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

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

Baa Baa Black Sheep

Had a great weekend with some of the Divas. And I actually managed to accomplish a great deal on my current project. After everyone left and we got the house back together, I sat down and continued to work. When I went to bed Sunday night, the album was complete with the exception of the back page and a few Stickles. Yea!!!!!!

It'll probably be the weekend before I have everything ready to share. (Besides, I want to share the photos with the recipient first.) But I thought I'd give you a glimpse of what I have been up to.


I am SO loving this cartridge!

Hope you're having a good week.

Jill