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!)

Sympathy Card and Exciting News

Hi everyone! Sorry I've been MIA for a couple of weeks. It's been buisy around here.
Here is a card I just made for my Uncle's wife, he just passed away this past Saturday. We all knew it was going to happen very soon, but it still is very hard for her right now. He was my mom's older brother.

I made this card using my new Gypsy I won a few weeks back. I am so in love with her, she's named Cloey. I used a layered decorative element from Gypsy Wanderings for the front of the card. The Peace was from Cindy Loo. I pop dotted the inner layers to give the front of the card a little dimension and I also used my Cuttlebug to add texture to the mat on the front. The sentiment was one I found online and it really seemed to fit this situation. We are all happy Uncle Tim is no longer battling cancer and is in Heaven where he is at peace. I printed this off on my computer with a wonderful font I found the other day.

In other news, I am almost done with my Spencer word book. I feel like I've been working on this book forever, but I really wanted to take my time with this project and not rush it. I first starting making the book as a memorial of Spencer because he had a terminal brain tumor that was growing again. Well we just found out the other day all the growth on his original tumor has gone away! No treatment of any kind this time! It is a divine miracle and we are all beside ourselves with excitement!!! He still has his original tumor, but the growth is gone! Hopefully soon I can post pictures of his book, I can't wait to give it to his mom!

Hope you all have a blessed day!

My first gate fold card!

Susan again! I made this card for a friend of mine who just had a new baby boy! I have wanted to try one of these gate fold cards for a while now so I thought this was the perfect opportunity. The snail on the front is from Give a Hoot, the lettering is from Lyrical Letters. I inked everything with Distress Ink, Peeled Paint. What a fun card to make!

This last picture is just so you can see the fold a little better. Not the best picture!

Happy scrapping!
Susan

My First Chipboard Book..........and My First Post!

Okay, this is my first official post! Connie has graciously posted several pictures for me but I figured it was time to actually post something myself.
We had a wonderful time cropping together this past weekend! Connie got me started on my first chipboard book and I have to say, I am hooked!! I had SO much fun putting together this book for my sister. She is moving out of the country next month and I wanted to make something special for her so that she will take a part of me with her when she goes. I laid out the shape pages on Design Studio, and most of my cuts are from the Heritage cartridge and Winter Woodland cartridge. I would love to hear your comments on this project, however, remember this is my first one! Be gentle! :)
















In all the pockets throughout the book are tags with different quotes about sisters. Some sweet, some funny, all fitting!
















I love the way the tree turned out on this page! The cut is from Heritage. I glittered the branches with my Jelly Roll glitter pen and added tiny pearls to some of the branches. So pretty!















I also really like how the cameo turned out. It and the antique car are both also from the Heritage cartridge. The folder with the cameo on it opens.......















This is the inside of it. A picture and another quote.















I forgot to mention that all the paper I used is from K&Company.















All the word cuts are also from Heritage. I love this LOVE one with the curlicues on the ends!















This is the last page. Another picture folder that opens.........















And here it is open! Another picture and quote.















So that is it! My first chipboard album! Thank you, Connie, for all the wonderful ideas and for the flower cuts! I used almost all of them!

Happy Scrapping!
Susan

Oh Happy Day!!!!

I just found out today that I won a Gypsy!!!!! This from the girl who never wins anything! Wow! The Cricut Circle launched their blog last weekend and had tons of give-aways, I didn't win any. But the designers from the blog also were each giving away three Gypsys, I entered all those in hopes that maybe, just maybe I'd win.
I forgot all about the blog give aways last week-it was such a crazy horrible week. Well today it occurred to me I hadn't checked back on the blogs yet....so I did, and what did I find? I had won! I read it multiple times to make sure I really did! Thank you Lynn at Pieces of Me and of course Thank you to Provocraft who supplied the Gypsys!!!!!

Oh happy day! Just wanted to share my excitement with you all!

Sweet Doily Card

You all are doing Halloween and fall stuff, I'm here doing cute pink girly stuff. What can I say? This is a card I just made for the Cricut Circle Blog challenge this week, it's "Think Pink." When I saw the challenge I knew I would be using Cindy Loo, it just screams cute and pink to me.

I made the base of the card by welding two shadow layers from the doily together-overlapping a little bit so I could fold the card. The black layer is the same scalloped shadow circle. The top layer is the round fawn doily. The base of the card and the top layer were cut from the same piece of paper, my beloved Core'dinations Gemstone....love this stuff! The "bling" is small aquamarine heat set stones. This actually was a very quick and easy card (a first for me!) I'm not sure what occasion I'll use it for, so I didn't add a sentiment or anything on the inside yet. This card makes me smile and feel happy, so I guess that's good!

On another subject, Susan and I finally got to get crafty yesterday and we had sooo much fun! We started off at the Oh Crop! monthly crop in Frisco and then moved the craziness to my house for a while. I successfully got Susan hooked on making shape/word books! She's making a gorgeous book for her sister. Hopefully in the near future she will be posting pictures of it here on our blog. YEAH!

Well that's all for now...hope you all had a wonderful weekend!

Exploding Box with Layers

Here is one of my latest creations and I couldn't show it until now. This was my birthday gift to Susan, my partner in crafty crime. It is an exploding box with multiple layers and a gift bag I also made (with only 12 x 12 paper). I filled her exploding box with pictures of Susan and her family, the most challenging part was finding pictures (by stalking her facebook page btw) that would be small enough to fit on the layers.

 Box and coordinating gift bag which btw had a cartridge she really wanted!

the box "exploding"

 the box opened up all the way 

 some of the layers and silly pictures

flower and tag on the lid of the box.

I made both projects using patterns I downloaded from SVG Cuts. I saw this exploding box pattern one day and fell in love with it! Of course I used Sure Cuts A Lot to make all the cuts. The paper was a collection by K&Co. It was not double sided, I just figured out what paper I wanted where and used a spray adhesive to adhere the papers back to back, it worked like a dream! The thickness the two papers created was just perfect for this box. I've got to say this was so much fun to make and it was very hard not to tell Susan about it! I had the hardest time picking out the paper for this project and I almost called her from the store (a usual occurrence when I can't make up my mind-all the time!) to get her opinion. I'm so proud of myself for not ruining the surprise.  :)