray. It took some nerve before I could stick my hand in there.

We went to M&M World. It was a lot of fun but we look a bit pooped! The temperature was high and being in the desert, well, we kind of look melted.

I do think that Green has style though!

Gypsy Fun!!!

Yes, I was one of those people who was up at night when Provocraft and their World Launch on HSN.

Their offer was too good for me to pass up. Yes, yes, it was $299. and I know that's a lot of money ... but...my cricut was a gift and I have only ever bought 2 cartridges and one of those was on ebay and I spent $22 for it. The other cartridge I bought on sale at Michaels for $39. So my total cricut investment was pretty low. HSN was offering five $59 flex pays, an extra cartridge, a car charger and this lovely bag. No tax and free shipping.

Now do you understand my purchase??? Oh did I mention I got mine before they hit the stores? Oh, yeah!

There wasn't any instructions in the box so for those of you who aren't computer savvy, be prepared for a little frustration. I waited a day and then went on the message boards at www.cricut.com and got the low down. After reading a little, my set up was easy as pie!

I do not own the Cricut jukebox or the Design Studio software and the gypsy eliminates the need for both, although they are compatible.


So here is my first layout using my gypsy. I used the Home Decor, Base Camp and Don Juan cartridges. The adore was a one button on Home Decor. I and these were base camp and I welded all the words together. This means I smooshed the letters so they touch and when it's cut, it comes off the mat as one piece. Bright and eyes are from the same font but after I welded the words together I stretched bright to make it stand out more. The orange mat has the name welded making it one piece also.

When you look at the last pictures you can see the 6 x 12 piece of paper I cut from. Because you decide where on the mat you cut, I was able to only use a portion of the paper.



A little stickles to outline some words, eyelets around the Bazzill edged paper, inked edges and one of those big gromlets give a little more pizazz.

I really like being able to cut out whole words that are one piece. Saves time and frustration when gluing them down!

And I really do adore those bright eyes!!!

This is a composition notebook that I altered. "Hello Gorgeous" with the first thing my Father In Law would say to me whenever he saw me. The next thing would be "you look beautiful today" Well, that dear sweet man passed away a few weeks ago and I wanted a place to put down those special stories about him.

The lesson for today is:

Paper changes color when you pat it with Versamark ink and then heat emboss with clear embossing powder.

For the title I used the new Ashlyn's Alphabet font from cricut. Then I used the Versamark and clear embossing powder. Heated the letter and then immediately put it back into the powder, tapped off excess and reheat. Three layers of powder to get shiny raised letters.

Here you can see the original color of the letters, it matches the pale blue dots in the background. I did ink the edges of the letters before I did the embossing.

The combination of the Versamark ink (clear) and embossing powder just about turned the blue paper translucent.

I wanted letters that had a little more pop and staying power than just plain paper letters. To

adhere the letters, I used the Xyron sticker maker to get full coverage adhesive on the back.

Got to love this spatula that cricut makes! It really helps getting small bits off the sticky mat without ruining them.

Since the paper color changed I used a Micron pen to outline them.

The swirly is from the Home Decor Cricut Cartridge.

As always, I hope you can benefit from my mistakes to NOT make them yourselves. Have a great day

I had a evening of card making from my Bestest Buddy Becky! Here's one of the card we made.

The lesson here is there are two sides to every ribbon. I picked a rose colored ribbon to bring out the rose in the flower and Becky thought it was too rosy so I flipped it over and that side worked great!

We used those wonderful Cuttlebug embossing folders and rubbed chalk ink over the swirls. I used a darker ink on the border of the white embossed part.
Three flowers stacked with a little bling and tadaaa a card for someone special!

Wish Book

I've been letting this idea float around in my head for a while. Remember the old Sears Wish Book? I remember sitting down with my sister and circling all the things we wanted, using different pens so Mom and Dad would know who wanted what. No possible item was left uncircled, if anything, I was thorough!


Since I'm older, and I haven't seen a Sears Wish Book in ages, my wishes are a bit different now. Some wishes are for items (like the Swim Spa that I've wanted for AGES), some wishes are for other people and some are secret wishes that I'm not ready to share yet. Well these "things" need a place... I wanted a book to paste pictures in and to write so I pulled out a Composition Notebook, painted the spine white and started to pretty it up. My wish book needed to be sturdy and while I love flowers I just didn't think they would last without a protector - so - no flowers.

I had these great bookplates from Basicgrey. They were sitting in my stash just waiting for a project!!

I used my computer to print out my title.

Here's my book. I used the Smitten line from K n Company (love it so much I bought 2 packs), Paper tape also from K n Company, ribbon and one of those Bling shapes from Basicgrey.

Speaking of those Bling Shapes ... I had read a tip about using Low Tack Artist Tape to help put these jewel shapes down. I've had some real battles with the square shapes and was reluctant to buy more. You are supposed to cover the top of the shape with the tape to stabalize it.

I found this to be a paper tape that is stiff but barely sticky. When peeling off the backing of the shape, the paper tape just didn't hold on. Instead of low tack, this was more like "no tack".

I'll probably give it one more try and use a little more "rubbing action" to the jewels. Everyone deserves a second chance - don't you think?

Blog Candy from Basic Grey

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Don't Make my Embossing Mistake

I love the look of embossing! Heat embossing especially. Now, I mostly use clear embossing powder because of the versatility:

1. With pigment ink, my embossing color is chosen by ink color. And I have a big collection of pigment ink.
2. With versamark ink the embossing color is the same as the background paper, another way to save.
3. Again with versamark you can create a resist for inking or using those wonderful glimmer mists.

Now for my mistake:
This is a great tool ..
unless... you use different colors of embossing powder like clear, white and BLACK and don't wash it between colors. I'm not a complete slob, I mean, I wipe it out but that powder just sticks to every stinking surface, up the sides and especially at the spout. My scrap space is in the basement so I avoid running up the stairs at all costs.


This is what you get when you don't wash out the tray
The clear embossing powder jar on the left is brand spankin new and the right one is my mistake.


So why did I buy a new jar when I still had some left? you ask? Well, I used the clear embossing powder with versamark on a dry embossed white cardstock and was wondering why it looked "muddy" when I was done. Thankfully I was using this technique as a resist so it didn't stand out like a neon light, once I sprayed glimmer mist over it. Here's the card I made, you can't really tell, because like a good scrapper, I covered my oops with an embellie (the flower)


See how the white on the left side isn't quite white white?
So my solution is to only use the tray for black embossing powder and use these little plastic containers (that The Angel Company Stamps come in) and keep the powder ready to use. And I labeled each one so I don't confuse white and clear embossing powder.