Hula Time

The weather is warm here in Colorado and all I want to do is go find a spot of sand to wiggle my toes in! Good thing I have a comfortable new craft room, a challenge, and a beach themed cartridge to play with. Fantabulous Cricut's challenge this week was around the theme of dance.  I looked at my cartridges and right away thought of Life's A Beach! I was so excited to see a cute little Hula girl.  I cut her out, added Stickles, Glossy Accents, some pink chalk for cheeks, and popped her up on a pink oval that I distressed with some pink ink.  I thought the lime green floral print made a nice background, so mounted that on a peach cardstock.  Finally, whenever we have visited Hawaii, there are flowers abundant. So, I added a couple bright pink ones to remind me of the tropics!

It was a teeny weeny yellow polka dot bikini...

I was blog surfing this afternoon and came across a new to me blog.  Jitterbuggin' provided a sketch (see below) and required the colors red and yellow, a beach themed item, and something cut from a Cricut.  I thought, I bet I could whip that out and use my Life's a Beach cartridge! I haven't gotten to use this cartridge very much, so was excited to see what I could do.  I also knew it would not be a shape card and thought it would be a could card to create sans Design Studio.

 

My resolution this year has been to use more of my scrap paper. I have a whole drawer full that needs to be sorted and is just sitting waiting for use on a card or scrapbook page.  So, rather than cut into new paper, I made my entire card out of scraps I had on hand.  I started by choosing some papers that fit the look I was going for and met the challenge criteria.  When I came across the yellow and white polka dot paper, I could not quit thinking about the biking song! I took that as a hint I should put a bikini on my card.  I cut the yellow polka dot paper and distressed it with red ink.  I then sewed around the edge of the paper to create a nice border and create a bit of a focal point.  I cut out four rectangles and distressed with red ink.  I set those down to create my quadrants. I used my George and Basic Shapes cartridge to cut out the orange card stock circle and yellow and white polka dot border.  I ran the orange circle through my Sizzix and used a Cuddlebug folder to add the funky circles.  I used more red ink to highlight the entire circle and distress the edges of the yellow border circle.  I used foam squares to lift the circle up from the card.  I moved to the Life's a Beach cartridge and cut out my teeny bikini in yellow card stock with the accent pieces on some yellow polka dot paper. I distressed the edge of the bikini with yellow ink.  I added a blue gem to the center for some bling.  Using foam squares, I mounted the bikini to the card to make it pop! Finally I cut out the "teeny bikini" wording using the Life's a Beach cartridge.  There was a little bikini attached that I chopped off.  It seemed silly to have a tiny version of the big bikini right beside it.  I mounted the yellow words on red card stock and cut around to create a background.  I added three tiny green gems to dot the letter "i".

 
Voila, a teeny weeny yellow polka dot bikini card is ready to go!