Happy Almost 2011!

Last week just before Christmas I was able to do this layout. It's been bugging me that I'm behind a couple months in our scrapbook (I know, I know, stop groaning everyone!) I can't stand being behind. I've never done separate books for my kids, so it's just one main book I do (they can all fight over the pages later if they want them!) Anyhow I had these very un interesting pics of my son when we started school back up this past August and I had been dreading trying to do a layout. Well then it came to me! Make a huge robot and focus on the fact that Michael loves science and robots....ta-da! It came together quite easily. Never mind the pictures show him working on his history time line...we'll ignore that fact.

So I cut the robot out at like 11 inches, that sure makes piecing them together so much easier! This robot reminds me of my dear son "I didn't do that!" I embossed his head, chest, and shoes with the tiny mosaic folder. I also cut a base layer of the robot out of chipboard to give him a little more dimension. I cut the words out of chipboard as well using the Don Juan font. I inked the living daylights out of the letters with Vintage Photo, Fried Brick and black  ink pads. The blue background behind the letters was a grayish paper that I lightly inked with a Stormy Sky ink pad. The trouble word bubble was cut with Indy Art, this was white paper I inked with the Vintage Photo and Antique Linen, I also cut this out of chipboard as well. I am actually very happy with this layout now and can move onto the next challenge....

This week I seem to be sewing doll dresses again, so I will try and post some pictures of them soon.

Hope you all had a wonderful Christmas and have a terrific New Year too!

                 (image is from The Graphics Fairy)

Thank you cards and Santa too!

Last night I made these adorable thank you cards. It was so easy with my Nifty Fifties cartridge! I cut out a thank you sentiment I made for the inside of the cards. Cat card is for Grandma and Grandpa who adore kitties as much as I do. The fish card is for my dad who lives to fish.

 Solid paper on these cards is Core'dinations and the prints are all from a huge collection by My Mind's Eye-love this stuff!

Again, all solid paper is Core'dinations, including the red glitter bag. The striped paper is from the 2010 My Mind's Eye Christmas collection.

Hope you all have a blessed day! Merry almost Christmas!

Wow! Another Great Day!!!!

I just found out this afternoon that my gathered ribbon layout won a top three spot this week at Frosted Designs Challenge! Wow! I'm so surprised and excited! It's the first time EVER that one of my projects has won an award! Yippee-Skippie! Thank you so very much!

Banana Split Cat

After Halloween this year I went to Target for the sole purpose of finding my kitty a fun "outfit." Yes, once again, I know I'm crazy! He has a cute little Santa suit, but he is much too large for it now. Perry likes this one much better because there is no hat involved. He actually tolerates this costume pretty well for a crazy kitty like himself. I finally just got around to scrapping these pictures, I thought they were so funny so I just had to share...

The title was cut using Nifty Fifties, welding on Chloe. Banana split was created using the banana from Create A Critter, ice cream was from Indy Art (ice cream cone.) Hot fudge sauce was the drippy topping on the Christmas Pudding from Winter Frolic, and the cherry was from Create A Critter.  I embossed the words with the Tiny Mosaic folder, banana was Wood grain folder, ice cream scoops were Polka Dots folder, hot fudge was Divine Swirls and finally the cherry was embossed with Swiss Dots folder. Of course then I stickled the hot fudge sauce and the cherry.

This was the first thing I made with my Nifty Fifties cartridge when it arrived last month.  I embossed the words with the Polka Dots folder once again. I know these pages are pretty simple, but I didn't want to distract from the silly Perry pictures, he does think he's pretty cool AND the top banana around here. As you can see he has a love for laying on storage totes. I just started labeling all my Christmas tote boxes with vinyl, it's so much fun!

Hope you have a day filled with laughter!

Very Cute Video from Scrapbook.com

 You all know I don't post videos on my blog, but this one is just too darn cute and funny. It'll make any scrappers day!

 click here!

It's a Big Day!!!!

Recipe Card, Bags, and Tags Oh My!

Hi again! I've been very busy with my Love Bug and Chloe for the last few days, they are loving all the attention they're getting!

First, here is a recipe card I made yesterday. It was for a challenge about favorite holiday recipes. Well the reining champ here at our house has been these yummy little cookies officially known as Raspberry Pinwheels, but Becky renamed them a few years ago to be now called "Annabells." My mom always made them at Christmas time. Last year my mom made some while she was visiting and Mike fell in love with them again, I ended up making another huge batch of them just for him. Anyhow, they are a huge favorite here so I thought I would make a special recipe card to hold this beloved cookie.

 The card base was cut with From My Kitchen, using this cool double sided paper. Apron was from Nifty Fifties, the cherries were omitted from the pockets and I added holly from the top of the Christmas Pudding cut in Winter Frolic. Annabells was cut with Gypsy font and welded on Chloe.

 The back of the card is the recipe. I printed this out on my printer and just cut it to size.

On to another project...a couple weeks ago I made Susan's two youngest daughters matching dresses for their American Girl dolls (it's been too long since I've made these, I miss it so much!) Well of course I couldn't just wrap the dresses like a normal person, I HAD to make little shopping bags for them. It was quite a challenge making the bags large enough. Even with 12 x 24 paper, the bags have so many odd size pieces. I finally figured out how to rotate the bags on Chloe enough to get a good size bag. 

 This is Allie's bag, I decided to cut off the handles and use double sided satin ribbon for the handles, more like a little boutique bag. I just love the little kids on Winter Frolic so I just had to make the girls and put them on their bags. Bags were cut with Tags, Bags, Boxes and More.

This is  Deanna's bag. When I first saw this cut it screamed Deanna to me. I have been waiting for an excuse to make this one for her. ( I realized while making these bags, I have now created three versions of these two sweet girls in just the past year, crazy! Spring, Summer, and Winter.)

I made cute tags for the other side of these bags, each girl has her name on it and it is tied on with some pink ribbon. Their names were done with the Gypsy Font once again, and the tags are from Gypsy Wanderings.

Have a blessed day!!!!!

It's That Time of the Year!

Late last night dear hubby told me today was his office Christmas party. Thankfully I already had an ornament for him to take-a big tooth of course! (He's the IT guy for a large dental clinic.) I got up this morning and decided I would make a fancy box for his ornament, my Cricut was feeling neglected ya know. I also made a cut little tag to go with it. I know this is way over the top for their parties, but the girls in the office love it when I send hubby with cute packages. My box turned out larger than I needed, so I just filled the bottom with tissue paper. Of course I had to add paper lace and bling to the box as well, I mean really! Hope you like...

The "box" was made with the flower pot cut on Cindy Loo, the paper lace is from that cartridge as well. The box was cut to fit on a 12 x 24 piece of card stock, much larger than I realized it would be, but I like it anyhow. There are  green and clear crystals on the "lace" but you can see them very well here.

Here's a closeup of the tag. All the cuts are from Winter Frolic. Everything was designed on my dear Chloe (Gypsy.)

Hope you have a Merry Crafty Weekend!

Day With My Daughter

So Becky and I were out early Friday morning doing our Black Friday thing. She decided she wanted a funky layered necklace and long story short, she went a little crazy at Michael's. I spent most of that afternoon putting it together for her-she designed it ya know. I was just her worker bee, but so excited she actually wanted to do something crafty with her dear old mom. We had a great time being silly. These are the moments I will cherish forever.

 So here it is all finished

A couple of her charms...I love the book type one, it so captures Becky.

Hope you all had a wonderful weekend! I have! I haven't paper crafted at all, but I have been sewing! Yeah!

Blessings,

Happy Thanksgiving!

Isn't this the most adorable card ever?! 

Thank you Karen at the Graphics Fairy for this image.

We hope you all have a very blessed day!

Layout with Gathered Ribbon

Hi all! This is actually a re-do layout from my daughter's birthday. I just wasn't happy with the one I did a few months ago, so today I decided a do-over was in order! The little library card was already done from a previous challenge so that made this layout much easier. I didn't photograph the matching page to this layout, I only put the typewriter card on that page (seeing how I made it HUGE.) I decided today would be a fun day to try adding ruffled/pleated ribbon to a page. I don't seem to do many girlie pages any more.

I stitched the ribbon on my sewing machine, making pleats as I went, it also gathered a little too which helped me round my corners. I put red tacky tape all around the edge of the photo mat-on the back side, then carefully added my pleated ribbon. It was actually pretty easy and a LOT of fun! On a side note, I have to say again how much I love my Chloe!(Gypsy) I was able to make 3 double page layouts in just over a day! Because I had pre-planned what I wanted to scrap, all I had to do was connect her to my Cricut and pick paper (now that takes me a while!) Later I'll try and take pictures of the other layouts from this weekend, all birthdays!

Hope you all have a great week, and have a very blessed and happy Thanksgiving!

Christmas Freezer T's

This year I decided that my mom, daughter, and I all needed fun Christmas shirts. I got us all long sleve white shirts at Target and went to town on them! It took me all day Sunday to do the shirts (lots of layers ya know) but I think they turned out pretty cute. Maybe I'll have a chance soon to get a picture with the 3 of us in our shirts. (don't hold your breath on that one though!)

Deck the Halls was made using the Gypsy font and of course I welded the words and put them on a slight curve. Reindeer and lights are from Winter Frolic. I don't know if you can see in the picture, but the reindeer's eye and nose are crystals (as well as on the lights, scarf and a couple letters.) I have never used crystals on clothing before, so we'll see how well they stay on once we wash our shirts...

Have a blessed day!

Introducing Miss Chloe!

Yes, I'm nuts, let's just get that out of the way shall we? If you don't already know, I WON a Gypsy about a month ago. I am still beside myself with giddiness! Of course I HAD to name my new "baby," it was voted upon at our house, and we settled on Chloe. She is everything I dreamed of and much more! Just before Chloe arrived I made her a cute little carring purse to tote her and her accessories around in. I searched the web high and low and found some Basic Grey (my favorite paper line in the world) fabric sold by the yard, yippie!!!! So here she is styling with her new black and white Gypsy Skin and her purse...

I am a very blessed girl!
Hope you all had a wonderful weekend!

Spencer Word Book-Finally! (picture heavy)

Here is the book I made in honor of our sweet little Spencer, I am going to give it to his mom as soon as possible. This little guy has been in and out of hospitals his whole life and he is such a miracle. We know God has some big plans for Spencer!

 I made this book in Design Studio. The base of each page was made using George and the font is from Lyrical Letters using the "jumbo" font. Each page in this book was designed individually, I really had no rhythm or reason to it other than it had to capture Spencer and who he is. I only did one or two pages at a time, then I would put the book away. I didn't want to rush this and I know that I start loosing creativity when I work on something too long.

 This is Spencer and my daughter way back not too long after she started watching him. He has married her many, many times and we think it is so sweet!

This is a pocket and a tag I knew had to be in this book. The tag pulls out and a poem my daughter wrote for and about Spencer is attached. The pocket had to be pop-dotted because the poem ended up being pretty thick once it was folded. Becky wrote him this poem about 3 or so years ago.

This picture was taken last November when we got to go visit Spencer and his family out at the Ranch they moved to. This is one of my favorite pictures ever! The adoring look Spencer has on his face is priceless, he was so excited to see "his" Becky again!

Ok, to know Spencer and his mom, Kimberly, you know that he is her EVERYTHING, that is what inspired the key to my heart here. The cover lifts up here and you see Spencer and his mom. This picture was taken about 3 years ago when Spencer spent the entire summer being treated at MD Anderson in Houston for his brain tumor. His family spent so much time driving back an forth and even had to rent an apartment there because Spencer had to be in treatment almost every day. It was a very hard time for everyone, but Spencer being the trooper he is, came through it with so much grace. He is amazing!

This picture was two years ago almost to the day! I don't remember what happened to send Spencer back to the Children's Hospital, but he ended up being very very sick. We came to see him one day and let him hug on his Becky. About 2 weeks after this Spencer was readmitted back here and ended up having a bone marrow transplant just before Christmas. Once again he was so strong. He had to be in complete isolation with his mom for at least 2 months. Kimberly was allowed to stay in his room with him and didn't leave his side the whole time! Again we came to visit him on New Year's Day, he was very weak and couldn't talk much, but do you know what he did? He sang "I Can Only Imagine" to his mom and to all his visitors on the other side of his glass wall. He said it was his song! Makes me cry just thinking about it. He is one special guy!

This book is obviously not in chronological order at all, this is one of Spencer's great loves, horses! This was taken out on the Ranch with his new miniature horse. I'm sorry I don't remember his name. Spencer was so thrilled to get his own horse finally!

This picture was right after we first meet Spencer, Becky had just started watching Spencer then. They became fast friends and the rest is history!

My husband and his friends love flying radio controlled (RC) helicopters and airplanes, well Spencer thought that was the neatest thing ever! He was always asking Mike to fly for him. Once when Mike had his flying buddy over they got out the helicopters for Spencer. Spencer's eye sight is very bad, so he touches everything and is very tactile. Greg was so nice and let Spencer touch and feel the helicopter, it was so awesome! (that's a big deal because the guys don't let anyone touch their "toys.")

This picture is from the same summer I mentioned above but this was the happy time. Make A Wish sent Spencer and his family to Disneyland and Lego Land in CA. Mind you none of them have been to the West Coast ever! Spencer had such an amazing time, he especially loved Lego Land. He is all about the Legos! Because he can feel them, he builds amazing things! Unfortunately I didn't have a picture of him playing with his legos, not sure why,I don't have access to the pictures from his trip right now.  He also loves trains, so I put a train full of legos on this page for him.

This picture is from this past June when Spencer finally got to come visit us in our new home. He was so excited and had such a great time, of course he got his Becky hugs in. He even got to go visit her at work and tell her manager how much he loves Becky-it was so cute! He is Becky's Prince Charming!

These pictures are from way back too. Spencer just adored my hubby, probably because Mike is just a kid in a grown up body. Every time Spencer saw him he'd say "Swing me Mr. Mike!" It was their thing. So here he is having a swing!

The front picture lifts up and you see the second one...

Finally, again back out at the Ranch. Spencer seems to be holding court on his ATV (left picture). He knows how to socialize with people and entertain too, he's been around so many in all the hospitals. On the right he's greeting guests and introducing people, what a cutie!

Well there you have it! Whew! Now I need to figure out when we can see Spencer and Kimberly again so we can give them this book.

Hope you all have a very blessed day! (Kimberly's favorite thing to say!)