Cosmo Cricket

Three Lucky Projects for St Patrick's Day

"I love you, I love you," said the little green man,

"I love you, I love you to bits."

"I love you, I love you," said the little green man,

And he scared me right out of my wits!


I hope you and your leprechauns love these projects to bits.

St. Patrick's Day Hair Pin Friendship Card

Woodgrain tag comes from the Sweet Disposition / Summer Love Tags
Brads are a mix from both the new Canvas Brad sets 
Patterned Paper is from the Summer Love Mini Deck

Hair pins can be removed from the tag and worn, of course!

Shamrock Cupcake Toppers

These cute pics are made from Summer Love and Sweet Disposition papers.

Just punch four hearts and two circles. Stitch the hearts to one circle, then glue the second circle to the back with a toothpick sandwiched in between.


Ribbon Four Leaf Clovers 

To make these you'll need green ribbon. Mine was 1" wide. Cut a length, giving yourself extra, about 12" long. Trim one edge with pinking shears so that it won't fray.

Start a running stitch and continue stitching as shown until you have this.

Each time you come to the edge, not where your needle is, if it is above the fabric start the next petal under the fabric or vise versa. See how my thread is under the ribbon and then I've brought it over the top of the ribbon for the next stitch? This is important because if you do it wrong, your petals won't gather.

Once it's all stitched, trim with your pinking shears and then pull the thread to gather the petals. You may be surprised to see that the stitches are the inside of the petal leaving the pretty finished edge of the ribbon on the outside.

Pull it until it's tight and then stitch the two ends together. I put some of our cute brads (I have lots of them ;) and some paper embellishments I had left over from a previous project in the center. 

I think now I'll make little brooch pins with them for my girls and their friends to wear on Sunday. They would be really cute on headbands or pony tails too! 

Feeling Lucky? We Have a Card for That!

I read somewhere (probably a quote on Pinterest) that we should quit talking about about our problems and start talking about our joys. Hmmmm, is it just me, or do you think you may explode if you didn't talk about your problems?!?!

I think having problems can be a sign that you are very lucky! I'm lucky to have found someone to listen to me complain about them. I'm lucky to have four kids that cause them. I'm lucky to have too much laundry, too many dirty dishes, too much food to stay slim and too much time to worry about it.

Maybe I'll send this card to a friend that needs some of my kind of lucky.... or the girl that only talks about her joys? What do you think?!

To make the card, I cut Gluber Strips into block letters and pressed them onto a green ombre print from the Summer Love Mini Deck. Then I glittered them with Vintage Glitters. Punch three hearts and stitch them in place with gold metallic thread. The whole thing will take you around 10 minutes or less.



 

Four Owl Cards That'll Make You Hoot!

Meet my new friends, Owliver, Owlivia, Owllen and Owlexandria. They are showing off the Honky Tonk Mini Deck papers in style!

I don't know how you could get one of these and not smile. They totally crack me up! I designed them thinking I would be making some owl pillows and got side-tracked testing them out on cards. I guess, when I get the pillows made, I'll have cards to go with them!

Here's what to do to make your own set. Cut your bases 4" x 8" and fold in half.

Making Owllen

Cut your background 3.875" square.
Cut your foreground 2.75" square.
Punch two 1" circles for eyes and a tiny triangle for the beak.
Find 2 buttons and some string.

Glue down background. Adhere forground next, then whites of eyes and beak. Run string through buttons and glue in place. 

Making Owlivia.

Cut background 3.875" square.
Use a saucer as a guide to trim the tummy from a second 3.875" square.
Punch a 3" circle (mine is scalloped) and cut it in half.
Punch two 1" eyes and cut a tiny beak. 
Gather two buttons and some string.

Adhere background. Glue top half of scalloped circles to tummy piece, matching up the bottom edges. Trim the overhanging portion off the top.

Adhere this unit to the base. Ahere whites of eyes and beak. Thread string through eyes and glue down. Flip wings up a bit for dimension.

Making Owliver

Cut base 3.875" square.
Cut a 4" circle and then cut it in half. 
Cut a 2" circle and then cut it more than half.
Eyes, beaks, buttons and string as before.

Adhere background, then tummy and top-knot. Do eyes and beak as before.

Making Owlexandria

Cut background 3.875" square.
Cut a 4" circle and then cut it in half.
Eyes, beak, buttons and string as before.

Adhere circles to background. Allow them to overhang the edge slightly so that you have a gap in the center. Trim the overhang like we did before on Owlivia's wings. Next glue down the eyes, beak and buttons as before.

I think you could make this set in under 20 minutes. They are each about 3-5 minute cards. How great is that!

Mini Album: Sweet Disposition

Tons of you said you are in LOVE with this line. So is Donna Budzynski!

I think my spring break photos may find there way onto these beautiful papers!

Now for our winner of the Hello Awesome Giveaway. Offer up some congratulations to  Margie Visnick who said, "Chocolate, Coffee, Cherry Coke zero and.... Cosmo Cricket's Sweet Disposition or Summer Love!"

Margie, send me your info (julie at cosmocricket dot com) and I'll send you some goodies. Tell me which paper line you prefer. The embellishments were designed to match both of these lines. 

Related articles

5 Minute Card: Sweet Disposition

How We Created Sweet Disposition

Hello Awesome Giveaway

A list of just a few awesome things:

Chocolate
Coffee
Long Walks
Mini Schnauzers
Hot Showers
Good Books
Craft Nights
Iced Tea

and

Abby Comstock!

I made this fun layout with our new Summer Love Collection and photos I took of Abby after one of our walks. She really is an awesome kid!

Tell me one thing that would make your awesome list along with your favorite newly released Cosmo Cricket line. We'll pick a random winner to be announced Monday morning. Our winner will get a collection of goodies from their favorite new line to create awesomeness with.

Why you ask?!?! Hello, we are Cosmo Cricket and some might even say we are awesome!
 

Rain & Shine Cards: Photo Tutorial with Free Template

Hello Friends!

Let's make our happy little rain cloud into a card and add a friendly sunshine to go with it. I started with the sunshine card.

Cut a background. I used the ohmbre stripe from the Summer Love Mini Deck. Next punch a 2" circle. (If you are unsure about your face painting skills, you may want to skip down to those steps before you sew your sun onto your background. Then if you mess up, you can just start over on a new circle.)

Use a glue stick to lightly adhere the circle to your background. I zig-zag stitched around the sun. Notice the machine settings with the width set to four and the stitch length set short. A short lenght makes going around the circle easier with the zig-zag. Try your best to keep you paper lining up with the center notch in your sewing foot. If you're not comfortable with sewing, try using glitter and glue like I did on the cloud.

Next, I drew some rays lightly with pencil. I switched out my machine settings to a straight stitch and long stitch length.
Now you need to cut out your cloud with a craft knife. Download this template:  Happy Rain Cloud Template | Julie Comstock

Next, use the cloud to help you position where you want your sunny face. I used the end of a crochet hook for the white dots of the eyes and a paintbrush for the blue dots. Just dab the end into the paint and press it to your paper. Don't worry if it isn't level at first, it will even out for the most part as it dries. Once dry, you can add the smile and eye details with a pen. I like Uniball (and no, I don't get any compensation for saying so) because they don't bleed as much as other pens I've tried.

Now adhere your cloud and string together your chipboard alphas. Since I used a wider seam binding, a needle made the job quick and easy, but usually I just thread the ribbon right through the holes.

Stick this unit to your base and you're ready to brighten someone's day!

For the Pouring Love card, we'll start by cutting out our cloud. Then edge it with glue and dip into gold glitter.
Use the cloud to position your punched hearts. Note how far you want your stitch line to run under the cloud. The benefit to using this paper background was that there is a line under the cloud, otherwise, you may want to draw a guide for yourself. Use a glue stick to hold your hearts in place as you sew... just a tiny bit of glue.

Leave your stitch settings the same as for the straight stitches on the sunshine card. Stitch through the hearts from your guide line to the end of the base.

Adhere this unit to a card base and you're done.

I hope you enjoy the template. Show us what you do with it on our facebook fanpage!







 

TV Dinner Notecards and Today's Winner

I want to thank everyone that left comments yesterday. I got some great insight into our fanbase. You all are split on video or photo tutorials, so maybe I'll try to do some of both.

My day started out bright and early because somehow I got my hours mixed up and thought 5:20 was 6:20. Since I had some extra time, I cut apart this sheet from TV Dinner and wrote a lymerick for each of my kid's lunches on one of the cards.

I could hardly stand not to tell them about the surprise and I'm particularly excited to hear what Kate thinks of hers. (It's not in the photo, but involves all her friends and BOYS!)

We want to congratulate yesterday's giveaway winner: Cindy Andrews our second commenter, can you believe that?!

Cindy, send me your info to julie at cosmocricket dot com and I'll make sure that Summer Love finds its way to your doorstep.

Get ready everyone because the Pouring Love Cloud project tutorials are coming soon!

 

Summer Love Giveaway: It's Pouring Love!

Hi everyone, sorry for my hiatus. Were you wondering where I went? Well, it was palendrome day on Friday and I got sidetracked when I realized that my life can be summed up with one palendrome: Desserts, I stressed!

I hope you are all waiting for a fun Summer Love giveaway, because we have one for you. But first, let me show you a plan I have for these awesome papers.

I designed this pattern for a quilt, but I thought it would be great as a mixed media piece too and since I have a heart punch, it should be quick and easy.

Tell me, would you prefer a photo or video tutorial of how to create it? And would you create something like this yourself? If so, would you do it with pieced paper or fabric? Let me know and I'll enter you into a contest to win the Summer Love paper Mini Deck, Chipboard Alpha banners and brads. You can see it all here.


Best of luck my friends. We'll pick our random winner and announce it all tomorrow morning. Then, depending on feedback, we'll see about a tutorial and pattern for the above project.

PS: The new lines are all shipping and should be showing up in your local stores and online any day now if not already.

 

How We Created Summer Love

This is Julie

And this is Eric

We have to tell you how we created Summer Love because it is my most favorite line!

While working on some posters for Fab.com, I got the idea that we should do a vintage line about drive-in movies, the beach, picnics, ice-cream, etc. I thought the record player would work in it. I suggested it to Julie and she loved the concept.

(By the way, if you want to follow all of Eric's art endeavors you can on our "The Comstocks" facebook page.)

I kept drawing things. These ice cream cones made their way onto the stamps, but funny enough, the record player isn't in the line anywhere.

I started working on papers. This was the first design. I was going for the feeling of sunshine. (This image is missing one layer that Eric added when he prepped the files for production, can you tell? You can see the real paper below with the pattern on the backside.)


I really wanted to use an ombre effect in the papers. Illustrator has an option for gradients, but to get the sunbleached look, I did a lot of work in Photoshop. While working in Photoshop, I started to feel that the line was too heavy overall. To me every design was beautiful on its own, but together, it felt overwhelming. To fix it, I screened the opacity on all my designs by 30%. At first, they felt washed out in comparison, but after a day I knew it was right.

You can see a before and after example here. The first is how the design looked with full on opacity in Illustrator. The second is after the opacity change and some hand painting in Photoshop.



Julie had designed a couple papers and then got stuck. She started saying things like, "Frick a fricky, freackin' frack... This is not working." When Julie has gone from "goodness gracious" past "darn it" and all the way to "frick", you know it's serious! I intervened by saying, "Hey, let's go to the movies."

Eric took me to see Moonrise Kingdom. My mind was still on Summer Love when the movie started and I became obsessed watching the countdown screen. When the girl in the movie had a record player, I knew the design Gods had sent me a message. I came home and created this paper.

Somehow, when you've really struggled through a line and are finally able to make it come together in a way that you are happy with, you become quite attached to it. I love this line! Oh, I think I said that already. ;)

Basically, once I opened the door to Julie's creativity, she was able to spread her wings and fly. I take full repsonsibility for the line's success, of course. What would she do without me?!?

I would drive myself to the movies and eat all the popcorn.

You always eat all the popcorn anyway! (Seriously, Julie loves popcorn and if you take a break to pop in a few Junior Mints, you will miss out on getting any.)

Hmmm, is it too early to pop some now?!?




 

5 Minute Card: Sweet Disposition

This will come as a complete surprise to anyone that knows me, but yesterday I decided I would clean off my desk. Part way throug, I found these punched hearts left over from a previous project. 

Since I'm really great at getting side-tracked, I whipped up this card. It took just long enough to make me forget about cleaning my desk which I'm now planning to do today. ;)

If you want to recreate this project, you'll need:
3 paper rectangles measuring 1 3/4" by 3 7/8" 
3 big hearts (I used a Fiskars punch)
3 small hearts (I used matching Fiskars punch)
1 standard card base
1 Tiny Text sticker
1 Sewing machine with gold thread (optional)