A new adventure, a free gift for all of my readers and a CHALLENGE!!

Hello to everyone! I have some great announcements and free gift in this post, so hold onto your hats!!

Back at the beginning of November my husband was laid off from his job.  With him home so much, while he searches for new employment, I discovered that he can create files for me to cut out with my Silhouette cutting machine.  In fact he can create them and save them in any format to use with other cutting machines as well. Well you know when I discovered this I put him to work.  Once he tried it he found that he had some ideas about what he wanted to create too.  Well this card is his idea.  I hope you like it because we want to share.

Before we get to the rest, let me introduce our first baby.  It is a fun window card!! It has a window in the front and an easel on the back to help it stand up.  We like to display our cards for awhile after receiving them.  That way you get a week or so of looking at all your fun greetings that you receive for your birthday or other occasions.

I used just plain white card stock on these first couple of samples to show you, in the most basic way, what the card looks like. I used a paper piercer to punch all the holes in the frame of this first card, after it was cut out.  You can see that the card has the frame opening, held shut with a slot on the front. I used my Silhouette to also cut out the banner shape.  I stamped a simple greeting on the banner and adhered it using foam adhesive. 

The window has an acetate panel behind as you can see in the photo below. The picture you are sending is held in place with four slots that are cut into the back of the card. 

It is a little hard to see, but the slots are in the four corners. This way the photo stays in place until the recipient wants to pop it out.  You can put your greeting behind the photo, or on the back of the card. 

This next card is the same, but turned horizontal.  I opted to put a small gift into this card. The pink is a fun magnet that the recipient can pop out and use on their fridge.  It is NOT just for photos. :-)

This card works the same way only turned the other direction. In these photos the easel is holding the card up.  The magnet is covered in fabric card stock by American Crafts, die cut card stock by Basic Grey, a hand stamped card stock banner, baker's twine, and a flower embellishment also by Basic Grey.
I, once again, kept it super plain so you could see what the shape looks like.

The magnet isn't super light. I am impressed how strong the easel seems to be so far.

This last example I decided to see if I could use a pack of gum as a small gift to include.  I found this fun Shaun White pack of gum.  Guess who loves Shaun?  My mom!! X Games mega stars are apparently for Grandmas too. Hee!  I created the card in red and used a fun patterned paper in the background of the opening. I added my signature to the inside underneath the pack of gum.  The gum is attached with repositionable glue dots. She should be able to pull the pack off and see the signature underneath.

Oh, Shaun! You are so Winterfresh!

Of course I added a few hearts and gems to bling it up.  I also added the white stitching with a white gel pen around the border.  I also added some cute baker's twine!  The white hearts are dry embossed with some snowflakes. I used a Stampin Up dry embossing folder.

Here is the easel on the back. It holds up even with the pack of gum attached. I am thinking it's fairly strong. 

Well now for the fun part.  I challenge you to make something fabulous with these files too. We want to share the cutting files with you. Follow this link and download the files. 

https://sites.google.com/site/duanehessdesign/home/Card-with-Frame_Sample.zip?attredirects=0&d=1

There is a file for both the vertical and horizontal cards. Download one or both.  Let's share what you make.  Please leave me links to pictures, blog posts, or Flickr photo streams using the file.  I have used this linking tool below to get us all connected.  

 I can't wait to see what you make and how you come with new ways to use the files.  The cutting files should work with the Silhouette, Pazzles, Shure Cuts A Lot and any other machine that uses similar types of files.

Thanks for stopping by and sharing in the fun. Now lets get creative.