Love is in the air!

My DD gave her boyfriend this Love book for Valentine's Day, including pictures of the two of them on it's pages. She elected not to tie the spine with ribbons, as she thought it might make the book a little too girly.

Want to make one? I've already done the "hard" part, so you can just download the file and go to town with your Cricut and Sure Cuts A Lot. Click HERE to download the zipped files.

Want to learn to make your own word books? Click HERE and you'll find a great video tutorial on creating word books in Inkscape.

Don't have Inkscape? Click HERE to download it free.

Don't have SCAL? Click HERE to purchase or to find out more.

Links, links, links

I've spent next to NO time creating svgs lately, because I've been finding so many fabulous ones already out there, generously shared by other bloggers. Here are some of my favorites:

If you download from these sites, please be sweet and leave the designer a comment. This is truly a labor of love, so give a little love back.

http://etceteraetcetera.wordpress.com/
http://dan99.blogspot.com/
http://dscrapbookingroom.blogspot.com/

I'd also love to hear what your favorite sources of svg or cut files are - leave me a comment and let me know!

Happy Heart Day

We had a fabulous Valentine's Day. My DH sent me white roses (which I carried on our wedding day) with a note that said "To my wonderful bride..." How amazing that he still feels that way after eleven years.

Dinner was a fondue feast! We had cheese fondue to start, chicken and steak with fettucine alfredo as a main course, and yummy bittersweet chocolate fondue for dessert. Here's a peek at what we dipped. You can't see them, but there are strawberries and pretzels on the bottom tier.

Valentine Treat Bags

Valentine's Day is one of those days when most folks go out for a romantic dinner. Not us. We'd much rather stay in and create our own fun. This year, our daughter Katherine has invited her boyfriend Colby to have dinner with us.

We've decided to repeat what we did last year, since we all loved it - Fondue Night. We'll have cheese fondue with apple and bread dippers to start, and then steaks and chicken and a tossed salad. For dessert, the fondue returns - this time with chocolate. We'll dip cheesecake, strawberries, marshmallows covered with crushed Oreo cookies and whatever else we can think of.

Katherine asked me if I would do a special table decoration for that night like I did last year. Isn't it great when your kids notice the effort you put forth to make things special? One of the items for the table will be these treat bags. I first got the idea at stamp club this month, and changed it up just a bit to fit the stamps I had. The project uses the Sizzix Top Note die, which I absolutely love. Inside each treat bag is a cello bag filled with goodies. Some are Valentine gum balls, and some are Hershey and Reese's hearts. Yum!

You say it's your bird day....

Recently, a friend sent me a link to the Maya Road Design team site. On it, I found an adorable Valentine project. You can view the original by clicking on this link. My version is shown here. I don't own all (or possibly any) of the supplies they used, but I was inspired to make my own version, which I'll share with you.

Of course I used my Cricut. The heart is from the Doodlecharms cartridge. The bird is my own design. I did a rough sketch of the one on the Maya Road site, and using Inkscape created an .svg file to use with Sure Cuts A Lot. I liked it so much that I did a couple of variations of the bird as well. You can download the files here. The usual restrictions apply - please leave me a comment if you download, and please do not share the files on any bulletin boards or groups. Instead, please post a link to this blog so that others may visit.

All stamps used are from Stampin' Up. Alpha stickers are from Karen Foster Design.

Butterflies are free (no, really!)

Although I live in the south where we have a relatively mild Winter, I'm still in the mood for a taste of Springtime and I imagine most of you are too.
For Christmas, my dear husband bought me the Sure Cuts a Lot software I had been gently hinting that I wanted. I'd been afraid to use it for about a month - how silly! I joined a great SCAL group on Yahoo, and before long I found myself downloading Inkscape (thanks to Dan's amazing tutorials!) and trying my hand at creating my own cut files for the Cricut. This is the result.
There are two different butterfly cut files - get the solid butterfly here and the lacy butterfly here. (The lacy butterfly cuts better if you use a slower speed and a thicker paper. )
I haven't had a lot of time to play with these pretty creatures, but my mind is going a mile a minute with all of the possibilities. I cut them from patterned paper, but you could stamp on solid colored cardstock before or after cutting. They'd be pretty embossed, flocked, glittered, jewelled... I'd love to see what you come up with!
If you would like to download these files, they are offered free of charge with a few restrictions and requests. Please leave me a comment if you download the files. And please, please don't share the files on mailing lists or groups - instead, include a link to my blog so others can browse here too.