Clean and Simple - A Red & Turquoise card

HI all...
I was browsing ideas for my dream craft room (don't laugh, we all have one!!!) and found this really awesome design with turquoise blues and red accents. It is a gorgeous room. I wanted to try and pull that in to my design this week. I have also been dying to use my Forever Young cartridge. In my surfing, I have seen cards with the Mrs. Claus dress and a sentiment - so I came up with my take on this fun, flirty design.

I am entering this card into the following challenges:
 Christmas Inspirations - Anything Goes challenge # 41. A big shout out to my new Brazilian Crafting friends!
Through The Craftroom Door - Challenge # 20 - CAS - Include Sentiment. Great challenge! I wasn't sure if the 'ho,ho,ho' counted as a sentiment, so I added the 'Naughty/Nice'. Hope that's OK. :-)

I really love the way the colors go together, and I hope you enjoy this as well...

 As I mentioned, I used my Forever Young Cricut cartridge for the dress. I used a long one, and then cut it down to mini length and shaped the bustier to a sweetheart neckline. I added the belt - I used a gold bead for the 'buckle'.  For the ruffle at the bottom, I used tissues (as in kleenex. Strange I know, but it worked!) layered, then ruffled and fluffed. I cut several black boots, and glued them together to give them some depth. The sentiment is from the 'Opposites Attract' Cricut font cartridge, welded with my Gypsy.
As always, many thanks to the talented DT that put together these great challenges! I appreciate the time and effort and love playing along.

Blessings!
Kat

Color Throwdown Challenge # 178

I love searching the web for new ideas, blogs and challenges. Last week at lunch, I came across the Color Throwdown blog. I immediately loved this week's challenge, Color Throwdown # 178. The rich earthy colors and the lacy, feminine look of the cake in the photo inspiration really appealed to me. I searched through my stacks, and found that I had the required colors, so I decided to play along. I think it turned out very well.

I started with a 'Vanilla' card, and used my Cricut Damask Decor cartridge for the background and the butterfly - I wanted to try and duplicae that flowing, lacy look of the cake. For the background, I used CoreDinations form the Chocolate Box collection, which has an orange 'Cajun Craze' type color when it's distressed. The paper Tag is from the Ashlyn's Alphabet Cartridge, stamped with a basic sentiment - I wanted something clean and simple to offset all the frou-frou. Still loving making my own roses, so created a lovely 'Vanilla' rose and bud, using an 'Early Espresso' type color for the leaves. And of course aded in some frou-frou - 'Summer Sun' Baby's breath and a scrap of ribbon I've had for some time. I decided to forego any extra bling - so no glitter or pearls this time!

Super Big thanks to the DT @ The Color Throwdown for the wonderful challenge...I certainly wouldn't have thought to design with those colors, but am glad I did.

Blessings!

Kat

Blue & White Challenge (x2)

Another week, another challenge. 
I had such a good time following the Winter Wonderland challenge last week, I decided to try another challenge (or 2) this week. I selected Crafting for All Seasons - #19 Color Challenge - Blue & White and Winter Wonderland  also Blue & White.
Be sure check them out here:
Crafting for All Seasons - #19 - Color Challenge, Blue & White
Winter Wonderland - Blue and White Challenge

The idea for both is to create a card using ONLY blue and white.

I was really loving the window cutout I used last week, and am still having fun playing around with creating textured flowers using my Cricut Flower Shoppe cartridge.
So, started with a card with a lovely scalloped edge (Another Michael's $1 bin find!!!).
I cut out the window, using Cricut Christmas cartridge, altered to cut only the window openings using my Gypsy. After cutting the window opening, I ran this through the cuttlebug using a QuickCutz folder, from the 'Whimsy' set. I added blue glitter dots to the embossing on the card.
I then cut the same window out of white cardstock, and then a third blackout version out of vellum.
I cut out a bunch of Poinsettia looking petals form glitter blue and soft blue cardstock. I assembled the flowers similar to the rose tutorial I shared from Selma's blog last week. (Check last week's post for the link)
I cut some Holly leaves from the Cricut Winter Wandering cartridge on white glitter cardstock, and some berry frou-frou from ultra glitter blue cardstock.
Finally, I cuts some small snowflakes from the Cricut Christmas cartridge. And a sentiment from a DCWV winter theme card stack.
I layered everything on the card and added a bit of transparent blue ribbon. I used foam dots on the sentiment, and clear dots on the snowflakes for added dimension.
I felt it was missing something, so I added the cute stamped Santa behind the window, stamped in blue ink. It added a bit of whimsy, don't you think?
Anyway, here it is:

The second picture has this weird blue cast for some reason, but you can see the glitter a bit better.

As always, many thanks to the fabulous DT @ Crafting for All Seasons and Winter Wonderland for continuing to bring us these wonderful challenges.
Blessings!
Kat