Sarah's First Christmas

Last year I shared a preview with you of a project I had been working on.


Well, it took me forever to get it in the mail and for my niece to actually receive it. And then I forgot about it. For some reason it came to mind the other day and I thought I would share it with you.

First of all, let me give you a little advice. When you make something for someone and have to mail it, go ahead and send it certified or whatever where it can be tracked. I sent Shannon 2 packages at the exact same time by USPS using the flat rate boxes. Then I sent her a facebook message to let her know they were coming and to please let me know when they arrived. Six days later, I got a nice little message that a package had arrived and blah, blah, blah. Well, I could tell that it wasn't THE package.

THIRTY-THREE days later (yes, I'm going out of my mind by now but had plenty of Race for the Cure related things going on), Shannon's neighbor decided to return from vacation and brought her 2nd package over. Yes, it was delivered to the WRONG house and just sat there for a month! UGH!

OK, it may be out of my system now. Maybe not though.

Anyway, I had been doing so many ABC albums that I wanted to do something different for Shannon's daughter, Sarah. I thought a Christmas album would be cute. After much debate, I decided to go with the 12 Days of Christmas as the theme. From there I had to come up with 12 items that I could make with my cricut and would fit. Thankfully, I had plenty of suggestions from friends. Another friend (thanks, Gayla) suggested that I send her all of the items. I sent the stocking before Christmas so that she would at least have it and told Shannon more would be following. I just had no idea how long that would be.

I managed to get the album made and most of the items obtained. However, by procrastinating in getting it mailed, Sarah outgrew some of the items. Bad aunt!!!! I also included extra papers from the album for Shannon to use for mats, etc. So Shannon was really confused when she got the first box with odds and ends of multiple items including scrap paper. Sweet thing never asked if I had gone stark raving mad, but I'm sure she thought it. I mean really, SIX rubber ducks?

OK, ok, here it is:

Well, when I view the slideshow on the blog, it is only showing part of the layouts. If you click on the slideshow, it should take you to my photobucket page where you can look at each layout. Sorry.

The paper was an 8x8 stack I found at Hobby Lobby. It had lots of glitter. I used 3 CTMH cardstock colors for the solids and rotated them. I tried to keep the format fairly consistent throughout the book by putting the number ornaments in the same place on most of the pages. I also used Stickles, google eyes and ribbon to girly it up.

For the cover page, I used Design Studio to cut 1st Christmas into the pink ornament. I ran the pink paper through my Xyron where the adhesive would go on the back and then, leaving the backing on, I ran it through for the adhesive to go on the front. I took the backing off the FRONT and covered the ornament with CTMH Prisma glitter. Once it was well covered and the access glitter shaken off and poured back into the bottle, I took the backing off of the back and placed it on a darker ornament which had already gone through the Xyron to adhere the back to the page.

I also included a copy of One Baby Jesus: A New Twelve Days of Christmas book. I hope that Shannon was able to find pictures to fit the pages of her album. I can't believe she's already had her 2nd Christmas.

I hope you and your family are enjoying a nice weekend. I'm spending mine scrapbooking with the Jammers. Yes! Actually scrapbooking!

Jill

Stocking Banner

Happy 2012! Hope you have had a happy beginning to the New Year. I also hope to be able to scrapbook, create and share with you more this year. 2011 was k-razy! Here's to a quieter 2012 for me.

OK, I did not manage to share this with you before the holidays, so let's just pretend that I'm sharing early for Christmas 2012. :D

Seems like everyone has been making banners lately and I wanted in on the fun. I wanted one on my mantle for Christmas but didn't want to use pennants. As we use a stocking hanger for our stockings instead of hanging them from the mantle, I thought stockings might be cute. But I also didn't just want to say Merry Christmas. Finally--Happy Birthday Jesus.


I used stocking1 from Christmas Cheer for the base and its shift for the detail (both cut at 5 3/4"). However, I only needed the top cuff so hid the nail, toe and heel pieces. I also hid the toe, heel and cuff lines on the base stocking as I didn't want these to cut. I probably could have welded those instead of hiding.


Calligraphy Collection has become my favorite font cartridge lately. I didn't want a lot of layers and wanted to be able to see the letters from across the room, so I just used the shadow of the basic font for my letters cut at 2 1/2".


I would have added glitter or cut from glitter paper for the white except for the fact that my son has a glitter phobia.


For his sake, I try to avoid glitter when I know he is going to be around.


Here's the fireplace on Christmas Eve after Santa made an early stop to fill our stockings and before everyone arrived. If you click on the photo, you can see the silver letters I found to attach to our stockings. Everyone loved the banner.


I plan to add something at each end next year to "hold" the string. I just ran out of time this year and couldn't decide what I wanted to use.

Have a great week!

BTW, while not using my blog in almost a year, I have lost the connection to upload my files. You should be able to recreate this file on your own if interested, but you can comment on this post and leave your email address if you would like for me to email it to you.

Thanks,
Jill

Holy Smokes!

Holy Smokes! I knew it had been a while, but had NO IDEA it had been 2 months since I posted. So sorry! I really need to get away from Facebook. It's evil!

Actually, I have been working on a project that is finally completed. Now I just need to get it in the mail to the recipient so that I can share it with you. Here's a sneak peak:


I hope everyone is doing well, had wonderful holidays, is surviving this crazy winter, and has managed to get more crafting accomplished than me.

Once again, I'm asking for your assistance to help Diane. She won the Cricut Cruise and is now working to become a Design Team member for Cosmo Cricket.

Happy 2011,
Jill

Help Diane

Yes, I know I haven't posted in forever. Life is really busy, but I promise I'll get there eventually.

In the meantime, please go help Diane win a Cricut Cruise if you aren't already doing so.

Thanks,
Jill

Ariel Card

Our trip to Dallas in August was also intended to celebrate Layla's 4th birthday. Unfortunately, Layla was running a fever and her birthday celebrations had to be rescheduled. Anyway, above is her card. I thought she would really like Ariel.

I didn't want to just plop Ariel on the card, so I decided to layer some of the sea plants. And what's a little girl's card without glitter?


I had a lot of trouble with her eyes but finally used Stickles for the pupils and took care of that. I selected the Wish on Gypsy Wanderings for my sentiment cut at 1.25.


I wanted some dimension to the card, so I used the 3-d glue dots to pop Ariel and pop dots for Wish.


We were able to spend some time with Layla and present her with her gifts and card, all of which she loved. Along with the gifts Denise and Brian got her, they kept her busy most of the night.

I'll have to remember to make Avalee a special card next year. Her birthday was a few weeks ago. We knew we wouldn't be able to go back but gave her gifts to her while we were there. Although she loved her first very own Barbie, she really wanted the cars we gave Ben. Sure do miss all of them!

Jill

Little Bo Peep

What a beautiful weekend! Great temperatures, beautiful weather, winning Razorbacks and lunch with Matt, April, Josh, Tosha and Uncle Herman. Awwwwwwwww.

We finally made it to Dallas two weeks ago so that I could deliver Alyse's nursery rhyme album to Darci. Well, we did other things, but I was glad to finally make delivery.

The inside of the back cover on her album has a plastic pocket intended to hold a cd. I decided to use it to hold a card instead.


Since the pocket was square, I opted for a square card and decided on 4.25. I probably should have made it a bit smaller with all of the layers, but it fit.

I like the design of the monogram cuts but needed mine to be square, so I used Design Studio to alter the solid one found on the WlcmBaby key.


The 6" cut was close to the width I needed, so I started there. I then changed both the width and height in the Shape Properties box to 4".


My second issue was that I wanted the design to reflect the scallop along the bottom edge instead of being straight. To get around this, I first created my cut page with the design and it's shadow together as they would appear on the card:


Then I placed the adjusted mat where I wanted the scallops:


And finally I moved the design so many spaces to the right using the arrow key on my laptop, clicked on the mat to make it active, copied it, pasted it and moved the new mat the same number of spaces to the right.


So all of the scalloped edges lined up just right.


We had a great time in Dallas with lots of kid time (although never enough), visiting with friends and a little bit of shopping thrown in.


Here's my cut file if you're interested: Bo Peep Card

Hope you're all having a wonderful weekend,
Jill

Envelope for 3 x 3

I need to get this on the blog before I mess around and throw the paper away that has this information. It's amazing that it has made it this long on my scrap table.

When I made Rose Mary's cards a few weeks ago, her envelopes were a bit haphazard as my score board didn't have the dimensions to fit and I was out of time. I plan to make more 3 x 3 cards and didn't want to go through that with the envelope again. So after we got home and I had a bit of time, I experimented until I found a good size.

Cut a 5 1/2" square and score at 2 1/8" on all 4 sides. Clip, fold and add tape.


Working at my table today and hope to have more to share soon.


Hope you're somewhere nice and cool.

Jill

Back to School

It's about that time once again. I am so dreading next week as traffic will be horrible once again. Since I no longer have one in school, I don't have the other issues of back to school. Yea!!!!!

I hope to get some projects accomplished this weekend but thought I'd just remind you of my school related projects from last year.

There are the luggage tags I made for Logan and Bella here.

And the sign for first day of school pictures here.

Gosh, looking at these, I sure wish we were back in Branson. We haven't been back since that trip and I'm really missing it.

I think I need to go make a list of the projects I need to work on so that I don't forget something.

Have a great weekend,
Jill

Hello Kitty

Hmmmmm. Maybe that's why I never shared the Hello Kitty luggage tags. I can't find a picture of them. I think I made these for Abby sometime last year, and I helped Rose Mary make some for Emma a while back.


Here's the picture of Meadow's.


And a print screen of all three.

The cut file includes a Paper Setup page for the Cut Page and a separate one for the Rainbow. The setup page for the rainbow includes some instructions. Because the rainbow parts are grouped with only 2 "contours" to a cut, it is impossible at this time to "hide selected contour" part of it and it still be hidden when you reopen the file. Therefore, you'll either have to hide the parts yourself or just cut all of the parts twice. Make sense?

To "hide selected contour", click on the part you want to hide to make it active, right click anywhere on the mat and click "Hide Selected Contour" on the pop-up menu.


Just a rerun of Miller, Sebastian and Meadow's tags.



Are you or a little friend a Hello Kitty fan? Thinking of you on this one, Susan.

Hello Kitty Luggage Tags


Where's Friday,
Jill

Fire Breathing Dragons

OK, so they aren't fire breathing, but they sure are cute.

When I created Aidan and Maddy's birthday cards (link here), I started work on tags to match but ran out of time. Then I needed a tag for Sebastian, so I decided to do his and Aidan's at the same time. I'll see Kay in a few weeks and hope to have Maddy's made by then too.


I cut the dragons but then remembered how much better they looked using the Cri-Kit pens. So I started over and drew with the pens before cutting.


Doesn't it make a world of difference! I need to remember to use them more.


Since I was working with Nursery Rhymes for Miller, I went ahead and used that font for everything. I rather like it anyway.


Now, I need to get Maddy's done along with making some for Layla, Alyse and Avalee.

Dragon Luggage Tags


Have a good day,
Jill

Miller Time

You may or may not remember James and Ashley that got married last year. Well, there has been an addition to the family. A bouncing baby boy, Miller. We are all so excited for them!

Reorganizing Rose Mary's scrap closet last week got me motivated to come home, clean my desk and get busy. So I made more luggage tags. No, there is NO end to them.

I love the Cow Jumped Over the Moon element on Nursery Rhymes and knew that I could get by with using it for Miller since he's still so little.


I tried to use colors to match his room. Isn't it precious?

Of course, I didn't want Meadow and Sebastian to feel left out, so I made tags for them too. I thought Meadow would like Hello Kitty and a dragon for Sebastian.


Oops! I had plans for a post regarding the dragon, but I thought I had already shared the Hello Kitty tags. I can't find it, so I guess you'll be seeing her again too.

Anyway, Sherrye was thankful for an "excuse" to go see them, and everyone loved the tags.


I just love this cartridge!

Cow Jumped Over the Moon Luggage Tag


Enjoy,
Jill

Lollypop, Lollypop, Oh Lolly Lolly Lolly

Had another crop with some of the Divas last month. Actually, for this small group, we call ourselves the Jammers because we love to crop and can just spend the day in our jammies.

Anyway, our plans included the celebration of Angie's birthday, but we were the ones surprised. haha We're not sure who had their days mixed up, but Angie's family made plans for the same weekend which included family photos. So .... However, we did enjoy her birthday cake and strawberries! We even took pictures of us enjoying it and texted to her. Yes, we can be evil but all in fun.

Her absence gave me time to make her birthday card. Yes, always behind. I did have her gift card ready but hadn't had/taken the time to make the card. I had it in Design Studio, just not cut.

Remember that Angie is the one with the new grandson, Eli, and her and her husband's grandparent names are Lolly and Pop? So, naturally, her card HAD to be (wait for it) ...



a lollypop. (Yes, I know it should be lollipop, but she's Lolly.)


Pull on the stick and you have the card


with the gift card attached.

Of course, it had to be a fairly large lollipop for the gift card to fit inside. There are several cartridges with a lollipop, but this one was from Mickey & Friends.


I used the base of the lollipop element to get the size for the stick but just cut circles since I needed the stick to be attached to the card and not the sucker. I used George and Basic Shapes for the circles, stick and card elements and used Mickey and Friends just for the swirl layer of the lollipop. I cut out additional "sticks" and just glued them all together to make it stronger.

I think it turned out pretty cute. I probably should have added Stickles, but too late now. Happy Belated Birthday, Angie! (She received her card last weekend when Rose Mary got hers.)

Lollipop Gift Card


Later,
Jill

Road Trip

Rose Mary gave us a scare last week when her husband replied to one of our emails that she was in the hospital. Yikes! Angie and I decided it was time for a road trip. None of the other girls were available. I asked Rose Mary if we could come and told her that we would vacuum her floors, clean her toilets, or whatever she needed done. She said we could come but couldn't clean her house.

I left the house a bit after 9:00 Saturday morning, picked Angie up, drove, drove and drove, took the wrong exit (A instead of B or B instead of A or whatever), got turned around, picked up lunch (if you don't live in Arkansas where you can go to Market Place Grill, I'm so sorry), and made it to Rose Mary's house. I'm glad my house isn't that close to Market Place! We finally got to meet her husband, John, and we all had a GREAT lunch. Food was great; company was even better!

After lunch was present time! We'd gotten Rose Mary the I-rock tool, setters and set of gems as a GET WELL.

I had an email from Archivers last week about the 3 x 3 cards. I thought they were such a cute size and decided to make some. Here's Rose Mary's get well card using an element on Love Struck 2010.


And her birthday was coming up, so we added that to the celebration. Here's her birthday card. I just couldn't get this design to fit on a 3 x 3, so I fudged a little. I believe it's 3 x 3.5. This element is on George and Basic Shapes.


And both cards with the tin containing her gift card. Don't you just love the Hobby Lobby tins?


I was trying to match the cards to the tin. I used Vanilla Cream for the bases, Chocolate for the shadows and Twilight for the designs (all papers CTMH). Once the cuts were put together, I pop dotted them to the bases. I used Waterfall Stickles with Yellow on the candle flame.

Even though Rose Mary wouldn't let us clean house (like it really needed it--NOT! She has a beautiful home that is very neat and tidy.), she did have a few projects lined up if we were willing.

Ha! After 2 real quick projects, we dove in on project 3, reorganizing her scrapbook closet. Yahoo!! With her approval, we threw away, we made a box for Arkansas Children's Hospital and we made piles. Then we left Rose Mary to rest while we made a trip to Hobby Lobby and Michaels. Love shopping and spending other people's money! haha

Then we came back and put everything in its place. Wonder if she'll ever be able to find anything? And believe it or not, we didn't even take a before or after picture, but here's one of the three of us--left to right: Jill, Rose Mary and Angie.


By the time we finished our project, drove back to Little Rock, dropped Angie at her car, and stopped for gas, I got home about 10:20. Long but GREAT day with lots of laughter. And, yes, Rose Mary is on the road to recovery and doing great!

I'm not attaching files. Just put a 3 x 3 square on your Design Studio or Gypsy mat and make your element fit inside.

And, NO, we're not coming to clean your house or reorganize your scrapbook area, so you might as well just stay healthy.

Hope you have a great weekend,
Jill

Nursery Rhymes

Hello! Is anyone out there? Not hearing from many and just wondering if I'm sitting here talking to myself these days. Hope I don't run you off with this long post.

I am so excited! I completed my album on Saturday. Now, I just need to plan a trip to Dallas to deliver it. :o) Darci, you better get some pictures ready.

A few years ago, I made ABC albums for Layla and Avalee as well as a few other little ones. Layla and Avalee are daughters of very special people in my life and they are cousins. Well, in February, we were blessed with a baby sister for Layla, Baby Alyse. They are all beautiful little girls, and I love them and their parents very much.


This is a photo of the three girls (left to right: Avalee, Alyse and Layla) in our living room last month when they all came for the weekend. Their uncle's girlfriend gave them these darling matching dresses. I had to use three different photos to get this one. Thank goodness for digital! And thank goodness I took so many.

Anyway, my first thought was to make another ABC album for Alyse. Then I bought the Nursery Rhymes cartridge and fell in love. However, between our trip to Arizona, finding paper and trying to get an album done for the bride and groom (I'll share part of that soon), I was delayed getting started on Alyse's album.

Here's the paper I finally selected. I found it at Michaels and used a coupon. I used CTMH cardstock for the solids. I'm using a bright pink album with a place on the cover for a photo to be inserted, also from Michaels.


I had in my head exactly what I wanted it to look like and I DID IT! So many times I have a certain way I want something to turn out and, no matter what I do, it just won't happen. Well, this one turned out perfect!!!!!!! Here's the title page.


I wanted to include the words to the nursery rhymes, the base design and the phrase and leave room for photos to be matted and added. All of this in an 8x8 album?


I used The Real Mother Goose as the basis for getting the words correct for the rhymes. However, some of them just weren't what I remembered, so I went to the internet on those. I'm still not sure about Pat-a-Cake as I do it different, but I like the one I used. I'll change later if Darci wants.

Since I wanted the nursery rhymes to wrap around the pages, I used Microsoft Word and text boxes. I have converted these to pdf files for you and zipped them. I tried to put them all into one document, but the pages were doing weird things and some of them would come out in portrait while others would be landscape. As a matter of fact, one of the rhymes is in two pdf files because I couldn't get both pages to come out in the same direction.

I set up a template file for the Cricut designs. Since I was making an 8x8 album, I set it up on a 24x12 mat with the two pages centered on the mat. Other than welding on the Title and End pages, I did not alter the images. However, using Design Studio and the template made it easier to determine the sizes to use. Hopefully, I have included the sizes on the Notes tab in each file which might help if you are working in a different size album and need to resize.


As I wanted the previews to be available and to make it easier to concentrate on one rhyme at a time, I made a separate cut file for each rhyme. As usual, most of the tabs in the files are for preview. Most of the files have one Cut Page and that page is set up where it will cut on any of the machines. The exceptions are Hickory Dickory which has separate 12x6 Cut Page and 12x6 Paper Placement tabs for the smaller machines and Ring Around which has a 12x6 2nd Cut Page (small machines need to cut both cut pages on that one). Does any of that make sense? Click on the graphic below for a larger view.


Unfortunately, those using the smaller machines will not be able to cut the Cut Shadow pages on the Title Page or the End Page the way I have them set up. My only thought is to cut the shadows in separate pieces and glue them together.


This is the last page of the album. I will give Darci another circle the size of the inside circle as well as one 1/4 inch smaller that she can use for templates if she wants to cut a photo into a circle to place over the LOVE YOU.

I did not use all of the rhymes on the cartridge. I selected 14 for the body of the album and then included 8 more of the designs only in the Title and End pages. There are 17 cut files including the template file. With so many files involved, I zipped them into one zip file to share with you.

Cricut Cut Files

PDF Nursery Rhyme Files

I have a feeling that I'll be doing several more of these albums. Would love to see your creations.

Oh, I also used the font on Nursery Rhymes for the Title and End pages.

Enjoying a nice day at home,
Jill