Animal ATCs and a Set of Thank You Cards

I love to participate in the ATC swaps on the Cricut Message Board.  It's such a wonderful way to learn new ideas and techniques.  I keep an album of my ATCs (and the ones I have received) as a reference tool.

I just finished a number of sets with an animal theme.  Here are my cards:

Group 1A: Butterflies
The butterfly is from Paper Pups and the scallop circle and circle frame are from Mini Monograms.  I used Cuttlebug folders on the circle frame and the background.

Group 2: Birds

The clouds are from Paper Pups (stickled) and the birds are digistamps from Tortagialla, coloured in Paint.  I used thick thread for the feathers.  I embossed the background with a Cuttlebug border folder.

Group 3:  Zoo Animals

I cut this giraffe from Create a Critter and embossed the background paper with a Cuttlebug folder.  I used stickles for the giraffe's eyes.

Group 4: Farm Animals

(E.B. White's Charlotte's Web was a favourite growing up.  I still own my tear-stained copy!!)  The image is computer generated and I cut the corner from Jasmine, which I then embossed with a portion of a 2x2 folder.

I also created this set of thank you notes for Serenity Scrapper's Quotes and Notes week.  The ladybird image is cut at 3" from Nursery Rhymes and the little frame was manipulated for size and then cut from Ashlyn's Alphabet.  I used my new gel pen set and holder (from Chomas Creations) to draw Thanks, using the font from Tear Drop.  Again, I had to manipulate the size in Design Studio.  I used smaller pop dots for the sentiment frame and larger ones for the ladybirds.

Amy Chomas has a video tutorial on using the gel pens and holder on her blog.  You can access the video here.