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