Thursday's Tutorial: Adorable Sunshine Cards

Happy Thursday! One day closer to the weekend, which I must say, I am very much looking forward to. I can't wait to have some time with my husband this weekend. We've had the craziest week and I feel like we've barely seen each other. Please check out my blog if your interested in my crazy week. :0)

For today's tutorial, again, I wanted to stick with the theme of the week, which is basically summer, focusing on the sun. I don't know about you, but in Colorado it has been an extremely weird summer so far. Wow! We had temps from the highs in the 90s to a high of 61 just this week! Not to mention all the hail and crazy rainstorms, flood warnings, and afternoon Thunderstorms. We could use a little sunshine! Great theme for this week, don'tcha think?

These adorable cards were created by Lori from Scrappin' My Stress Away. She also entered them into our Challenge Me Monday's Challenge. :0) This is a photo tutorial, but I think you can get the idea on how to create them pretty well. Of course, if you have specific questions, please shoot Lori an email or comment on her blog.

This is the front view of the completed cards, which were made by using the Gypsy.

She found a sun that she liked on her Gypsy using the search feature. " This sun is from Simply Charmed. The sun is sized to 2.14h. The square window card is from Fun Finds sized to 6.58w x 3.24h."

She was able to fit four cards on her mat for the Expression. I love that on the Gypsy you know exactly where your paper is going to be cut so you can add lots of different paper and sometimes get everything you need cut in one fell swoop!

She arranged the layers into sections of her mat. Isn't the Gypsy just amazing for saving space and seeing how everything will layout? I also love how you can add a different layer if you want, for each element, and put one image on top of the other to make sure the sizes will line up properly and that you didn't make a mistake with your sizing.

I still can't believe I really didn't want one or think I would ever use it! For those of you who don't have this (I know I've mentioned it before), get it! If you spend as much time in a doctor's office or waiting, like I do, you will not regret it. It makes designing so much easier. Or, I would highly recommend getting a program like Sure Cuts A Lot as well. It is just so much easier to see things laid out on a screen, in my opinion. If you have any questions about either of those items, please ask!

Here the pieces are, all cut out!

Lori then ran her dies through her Xyron machine. Again, another Fantabulous tool to own. I have 4 of them! In fact, think I'll give one away in my 500 followers blog candy. ;) Next, put the sun together from the bottom layer to the sunglasses. Lori added some yellow Stickles and a little twine to dress hers up. I like to add Glossy Accents to my suns just to make them extra shiny, but in this case, I think Glossy Accents would look even better on the sunglasses. Another thing that would make this card just adorable is adding a phrase such as -- Your future's so bright, you gotta wear shades. :0) I think that would be cute!

And there you have it! Adorable and easy right? :0)

Hope you enjoyed today's tutorial and again, thank you Lori for the lovely inspiration! Hope you all our entering our challenge. It's a great challenge and you can use it to bring a little sunshine into someone's day. We can all use that!

Please be sure to leave us some comments and any questions. As always, we love to hear from our Fantabulous followers friends! Oh, and don't forget to hop over to Lori's blog to see some of her other fun creations! :0)

XO ~ Amy Jo (DT member and Thursday's Tutorial Hostess)