A Quick Baby Shower Card

Thanks for all the wonderful comments you've been leaving recently, and welcome to my new followers!

So, this has been a crazy week in my little section of the world!  In between preparing my 6th grade students for the state US History test yesterday and taking care of my family, I needed to make a baby shower card.  On Wednesday night (yes, I waited til the last minute, the shower was on Thursday) I started to pull out my Gypsy and the four new carts that my wonderful friend at craftymrs helped me find for $10 each this weekend.  But then I spotted a  Creative Memories Baby Boy and Baby Girl Photo Album Kit and inspiration struck.

I found the star paper and realized my new My Pink Stamper "Welcome Baby" stamp would fit perfectly inside the large star.  Then I matched the paper up with a second coordinating sheet from the same pack.  I cut the background plaid at 5 1/4 x 4 and mounted it on an A2 size cream colored card.  Then I cut the blue star paper at 4 X 4 1/4.  I mounted it  with the brown ribbon hiding the right edge of the paper.  I stamped it, and I was done!  It turned out really well and it was so easy!

Have a wonderful weekend!

Using my Gypsy to Make Cuts That I Don't Have

Hello everyone!  I hope that you enjoying a wonderful holiday week.  We recently went to stay overnight at my parents' house, and, like every good mom, I made sure that we had everyone's clothes and pj's.  However, just before we left our house, the DirectTV guy had been late for his appointment with us and it was a little crazy at our house to say the least.  So, when we arrived at my parents, I realized that we had everything except my pajama's and change of clothes.  Ooops.  So I borrowed a pair of my dad's pajama pants and a white tshirt.  So I wanted to send them a quick thank you note for still taking care of me, even at 38.

I looked through all my cartridges, and I have about 15 great cartridges, but I couldn't find a tshirt and pants.  So I used my Gypsy to create them.  I found that the pants could be from a scarecrow on my Creative Memories Cheerful Seasons cart and the shirt from a dress on my Paisley cart.  But hide contour didn't work, so I ran the scarecrow off the mat so only the pants were showing, and then used hide contour to get rid of the buttons on the pants.  For the shirt, I ran the dress off the side, and then used hide contour to get rid of the heart.  (Ignore the other paisley shapes on the mat, I was working on two projects at once.)

A double mat under the shirt and pants finished off the card.  I've been so impressed about what I've been able to do using my Gypsy.  If you haven't checked out Emma's blog at www.creativetimeforme.com, she has a lot of fantastic gypsy videos.  Have a great day!

Finishing Up the Last Homemade Gift

I hope you are all enjoying holiday festivities.  I've finished wrapping everything except the seven gifts which haven't yet arrived from Amazon.  (Yes, I'm very worried about this.)  But my two little elves were wonderful wrapping helpers today.

My last homemade gift for this Christmas has actually been in process for several months now.  Thanks to some time to work on it early this week, it is now completely finished.  It's an ABC album for my youngest daughter who just turned three.  I made one for our older daughter several years ago and she still loves looking at it.

I used a retired Creative Memories 7x7 album along with my CM 1 1/2 inch circle and square punches.  The stickers are from the CM Primary Power Palatte.  Once I decided on which pictures to include, putting it together went very quickly.  I do recommend laying everything out before you begin though.  That was how I realized that I was missing two of her uncles for the letter U page.

I will be entering the 'W' page in the My Pink Stamper challenge.  It's a bit of a stretch since the only brown I could put on the page is in the leaves, but I thought I would go ahead and share.  I'm also sharing it on the Fantabulous Cricut blog.  If you are visiting from either site, I would love to have you as a follower and/or read your comments.  Have a wonderful Christmas everyone!

A Color Challenge

First, let me thank you for visiting my blog. It's so exciting to read comments that people leave!

I created this 12x12 page for Robyn's green, brown, orange, and pink challenge at www.mypinkstamper.com. I used Creative Memories Simply Beautiful paper and the Cricut Walk in My Garden cartridge. I cut the pot at 3", the flowers and stems at 1 1/2 and 2", and the words at 1 1/4".

The word 'smiles' is not in the cartridge, but 'smile' is and there is a border feature which cuts 'smilesmile'. So I cut that and then cut off 'mile' by hand leaving me with 'smiles'. I love the welded letters, but don't have a Gypsy so sometimes thinking outside the box works. Have a great Friday!

Challenging Page for a Throwback Challenge

How do you create an album page when the only picture you have of the event is a Polaroid? You can't cut the picture or surrounding white because the chemicals inside will be exposed and the picture ruined, but it's not exactly an attractive shape to incorporate in a layout. I decided to try to deal with it by hiding it in plain site and at the same time participate in Emma's Throwback Thursday Challenge (http://www.creativetimeforme.com/2010/06/throwback-thursday-challenge-episode54.html).

Using the Doodlecharms cartridge, I cut the presents at 5 1/2 inches along with the bow and tag layer. The present on the top right became the spot for the title sticker. The present on the top left will be the journaling box. (I just used my scissors to cut out the main part of the present and then backed it with white paper.) I used the Polaroid to make the third present, tucked the base of the picture under the lower border to make it look like a picture with a white mat, and added the bows on top. By reversing the top layer of each of the bows, I felt like they had a little more dimension. The paper and cardstock are all from Creative Memories.

I'd love to hear how you might have dealt with a challenging album page!

Peachy Keen Stamps Challenge

I really am feeling very motivated by all the challenges people are posting on their blogs! This one is from Peachy Keen Stamps (http://peachykeenstampschallenge.blogspot.com/), and, while I don't own any of their stamps yet, I do have some on the way. I was a winner in a blog hop that they hosted last week. It's so exciting to win something! Adrianne from their office was wonderful about contacting me right away and sending the prize out as soon as I sent her my address. I'm hoping that they will arrive tomorrow. If the customer service was that good for someone who was receiving product for free, I would definitely buy from them!

On to the challenge, our family album for 2008 has outgrown one album and moved into a second. So I created this title page using the font and shapes from the George and Basic Shapes cartridge. After taking this picture, I added our last name to the tag on the bottom left. I have to say that I love the patterns and colors of the Creative Memories Primary Power Palate papers!

3-D Throwback Thursday Challenge

Emma at www.creativetimeforme.com is having another Throwback Thursday Challenge. I don't have the cartridge she suggested using, so I'm using some other oldies but goodies - Doodlecharms and Stretch Your Imagination. I made this card for my dad for Fathers' Day and added the 3-D element on the inside with a special message behind each acorn.

Each of the large acorns for inside was cut from the Doodlecharms acorn and leaf cut. I scored the acorns to make tabs and used Zig 2-way glue to attach the tabs to the card. My favorite part is that each acorn folds down and my dad will be able to see that we have written something that we love about him on the back of each one.

I used Stretch Your Imagination for the front of the card. The layers for the acorn stack were very easy to cut and put together. The letter stickers and all the papers are from Creative Memories.

Unexpected Color Combination

So this weekend I managed to squeeze in time for creating a card for Emma's challenge a www.creativetimeforme.com. Her throwback challenge this week was to use the Stretch Your Imagination cartridge and the colors blue, brown, and red to create a card.

I really struggled with the combination of colors. So I started by finding three papers in those colors that I felt worked together. Luckily, I found exactly what I was looking for in a retired Creative Memories Storybox. (I've found that card making is a great way to use up some of my older Storybox papers.) Then I used the foundation card in the Stretch Your Imagination cart to cut out the card base in cream cardstock. Then the Flrsh3 Shadow and Blackout cuts for the two layers and the birdhouse was last. I repeated the cream cardstock in the Layer cut of the birdhouse. I also made a matching envelope for this 3" card, but I'll tell you about that in a post later this week.

Fathers' Day

This is a card that I created for my husband for Fathers' Day. We have two wonderful daughters whom he loves, so I thought it was perfect. The cardstock is from Creative Memories. The lighter blue is embossed using the Cuttlebug, and I used A Child's Year to cut the silhouette. Simple yet meaningful.

My Pink Stamper Challenge #2

Ok, on to challenge #2. This challenge was:
Make a project incorporating your scraps! Super simple. Everyone has scraps, right?
Scraps, of course I have scraps! This adorable little bag was cut using the Plantin Schoolbook cartridge and cardstock from Michael's that was leftover from cutting bulletin board letters for my classroom. The flower and paper ribbon are from the Creative Memories Delightful Power Palatte. I filled the little bag with Crayola mini cards from Michael's.

My Pink Stamper Challenge #1

So while we spent last Saturday lost inside our nearest Ikea store, I was still able to enjoy some paper crafting on Sunday afternoon. I enjoyed completing some of My Pink Stamper's National Scrapbook Day challenges.

This is my entry for Challenge #1:
Make a scrapbook layout, card or other item with your mother or someone dear to you in mind.
Since my girls and I had already created our Mother's Day cards, I decided to make a card for my best friend who lives in Pennsylvania. The flower, sentiment, and purple cardstock are from Creative Memories along with the bubble punch. The white cardstock and ribbon are from Michaels.