Disney Autograph Books

Hi all!  I have been busy up in my craft room making gifts for all my family members for Christmas. I tried to make as many gifts this year as I could instead of buying gifts.  I really love getting homemade gifts from the heart and I hope my family members too:-).

Here is an example of something I made using my new Cricut Imagine. I am seriously in love with this machine.  I just love the possibilities with it and I love using Cricut Craft room (an online design tool).  I also just loaded the Imagine app onto my gypsy for designing when I'm away from my craft room.  It's just so much fun!  I have also been buying up carts like crazy on ebay for around 10.00 a piece.  One I just received was Baby Boutique.  At first I glanced right over this one thinking I wouldn't need to do any baby pages since my babies are a little older now but once I saw it was Teresa Collins and I saw all the awesome papers I was sold!  I used this one primarily for these books:

The frames and paper were cut using the Imagine Baby Boutique cartridge, along with the crowns.  I used Mickey Font for the words along with the Mickey Mouse ears (filling in the colors from the Baby Boutique patterns).  Sleeping Beauty was cut using the Disney Happily Ever After cartridge, I also filled in her colors on my Imagine based on the Disney "official" RGB codes.  How cool is that?  I used my cinch to bind them.

 Here is how it looked when I pulled the mat out of the Imagine I just stuck in a white piece of paper and all the colors were done for me:)

 Modge Podge is my friend when I make these books, don't want the paper to come off for anything and they need to be able to withstand a lot of hand holding by little ones. Notice my other two autograph books in the background? I was getting the photos around from our last trip to put in those for my son and daughter. :-)

Here is the front of my nieces book, she is only 2 so I chose a Mickey head for her.

.

 This is the back, I just love this paper from the Baby Boutique cartridge and the modge podge made it look even pinker!

 Here is the front of my niece Alyssa's.  Her favorite princess is Sleeping Beauty. 

 Here's the back, I added the gray strip and the I like the look.

 Thanks for stopping by today! I am so happy to be done making all my Christmas gifts!  Can't wait to start some scrapbooking with my Imagine...

My Christmas Card

Hi everyone!  Well I promised a post today on my Christmas card that I sent out this year so here it is:-).  I used the banner photo I showed yesterday of my family and kind of centered the design around the photo using mostly black, white, and silver.  Here is what I came up with.

Here is the first version.  I used an embossing folder from Crafts Too for the ornaments on the white cardstock.  The gray is embossed with the swiss dots cuttlebug folder.  The ornament is punched out with a Stampin UP punch on Stampin UP silver slitter paper.  I used my Cricut Imagine to cut out the scalloped square using my Storybook Cartridge.  Lastly, the pearls were put on using my Silver Pearl Pen.

 This is a second version.  I just stamped the back of the gray using a Stampin UP Baroque stamp.

 Here is the inside with the photo of my family and the Merry Christmas banner.

I sent out 60 of these so far and need to make about 30 more!  I guess I need to get busy! Thanks so much for stopping by today!!

Christmas Banner

Hi all! I wanted to post a project I actually made almost 2 months ago.  We were having family photos done at the end of October and I wanted something special for our Christmas photo.  I really wanted a banner that we could hold in the picture that said "Merry Christmas".  Well, as the week before our photos went on  I still hadn't gotten the banner done.  I hemed and hawed over making this banner Friday night and then into Saturday morning (our pictures were Saturday afternoon).  After finally deciding that I NEEDED this banner (LOL) I made it in literally 30 min.  I put it all together on my gypsy and cut it out.  I made it very simple so that it wasn't too distracting from our photos.  After we were done with our photos I decided that I would keep it and hang it up for Christmas:-)  Here it is.

I think it looks great hanging by the fireplace! I still can't believe it only took me 30 minutes to cut out!

After we got the photos back I was sooo happy I took the time to cut it out.  Here is our photo that went into our Christmas card:

Thanks so much for stopping by today, tomorrow I'll post pics of my Christmas card

My New Cricut Imagine

Hi all!  It's a cold, dreary day here in Illinois so I took some much needed down time to play with a new toy I got last week during the Black Friday sale, my Cricut Imagine.  I have been wanting one of these since the day they came out!  I was so intrigued by the fact that you could print out a pattern onto your cut and just use a white sheet of paper every time!  You can also use your old cartridges with the machine and fill in those cuts with color.  Oh the possibilities!!  Anyway after I got my machine set up, (so easy) I decided to play.  The imagine is loaded with a few items you can cut so I found a Christmas tree and filled it with a pattern from the Elise cartridge that I got with my imagine at Walmart.  The cut came out so clean!  I added some pearls with my pearl pen and I had a tree!

(All the images were taken on my ipad using instagram)

So after all that fun I decided to make a background for my tree.  I again used one of the images loaded and filled it with a pattern from Elise.  I added some ink around the edges to give it some dimension.

I love this.  It's going on our "weekly schedule" board for some decoration for the month.

Here is how my mat looked after I was done, you can see how clean the cuts are.  I flipped the mat around to do the second cut and got it to fit perfectly on the paper.  I couldn't figure out how to move the image on the screen, if anyone knows how to do this, let me know:-)

Thanks so much for stopping by, now I need to get to work on my Christmas cards!

Calendar Blog Hop

Hi Everyone! I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving.  My Thanksgivings are usually spent in Michigan hanging with my husbands family and of course, eating way too much!  I am so thankful for many things this year and am really thankful for all my crafty friends that I have made through the years.
Anyway, onto my post for today, hopefully you have arrived here from Elsa at Cricut Lvr, if not and you want to start at the beginning, please go back to Zeni at Scrappy Zeni.  Once I heard about this hop I knew I wanted to be a part of it!  I love making calendar pages for my scrapbook pages and thought this would be a great way to get my December one done early:-).  Here is my page for December.

I used the cricut cartridge Designer Calendar to cut the calendar grid and the December.  All the paper is Stampin UP!.  The presents and the snow globe are cut from the Christmas Cheer cartridge.  I stamped on the snow and the snowflakes from an old snowflake stamp set I have from Stampin UP!.  

 Love this cute little snow globe!

Thanks so much for stopping by!  Don't forget to comment to enter in for your chance to win the adorable stamp set from Emma over at My Creative Time!

Your next stop is Sandra at 365 days of Cricut.

Here is the lineup in case you get lost along the way:

Zeni - http://www.scrappyzeni.com/

Pam - http://lovebugcreations3.blogspot.com/

Gloria - http://www.omascrafts.blogspot.com

Amanda- http://amandascraftsandmore.blogspot.com/

Roberta - http://www.txscrappermom.blogspot.com

Christy - http://www.90days2agodchick.blogspot.com

Monica - http://scraps2treasure.blogspot.com/

Liz - http://www.mywhichcraft.blogspot.com

Elsa-http://cricutlvr.blogspot.com

Jessica - http://thecreativestamperspot.blogspot.com/---- You are here

Sandra- http://365daysofcricut.blogspot.com/ ---Go here next

Kacee - http://youhadmeatscrap.blogspot.com/

Erika - http://www.craftysprouts.com/

Disney Blog Hop, Day 2

Hi Everyone and welcome to the Disney Blog Hop!  I am so excited to be a part of this hop again!  I love Disney and since we just got back from a trip to Disney in August I figure it's about time I started to scrapbook some of these 300 photos I took!  I hope you have arrived here today from Jenny at Jenny's Place, if not and you want to start at the beginning, please go back to Shawn at Crafty Chics.
Okay, onto my project.  This is a scrapbook page I made of our first photo with Mickey at Disneyland in California.  If you have never been to Disneyland and only been to Disneyworld I HIGHLY recommend going and checking it out!  It is smaller than Disneyworld and much easier to get around.  We spent 2 days at Disney and 2 days at California Adventure and we pretty much saw it all.  It was so fun and my 5 and 2 year old had a BLAST!  We are going to Disneyworld in a few months and they are so excited!  It was a nice warm up for them to go here first.

 For my page I used my Mickey font and Disney Mickey and Friends Cricut cartridges for Mickey, the word Disney and the 2011.   The paper is all Stampin UP! and the banner stamps and my journaling box are all from Taylored Expressions.

Here's a close up of my Mickey:-)

Don't forget we have a GRAND PRIZE for this Blog Hop donated by ContainYa Crafts!  You can have YOUR CHOICE of a Scrap'n Tote or a Scrap'n Easel!  Each blog in this two day hop has a special letter, and when all of the letters are put together they spell out a secret phrase.

My letter is . . . .l

Once you have stopped at each blog in the hop and collected all of the letters, simply email the phrase they create to bloghopcontests at gmail dot com.  All entries must be in by Midnight on Monday, November 21st.  The winner will be announced on Tuesday, November 22nd at http://craftychicsblog.blogspot.com/

Thanks so much for stopping by, your next stop is Jenny over at Crazy about Cricut!

Here is the lineup in case you get lost along the way.

Shawn http://craftychicsblog.blogspot.com/

Melissa  http://www.disneydreamerdesigns.blogspot.com/

Megan http://www.aboverubiesstudio.com/

Kim http://uscrap2.blogspot.com/

Bobbi Jo http://sweetsassydiva-gspot.blogspot.com/

Jenny http://jennyplace26.blogspot.com/

Jessica http://thecreativestamperspot.blogspot.com/

Jenny http://www.crazyaboutcricut.blogspot.com/

Susan http://www.cricutforbeginners.com/

Tami http://www.scrappinrabbitdesigns.blogspot.com/

Kathy http://kathyand3kids.blogspot.com/

Twilight Calendar Page

Hi everyone!  Like I said yesterday I was so excited for the new movie, Breaking Dawn Part 1 to come out!  Now that I have seen the movie, I can't wait to see it again:-)!  Yes, I am twihard.  I love the saga!  Hopefully you have arrived here form Carla over at Racin Crafts, she is the first stop on our awesome hop!

My second Twilight project is in honor of the new movie coming out.  Each month I make a calendar page for that month and for this month I thought about doing a Thanksgiving theme like I normally do but then a light bulb went off, how about a Twilight themed page!  I bought these two adorable images from Karber digital.  I colored them in with my copics and based my page around them.  Aren't they so adorable?  You can find them here.  I again used my Immortal Love stack from DCWV and cut out the Twilight word using Make the Cut and a twilight font I found.  The calendar grid and the title for November were cut out using the Designer's Calendar Cricut Cartridge.

 Close up of my Edward and Bella:-)

Thank you again for visiting and don't forget about our grand prize from Karber.  To be eligible to win you must comment on everyone's blog for both days of the hop.

Your next stop is Berenice over at Karber Sweet Escape.

Twilight Blog Hop, Day 1

Hi everyone and welcome to the Twilight Blog Hop!  Hopefully you have arrived here from Carla at Racin Crafts.  I am so excited for this hop and also for the movie!  I am going out tonight to see it so shhhh! don't tell me anything about it!  Of course I have read the books (3 times) and I know what happens but I want to be a little surprised tonight:-).
My first project for the hop is in honor of last years movie actually, Eclipse.  I had a great time going to the midnight showing with my sister, my cousin, and a few friends.  It was so fun knowing that we were one of the first people to get to see the show.  Staying up to see a movie past midnight was a little tiring but a blast!

This scrapbook page is my sister, cousin, and I before we left for the movie.  I used the DCWV Immortal Love pack for the paper.  Eclipse was cut out using Make the Cut on my cricut and a Twilight font I found online.  The tickets and the popcorn were cut out using the Cricut Carousel cartridge.

A close up of my popcorn and tickets:-)

 Here is the second page in the layout. I usually do this when I do a two page layout.  I make one page the focal point and put a lot of photos on the second page without much embellishing so that I can get them all on there. I used the immortal stack again for this page

Thank you all so much for stopping by!  Your next stop is Berenice at Karber Sweet Escape!  Be sure to leave a comment below so you can be entered to win the adorable digital images from Karber!
Here is the lineup for today:
Carla~ http://racincrafts.blogspot.com/

Jessica - http://thecreativestamperspot.blogspot.com/ ---> You are here

Berenice - http://karbersweetescape.blogspot.com/ ----> Go here next
Amy - http://www.lovetocrop.com/
Nancy - http://blog.fancywithnancy.com/
Kristen-http://huneebcreations.blogspot.com/
Theresa -http://thescrapbookingqueen/-princesspenelope.blogspot.com/
Jessica - http://scrappyluvs.blogspot.com/
Jamie- http://myamusinglife.blogspot.com/ 
Dena - http://missdjones.blogspot.com/
Joy - http://justjoycrafts.blogspot.com/
Tanya - http://little-scrapper.blogspot.com/

Christmas is For Kids Banner Hop

If you are looking for the Hello Kitty Blog Hop, please click here.

Welcome everyone!  Thank you so much for stopping by my blog today!  If you came here from Charity at Scrapfaire then you are in the right spot, if not and you want to start at the beginning, please visit the sweet Ellen at Cardmonkey.

We are here today on this blog hop because we have all made holiday banners for special needs children, ages newborn to 21, who reside at Pediatric Specialty Care (www.pediatricspecialty.com), a group home for medically-fragile, technologically-dependent children in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. I am so honored to be a part of this hop and to hopefully touch some of these children and their families with my banner.

This banner was cut using a few different Cricut cartridges.  I cut the santa and the rudolph from the Doodlecharms cartridge.  The letters are from Plantin Schoolbook along with the squares.  The scalloped squares are from the Mini Monograms.

 I embossed all the backgrounds and the white paper is also embossed some with stripes and some with dots.  

This one was embossed with a Stampin UP! snowflake Big Shot folder.

 This is also the snowflake folder.

 This one was embossed with an ornament folder from Crafts Too.

Thanks so much for visiting today.  Please make sure to stop by all the blogs to have more chances to win the prizes from our wonderful sponsors!

Your next stop is Denise at Vintage Heartfelt Designs.  

Hello Kitty Blog Hop

Hello everyone and welcome to the Hello Kitty Blog Hop!  I hope everyone is as excited for this weekend as I am!  We don't have much planned and I LOVE weekends like that.  I am especially looking forward to looking through all the stops on this hop.  I love Hello Kitty and that's why I really wanted to take part in this.  Anyway, I hope you have arrived here from Lisa's blog at Handmade with Love, isn't her project great?  If not and you want to start at the beginning you can go back to Emily's blog at Create Serendipity. You're going to want to check out all the blogs as we have some fun prizes along the way and if you comment on all the blogs you will be entered for a chance to win the grand prize!
Onto my project.  I have been really in the Christmas mood lately.  I don't know what happened, Halloween came and went then I was onto Christmas (just no snow yet, please).  I have been putting together ideas for my family's Christmas card and while doing that I thought of this one for the blog hop today.  Maybe it will get you in the mood if you aren't already (like me).

I used the latest Mojo Monday sketch for my card layout.  The patterned paper is all retired Christmas DSP from Stampin UP!  The green is Stampin UP! Old Olive.  Both of the glittered papers are Stampin UP! as well.  The ornament was done with the Stampin UP! ornament punch.  All the silver pearls were made with a pearl pen that I love!  The be merry stamp is an old retired Stampin UP! stamp as well.

 Okay, so this is where I put my cute little Hello Kitty cut from the Cricut Hello Kitty Greetings cartridge.  She is hiding inside the card.  I cut two slits in the top to made her a little pop up for when the card opens.  (Here's a quick instruction on how to do it: http://www.origami-resource-center.com/pop-up-card.html)

Thank you so much for stopping by and be sure to stop by all the blogs to get your chance to win:-).  Your next stop is http://thepurplemuse.blogspot.com/

30 Days of Handmade Gift Giving Blog Hop ~ Day 2

HI everyone and welcome to the 2nd day of the 30 Days of Handmade Gift Giving Blog Hop!  If you came here from Jill's blog over at the Scrapoholic then you are in the right place!  I am so thrilled to have been asked to be a part of this hop.  I am actually thinking of having a "handmade" Christmas this year and making all my gifts (except the ones to my kids).  We'll see if I can do it:-)  I think I can!
My first project for today is something so simple and fun to do!  I just recently got into making wreaths and my friend Nancy and I are going to make a bunch of ribbon wreaths for gifts this year.  I am excited to get started.

I only have this one photo of the wreath so I'll just walk you through how I did it below. 

• I started out with some foam tubing that I bought from Home Depot.  I wrapped it in a circle then secured it with lots of duct tape.  (I wouldn't actually suggest using the tubing for all your wreaths as it made the wreath a little flimsy but in a pinch it's good to use and a little bit more inexpensive than the foam tubing from the craft stores.)
• From there I went to the craft store and picked out some yarn I thought looked good together.  For this particular wreath I wanted fall colors as I gave it to my sister in-law for her birthday last week.
• I then wrapped the yarn around the wreath, I found it best to hold the wreath in my knees and just wrap.  I did this while watching my favorite tv show so it was kind of fun to do.  When I was done with each color I just tied a knot on the end and then started with the next.  
• After getting all the yarn on I tied the ribbon to the top for hanging.
• I then started looking at putting some embellishments on it.  I knew I wanted to do a couple of felt flowers and I cut those out with my big shot using some dies I had and added some buttons from my stash. I also added some felt leaves cut with my big shot.  I thought about adding some more but I just decided to leave it alone and not go overboard:-).

My next project is to learn how to make flowers on my own out of felt, I need to watch some tutorials on how to do that, let me know if you know of any.

I hope you enjoyed my wreath today.  Be sure to check back tomorrow on Jill's blog to see who the next blogger is with another fun project.

The Great Pumpkin Hop, Day 2

Hi everyone!  Welcome to day 2 of the Great Pumpkin Hop! If you arrived here from Theresa, aka The Scrapbooking Queen, you are in the right place!  If you want to start at the beginning to see all the fabulous creations, you can start at Amy's blog, Love to Crop.
For my project for today's post I decided to make another banner.  This was actually my first banner that I intended to make the other day but the way I did it, I was able to get two banners cut out.  Let me show you how.
Lately when I make a banner I make two parts to the actual banner, one for a background and then another sheet on top of that one. The background is essentially the "shadow".  I have then been welding the letters into the front part of the banner.  The causes the background to become the paper for the letters. You can see it here on my gypsy.

The letters are placed right in the banner piece and then I select weld to weld them together so they print out cleanly.  Once you have them printed out you also still have the letter piece which is what I used to create the banner yesterday.  I love doing it this way!

Here is the finished banner.  I also strung this one together using mandarin twine from the Twinery.

 Like my little pumpkin rosettes?  I used my Tim Holtz rosette die to cut them out and then cut out little faces with my Pumpkin carvings cartridge.  For the stems I used the top part of a leaf die I had.

Thanks so much for visiting again today! Your next stop is Brenda at http://createbyburffrau.blogspot.com/

The Great Pumpkin Hop Day 1

Hi everyone and welcome to the Great Pumpkin Hop!  I am so excited to be a part of this hop and can't wait to see all the fun creations everyone comes up with!  If you arrived here from Theresa, aka The Scrapbooking Queen, you are in the right place!  If you want to start at the beginning to see all the fabulous creations, you can start at Amy's blog, Love to Crop.
For my project, I decided to make another fun Halloween banner for one of my best friends who is coming here to visit this weekend. She has two little girls and I know they will love a cute little banner to hang at their house for Halloween.

The banner was cut using the Cricut Birthday Bash cartridge and I used mandarin twine from the Twinery to string it together. The letters are from the Cricut Carousel cartridge.

 I embossed the folders, this one with a spider web:-)

 My little pumpkin was cut with a Quickkutz die and embossed with a dot embossing plate

 This is an argyle type embossing plate

 I cut out a pumpkin face from the Cricut Pumpkin Carvings cartridge along with some faces for my little pumpkin rosettes to decorate this bag to go along with the gift.

Thank you so much for visiting today! Be sure to check back tomorrow for more some more fun!

Your next stop is Christina at http://cema1cema.blogspot.com.

Vinyl for my Ipad Cover:-)

Okay, so ever since I got my new iPad cover I have been itching to do something with it to jazz it up a bit.  I have a few rolls of vinyl so I decided to get them out and see what I could come up with:-).  

Front

 Back Cover

I thought it came out really cute!  I used my cricut for most of it, Create a Critter for the owl, Summer in Paris for the Eiffel Tower, the J I'm not sure of but it was one of my fonts, maybe Storybook?  The banner is actually a die I have from Taylored Expressions.
Let me know what you think:-)

Winner of the Peachy Keen Stamps

Happy Saturday everyone!  I am here to announce the winner of the awesome PK-690 Make a Monster Face Assortment set!   I used random.org to pick my winner out of all of the comments and the lucky winner was Cari, here is what she had to say:

Super fun and adorable!
Carri~abusybee
www.doubleclickconnections.blogspot.com

Cari, I will be contacting you soon.  Thank you to everyone sooo much for visiting me this and to Peachy Keen Stamps for letting me hijack their blog:-).  It's been such a blast!!

Peachy Keen Guest Designer Day 5

Hi all!  Welcome to Day 5 of my posts as guest designer.  I am so sad that my week is over already!  It's been so fun and even though I am sad to leave I am excited to see what our next guest designer has coming.  All week I have been wanting to do a scrapbook page using some photos I took last year of my family and I apple picking.  I had a great photo of my son in the orchard and I couldn't wait to use it:-).  He is about a year and a half here and he loved getting the apples and eating them.  It was so darn cute!

 For these cute little apple faces from the Create a Critter cartridge I used the Boy Mates faces.

I based my page on the latest sketch challenge from DCWV.  I love using sketches for my inspiration and this one worked perfect for my page!

Thanks again for visiting me this week!  Please leave a comment on this post and the post the PKS blog, to enter to win the stamps Peachy Keen Stamps has generously donated this week, the Make a Monster face Assortment stamps.  I will be announcing the winner Saturday morning so be sure to get your comments in today!