Silhouette Scrapbook Page.

Hello, it's Carol with you today and I am going to share a scrapbook page I made using my Cameo, stamps and a stencil. (As if me scrapbooking wasn't enough of a shock, I tackled stenciling too eek!)

As some of you know, a few of us Team Hurley girls went to the NEC in Birmingham to meet up with Sarah to discuss a lot of exciting new things happening in the very near future...watch this space! We also popped over to the Stitches Show and saw lots of luscious new pretties that are due to hit the shops soon, so start saving lol. One of my favourites were the new Shinhan Touch Pens, and I can't wait to get my grubby wee mitts on some of those, anyway I digress sorry!

One of Sarah's lovely friends Diane took this amazing picture of all of us, and I just had to do a LO with it.

I decided to use my Cameo as Sarah has amazing files in the Silhouette Store that are just perfect for scrapbooking.

Here's how I made my LO.

1  I used the Square Page Mat from the Silhouette Store and cut it out full size on a sheet of DCWV paper.

2 I picked the Team Hurley Corporate Colour of mint green for the base for the mat, and decided to use one of Sarah's Stencils to make my own background. I used my favourite Distress Ink combo of Peacock Feathers and Picked Raspberry.

3 Being a stencil novice, I opted to use Scotch tape(washi would do too) and taped the edges of the stencil to my craft mat, and taped some scrap paper to the edges that were on the base layer.

4  Once I had moved my stencil around the base and covered it in pretty stars I popped my cut out Square Page Mat onto the base.

5 I love using arrows in my LO's and had to use the Hand Drawn Arrow Doodles on my page. I ungrouped the set, deleted the ones I didn't want to use and then resized the arrows using the Scale tool. And extra stars of course and the Doodle Stars are perfect for this. I separated them onto separate sides so I could make two different colours of arrows and stars.

6  And here is the finished LO!

7  And a close up to show the amount of dimension on the page.

Ingredients

From Sarah's Silhouette Store

Square Page Mat

Doodle Stars

Hand Drawn Doodle Arrows

From Sarah's Shop

Star Stencil

A Few Of My Favourite Things Kit

White Photo Corners

3-in-1 Advanced Craft Glue

Tuxedo Black Memento Ink

Other Bits n Bobs

Stampin Up Bunting Punch

Distress Inks

I hope you like my LO and it inspires you to get a favourite piccie from the box they are in or print one out from your phone and make a special page for it.

Thanks for popping by, remember and look back soon for more inspirational posts from my immensely talented teamies.

Cameo Creations Episode 1.

Hello, it's Carol here today and I can't believe it is a new month already! Which means it is almost St Valentines Day, so I thought I would share another love themed make.

In my last post I spoke about my "10 Minute Makes" and the other mystery makes...it can only be "Cameo Creations" using Sarah's files from the Silhouette Store. 

This is quite a photo heavy post, so you may want to grab a cuppa and a biccie!

First I picked the file I was going to use, Circle Heart Page Mat, and adjusted it to suit the size of the card I was making. I opted for 8"x8", which is unusual for me, but good to do something different.

I then chose the colours I wanted to cut the shape into.

I make two different mats so that I can mix and match, this will be clearer in later pictures. Pop out all of the wee hearts and keep for later.

Roughly cut pieces of contrasting card and glue them over the back of the hearts.

Once you have as many as you want in place, use LOTS(I used 50 odd) of 3D foam squares to give your card lots of dimension.

I used Kraft Card and a contrasting colour for my matting and layering and popped some inverted corners onto the Kraft card too. 

I also popped some more wee hearts inside the cuts to add some more colour and interest to the card.

Here are the two cards side by side, complete with some of the extra hearts from the cut outs. These will be popped into a wee box and used as confetti in the cards.

I hope you have enjoyed my post, and that it inspires you to dust off your cutting machine and get crafty.  I love using Sarah's Silhouette files as they are so versatile that they can be used for a 12"x12" Scrapbook Lay Out, a 4"x4" card, Project Life, or for whatever crafty project you are working on. Over the next few weeks I will be making lots of different things using Sarah's Files and showing just some of the unique creations that can be made. I look forward to seeing you soon.

Thanks for popping by, Carol x

Make a date!

Hello, it's Carol here today to share something completely different. Who can believe it is the first day of November already? It will be Christmas before we know it, and I am trying to get more organised this year(though I think we all say that every year!)

Today I will be showing you how to make a calendar that is an ideal wee gift for someone at Christmas. I picked up a pack of calendars on my last visit to the craft shop and was really stuck with what to do with them, so I visited Sarah's Online Silhouette Store and had a bit of a think and here is what I came up with.

1  Select a file to use, I picked the Shattered Triangles Background.  Place it onto your work space, highlight in then go to the "Scale Window", click on "lock aspect" and type in 5 in the W box. I made mine 5x5", but you can make it any size you want. Then duplicate it 3 times, and place into the corners of the mat.  You can do as many or as few as you like, I opted for 4 as I wanted 3 colours that would co-ordinate with my kitchen, and one frame. Put 4 pieces of paper just under 6x6" onto your mat, load it into your Cameo, and off you go.

2 Get a piece of thick card or grungeboard and cut it to 5x5", cover the edges with co-ordinating Washi tape, I used Silver Washi Tape. Pick another colour of card to work with the colours you have already picked and cut it to 5x5" then stick it onto the card.

3 Carefully remove the colour of the cut out you want as the frame from the Cameo mat, and stick it onto the base. I found the easiest way to do this was to cover the back of my hand with PVA and place the frame onto it. 

4 Have lots of fun picking which colours you want to fill parts of the frame, I used a Quickie Glue Pen to stick them in as it gets right into the corners of the triangles.

5  Foam mount the calendar onto the finished background.

6  Pop some magnetic tape onto the back of it, and voila you have a calendar for your fridge. 

Thanks for popping by today and I hope this will inspire you to use your Cameo for Christmas gifts.

Batty About You!

Hi, it's Carol here and today I am going to share a card I made using Sarah's Silhouette Files, Sarah's Stamps and lots of other crafty goodies.

1  I picked the Silhouette file I wanted, then the colour of card I wanted to use, I picked the awesome Bat Card Frame. I also "released the compound path" of the file so I could cut out the oval shape in plain white card. I also placed a couple of Bat Silhouettes on the top and bottom of the oval, you will see what I did with them next.

2 I placed the bat frame onto a piece of red mirri card and layered it up, with black card too.

3  I took the Oval and the bat cut outs and distressed them using Black Soot Distress Ink. You will see the finished result on the card.

4  Once I distressed the oval, I stamped "Batty About You" using Sarah's Block Alpha Stamps and Lady Bug Memento ink, I used the Outline Alpha Stamps in Tuxedo Black to give some contrast.

5 I put the card together and popped a bit of 1mm foam under the body of the bats to make them look like they are about to fly off. 

I really hope you like the card, and it shows that Halloween themed pretties can be used all year round.

Thanks for popping by, remember there is still time to join in our Halloween Challenge.

Bye for now,
Carol x

October is here!

And if you are anything like me, that can only mean one thing...HALLOWEEN!!!! I just love it and everything about it, from the dark nights to candles, to spooky things and witches, sweeties and pumpkins but most of all the gorgeous crafty goodies that are available to make this season even better!

The latest issue of Sarah's Lookbook is out now, full of inspiration and crafty loveliness and this is what I made this Halloween Wreath for. 

We are having a Halloween party this year and it is never to early to get organised and make decorations for it. I used my trusty Cameo for this and different shapes from  Sarah's Silhouette Store to make this.

I used a polystyrene wreath covered with strips of black felt as the base.  I chose 3 different colours of card stock and black to make it as effective and striking and of course "Halloweeny" as I could. I discovered that gluing hat pins onto the back of the cut out images with a hot glue gun allowed me to make it more dimensional, plus I could move them about more if I wanted to.  the witch in the middle is double sided and has clear fishing line in between the two layers so she moves. I can't wait to put this on our front door.

Ingredients

Halloween Word Set

Flying Witch Silhouette

Raven Silhouette

Venomous Spider Silhouette

Bat Silhouette

Cat Silhouette

Polystyrene wreath

black felt

card stock

hot glue gun & pins

Fishing Line

Hope you like this and will try something similar. See you all soon, Carol x

Buttons galore.

Hello, it's Carol here today and I am going to share my recent make for this months Buttons themed challenge. 

I am loving all the great new Silhouette Files over at Sarah's Silhouette Online Store. And used one of them for this card.

I fancied making a card that could be used for a male (for a change!) and used a piece of paper from one of the A Few of My Favourite Things Kit as the backing layer as it was lovely and neutral(and chevrons, did I mention chevrons?) 

I used the Circle Steampunk Cog Page Mat, which is sized 12x12" but due to the wonders of technology(scale in Silhouette Studio) it can be resized to any size, I picked 5x5" so it would fit onto my 6x6" card blank.

Once the cut was finished, I popped lots of tiny 3d foam squares under it to add dimension, and then added some tiny buttons to it.

I stamped "Curio" from the Curio Stamp set, which will be on Sarah's Shop really soon ;-)

Hope you like my card, and can join in with our Challenge this month. Thanks for stopping by.

Carol x

It's almost Easter.

Hi, it's Carol here this Good Friday and I thought I would make something to reflect the time of year it is.

 I was lucky enough to be treated to a Cameo electronic cutting machine a few months ago and I still have the new machine "fear" and realised I really had to use it rather than just download lots of Sarah's yummy files.

I thought I would make a card using one of Sarah's new designs and chose the  Easter Page Mat. When you open in onto your "Drawing Area" it opens as a 12"x12", but that is easily sized down and I will try and explain how I did that.

I wanted to use a 6"x6" card, so decided to make the cut out 5.5", to do this I selected the whole image, clicked on the Scale tool, typed in 5.5" and ticked the lock aspect option.  It resized it perfectly to leave me with this. 

I was feeling confident, so decided I wanted to layer the cut out, and knew I could do it easily using the Offset tool.  I wanted it to just have a nice frame, so chose 0.1" as my Internal Offset. The result was this;

You may be wondering why I am working on the right hand side of the page...this next step will explain that. I clicked on the internal image, and dragged it over to the left of the page. That way I could do the two cuts on one pass through, and use two separate colours of card;

I sent them to the Cameo to cut, then went about picking out matching backing paper and some sparkly bits. Et voila, here is the finished card...taaa daaaah!!

Ingredients

Easter Page Mat from Sarah's Silhouette Files

Backing Paper from A Few of My Favourite Things Kit

I hope this shows that once you overcome the new machine fear, you can have lots of fun making pretty things. 

Remember there is still time to enter our challenge, the theme is Stitching - Real or Faux.

Have a great Bank Holiday Weekend, and a lovely Easter, Carol xx