Cricket, Lovely Cricket!

Wonders will never cease - two entries for this week's LIM die cut challenge! The added challenge I set myself at this time every year is to come up with something different on a cricket theme for our nephew's birthday.

This particular card was inspired by Chrissie's cards using Memory Box dies. I downloaded some free cricket pictures from the internet, did a huge amount of editing, welding etc in Craft Artist 2 Professional & Ecal before cutting the finished article on my Sizzix Eclips. My original attempt at clear embossing the greeting then overspraying with Promarkers using my airbrush was a dismal failure, so I re-did the airbrushing then overstamped instead with a greeting by Clearly Besotted. A few brads (coloured with Promarkers) kept the overall look CAS.

White cardstock: Limetree Crafts

Green cardstock: Coredinations Mantis

Promarkers: Pear Green, Olive Green

Ink: Yinks Olive Green

Greeting stamp: Clearly Besotted

Butterfly Heart

This card is a kind of "homage" to one of my favourite cardmakers, Michelle Short who makes the most gorgeous cards over at the Card Grotto. A couple of times this week she's posted cards made using a die from Memory Box but as I recently bought a second hand Eclips & the Ecal software to go with it I decided to have a go at creating something similar, and this is the result.

Ecal is really easy to use so the heart only took me about 30 minutes to create in the software - getting it to cut properly out of 300gsm cardstock took a bit longer! I really should buy some new blades as I'm still persevering with the used ones that came with my machine and they are definitely past their best. Still, I eventually worked out the settings as you can see below:

The finished heart is 10.5 cm across (just over 4 inches), each one of the butterflies is 1.5 cm across at its widest point (just over half an inch) so you can see how intricate the cut is. I created the greeting in Craft Artist 2 Professional and mounted the whole thing on pearlescent DCWV cardstock. A bit of Wink of Stella clear on the capital letters & I decided to call it quits. Hope you like it!

I'm joining the linky party over at Croft Crafts this week, why not take a look?

Cardstock: Xerox Colotech Plus 300gsm, DCWV