Deal and Kit of the Month for May from Creative Charms

 

It's a beautiful May Day here in Massachusetts.  With every new month, Creative Charms has a new Deal and Kit of the Month and I think you will like what they have selected this month.

If you love bling - you will be thrilled with the deal this month.  There is enough sparkly stuff to keep you busy for quite a while!  The May Deal is called "Sparkling Garden of Delight" and contains 347 pieces for just $6.99.  

Here is a list of everything included:

·         Amber Gradient Gem Stickers – 76 Pieces
·         Blue Gradient Gem Stickers – 76 Pieces
·         Pink Gradient Gem Stickers – 76 Pieces
·         Assorted Gradient Pearl Stickers – 76 Pieces
·         Light Purple Vintage Jewels – 12 Pieces
·         Light Green Vintage Jewels – 12 Pieces
·         Green Gradient Gem Brads – 9 Pieces
·         Purple Gradient Gem Brads – 9 Pieces
·         18” Blue Fancy Polka Dot Ribbon

 You can find the Deal of the Month on the Creative Charms website HERE.

The May Kit of the Month is called "A Knitted Garden" and contains 46 pieces for $14.99.  These are some of the very popular flowers and felt embellishments that add a lot to your cards or other projects.  I used the knitted strawberries for the card at the top of this post.

Here is a list of everything included:

·         Knitted Strawberries – 3 Pieces
·         Orange Countryside Garden – 6 Pieces
·         Green Knitted Butterflies – 4 Pieces
·         Blue Small Knitted Flowers – 9 Pieces
·         Blue Blooming Garden – 12 Pieces
·         Pink Blooming Garden – 12 Pieces

You can find the May Kit of the Month on the Creative Charms website HERE.

 I hope you enjoyed the Creative Charms Farewell Blog Hop - if you are wondering who won the Grand Prize (both the Deal and the Kit of the month for May) hop over to the Creative Charms Blog HERE to see the winner posted.

A winner

 The winner of the Creative Charms Farewell Blog Hop prize from my blog  (a package of white gradient pearls) is



In Love With A Bug




 One more winner...

Thanks again for visiting and joining the Disney Pixar Blog Hop.  The winner for the Disney character journaling mats and folder is

mamawcindy

Congratulations to both of you!  Please send me an email (capadiadesigns@gmail.com) with your mailing information so I can get these in the mail to you as soon as possible.

If you are wondering about the giveaway box I am filling this month, there are already some things in it and I'll share more about them soon.

link to discussion Day #3 - Time to Craft
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All from one tulip photo...

Thanks to everyone who followed the Creative Charms blog hop and the Disney Pixar blog hop.  Some of you are new to my blog.  I hope you will enjoy what you find here and that you will continue to visit and join in with some of our discussions.

The Grand Prize for the Creative Charms hop will be posted today on the Creative Charms blog.  I will draw the winners for the small items on my blog for both hops and post the names later today.  I should also have some information about the new Creative Charms Kit and Deal of the Month to share later today as well.  

The Grand Prize Winner (of a new Gypsy!) for the Disney Pixar blog hop will be announced on Wednesday.

I wanted to show you the original photo of the tulip that was at the top of my post a few days ago.  This is straight from the camera and there is a lot of distraction in the background.

Here is the photo after cropping to a square, adjusting the color and light and removing some of the twigs.  It usually looks better to have the main image off center a bit.  This photo still has some leaves at the bottom that are light in color.

I used the cloning tool to remove any of the items in the background that take attention away from the lovely tulip.  This photo could be used on a card front with a quote or greeting in the dark area.  I wanted to try some more experiments with this image.

 

I dropped out the background to save just the tulip image.

Then I played around with some filters to add effects.  Here I "posterized" the image and added some wrinkles digitally.

 

I cut out a triangular section and then repeated it to create a new shape with a kaleidoscope effect.

This is easy to do as long as you pay attention to the amount of rotation and align the images carefully.

Next, I trimmed the image to an octagon shape.  I combined these in rows of six at two inches to fill a 12 x 12 page.

I also added a background square and experimented with the color combinations.

The possibilities are truly endless - and if I don't like what I see I can simply "undo" (this is one of the biggest benefits of digital work for me).

The various background colors give many different looks - the amount of contrast is the most important factor to make the colors blend or stand out.

By altering the hue I can create a totally new design.  It is hard to believe that this new page started from a single orange tulip.

I did all of this editing and manipulation with the Creative Memories Memory Manager 3.0 and StoryBook Creator Plus 3.0.  Both of these programs are easy to use.  If you would like to know more about the software and you don't have a local consultant that you work with, I would be happy to help you.

Please check back later today for the winners - and let me know if you have any questions.  For those of you who are new, you can click below or near the top of the right column to subscribe to my blog so you will receive updates via email when I post something new (once a day).

link to discussion Day #3 - Time to Craft

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Hidden Treasures from Disney Cartridges

If you are looking for the Creative Charms Farewell Blog Hop, please click HERE to go to Friday's post.  All of the details about the hop are in that post.

 

Welcome to Day 2 of the Disney Pixar Blog Hop.  You should be arriving from Shawn's blog.  If you are visiting by chance you should click HERE to start at the beginning of the hop.

If you are a regular reader of my blog, you know that my posts can get long.  If you are new here, I hope you will find some help and inspiration!

I wanted to try something a little different for my stop on the hop.  These cartridges are usually sought after for the layered character images.  I didn't buy any of the Disney cartridges when I first got my Cricut because our children are older and we are "just not that into" the animated characters.  It seemed that they wouldn't be very useful cartridges to own if you didn't care about the characters.  I soon discovered that there is so much more to like on the cartridges - I think they are worth having even if you never make a character!

There are some great frames, nice flower bunches and lots of hats on the Pooh and Friends cartridge, a wonderful teapot and some realistic shells and sea life on Dreams Come True, faceted gems and a needle and thread on Happily Ever After...and so much more.

 These "extras" are always fun to discover.  I  was using Design Studio to look through the various Disney cartridges I own and I found something on the Mickey and Friends cartridge that really caught my eye and made me start thinking.,.

This shape is meant to be used as the top layer to make a swirly lollipop.  I realized that it would make nice spirals that I could use to make some rolled flowers.

 I set up a mat to cut this image in a variety of sizes.  You don't need Design Studio or the Gypsy to make the flowers, however, you can place the images closer together to save paper if you do work through the software instead of cutting directly from the cartridge.

I used double sided paper from K and Company.  Cardstock could be too thick to curl nicely and text weight paper might be too fragile.  It is important to use double sided paper so there will be color on both sides of the flower.

 When  you lift the cuts from the mat, there are two pieces.  One is already a perfect spiral...

...and the other needs just a short snip with scissors to open up a second spiral.

Then, starting at the outer tip of the spiral, I used the quilling tool from one of my Cuttlebug quilling sets and wound up the strip tightly.  You could probably use a chopstick or skewer to wind the spiral if you don't have a quilling tool.

The strip widens a bit at the end and you should keep that area open for adding the glue to assemble the spiral into a flower.

A glue gun will be the best choice for adhering the end of the flower.  You do need to work quickly so the glue doesn't set up but you will have a little bit of "play" time before it dries.

Half of the spirals will have this type of an end to form the base of the flower.  For the others, you can bend the tip to create a small area to hold the glue.

 A pearl in the center gives the flower a much more finished appearance.  I used some pink Gradient Pearl Stickers from Creative Charms.

 It is difficult to hold on to the flat backed sticky pearl to center it in the flower.  This handy tool helped a lot.  It is a "QuickStik" from QuickKutz.

There is a low tack adhesive that will lift the pearl but then allow you to place and release it once you have the pearl in the right spot.

I prefer to make nearly flat layouts so this sort of flower has too much dimension for me to use it on a scrapbook page.  I decided to decorate a small gift box.  I took some of the smaller flowers and placed them on the box, moving them around until I was happy with the arrangement.

The box is a typical plain white jewelry box.  I could have covered the entire box with paper but I decided to just cut a backing square from paper in the same K and Company stack to fit the lid.

I also added some ribbon around the rim of the lid.  Scor-Tape is the best adhesive I have used for securing ribbon.  It sticks tightly and does not show through the way a liquid glue can.  I used the 1/8th inch tape on this 3/8 inch ribbon.

It is important to remove only a small part of the paper backing at a time - working around the sides so the sticky ribbon won't get tangled.  This ribbon is from American Crafts.

The ribbon adds some more texture and shine to the sides of the box.  You could use a paper strip or two cut to the proper size if you don't have ribbon that coordinates.

This little box would be a nice gift card holder.

 I cut a variety of sizes of spirals and some of the flowers are quite a bit larger.  These three fit nicely on a slightly larger box with just a strip of satin ribbon to dress up the top.

 They also look pretty arranged in a row.  If you cut several sheets of paper in different coordinating colors you could make a beautiful bouquet on the box top.

The finishing touch is the small white Sparkled Butterfly from Creative Charms.

I hope you didn't mind that I took a different "twist" on the Disney theme.  if you are feeling Disney-deprived, you can click on this LINK to see some older posts about the method I use to speed up production of the layered characters (yes, I do sometimes cut them out too!).  If you like videos, you can find the video explanation of this process at THIS POST.

Here is the full list of the blogs in the hop in case you get lost along the way.

Shawn	http://craftychicsblog.blogspot.com/
Diane (HERE)	http://www.capadiadesign.com/
Susan	http://www.cricutforbeginners.com/
Tami	http://scrappinrabbitdesigns.blogspot.com/
Kristal	http://www.gettingcricky.com/
Jessica	http://thecreativestamperspot.blogspot.com/
Kaye	http://yesterdaystomorrow2011.blogspot.com/
Cathie	http://www.creativecutter.org/
Bobbie Jo	http://sweetsassydiva-gspot.blogspot.com/
Jamie	http://jamielanedesigns.blogspot.com/
Kim	http://uscrap2.blogspot.com/
Melissa	http://disneydreamerdesigns.blogspot.com/

Your next stop is Susan's Blog - have fun hopping and don't forget to look for the hidden Mickeys so you can have a chance to win the grand prize - a new Gypsy!

I have a token prize to send to one person who leaves a comment on this post.  Anonymous comments are fine but please be sure to leave some identifying information so I can contact you if your comment comes up in the random draw (message board name, email with (at) and (dot) typed out to avoid spam, etc.).  This is a photo or photo mat storage folder from Creative Memories with 12 journaling mats with Disney characters.

The journaling mats are double sided (one horizontal, one vertical) and are from the Disney Vacation line which is no longer available.  They could also be used for an autograph book.

Have a wonderful Sunday - the first of May!

link to discussion Day #3 - Time to Craft

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