Christmas and St. Patrick's Day!

I know! Christmas and St. Patrick's day - what do they have in common! Nothing except I finished 2 things yesterday! One was my goal to do 10-15 Christmas cards each month so when I get to December I'm not stressed out!

I used Card Patterns #55, Bo Bunny paper (the santa), and Basic Grey Fruit Cake paper along with some buttons and ribbon I've had in my stash for quite some time to make some cards. These cards satisfied my committment to myself for February (I didn't do any in February) and little for March!




My next project is one I've worked on for a couple weeks now. I had had St. Pat day pictures taken (or I took them) every year for quite some time to make cards. I found this really cool board book and paper kit from Little Yellow Bicycle and decided to go through all those pictures and create sort of keepsake of st. pat pictures. I made 3 of these books ~ one for me, one for my daughter, and one for my son!





The little kit of paper is so cool because it is cut to the shape of the board book (each page is a little different shape). There are also extra pieces of paper so you can back your pictures and some little stickers to embellish with (like the Lucky Me on the cover). I added a few other things and it was done! I had most of it done a couple weeks ago but I needed some pictures from this year to complete it.





I'm looking forward to seeing if Little Yellow Bicycle will come out with some other really fun books like this!

I love these pics on the back cover ~ Shaina is so serious and Carl is clowing around!

Birthday Cards and Cake Balls!

I've been in the mood to make birthday cards! Partly because there are alot of people having birthdays and partly because I'm trying to get organized for the year!

This first card uses the Laura's Sketch 42 from 2S4Y. My sister, Teresa, gave me this quickutz cake die that I've been wanting for a long time for Christmas and I just had to use it! The paper is DCWV and the lace is Fancy Pants. The tag is also a quickutz and I used one of the dollar stamps on it!

I'm going to save this for my mom's birthday in June!


A guy at work had a birthday on the first and I tried my new cricut "Sweet Treats" cartridge to make this birthday cake card. The paper on this is Basic Gray "Cupcake."

I used some stickles to make it "sparklier!"










I had so much fun with this cricut cartridge that I made several different versions using the Basic Gray paper....












And then I used some other paper I had that said Happy Birthday so I didn't cut out the sentiment for the front!












My friend Bonnie's birthday was this last week (although she was in Arizona and won't be back till Sunday) so I found this cool tutorial on Split Coast Stampers for a "flower pot" card. I used birthday paper for the "pot" and then cut out flowers and leaves with my sizzix. These were so fun......










That I made 24! I used the non-birthday ones for thank you's for x-mas presents and little things people gave me at work! Here they all are (picture isn't that great but you can see I was busy!).














I also made these yummy cake balls to take to work this week. They are super easy and look cool! Here is the recipe:

1. Make a cake (any flavor) from a cake mix in any sort of pan (I used 9 X 13 because it was the easiest).
2. When the cake is done, crumble it into a large bowl while it is still warm. Stir in a can of frosting mix (any flavor) until well blended.
3. I then let it set an hour or so to cool down.
4. Form small balls with the cake mixture (the recipe I found on the internet said to use a melon baller but I found it just as easy to roll in my hands). I then put them on a plate in the freezer for a 1/2 hour or so.
5. Dip the balls into melted chocolate and place on wax paper to set.

Everyone at work loved them!

Card Patterns #44 and Count Down to Christmas Calendars

I hope everyone had a great weekend! I worked on Disney scrapbooks and Christmas cards and cleaned house!!! I'm sure you can guess what was my least favorite thing!

Here is my card for Card Patterns Sketch 44. I used Basic Gray fruitcake paper for the background and the "Christmas Stamp" paper is Graphic 45 (I'm so loving Graphic 45 right now and the nostalgic look). The snow flake was cut out of sparkly paper with the cricut solutions cartridge, When it is Cold Outside (I just got it in the mail yesterday!). I added a green button with red skinny ribbon and a making memories stick pin. The top ribbon I just got at Michaels (1/2 price with 15% off tonight!!).


I finished these 2 Countdown to Christmas calendars today also. Michaels had a demo of countdown calendars but they did not have any of the round favor containers or the smaller wooden wreath so I had to improvise with hearts and a bigger wreath.

The first one is for my daughter so I used pastel reindeer paper and used all pastels. I cut the numbers with cricut Don Juan.






For my son's, I used more traditional colors.

They both have yummy candy in them: cookies and creme, peppermint patties, rolos, and reeses peanut butter bells.

Hopefully they won't get into them before the 12 days of Christmas!!!

Hope everyone has a great week!

2S4Y - Christmas "card" Booklet for Family!

This week I used Laura's sketch 40 combined with a little idea from JoAnn.com to come up with my x-mas cards for my close family. I only plan to make 20 of these because they are a little bit of work!

The "wishlist" tag is something that I had in my stash. The patterned paper is all from Basic Grey Fruitcake (I've been hoarding it for awhile!) and the little santa is from Graphic 45. I used a border punch, regular ric rac, and a cool brad from K and Company that I picked up packages on clearance after Christmas last year at Michaels.

The first picture is the cover.


Here it is with all 4 panels. The booklet pages are 4 X 4 so I printed the pictures as "index prints."

The 2009 is from the cricut Graphically Speaking cartridge.

This last picture shows how the ribbon can be tied around the booklet to keep it together.

It was a very fun project (hope it is as fun for the next 19).

I'm looking forward to the next sketch because I have lots more cards to design and make!!! Nothing like waiting till the last minute!

Card Patterns #43 - Another Try!

I was not happy with the original card I made for Card Patterns #43 so here is another try!

I'm going to need a lot more Christmas cards this year than in the past because of the job I have this year.

I used patterned paper from the Basic Grey fruitcake collection (I've been holding on to it for awhile!) and the little santa image is from Graphic 45. There are little stickle dots around the santa image if you look close. The fancy brad is a K and Company brad that I got a bunch of after Christmas last year (now I wish I had more!).

I think this card turned out way better than the other one I did! I think I will make several patterns of Christmas cards and give them to different groups of people!

Primary Colors! Card Patterns #20 and a Birthday Card!

I just bought this cool paper pack (6 X 6) of Basic Grey called Lime Rickey and I just love the bright colors.

I used that paper for the background of my card for Card Patterns #20 this week. I didn't have anything that would make a whole square of scallops so I used my revolution border scallop and bordered the "totally fab." My daughter needed some thank yous for her 5th grade graduation presents so I pulled out one of the cutting cafe's (see link to the right ~ they are so cool) printable stamps that I had gotten awhile back and used it. I added some flowers and buttons that I've had around for awhile. I love anything with black because it makes it pop so that is why I chose the black for the scallps and ribbon.



My son will be going to a friend's birthday party in July and I had some more of those cute penguins cut out (revolution die) so I framed him in another cool cutting cafe printable stamp ~ you've got to love these cool big circles stamps ~ I use them alot. HB2U is cut from the cricut Alpahlicious cartridge.


Thanks for stopping by! Have a great week!

Use It ~ Challenge #7

Wow! This was a tough one!

I don't know if I got everything in but it was a great way to get my daughter's birthday party invitations done! She is only inviting 2 girls because we are going to a small amusement park in Portland and then they are staying the night. So it wasn't one of those massive card making exercises!

I knew I wanted to make a shaker because I found this cool confetti that was tropical themed! We had bought a bunch of cool tropical party stuff last year thinking ahead for now! So, let's see how I did on the challenge:

**Use black or white cardstock as the base: I used both (sneaky, huh! maybe I'll get extra points when I don't have one of the other elements!)

**Use 4 different patterned paper: green on the tree is DCWV Christmas Glitter stack from years ago, Brown on the tree is Basic Grey, flip flops are WR Memory Keepers, and the yellow sun is making memories

**Non-scrap item: This is where I have some problems, unless you count the confetti which is technically not a scrap item but I bought it with the intention of making shakers!

**Doodling: Yeah - I did it!

**Use whatever is laying around: I had this tropical flower ribbon that I used in another project 2 years ago and was able to use it all up! Whoo Hoo!

Have a great rest of the week and Happy Scrapping!

Card Patterns #9 - Another 3 pages from the Silverwood Altered Book!

The Card Patterns Sketch yesterday was so cute! I made this card for my daughter for easter. I love the peek-a-boo bunny from quickutz and I have used it every year for something! I used this Basic Grey paper that I had in 6 X 6 and had to cut it down the middle and finagle (is that a word) it so that it would fit the card but with all the stuff down the middle you don't even notice!







Here are some more pages from my Silverwood (Amusement Park in N. Idaho) Altered Book. these are all the driving pictures. I had so much fun using my cricut on these pages. The old car is from the My World Cartridge, the Driver's License is from Locker Talk. Both of these patterend papers were in my stash! Yeah, I used something I've had for years!








For this set of pictures I also used paper from my stash! I used the Going Places and Graphically Speaking cricut cartridges. I love how it turned out!











For this last one, I had purchased this paper at my local scrapbook store, Scrapbook Fever because it was just so cute! It is double sided and the strip where Driving is is from the back side! All the words on this one are from the Storybook Cartridge and again I used Going Places!

I'm sure the kids won't get the "Driving Miss...." from the Driving Miss Daisy movie but the old cars and my son driving his sister and cousin was just too cute. In the picture on the left, if you look close you can see he has his thumb up!

This book is a little hard to take pictures of because it is just crammed full and will hardly shut. If I did it again, I think I would do it differently but even though it is really stuffed, it will be a keepsake for all of them!

Have a super week!

Laura's Bonus Sketch for ScrapStreet.com

This is my take on Laura's bonus sketch @ scrapstreet.com! These are kind of card/tags! I needed to make 12 card/tags for an upcoming award thing at work. There were 12 people who were an integral part of upgrading our accounting system and we are buying them bags with our agency logo and then we will tie these on the bags. I will have the director, deputy director, and my boss sign the tags and then we will have cake and a little speach! Can't do much when you work in state government! But I did something similar (with a different style card/tag) for a group of people who had worked on a project for more than a year and even though it wasn't a big expense, it was recognition and they loved it! So, I just knew Laura's bonus sketch would work and I replaced the 1/2 circle with a star! And I'm really liking the word Bravo (have you noticed!). Maybe it is the way that it cuts out on the Cricut (which of course I'm loving!).

The patterned paper is scraps (lower one DCWV Glitter Stack, upper one Basic Grey) from projects where I made 8 X 8 books and used 12 X 12 paper. There are only 3 women on the project so I will give them ones with flowers and the guys ones with stars!

2 Sketches 4 You Bonus Sketch for week of Nov 24, 2008

I was so excited to do a card for Hanneke's sketch. I love bracket cards! I made this card for my sister who just came to visit after many years. This card is also really special because she told me how cool the Cricut was and we went to Michael's on Thanksgiving Day at 6 pm and I bought the last Cricut Create they had! She said it was a great price and I would love it! So the many thanks and the accent were cut with my new cricut!!! All the patterned paper is Basic Grey Boxer. Thanks for taking a peek!