Quick Card using Smiley Cards

      Finally, a card that went together quickly. This one gave me no problems and I was able to make 2 at a time, with a few design changes.  The only difficulty with Smily Cards, which is a free download to the Gypsy if you register it before Feb. 28th, (there are 4 other free downloads and it comes with 2 pre-installed carts) is there is no handbook since it is a download. You can find a cheat sheet online, but I'm afraid I can't remember where I found it. If anyone knows let me know. As I was looking for it, I found that Joy at Obsessed With Scrapbooking has a handbook on her blog Here. That would have been helpful earlier today, because the cheat sheet showed them put together, and on the Gypsy, it was hard to tell what the layers were meant to be, at least for me. So I'll go over it in case anyone else in interested. Skip down if not. The first layer of the Emoticons is the black background the makes up the eyes and mouth and goes behind the yellow circle. The shift of the key is the top layer and I cut it using Yellow from DCWV Premium Cardstock Pack in Brights. Both were cut at 2 1/2 inches. Next is the Emoticons Layers. The unshifted one gives you the cheeks, (mine were cut from peach scraps), and the shifted one is the highlight at the top of the smiley (white cardstock from Walmart). Finally, the next element of this image is the Phrase. The Thx is unshifted and I cut it from grey scraps on 1 3/4 inches. The shifted Phrase is the speech ballon and it was white cardstock cut at 2 inches. For some reason they didn't look like the Thx fit inside the balloon on the Gypsy screen when both were at 2 inches, so I cut it smaller.
     The first mat is yellow from DCWV Premium Cardstock Pack in Brights, cut at 5 1/4 x 4. The aqua piece was cut from Core'dinations paper at 5 x 3 3/4 and I ran it through my Big Shot, using Sizzix Texture plate Petite Daisies, from the Texturez Starter Kit. I didn't think the embossing was very deep so I sandpapered it lightly to bring it out more. On the inside I used the same yellow paper and made a black circle using the base emoticon at 1 inch and then the same one in yellow at 1.95 to go over (so that you could see it on the yellow background) and drew the face on it.  Actually, as I was cutting all of the pieces out, I cut out 2 of everything, because I knew I wanted to make 2 cards. I was able to use the power of the Gypsy to set up the cuts so that I could cut it all out at one time, since I could see where everything would cut-out and position the paper colors in the correct spots. I stamped and embossed the inside with a sentiment from Clear Dollar Stamps sentiments called, Church Chatter using Memento black ink.
     The second card appears below. The only differences are that I ran the aqua background through the Big Shot using the Square Patio Texture plate from Sizzix Texturez Plate Kit 2. This time I put a shim (a couple of pieces of scrap cardstock in the embossing "sandwich" to try and get a deeper emboss. It worked except for the fact that the pieces were smaller then 5 x 3 3x4 so the deeper embossing is only in the center, but I didn't mind the distressed look. I sanded this one as well. I also used aqua cardstock on the inside of this one, so I skipped the black shadow on the inside smiley face.
     These can easily be used by our Youth Director for teen volunteers or just to catch a teen doing something nice. I think either can be used for male or female, but the second is more masculine if you had to choose. At our Church or 3rd though 5th graders are making cards for military personnel, stationed in Iraq and Afghanistan to send back home to their loved ones. Everyone loves to get a card!