I needed to make a birthday card for a friend who is turning 60. I wanted to create a custom handmade card that would be fairly special. I was determined to use my cricut expression to help me do this. As I went through the various cricut cartridges I had in my supplies, I came across the animal kingdom cricut cartridge and thought that would work just fine for me. Let me share with you what I ended up doing.
What you’ll need:
Cardstock: Hobby Lobby patterned paper and solid brown and beige paper from World Win Papers, Die cut machine: Cricut Expression, Cricut cartridge: Animal Kingdom Cricut Cartridge for Owls and the word Whooo,: Plantin Schoolbook for the numbers 6, 0 and the letter’s, Little Greetings from hero Arts 3×6 card with envelope, All Night Media mini Pop Dots, Zig 2 way glue, K&Company permanent tape runner, Zig Memory System chocolate colored marker, and Rhinestones that I had in a jar.
How to make it:
I started with a neutral card base. Cut a strip of the patterned paper and adhered to the card with tape runner.
![cardsteps2 cardsteps2](http://joanscraftworld.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/cardsteps2-300x225.jpg)
Placed the paper on the Cricut cutting mat as shown in the picture and loaded paper into my Cricut Expression. I selected the size that I wanted to cut out the images. For the words and numbers I used size 1 ¼”, Owls were cut to 1 ¾” and 1 ¼”. Pressed the image that I wanted on the keypad and then the Cut button to start cutting.
![cardsteps3 cardsteps3](http://joanscraftworld.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/cardsteps3-300x225.jpg)
When the cutting has stopped, press the unload paper key. Using my spatula tool I removed the images from the cricut cutting mat.
![cardsteps4 cardsteps4](http://joanscraftworld.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/cardsteps4-300x225.jpg)
Wanting a stitched look I used my Zig marker and went around the letters and numbers making little dashes, then using my pop dots and glue stick, I put the images to the patterned paper, and then added rhinestones for the eyes.
![cardsteps61 cardsteps61](http://joanscraftworld.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/cardsteps61.jpg)
I was pleased the way it turned out and I know that he will not be getting a duplicate of this card. It is a one-of-a-kind Joan’s Craft World creation.
Make it a Great Day and don’t forget to leave time to Craft!