Halloween Cards

One of my Cooking with Cricut teammates is an amazing young lady named Madison.  Madison has a heart of gold!  Last year she started an outreach project she calls "I Feel the Love".  Each month a different individual, group or organization is chosen to receive handmade gifts of love from crafters around the world.  

This month's outreach is for the 70 children who reside at Casa Pacifica.  Casa Pacifica meets kids and families at the most challenging times of their lives and helps them overcome some of life’s most difficult circumstances – abuse and neglect, complex emotional and behavioral issues, family crises. They restore hope, help children find joy in daily living, and improve families’ chances at making a better life and at finding a place in their community where they can be successful.

The "I Feel the Love" Project contributors are making Halloween Cards during the month of September (handed out during the month of October) to be given to the kids who live at Casa Pacifica. Each year the facility has an amazing Halloween party for the kids. It is Madison's goal to send a card to each child who lives there to help celebrate this occasion.   Here are some of the cards I made to send:

 

These three cards were put together using the super cute cutting file "Bear Carving Pumpkin" from PaperCraftingWorld.com.  The next batch of cards is "old-school" style -- stickers, buttons, ribbon and patterned papers. (No electronic die cut machines used at all; there are a couple of old Sizzix cuts though!)  Just bunches of old Halloween goodies and scraps I had stashed away!

There is still time to link up your Halloween card and get it into the mail to Madison!  Head on over to IFTL for the guidelines and mailing address.

~ Jen

Happy Fall!

Is the air getting cooler in your neck of the woods?  Are the leaves starting to change?  Here in sunny Florida the only clue we have that it is officially Fall is the notice on our calendars!  LOL!  We are still hitting the low 90's most days.  I'm trying really hard to get in that Fall spirit though . . . and created this card for 

at CookingWithCricut.com.  Each Friday the CWC and Paper Crafting World Design Teams will be featuring projects made using digital stamps created by the very talented Melinda Beltran -- and there will be a free digi stamp given away, too.  (Click here to visit PaperCraftingWorld.com and check out all of our talented leader's designs!)

I used the pre-colored Bear in Pumpkin Cart digi stamp for the front of the card. 

This card measures 5 1/2" wide by 4 1/4" tall.  I used SCAL and cut a bunch of 1/2" tall leaves out of paper scraps; added a bow tied from some jute and some gems.

The inside of the card features the pre-colored Pumpkin Vine 210 digi stamp and text created on my computer.

Quite "Fall-ish" . . . if I do say so myself!  Head on over to Cooking With Cricut and check out the other Designer's projects -- don't forget to grab the freebie!

Have a wonderful weekend!

~ Jen

Cooking With Cricut Challenge: Card Outreach

It's Design Team challenge day at Cooking with Cricut!  This week the team is making cards for our teammate Madison's "I Feel the Love" Project.  Each month a different individual, group or organization is chosen to receive handmade gifts of love from crafters around the world.  

This month's outreach is for the 70 children who reside at Casa Pacifica.  Casa Pacifica meets kids and families at the most challenging times of their lives and helps them overcome some of life’s most difficult circumstances – abuse and neglect, complex emotional and behavioral issues, family crises. They restore hope, help children find joy in daily living, and improve families’ chances at making a better life and at finding a place in their community where they can be successful.

The "I Feel the Love" Project will be making Halloween Cards during the month of September (handed out during the month of October) to be given to the kids who live at Casa Pacifica. Each year the facility has an amazing Halloween party for the kids. It is Madison's goal to send a card to each child who lives there to help celebrate this occasion. 

Here is the card I created to send:

My card measures 8 1/2" tall by 5 1/2" wide.  I used Cricut's Holiday Cakes cartridge to cut the "Happy Halloween."  The cute little bear carving a pumpkin is one of Melin's cutting files from PaperCraftingWorld.com.

All of the papers are from my scrap stash.  And here's a quick "cheat" for you . . . my papers were too short to meet in the middle so I hid the gap under some grosgrain ribbon!  Easy-peasy, quick and easy!!

Thanks so much for stopping by!  I hope that you will join in the fun and create a Halloween card for one of the Casa Pacific kids (no scary, spooky or evil stuff please!).  Link up your card at "I Feel the Love" and link it up at Cooking With Cricut, too, for a chance to be our next "Top Chef!"  After you've done all your linking, pop it in the mail to Madison (her address is on the "I Feel the Love" Project blog).  Now head on over to CWC and see what the rest of the team created!!

~ Jen

Cooking With Cricut Challenge: Color Challenge

Happy Wednesday!  Thanks for stopping by to check out my Cooking With Cricut Challenge post.  Melin asked the team to come up with a project using the following color palette:

Brown, kraft, cream, green and red -- perfect colors for the Fall season!  Here is what I came up with . . .

A tall card!  My card base is a cream-colored card stock and measures 9 1/4" tall by 4" wide (folded).  The layered kraft-colored piece measures 8 1/2" tall by 4" wide.  Each of my paper "ribbons" was cut from leftover scraps -- there are two pieces of grosgrain ribbon in there, too.  The paper ribbons measure 1" wide by 2"tall and 3/4" wide by 2" tall.  I created them using the Cricut George & Basic Shapes cartridge and Cricut Design Studio software.  I simply welded a rectangle and two triangles together to mimic the "tailed" ribbon.  The "happy birthday" phrase was printed out using my computer.  And a few buttons tied with binder's thread and a bit of red ink add the finishing details to my card.  

I hope you'll head on over to Cooking With Cricut and play along with us.  You have until next Tuesday at midnight to link up your project using our color combo -- you might just be our next "Top Chef!"

~ Jen