Christmas Hug

I know I've been sporadic with my blogging. I have aspirations to be a daily blogger, but that's probably never going to happen. I'm ok with that. I hope you are too!

Anyway, here's another layout I did. This one is super simple. The challenge (at PPM) was to use a large photo, covering at least 2/3 of your layout.

This is one of my favorite pictures I took at Christmas. I printed it in 8x10 - that took up plenty of space for the challenge.

And I just wanted to keep the rest simple so the picture would be the focus. Yes, that is our little tree in the background. We opted to just put up a small one again this year for several reasons. But I'm looking forward to having a real tree again next Christmas. I miss the smell!



It's hard to tell, but the punched flowers at the bottom were punched from the same patterned paper. Simple, but I like it

Baby Love

OK Christy - I'm back! You crack me up!!

And for the rest of you - so you won't be in the dark, Christy wrote:

Okay, it is officially now OVER a week since you blogged on here. Get busy girl!
You sick?
Your kiddos sick?
Too involved in all the politics on TV?
Wondering if John will be released from Stefano's hold? (I don't watch, but saw the commercial)
Worried about the writers strike?

No, I'm not sick, but I have had a sick kiddo. Definitely not too involved in the politics. A little behind on Day's so not too worried about John at the moment. And although I'm annoyed at the writer's strike, that's not what has kept me away either. Nope, I've been at my parent's house, and though I intended to blog from there, it just didn't happen. If you really want the details, you can read them here.

I think I have finally shared all my Christmas stuff and I honestly haven't done much this year yet. I'm hoping to change that soon though. I have gotten a couple layouts done, however. I'm trying to keep up with the challenges at Paper Petal Memories - the message board I'm a part of. It is a much smaller board - nothing like Split Coast Stampers. But I think that's why I love it. We are kind of a close-knit group of gals and have formed some wonderful friendships. I even got to meet up with 3 of the girls a couple summer's ago for a weekend of scrapping. Well, we didn't actually accomplish that much scrapping. But we did lots of shopping, eating, laughing and having a good time. And one of the other ladies on the board, I have formed a wonderful friendship with. We talk on the phone pretty regularly, and even though we haven't met "face to face" she has become a great friend. It's amazing that you can form friendships like this. Anyway, we have some challenges going on over there, and I'm trying keep up and do them this year in an effort to get more scrapbook pages done.

The layout I'm posting today was a sketch challenge. The sketch came from Page Maps. I LOVE the sketches from there!

So the sketch was my starting point. Then I chose the pictures. Then I chose the colors and went from there. And I used my brand new toy I got for Christmas to make the title. My parents got me the Cricut Expression - what an awesome surprise! And I'm having fun figuring out how to work it!

Anyway, here's the layout:



It's funny, I actually had a completely different picture in my head of the outcome of this layout. But it changed as I went. But I'm happy with the end result.

I'll be back to share the other 2, plus hopefully more that I'll be getting done.

I Hope My Computer Doesn't Explode

It just might because of what I'm about to post.

Let me explain.....My husband is a DIE HARD Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets fan. He's also a fan of any team who plays AGAINST the Georgia Bulldogs.

I'm talking serious stuff.

However, we do have friends and even some family who are fans of the Dawg. We love them in spite of it.

What's this got to do with anything?

Well, as I posted earlier, I made monogram cards for friends and family. For our family, I make these for the couples and single adults. For years, I've done one gift for this group and a different gift for the "younger" crowd who might not appreciate such a "grown up" gift.

Chip's (my hubby)cousin Nathan is a UGA graduate. Up until last Christmas, I still grouped him with the "younger" crowd. His younger sister had already moved into the "adult" crowd because she got married.

Last Christmas he made the comment, "When do I get to graduate to the adult gifts?" I felt stupid! It's not that I didn't consider him and adult, but that he's well, a guy and all, and I didn't figure he'd appreciate the gift I had made for the "adult" crowd!

So this Christmas, he "graduated". However, I still felt the cards I made were a little on the "frilly" side for him. So I made him a special set.

All that to show you this:



I knew my husband would eventually find out I had tainted our house with this image. I didn't know how he'd take it. He caught a glimpse of these on my screen recently and wanted to know what they were doing there and who they were for. He was very forgiving...considering! But he did make the comment that my computer was now probably going to explode. I hope not!

Oh, and I'm pretty happy with the way these came out. I found the image online and printed it on cardstock and then used a circle punch to punch them out. I had planned to use my multi-letter stamp for the words. But I didn't like how far spaced apart it was, and I was having trouble stamping evenly. If I had not already assembled the cards, I would have run them through my printer and printed it directly on the cards. But it was too late for that, so I just printed it on the red cardstock, cut it out and adhered. Not exactly the way I had it pictured in my head, but it works.

Have a Funshine Day!

My daughter LOVES the Care Bears. She watches the "Big Wish" movie ALL the time. Her absolute favorite is Funshine Bear.

So for her birthday, it was only fitting to make her a Funshine Bear card. So I found an image of Funshine online. I printed it out on cardstock and him out.

I stamped the party hat, cut it out and placed it on Funshine's head. Then I stamped the balloons, cut them out and put them in place. I attatched some floss from the balloons to the hand. I cut the 3 with my Fiskars Shape Cutter and added a little pen stitching.

I think it turned out pretty cute. It's not very girly, but Funshine bear is a boy, and yellow, so I couldn't really "girl it up" too much. I chose a blue background to make it feel like the sky was in the background. She loved it, and that's all that REALLY matters!



And no birthday is complete without the cake! We had been talking about having a "Tea Party Birthday" and a "Tea Party Cake" for WEEKS. About a week before her birthday, she totally changed her mind and insisted she wanted a Care Bear Birthday. So she did.

I planned to do a more elaborate cake... a sheet cake with clouds and a big rainbow in the background and Funshine bear frolicking around. Well, I kind of ran out of time, seeing how I would have had to make some of the parts at least a couple days in advance. So I took the easy way out (for me.) I went and bought the character pan and just did it that way. I stayed up most of the night before her party baking and decorating it. But she LOVED it.



And here's the Birthday Girl!

My Favorite Gift

OK, so now I will post the gift I had the most fun making this year. It is actually a set of things. I forgot to take a picture of them all together, so I will have to post each picture seperately.

My Mom is in the process of redoing her kitchen with the Italian Chef theme. I knew exactly what I wanted to do.

I got these ideas from all the wonderfully talented ladies at SplitCoast Stampers.

First up: Recipe Tin



I love how this turned out. I was trying to match the colors in her kitchen. When she opened it, that was one of the first things she said was that the colors matched! I included dividers inside and a bunch of my favorite recipes. I still have more to add to her collection, but I ran out of time before Christmas!

Next: Coasters



I'm really happy with the way these came out too. I used the unglazed tumbled tiles. Then I colored them in with sharpies. I tested these, and they didn't leave a water ring, but if I spilled something like coke or coffee on them, they stained. So I sprayed them with a sealer to prevent that. I used thin sheets of cork, cut to size on the bottom of them.

Refrigerator magnet/post it note holder & beaded pen.



I used one of the acrylic frames and turned it around so the "foot" was in the front. Then I adhered magnets to the back (front!) I did this so it would hang on the refrigerator and have a little shelf for the pen. It is pictured hanging on my fridge.

Dry Erase Tile:



I used one of the ceramic tiles for this. What makes it so easy, is if you mess up, you can wipe it right off and try again. After stamping the image, I heat set it with my heat tool. Then I colored in with sharpies and heat set again. I read on SCS that to keep this image "in place" that they covered it with Crystal Effects. I didn't have any but I had some Liquid Embossing by All Night Media, and from what I can tell, it does the same thing. So I used it, and it worked perfectly.

And Next: Menu Board



I picked up this little chalkboard at Michaels. I painted the edges to match everything else. Then I stamped right on it. The image was a little too faint for my liking, so I outlined it with a silver sharpie. It made the image not be quite as crisp, but it still works. Then I attached a piece of ribbon tied to a stick of chalk. (Hey Mom, I forgot to give you the box of chalk! I'll bring it next week!)

And lastly. A Birthday Card
Her birthday was a week before Christmas. I have to admit, I pretty much copied this card exactly from a SCS'r. You can see her original card here. I just loved it so much and knew it was the perfect card.



And there are actually a couple more things that were supposed to go with this set, but time just got the best of me, and I ran out of it! So once she has the other things, I'll post them here too.

This was absolutely the gift I enjoyed making the most. I couldn't wait for her to get it. And she loved it. At least, I'm pretty sure she did. After all, she is my Mom, and she'd NEVER tell me if she didn't like something. But I can read her pretty well, and she really did seem to love it!

And hey Mom - I LOVE YOU!!!

Monogrammed Cards

More Christmas Gifts...

I made sets of 5 monogrammed cards for some gifts. I kept them simple since I was doing a lot of them.

I used various black/white/grey patterned papers for the strip in the middle, varying them so that each set had 5 different patterns. Then I used my scallop punch for the black cardstock. I stamped the design and letter in the middle of the white cardstock and assembled. The stamps are from Oriental Trading.


I made 36 set of these. Yep - 180 cards. I did them in an assembly line fashion, so it wasn't that difficult. Here's one big batch - I still had more after these.


Coming up next - the gift I had the most fun making!

For Baby

More Christmas gifts...these for 2 brand new babies in the family. Two of my cousins had babies - one right before Thanksgiving and the other right before Christmas. The brand new one was just a few days old when we all got together Christmas Eve. Such sweetness!

Anyway, since I couldn't go to the showers, I gave them their gifts at Christmas. Here are the things I made:

The first is for my darling cousin Lindsey, who actually lived with us for a year when she was 12 (and now she's a mommy!!!)(and I remember when she was born....I'm getting old!) Anyway, I found out she was doing baby Landon's room in a cute jungle animal theme. So I made this frame for his room with the cute little lion I got from Michael's.



And when I saw this adorable fleece, I couldn't resist getting it to make another now-sew blanket.



And my cousin Davie (Lindsey's brother) and his girlfriend Alison had a baby girl. Unfortunately, I didn't know her name when I was making her gift, so I just made a first Christmas frame.



And then these cute little onesies. The pictures aren't as clear a I wish, but you get the idea.

So Very Loved


Sweet


I used Stampin Up's So Very and Big Flower sets and stamped these with fabric paint. I think they turned out pretty cute.
I also gave her a couple of sweet baby outfits, but I didn't do anything to them, so no pics, lol!

More coming soon!

Here We Go...

OK, I'm falling crawling out from under the pile I was getting burried under! And now I can get some of the projects posted of things I made for Christmas. I'll try to get them all on here over the next few days.

For starters, here is a set I made for my MIL.

On the left is a magnet photo frame I altered to a post it note holder, complete with a pic of the kids. In the middle is a photo book I altered (and filled with pics of the kids) and a beaded pen. And lastly is an altered journal and a bookmark.

Here is what the journal looked like before:


And here's a closeup of the after.

I'm kind of wishing I had cut the scalloped circle out of white so it would have stood out a little more. But it stands out a little more in person than it does in the photo.

Lots more to come, but at least I have a start on it now!