Wolf Birthday

November 1 is my son's birthday, and he requested a wolf-themed party! You can see my post about the invitations and the animal masks I made for the party HERE.

Here is the main layout for the birthday party. On the back side of the right page are some more pictures and a blessing card from when I had my baby shower (all the attendees wrote a blessing for us to pull one on each birthday). There will also be a few of the page protectors that just hold photos to store the rest of the pics in. I took a sampling of the party pics for this page.

I'm also on a spending freeze, so all my scrapping is to be with stuff in my stash, and this is no exception! I did this layout at a crop where I decided not to take my cricut in with me, forcing me to use only embellishments and letter stickers from my stash! I hand cut those banners! The printed papers are Dream Street... I really loved the woodgrain one, wish I had more of that! And yes, for those following my Charlene's Button challenge... I used two Button Box buttons! (the woodgrain "photo" corners)

Winter Holiday Cards

So, I've been trying to make our winter holiday cards for the last few years. I try to make a "simple" design in the hopes I get them done quick, but gluing these together took a while so they weren't as simple as I'd wanted. lol

This year I also wanted to stick to using only my stash, which meant that I had to find enough cardstock of each color to make the cut top layer, and another layer for one of the mats. Fortunately, I found enough cool blues and purples to make these. A few of these colors may be non-traditional but hey... I managed to not buy a thing! :)  I still need to do something with the insides, probably a stamped sentiment. But at least I got 40 of these done and I can finish up the stamping this weekend.

These cards were created by welding snowflakes and a sentiment from several cartridges into a rectangle frame that I sized to fit a card that would fit into a regular size #10 business envelope. See below for the cartridges used!

Cricut Info and other supplies used:
Designed by Michele Donner-Ramsey

Cricut machines:  Expression and Gypsy
Cartridges used:  A Child's Year, Cake Basics, Christmas, Country Life (Sentiment), Art Philosophy, Joys of the Season, MS Seasonal Cake Art, Plantin
Supplies: white and colored cardstock, adhesive

Violet Jelly!

Greetings everyone! :)

Here is another "use your stash" layout that I finished at a crop this past Saturday. I'm very pleased with how this turned out!

I have had these lovely Kaiser Craft papers in my stash forever. Kaiser is one of my favorite paper manufacturers, and for the longest time I've hoarded my stash of their stuff. NO MORE! I will be using it up! LOL

This this last spring I put my mind to learning how to make violet jelly. In past years it seemed we just didn't have enough violets growing in the yard, but my very careful attention to letting weeds grow rampant and unchecked in our yard gave us an abundant crop of violets this year. :)  So my son and I hit the grass to collect as many violets as we could!

I took pictures of every step of violet jelly-making - it was super fun and easy (as any jelly-making process can be called "easy").  But that meant I had more pictures than space on two 12x12 pages... so I used the die cut shape in the middle... with one half of it being a flap, that pictures are visible only when the flap is lifted. See below!

You can see in the center the green side of the die cut had hidden 4 more pictures.

I used lots of cricut cuts on these pages. The title uses the font from the newest Cricut Circle cartridge, "Something to Remember". The violets are from 50 States! an oldie but goodie cartridge. :)

The title and it's shadow was welded on my gypsy. The violets, 3 different forms of them, were cut in two different shades of violet cardstock as well as green for the leaf layer. The two different violet colors allowed me to trim and make my own extra layer on a couple of the flowers for two-toned violets. I also used a white gel pen and some other pens to do some coloring in the flower centers. I used my photos of the violets we picked as a guide to making my paper violets more realistic looking.

I also used a couple Charlene's Button Box buttons, a green square one became a flower pot, and a cute little purple butterfly.

Thanks for stopping by!

Burlesque le Mustache!

Hello everyone!
So! My hubby and I have been saying to each other for a few years that we wanted to go see a burlesque show put on by a local troupe. But we never got around to it! Then, a good friend of mine joined the troupe and we KNEW we had to go see her first performance! It was so fun! Not raunchy at all, as we never really saw more than you'd see on some commercials! :P  Now, we weren't allowed to take pictures but the owner of the troupe had posted some rehearsal pics and I snatched them off the 'net. :) 

The funny thing was that I had this collection of scrapbook product from Glitz Design French Kiss line. I'd won the ENTIRE collection from a raffle back in March! (the link goes to their site with all the collection). When I'd won it, there was this mini-book set of pages that had the above cover and I knew I'd have to save for when I finally got to go see a burlesque.

So, I made this mini-book with the product from this line that I had in my stash since March. It was perfect for this project. I had lots of pages to work with, so I was even able to leave two pages picture-free for a couple pictures I knew were out there but that I couldn't nab and print.

 The pictures center around my friend whose performance name is Nixie Hex. ;)  Can you believe this beautiful woman is the mother of 7!?

Everything used in this book was from my stash, starting with the product that I won, which included 12x12 papers, the 6x6 paper pad, epoxy stickers, glitzer stickers, giant rhinestones, journaling stickers, layered stickers, ephemera, stamps and title stickers!

 I also used other things from my stash, including ribbons and bling.

 I nabbed some awesome pictures, even if they weren't at the actual show... rehearsal was good enough!

 But I did get some pictures myself after the show! I took one of me with my friend as well as some other mutual friends with her. I centered this mini-book around my friend because I intended to give it to her as a momento of her first burlesque, which I did last friday. :)

In addition to making this book, which used a lot of the collection that I had, I also made the scrapbook layout for my own scrapbook, finishing out the bulk of what I had. I had too many pictures for a 2 page layout, so I had two half pages as well, that went between the pages in my book.

So, another USE MY STASH project... or projects! done!

Thanks for stopping by!

Birthday time!

My son's birthday is November 1st. :)  We're having his birthday party today! Since we're having it at a pizza place, I did not make a huge pile of decorations or anything, but I did make the invites and some masks for the kids. My son chose a hard theme to decorate for... and I was lazy. LOL

Here are the invites:

My son wanted a wolf theme for the party. There's a story here:  When I was pregnant, two of my good friends were also pregnant. We were talking names one day and one of them said "if it's a boy, we're naming him Aidan Wolf" and the other friend said, "What a coincidence, we're naming ours Frederick Wolfgang".  So I said, "wait a minute! I want in on that! I'll put wolf somewhere in my son's name!"  So we all did! Kevin James Wolff is part of the wolf pack of boys born in 2006. ;)  Anyway, my son thinks it's cool and wanted a wolf themed party.  He told me the imagery he wanted as part of the theme and I made the invites accordingly! The card base is from Cricut Wild Cards and the wolf portion is from Pumpkin Carvings. :)

I also made the kids some masks to wear.

I made two each of all the masks, the cats are the only ones that are different from each other though. These were made from the Cricut digital image set Animal Masks.

And guess what! Everything was made using my stash. :)

Flower Spray Swap

Hello everyone!
In September, I participated in my first online swap, on the Cricut Circle messageboard.  We all made flower sprays! The picture above is mine, I made flowers from paper using a rolled spiral flower that I cut with my Gypsy and Cricut, then using wire and beads, I attached them all together. They were very easy but after making so many of them, my fingertips were SORE! lol

In the process of making my sprays.

Here's what the other ladies made!  (my photos do not do justice to how beautiful these are!)

Our hostess, AmyS, made this one. Her Website

 This one is by BulldogMommy. Go to her website

 This lovely spray is by FredaC and here is her blog

 This is by GrannyAnne and here's her website

 I love these colors. By Scrapperbecka CreationsWithBecka

 By KauaiMelody at her blog CricutMelody

By Erika: her website here

Thanks for stopping by!

What Happens at the Crop...

...Stays at the Crop!!

This is a USE YOUR STASH layout I did with pictures from Scrapaganza's last Favorite Things crop, the summer of 2011. Our theme for the crop was a Las Vegas style theme, including tshirts we had made that said What Happens at the Crop, Stays at the Crop. One of my co-workers, her hubby dressed up as nightclub Elvis, we had lots of fun games and a costume contest.

In August, Cricut Circle members had access to all the digital cricut image sets, and I made as many cuts as I had time to make for pictures I knew I'd want to scrap. At that time, I knew I would be scrapbooking these pictures, so I used the Las Vegas digital image set to cut the dice and the Las Vegas sign.

The diamond background in red was cut using Artiste, and I welded 4 of the diamond backgrounds together to make the background for this layout. I wanted something evocative of playing cards but didn't want to spend the time welding one image at a time... then I found this diamond background on Artiste.

Everything is from my stash, from the scraps I cut everything from, to the ribbon, papers and Charlene's Button Box buttons! :) 

Thanks for stopping by!