Inspired By

That was the theme on the Pebbles Blog last week.  We were to create a project based on an inspiration piece.  And where did I go?  Pinterest, of course.  LOVE that place!  Here's what I found -- a little beauty by Melissa Phillips.

And here's what I created -- a Valentine's Day gift bag for my mom.  I used the Pebbles With Love collection and a plain kraft bag.

Be sure to pop by the blog and see the rest of the designers' fabulous Inspired By projects.  You might just find some inspiration yourself.  Have a great weekend!

Soul Mate

Hello Thursday!  Today ProvoCraft has released several new Cricut Craft Room Exclusive cartridges.  I had the privilege of designing with Chess Set.  My family loves to play chess, so I made a Valentine's Day card for my husband.  Hopefully, he's not checking the blog today.  Hee!

Soul Mate Card

Be sure to check the official Cricut Blog HERE to see all the cartridges and design team projects with each one.  Super cute!

Project Life: Week Three

I have another week of Project Life to share. I am loving this project SO much that I took it with me to a crop over the weekend.  My fellow scrappers had to listen to me go on and on about this book.  By Sunday, though, I had people asking me to write down Becky Higgins' name and to tell them what they need to order.  Um . . . . I'm thinking I need some dividends.  Ha ha!  Anyhoo, here's Week Three.

Pretty simple design again this week. No surprise there. I used my Martha Stewart anywhere star punch on a journaling card, then backed it with paper from the extra paper pack. Easy! Another easy embellishment are the number stickers that come with the Core Kit. Just a little pop of color to link my photos and journaling.

For the right side, I dug out a couple of items in my stash.  Baker's twine wrapped around a journal card, a couple of American Crafts stickers, and my Martha Stewart butterfly punch.  It doesn't take much to add a little interest and color to the journaling cards.

My insert sheet holds the boys' report cards.  Ethan was especially excited over his behavior grade.  Given that he gets a frownie face or oops! face on his calender almost daily, I was quite surprised that he made such a good grade.  And the other sheet is a handwriting sample from this week.  And how helpful that the teacher date stamped it for me.

Well, that's it for me today.  I'll be back soon with a sneak from The ScrapRoom's February kit.  YUM!!!

Hello Thursday on Friday!

Yesterday was Hello Thursday on the Cricut Blog. I wanted to share a few projects that I created with some of the awesome new releases.

Chemistry Valentine Tubes

These were created with the Cricut Craft Room Exclusives Chemistry cartridge.  Sooo many cute uses for this one besides just science.  And the tubes are from SRM Stickers.  LOVE those!!!

LOVE Frame

This frame is on my mantle, and it was SO easy to make.  It's a cheap 12" x 12" metal frame that I filled with four sheets from My Mind's Eye 6x6 paper pad and four layered letters cut from Letter Envy.  That cart is my favorite!  So fun and funky and elegant all at the same time.  Here are some close ups.

Dos Amigos

These pictures crack. me. up.  My scrappy friend Beatriz drew these mustaches on my boys' faces to entertain them while I packed up my stuff at a crop.  Too funny!  As soon as I saw the Ole cartridge, I knew I had to scrap these photos.  Just look at this guy . . . perfect, hun?

Sweet Love Treat Bag

Three new Valentine's Day digital cartridges were released, and each of them is precious and just perfect for all your Happy Heart Day projects.  I made this little treat bag topper for my boys. 

That's only four of the recent new releases from ProvoCraft.  Be sure to pop over to the Cricut Blog or to Cricut.com for more great inspiration!

Doodlebug Cards

The Doodlebug Design Team was fortunate to work with a Becky Fleck sketch for this month's Doodle Cards.  I created a couple of cards with the same sketch but they have a totally different look.  What do you think?

Love Card

This 3D heart is SUPER easy.  I punched out five hearts, folded them in half, and then glued them together.  If you don't have a heart punch, you could use a die cut machine or freehand them.  Remember doing that in grade school?  Fold your paper in half, draw the heart, and cut.  Fun times!

Sweet Card

This one was inspired by the strawberry Doodle Pops sticker.  Too cute!  To create the sentiment, I cut apart one of the little flag stickers and tucked the edge of it under the leaves. 

You can see the sketch HERE at the Doodlebug blog and you can find out the details about submitting your card.  We'd love to have you play along!



Friendly Frog

Hello scrappy friends!  We're on day four of a four-day-weekend at my house.  Didn't get done nearly as much as I'd hoped.  My list is always longer than my energy level.  Hee!

Anyway, I just wanted to share a layout that I had up on the Jillibean Soup blog recently.  This one is about one of my son's favorite finds -- a toad that visits our yard regularly.  That toad gets barked at by the dogs and rough-housed by my boys, but he keeps coming back.  I say he's dumb but my kids say he's friendly. 

Friendly Frog

 

Those paper strips (yes, STILL loving those) are all from various 6 x 6 pads.  The smaller patterns are perfect for the small strips.  And I just love all the color and pattern it adds.  I've been surprised at how much I've used the Paper Pads on layouts since I always assumed they were for cardmakers.

Alright then, gotta go finish up a few chores to get ready for school and work tomorrow.  Back to the grind!

Project Life: Week Two

Yesterday, I completed my second spread for my Project Life album.  It was an absolute delight to scrapbook just for me, no assignment or deadline, no specific papers or embellishments to work with.  I had a great time digging through all my bins and boxes looking for stickers, die cuts, and punches.  Here's what I came up with.

I noticed that a couple of my pictures had the same green color in them as the green in some of the Core Kit cards, so I went with a green, yellow, and red color scheme.  I may not be so matchy, matchy every week, but that's part of the fun.  Just letting myself play!

I found an apple chipboard circle to add to the title card to represent this week's school theme. I need to go back and add a title, maybe something like All About School. Still thinking on that one.

 

I have a mini stapler in my Project Life bucket after seeing lots of staples in other people's albums.  Love that extra bit of texture that a staple adds.  In fact, I'm ordering Tim Holtz's Tiny Attacher to use for this project.  Eeek!!!  Can't wait for that to show up.

A yellow snowflake?  How about that, hun?  I wanted a bright pop of color there, so why not.  Hee hee!  I have found that punches are a great tool for adding quick, flat embellishments. 

My favorite find for this page was this candy jar sticker.  It was in an Echo Park collection pack, and it was perfect to accompany journaling about my son getting a huge bag of gumballs in the mail.  I also like that it took up the entire journaling card . . . I love bold, bright graphic elements.  Score!

Well, that's Week Two.  My kiddos have already poured over every detail of the page.  They LOVE that this album contains an entire week's worth of moments and that they can look at it right away.  And for me that's even more inspiration to keep at it! 

Have a happy Monday!



Make Mine a Double

What a fun assignment I had for Pebbles this week! A double-page layout. Woo hoo!!! When I came across a cute picture of my boys on New Year's Day last year, I was inspired to create a 2011 year-in-review layout. Here's what I came up with.

2011

Those  photobooth style photos were a happy accident.  My original intent was a large collage, but the spacing wasn't right when I printed my pics.  I decided to go with it, and I really like the fun result.

I really like the combination of primary colors and kraft in the Fresh Goods line.  With such cute papers and so many photos, I kept the embellishing to a minium.  I used my Cricut Expression to cut out the 2011 title, some Pebbles mini alphabet stickers to label the pictures with the month, and a  few layered butterflies.  Easy!

I love how this one turned out.  Just goes to show you that sometimes the best laid plans don't work out and you end up with something better.  Woo hoo!!! 

Thanks for popping in today.  Have a great weekend!

Project Life: Week One

You may remember from THIS POST that I decided to join in on Project Life this year.  My supplies arrived in November, and ever since then I've been surfing the Internet (mostly Pinterest and Becky Higgins' blog) looking for different ideas about getting organized, setting up the album, keeping up, etc.  There is a LOT of inspiration out there.  I decided to keep it simple -- since that was the appeal to me in the first place.  I gathered together all the Core Kit contents and a few items from my stash and created this little Project Life bucket.

And then this weekend, I made the title page and first week's spread.  It is very simple.  Maybe even too simple.  I figure once I get the hang of this method of scrapbooking, I can go back and embellish these pages if I still feel the need to.  Anyhoo, here they are!

After seeing Lisa Dickinson's title page HERE, I really wanted to make one just like it.  However, I didn't have a page protector with the same size openings, I didn't have a picture of all four of us together, and I didn't want to stress over the very. first. page.  So, I used what I had.  And I like it just as well.  Wanna know why?  Because it took me about ten minutes and I just love the pictures I chose.  However, if you have any suggestions on how to dress up my 2012 card, I'm all ears.

As you can see from my date card, I am planning to create a double page spread for each week of the year; however, I am not planning to take a photo every day.  I know that will not happen.  So, I plan to take whatever pictures I want and then I'll figure out how to make it work for the album.  The first pictures I printed were the eight center pictures from a trip to the park.  I always take a ton of pictures at the park, and I usually create a bunch of separate layouts using those pics.  SO glad to have them all here in one spot.  Then, I scanned in a note from my oldest to my youngest, printed it, and paired it with a journal card.  And finally, I added a picture that I took at the movies.  I also added a picture of the movie poster that I downloaded.  Easy!

For this right side, I added four pictures of an Uno game along with the score sheet.  My oldest totally changed the rules and ended up winning with 2,000,189 points.  LOL!  I also added a couple of pictures of the boys chowing down on some pizza and soft drinks -- they were crazy excited to actually get to drink a whole can of soda.  And then lastly, I added a journal card labeled This Week with a little run down of what all the pictures are about. 

I would have liked to add some stickers or stamps to the journal cards, but I'm not really sure where.  Or what.  Or if it's really necessary.  So, I'm waiting to see.

Are you doing Project Life?  If so, I'd love to see your pages or hear any tips/tricks you have to offer.  Leave me a comment . . . invite me over to your blog.  Us Lifers gotta stick together!  Ha ha!



Dear Pebbles

For my Dear Pebbles assignment this month, I created a couple of cute cards.  Even though I used the New Addition 2011 line (primarily intended for babies), I was able to create a couple of all occasion cards.  LOVE it when a line is versatile like that.

Love You Card

The cute swirled pink paper clips are also by Pebbles.  I had a whole stash of those at one time or another and never really used them in any way I thought worth mentioning.  But these little cuties fit perfectly on top of the New Addition 2011 layered die cut flowers.  How fun is that?  Hmmm . . . wonder if I have any more of those laying around here somewhere?  LOL!

Precious Card

Have you noticed a theme?  Scallops, pennants, flags, layered die cuts?  Yep, that's what I'm into these days, and I'm allowing myself to just run with it.  As in every. single. project.  We'll see.  Maybe in a few weeks months, I'll be over it.  Doubt it, but we'll see.

Ok, that's it for me today.  Gotta get back to chores.  And not the fun scrappy kind either.  Ha ha!  Happy Saturday to ya!