New CTMH Beautiful You and Country Collection Cricut Cartridges

I. LOVE. This. Stamp. Set!!

There. Just had to get that out of the way up front.

I also love the new Thin Cut "Thankful for You" which will be coming out on September 1. The words are separated giving you tremendous flexibility. I've made a number of cards using just the "Thankful," one of which is shown below.

However, what I really want to show you is the versatility of the new Country Collection Cricut Cartridges. Although more geared for scrapbooking, they can be stretched for card making. They are available for USA, Canada, and Australia/New Zealand. All of them feature states/provinces with both the floral and stripe overlay shown below.

I created a stencil by cutting Colorado out of a plastic notebook page separator. Both Colorado and Wyoming are basically a rectangle anyway, so all you have to do is insert the state into Design Space, ungroup the image and get rid of everything that isn't the stripe, stretch it big enough to cover a card front, and cut. The plastic notebook dividers I bought were so thin, I used the Cardstock setting on my Cricut dial and it cut perfectly. The only trick is to make sure your mat is sticky as plastic doesn't adhere quite as well as paper.

Once I had my stencil cut, I laid it over my card base and sponged Lemon ink over top. I cleaned off the stencil, flipped it over, and sponged Bashful. I concentrated most of the ink in the corner and faded out as it got higher on the card. The flowers were stamped using all three layers of images in the stamp set. For the largest flower, I started with Lemon for the base, then added the next two layers in Bashful and Pixie. The smaller flower was stamped in Bashful first, then Pixie stamped once for the middle layer and Pixie stamped three times for the top layer. The leaves were done in Sweet Leaf and Fern. To create the berries, I stamped the stem only from one of the leaf layers then used the tip of a pen to stamp the berries.

I cut the sentiment dies three times for each word and layered them together to get extra thickness. The sentiment banner was stamped in Fern and hand cut. This week CAS-ual Fridays and Addicted to CAS both have a "Friendship" challenge, so I've linked this card to their blogs.

Now here's another card I created by using the Slice and Weld feature on Design Space with the floral overlay shown on the USA image above:

If you have Cricut Design Space, click HERE for the cutting file.  I cut it at 4 x 5.25 and backed it with a piece of Bashful cardstock cut to the same size. I used the same "Thankful for You" Thin Cut set plus another stamp set coming September 1 for the banner. This time, I die cut once in Charcoal paper and once in White Daisy and layered them slightly offset. On this card, the Cricut cut does practically all the work!

Time for me to head upstairs and write. I'll be back with more cards using this digital only cartridge (list of compatible machines listed in the shopping link below). BTW, I'm going to be interviewed on Army Wives Network Monday, August 21, otherwise known as Eclipse Day. (We're in the direct path here in Columbia, SC, but the forecast is calling for cloud cover.) I'll be talking about The Promise Bride which releases in eleven more days. Yee!! The show starts at 8pm Eastern. Hope you can join us. We'll be giving away copies of the book.

Until next time,
Becca

Shopping Links:

• Country Collections - for use with Cricut Explore™, Cricut Explore Air™, and Cricut Explore Air™ 2
• Beautiful You (with coordinating die cuts)
• Beautiful You (stamps only)
• White Daisy Cardstock
• Bashful Cardstock
• Charcoal Cardstock also available in Basics Combo Paper Pack
• Lemon Ink
• Bashful Ink
• Pixie Ink
• Sweet Leaf Ink
• Fern Ink
• Black Ink
• Round Sponge
• Micro-tip Scissors
• Chisel Tip Glue Pen