Inspiring cards

Today I have some happy inspiring cards to share with you.  On World Card Making Day I was lucky enough to win a fun card kit from Simon Says.  Since it arrived I have pulled each piece out and touched it, and held it up against the others, showing them all to hubby one by one (boy, is he thrilled LOL!), but just couldn't bring myself to use them.  I am such a hoarder!  Finally, I opened the stamp set and dug out the washi tape and buttons, then found items in my craft room that kind of went with the theme, so that I could save the lovely one of a kind pieces from the kit for a future day {roll eyes here}.

So here are the first three cards:

The colour scheme is based on what they had in the May 2012 card kit  which Simon Says sent me, but slightly substituted.  The main colours are Pool Party, Real Red, and Chocolate.  I've used a Stampin Up digi set in MDS to create the balloons.  The sentiment has been stamped in Versafine in a brown colour called Vintage Sepia.

In the MDS software, you can choose to recolour all or part of an image, so I coloured the baskets chocolate brown, and the other parts the Real Red and Pool Party, so that they would completely coordinate with my paper.

You may notice some shine on the balloons, I printed them on Best settings on photo paper, which came out really well, and then hand cut them.

This last one came out completely crooked, but I figure I'll give it to someone forgiving.  Despite the crookedness, it's still my favourite of the bunch.

So a huge thank you to the folks at Simon Says for all the inspiration they gave me with this stamp kit, even though I'm only using a couple of items directly from it, I have gotten a lot of enjoyment from that card kit.

And on to other news, yesterday I finally ordered a Silhouette cutting machine, after wanting one for over 3 years, I'm so excited!!!  If you have any tips or suggestions for getting started, please share those with me.  I've been madly searching online for tips and tricks (and of course, free cutting files LOL!), and have loaded the software up and experimented a bit.  Now I'm waiting for the post now to bring it to me, sigh!  I'll be thrilled with any suggestions you all have to share with me on what has worked or not worked for you, or sites you'd recommend I'd check out online :-)


I'm entering these cards in the following challenges:

Card Crafters Circle - Patterned Paper
Sentimental Sundays - Dimensions
Hybrid Chicks - National Chocolate Day  (chocolate coloured sentiment and accents)
Pink Gem Challenge Blog - Polka dots
Totally Gorgjuss - Anything with a button
Sweet Pea Stampers - Support