Birthday Cards - Janet and Anita

Two of my friends, Janet and Anita, had birthdays in the last couple of weeks and I made cards for them.

For Janet's card, I used a cool technique that I first saw on Becca Feeken's Amazing Paper Grace blog (***Spirit of Christmas***). I really liked the look of the woven ribbon through the frame. I do not have any Spellbinders' Nestabilities, but I do have a Cricut Expression and am armed with Paint.Net, Inkscape, and SureCutsALot and a whole of time. So I can pretty much make anything I want to cut. And I did! I created the half round scalloped frame, and the oval scallop frame with oval frame to layer on top. I also use MS Word and Excel to do some of my designing - with the PrtSc button (Print Screen) and Paint.Net, I can get those images into the creation process as well. I will make a post about all I do to make anything I want to cut.

Anywho--- I made the cutfiles and was able to create this card:

For Anita's card I had seen this card on a blog by ***Colien*** from Brabant in the Netherlands. While I have now seen them all over on ***SplitCoastStampers***, at the time I was just seeking them out on the European blogs that I follow. And I was really impressed with the look of the cards. I made up some ***directions*** for how to make them. I am still not sure how the Google Docs system works, but I have uploaded the directions --- they are a pdf file and include a diagram of your cardstock with measurements and folding directions. Good Luck! Here is her card:

I decorated the center diamond with the scalloped border punch by Martha Stewart - although this is usually a place where I would have used the Cricut and cut files! I was pleasantly surprised that I could use and *actual* punch that I had purchased with good old cash!