January 30, 2012

Design Team: Denise O'Connor Week 4 Term 2

Denise O'Connor: 'Kicking' Page!

CHA BLOG HOP CONTINUES!!! If you are here, then you have reached the end of our hop! And this is your last stop! :) And surprise! it's Denise again! And she has more eye candy for you! Denise will show off an amazing scrapbooking page using our February sponsors, Unity Stamps and the amazing eCraft Diecutable Cardstock! 

Here is her tutorial:

CHA is officially underway!!! I don’t know about all of you, but I will be spending the next few days on the internet like a stalker looking for all the CHA news!! In spite of CHA, all of us on the eCraft Design Team are still cranking out projects!
This month, we have two AMAZING sponsors!!!! I am so excited about this month’s projects, I don’t think I can contain myself! Seriously, I tried to share my joy with my husband! He did not understand LOL! So first off, we have UNITY STAMPS!!! I don’t know about all of you, but I LOVE rubber stamps! Unity offers some of the cutest rubber cling stamps I have ever seen! They truly have a style of their own!

We also have eCraft Diecutable Cardstock powered by CutMates!!! This cardstock is available exclusively at the Paper Mill Store. This cardstock is truly the bomb! I never thought I would find a cardstock that would cut so well AND at about $0.26/sheet, how can you go wrong??? I have been secretly using this cardstock for about a month on a variety of projects and have been itching to tell all of you about it!!!



Forgive me if I am being a little long winded here, but I just have to tell you a story about the first time I cut the eCraft Diecutable Cardstock from the Paper Mill Store on my eCraft. If you have been following me for a while, then you know that I always test cardstock and paper out on the tree from Fundamentals 1. Well I pulled out a sheet of the eCraft Diecutable cardstock and decided to start my test on a pressure of 5 with my veggie mat stabilizer. It cut it, but I noticed that some of the end branches pulled up a little bit. In all honesty, normally I wouldn’t have an issue with this, because I can always press them down, but I thought, can I cut this at a lower pressure? So I tried it on 4 1/2. Again a great cut, the branches weren’t pulled up, and I was amazed. But of course, I can’t stop there. I thought, can I cut this even lower??? No, there is no way right? WRONG! It cut at 4 absolutely perfectly!! Well then I had to cut it at 3 1/2, and it almost cut all the way through! In fact, if I had a brand new blade in, I think I could cut it at 3 1/2! Crazy!!!
So what does this mean for all of us…well if we can cut at a low pressure like a 4, then that means that we should be able to effectively cut intricate shapes and fonts on this paper with great success!!! Now, normally when I cut these types of shapes, I will try to cut them on a thinner paper so that I can use a lighter pressure, but now I don’t have to worry about that!!! Want proof? Hehehehe, I thought you would!!!


How about that title? That title is about 1 1/4 inches tall! YES!!!! I am loving this!!! As you can see it cut that thin flowy font just as well as it cut the more block type font. Both of these fonts are from Lettering Delights. I cut them from Blueberry eCraft Diecutable Cardstock and added some Interference Blue Perfect Pearls on the “Star” for some shimmer! I know, this is a “boy” layout, how dare I add shimmer? Well, a little shimmer on a boy layout is OK isn’t it?


Now, I cannot forget about Unity Stamps!! They are after all what inspired this scrapbook layout! That TV there gave me the idea! I stamped that onto eCraft Diecutable Cardstock (Bowl of Oranges) with Jenni Bowlin Spice Tin Ink from Joann.com that was cut in a trapezoid and then using my Exacto knife, I cut out the middle of it so that my son’s picture could be seen through it! You see my son Jared has been taking karate for about 6 months and he is on his 4th belt and these pictures were taken at his last graduation in December. I am so proud of him and that he is sticking with karate! He is really enjoying himself and when he has to perform on stage, he is not the least bit nervous! In fact, he does his best when the pressure is on, so that makes him a star in my eyes anyways!

The patterned papers in this layout are all from a paper stack that I got a long time ago at Hobby Lobby called “A Boy’s Universe”. And I cut this paper along with the eCraft Diecutable Cardstock in circles ranging from 5” down to 2” and I also cut their shadow layers. I did some embellishing to them like with this circle which was stamped with Unity Stamps Going Retro Stamp Set (also where the TV image came from). I am loving this! In fact, I love this background stamp so much that I stamped the edge of it along the edge of my page too! I also embossed one of the circles with a Tim Holtz embossing folder.
You can also see that I punched a bunch of holes up and down in a zig zag pattern through the circles. I totally did not try to make these perfect, in fact since Unity has me “Going Retro”, I just HAD to make it kind of wild and crazy!! I then inserted a silver brad in each hole and wrapped some blue and white twine around each brad to create the zig zag.
How about this cool karate silhouette? This came from the eCraft Sports Life SD Design Card and I cut this again with my new favorite eCraft Diecutable Cardstock in Licorice!


Thank you for joining me today!!! I sure can’t wait to see what the other ladies have created this week with these wonderful sponsors! If you don’t want to miss out on all the crafty goodness, make sure you click on that Follow button! See you next time!!

Denise O'Connor

 Thank you Denise!!! Make sure you don't leave before entering our amazing ebosser blog hop giveaway!  Scroll down for details!!!

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