Love Notes from Ethan

This week is With Love week on the Pebbles blog.  Every day we are featuring projects created with Pebbles Valentine mid-release.  And it is such a great collection -- lots of red, pink, and white mixed in with some Kraft.  LOVE it!  Here's my layout that was on the blog yesterday.

Love Notes from Ethan 

Even though the quality of the photos of my son aren't the best, I still wanted to scrap this sweet memory.  I edited them the best I could but they were still a bit dark and grainy, so I printed them in wallet size.  That helped a bit.

I used my Cricut Expression and Just Because Cards cartridge to create the layered hearts and the word "love".  I added some sweet heart-shaped Pebbles buttons to the hearts for a little dimension.  And then to finish off the title, I used a variety of Pebbles alphabet stickers.  LOVE a mixed title!

For my journaling, I cut out three speech bubbles from the Pebbles Dear Valentine patterned paper and added them to my layout with a little foam adhesive.  Easy!

Well, that's it for me today.  I'm off to brave the cold weather (a crisp 36 degrees today) to do a little Christmas shopping.  I haven't even started yet.  Yikes!  Hope you have a fabulous day.

Jillibean Soup & Petaloo Gift Tags

Jillibean Soup and Petaloo have teamed up this week to bring you tons of scrappy Christmas inspiration.  Petaloo's specialty and floral embellishments are such a great pair with Jillibean Soup's Christmas Eve Chowder.  And just to prove it, here are three gift tags that I made. 

For You Tag

Season's Greetings Tag

JOY Tag

Aren't the colors of the Petaloo paper flowers a perfect match for the Jillibean's Christmas Chowder?  I thought so, too!  You really should go HERE and check out what the rest of the design team created -- SO cute!

Thanks for popping in!

Thankful Cricut Projects

Hello scrappy peeps!  Today I have a couple of Thanksgiving projects to share.  The first one is a card I created from Imaginisce's Happy Harvest paper collection for the release of the new I-Top 2.0.  LOVE the new version of the tool.  Sooo much easier to use.  You can read all about it and see more fab projects HERE at the Imaginisce blog.  But first, here's my card.

{Thank}ful

I used my Cricut Expression and Sophie cartridge to cut out the layered flower and leaves.  Then, I covered a large Imaginisce Brad Daddy in brown cotton fabric for the center.  Quick, easy, but oh so lovely layers and textures.

My second project is a Thanksgiving layout that I created for the Cricut Blog.  Be sure to check out my post HERE for detail shots, cut and supply lists, as well as CCR and Gypsy file downloads.

 Thankful Heart

Thanks for coming by today!  And I hope all my stateside friends have a Happy Thanksgiving.  I'm off to my in-laws house to enjoy some good food and good company!

Counting My Blessings

Hi friends!  Just wanted to share a layout that I have up on the Doodlebug Design Blog today.  There's also a tutorial for creating the journal pocket and tags.

Count Your Blessings

Thanks for stopping by!  And be sure to head over to the Doodlebug blog for your chance at an awesome giveaway!!!  See ya soon.

ScrapRoom November Recipe Card

Every month the ScrapRoom design team creates a double page layout complete with detailed directions for club members.  This is the layout that I created for November.

Happy Fall

I LOVE the large tree on this Little Yellow Bicycle paper, so I designed this layout around it.  Once I decided to just stick down the whole sheet, the rest of the layout came together pretty quickly.

I cut this cute blue frame from the striped paper and used it for my title.  It was just the dimension that the right page needed.

For this left side, I layered up some die cuts and created a flower out of a canvas strip.  The sticky back made it super easy to crumple and turn into a flower.

To see the rest of the design team's recipe cards, you can check out the blog HERE.  We'll be revealing the December kit and gallery soon, so be sure to come back soon.

Have a happy Monday!

Missing: Natural Tweenage Smile

Today I have three Jillibean Soup layouts to share.  And for some odd reason, all three of them are about my youngest boy.  Odd meaning that my tweenage son has forgotten how to smile.  Every time the camera is pointed anywhere near his face, he tenses up and his whole upper lip disappears.  The more I try to coach a natural smile out of him, the more contorted his face becomes.  So, unless I want to scrap pages and pages of candid soccer game pictures, I don't have that many of him to glue down right now.  In the meantime, here's some pages of my little redhead who is a total HAM and doesn't mind the camera at all.

He Melts My {Heart}

His Balloon Man

Oh my.  I. LOVE. Pennants.  So I covered this whole page in them.  Most of them were created from scraps, too.  Easy, trendy, and cute.  Can't help but love that!

First Day of Pre-K

Ok, so besides all my crooked border strips (UGH . . . gotta work on gluing stuff down straight!), did you notice the green alpha stickers?  I made my own patterned paper by adding a whole lot of random alpha stickers to some green patterned paper.  I love the tone on tone look and how it reinforces the school them of my page. And I love that it used up the rest of a sheet of alpha stickers!  Stash killer!

Jillibean Soup offers so many different styles of letters that it is really easy to create a mixed title.  And there is just something fun about a mix of fonts, textures, and colors on a title.  Fun!

Well, that is it for me today.  The kids are out of school for the next ten days, so we will be busy trying to keem them busy (read keep them from getting on our nerves).  And maybe, just maybe, the elusive tweenage smile will rear its beautiful, nautural head.  Have a good day!

Imaginise & Glue Arts: Day 3

Hi everyone!  Happy Wednesday to ya.  Happy two down and three to go.  Happy it's practically the weekend.  Ok, that one might be pushing it.  LOL

Today is Day 3 of the Glue Arts and Imaginisce Blog Hop.  Glue Arts sent me a nice assortment of adhesives to use with my Imaginisce papers and embellishments.  And it was such a nice pair.  Here's what I have up on the Imaginisce blog today.

Baby Shower Corsage

I used an assortment of Imaginisce's flowers in various shades of pink:  Fabric, Cupcake, and Roly Rosies.  And for the leaves, I used the backside of a sheet from the Berrylicious line.   

Glue Arts's Cut It Up 3D Foam, 3D RaisNs, and Adhesive Squares were perfect for attaching the layers with a strong hold.  Here are some close ups.

I think the 3D RaisNs are my favorite.  I love the dimension they provide while still being a bit flexible.  You can see more projects at the Imaginisce blog HERE and the Glue Arts blog HERE.  Be sure to leave some comments because there are usually prizes to be had.

See you soon!

Cricut Craft Room & Cricut Digitals

I am SUPER excited to share with you some new releases from Cricut.  First, Cricut Craft Room is now open.  And what is Cricut Craft Room, you may ask?  It is a FREE online design tool that allows you to view and design with Cricut's entire image library, and then cut with those images that you own.  The search tool is amazing!  You can see all the details and learn how to sign up HERE.

And along with the opening of Cricut Craft Room comes the release of 20 brand NEW digital cartridges, available for purchase and use NOW.  When you buy Cricut digital cartridges, they are immediately available for you to download and use with Cricut Craft Room with any Cricut machine.  To see these new cartridges (as well as some AMAZING projects created with them), go to the Official Cricut Blog HERE.

Oh, and be sure to leave a comment on the Official Cricut Blog for your chance to win TWO Cricut Craft Room Exclusives.  Woo hoo!!!  How fun!

Give Thanks Card

Yikes, totally forgot to post this card that went up on the Jillibean Soup blog last Friday.  Jill challenged the designers to use some of the new corrugated sheets and this is what I created.

Give Thanks Card

I used the Brown and Kraft Plain Corrugated Sheets to paper piece a couple of acorns.  I love how much texture they add to the card.  The sheets are also available in white and red.  You can find sooo many uses for them.  In fact, be sure to pop on over HERE to the Jillibean Soup blog to see what the rest of the girls came up with.  LOVE!

Thanks for stopping in today.  See you soon!

Thinking About Grandma

As I was looking through my Cricut Circle projects from the past few months, I ran across this layout that I did about my grandmother.  This is an older picture of her.  From before she had Alzheimer's.  This is how I want to remember her and that is what inspired the layout.  She passed away last week, so this layout is especially precious now.

Thinking About Grandma

I used the Cricut Circle exclusive Sophie cartridge.  It has so many fabulous feminine cuts to choose from, and I really liked the doilie shapes.  They were perfect for a page about my grandma.  These American Crafts Dear Lizzie papers compliment her shirt so well.  And she would have loved all the flowers on the page.

If you would like information about membership benefits and signing up for the Circle, check out this page.  I hope you'll consider joining us.  You'll LOVE it!

Joining Project Life

Saturday is chore day here at my house.  Sweeping, dusting, vaccuming, laundry, bathrooms.  This Saturday I also need to take down the Halloween decorations off the mantel and put up my Fall/Thanksgiving mantel decor.

And for the past few several Saturdays, I have needed to put away five buckets of layouts.  I finally got enough albums, page protectors, shelf space, and adhesive (to repair several layouts) to put them away but the pile is SO huge that I am just. NOT. motivated.  What is your system for getting layouts into albums?  How do you keep them from piling up?

I have decided, though, that I am going to try a new approach in 2012.  First, I am not going to create so many layouts.  Every single picture I take does not require an entire 12 x 12 page in an album, but I do still want to remember those moments.  So, I bought this from Amazon today.

It's the Project Life Amber Edition Core Set by Becky Higgins.  I have considered this project for the past couple of years, but thought it meant I would have to take a picture every day of the year and I know myself well enough to know that won't happen.  However, I've seen other bloggers showing how they make it work without a picture a day.  So, I am going to give it a try.  I'm hoping it will allow me to create fewer layouts while still recording whatever memories I want. 

I also bought this variety pack of 12 x 12 divided sheet protectors.  Having so many different types of pages will give me the freedom to put the album together however I like.  Sixty sheet protectors fit into an album.  Awesome!

I'm looking forward to playing around with this new system for documenting my family's memories, but I'm not letting myself open a single package until I have put away all my scrapbook pages from 2009, 2010, and 2011.  Ridiculous!

TSR November Sketch

Hiya scrappy peeps!  Hope you are well on this Fall Friday.  Today I wanted to invite you to play along with the ScrapRoom's November sketch.  It calls for one photo and a sprinkle of leaves, which you could change to any embellishment you like.  Pretty easy, right?  Here's the sketch and my take on it.

 Sweet Fall Memory

You can see more layouts using this sketch as well as the details about linking up your sketch HERE at the ScrapRoom.  Thanks for stopping by and have a great weekend!

Eleven One Eleven

Wow, it's November.  The eleventh month of two thousand eleven.  It just never slows down, does it?  Only 55 days until Christmas.  And only 61 days until next year.  Ok, enough of that.  I'm stressing myself out.  LOL!  On a happier note, today is reveal day at The ScrapRoom.  And if you love Fall, you will LOVE this month's Flavors of the Month kit.  I want to share a few of my projects.

Family in Fall

You're Sweet

Thankful for My Boys

Soooo many awesome patterns and embellishments this month.  You can see the full kit HERE and lots of awesome inspiration HERE.  And I'll see ya soon with some more work from this kit!