Katydid Creativity & Paper Adventures

One more advent calendar

2010-11-04T19:08:00.000-06:00

I just wanted to share one more advent calendar I made using the Karen Foster's 3D Peek a Box Countdown calendar. You can see it here and see some great examples here.

Here is what I came up with. It was really fun to make and it went surprisingly fast to put together.

Well that's all for now. Have a super Friday and weekend!

More Craft Fair Projects

2010-10-28T14:02:00.000-06:00

So I got the camera out today and took some more photos of my craft fair projects that I am making.

This first one is an advent calendar that is from KaiserCraft. It comes as a kit that you have to assemble. The little boxes inside about drove me batty, but eventually I got them all together. The papers I used were Basic Grey Jovial collection pack, lace paper, and 3D stickers. The icicles were made from Crystal Effects and glitter. You can find a great tutorial on how to make them here.

The next 2 photos are these cute little shopping carts. These are svg files that I bought from a great online shop called My Time Made Easy. This is one of the many Pretty Packaging items that Lauren Meader has in her shop. It's call Shop Till You Drop. Inside of the carts I have a mini paper sack (pretty cute idea, huh?) and a gift card will fit very nicely inside it.

The last 2 photos I have to share are a Kaiser Craft Star Wreath I made using Basic Grey Wassail papers and stickers and a variety of Basic Grey buttons. The 3 ornaments that are attached to it were from Micheal's They were just starting to put out their Christmas products out the day I went in and bought these. For the stars, I used my Cricut machine to cut the paper stars so that they would just cover up the wooden stars. Then I sanded the edges to give is a more distressed look.

Well that's all for now. Happy Thursday to you!

Craft Fair Projects

2010-10-27T14:04:00.002-06:00

Happy Fall to everyone! I have been really busy getting ready for a craft show in a couple of weeks. I wanted to share a few of the stationary boxes that I have been working on for the past couple of months.

I have a lot of other things to share too, but I need to take some pictures. I will try and post again soon with all the fun things I have been making.

Have a great rest of the week!

Happy World Card Making Day

2010-10-02T10:05:00.000-06:00

Well this is going to be my one and only card I make today. Too bad these events have to be on a weekend because I really don't scrap or do much on the weekends anymore. I just enjoy hanging out with the family.

The supplies for my card came form Toni, my swap partner, from My Sketch World. I woke up early and finished my card before I realized we were to make it using a sketch form MSW. Oh well, live and learn next time. Or at least get on the computer to make sure I am doing things right.

The reason I was up so early this morning was because today was the 1st day of Balloon Fiesta. It was such a great morning. We just drove down to the end of our road to watch the balloons lift off this morning. Tomorrow we'll head down to the field and watch them from there. It will be an even earlier morning but worth it I think.

Here are a few pictures from this morning.

Have a great rest of the weekend! Hope you can make a lot of cards today!

Just wanted to share some LO's

2010-08-18T09:59:00.001-06:00

I have been working layouts these past several weeks. I am very behind in scrapping my very large pile of photos that have accumulated since last summer. But that's OK! I can do a lot of the weekly/monthly sketches that so many of my favorite blogs do now.

Below are layouts using the great sketches by Lucy of My Sketch World (except for the last one). Go check out her blog and join the forum. The forum is so fun and there are a lot of great gals there to chat with and the contests are lots of fun too. Right now the ABC Summer Crop is going on. I also am going to be a Guest Designer there in November! I am excited about that.

This is from this past Christmas. We go and pick a Christmas tree from Delancey Street ever year. If you don't know what Delancey Street is then check out this link.
I just love those little Scrabble tiles. I need to get some more of them.

This is from this past 4th of July. I had a few left over 4th of July papers that I used up for it.

This was from my son's first day of Kindergarten. His first day of 1st grade will be next week already. I am looking forward to making my daughters first day of Kindergarten LO's.

This was a fun LO to make. The giant tooth is an SVG file I have and the toothbrush was a freebie SVG file from SVGCuts.com. The "fairy" is an SVG that I made using an jpeg image I found on the web somewhere. I just converted it and tweeked it a little bit using Inkscape.

My daughter's first day of 4's preschool. She starts Kindergarten next week. I'm going to cry now. Isn't that apple lattice paper fun!

Another fist day of Kindergarten LO of my son. Those ABCD wooden letters are from a puzzle I "recycled". I just ruffed them up a little with a sanding block. They worked perfectly for this LO.

Well that's all for now. I am hoping to post more often now that the kids are back in school full time. We'll see though. I love looking at all the blogs out there. You should see all of them I have bookmarked-LOL! I just hate maintaining mine.

Have a great rest of the week!

Kristen

Ellyvan Invites with svg and scut files too!

2010-07-11T20:46:00.001-06:00

Getting back into the creative bug is hard. But I really enjoy a challenge once in a while. My friend Heidi called me one day a few months ago and asked if I could make a Jungle Junction themed invitation for her son's 3rd birthday party. Since there is absolutely nothing in the market right now that has anything to do with Jungle Junction I knew this would be a challenge. Plus I didn't even know what Jungle Junction was at the time but I said, "Sure, I'll whip something up!" Then a few weeks before the party she asked if I could come up with the wording for the specifics of the party using the Jungle Junction theme song. Wow, this is really stretching my creativeness. I am not a poet and I know it!-LOL! So after finding the song on You Tube with the lyrics I came up with something very hokey but cute for a 3-year-old's birthday.

Here are some of the characters from Jungle Junction.

Here is the card that I made for the invitation. Below the pictures you will find the the links to the svg and scal files for them.

These are cards that were used as goody bag toppers.

What a cute idea!

Here are the links to the svg and scut2 files:

Ellyvan.scut2 Ellyvan.svg

If you have any questions on how to use these files please send me an email. You can find my email address under the "View my complete profile" link in the right hand column of my blog.

Here is the little bit that was inside the invite. Hokey, I know. I used **** where you would put the birthday boy or girl's name.

Deep inside the jungle far from everywhere.
There’s a little boy who’s turning 3 years old
and we invite you there.. To Jungle Junction...
for ****e’s birthday party!

Life is fast and friendly and and everyone
you meet! ****e’s party is July the 4th
4 p.m. ‘til fireworks we see!
At Jungle Junction! (a.k.a. the Kelly’s House)

We'll have dinner and dessert! Let us know if you
can arrive. We’ll have some fun in the summer sun
So COME ON take a drive…
To Jungle Junction!

Now I have to show you the incredible cake my friend Heidi made. A while back we took a stage cakes class together. It is basically making 3 cakes and then cutting 2 of them in half and stacking them on top of the other whole cake. You can stack them up however you'd like though.

Do you see the Jungle Junctions characters? They are made from Fimo dough. Aren't they awesome! You can see the step by step instructions on how Heidi created this masterpiece on her blog Adventures of a Gluten Free Mom. She has a wonderful blog so check it out!

Well that's all for now. I am planning on making a few of the other characters from Jungle Junction too. So let me know if there is a character you are interested in and I will see what I can do.

Hope everyone has a great week!

Kristen

Back online

2010-04-26T12:08:00.003-06:00

Well I am not exactly back but I did decide to put my blog back online again.

I have made one scrapbook page since December of last year. I have been and still am re-evaluating all the things that are going on in my life and my family's lives. I am starting to feel some little inklings of craftivity so we'll see I guess.

So let me know if any links are not working in my posts so I can take care of them or if I have any outdated blogs or websites in my lists on the right side of the page.

Did you have a happy turkey day?

2009-11-28T17:38:00.000-07:00

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving out of town at my in-laws in Colorado Springs this year. I stuffed myself and did not save any room for pumkin pie. Friday evening we went to dinner and I did save some room for dessert then so I enjoyed a slice of vanilla bean cheescake. Not too bad! We just got back home a couple of hours ago and thought I'd better post my latest Basic Grey Challenges card. Again, it is a Christmas card. Tis the season, right?

The challenge for the next couple of weeks is to make a card based on a sketch from the lovely and ever so talented Tara G. She does amazing things so please check out her blog too.

So here is the sketch:

And here is one of many Christmas cards I have been making using this wonderful sketch.

I wanted to share a photo of my cute and handsome son who finally lost his two top teeth. Of course he wanted me to pull them out on Wednesday morning, the day we were leaving for Colorado Springs. And so I did! I just love listening to him talk now, such a cute little lisp he has. It reminds me of Tim Meadows (former Saturday Night Live actor) and his character the "Ladies Man". I think there is a movie they made too, that was really bad, but I may have to watch it just to hear his character talk.

Well I hope you all are doing well and you have most of your Christmas shopping done. I have a few more things and I am finsihed.

Hope you have a great rest of the weekend and a wonderful week ahead!

I am back...

2009-11-13T22:43:00.001-07:00

Well I have been such a bad blogger. It has almost been a month since my last post. Let's see. I had a bad experience with a new pillow I bought. At 3 in the morning I woke up with a very bad kink in my neck. So I threw the pillow off of my bed, found my old pillow, and went back to sleep. The next morning I woke up, still with a kink in my neck and a headache. As the days progressed the kink in my neck worked it's way down my entire left arm and left all the muscles in my upper arm in a constant muscle spasm. Lots of pain and very little fine motor skills in my hand and fingers. Nothing that some muscle relaxants and some Vicodan won't knock you out into "la la land". Also I got a prescription for these wonderful patches called "Flector patches" that have pain reliever in them and when you put them over a knotted muscle then medicine goes there directly. What a relief they were so I could function in a non-drugged phase during the day. Needless to say, I was not crafting all that much. I could even curl my hair or put deodorant on (under the opposite arm) without my arm shaking and seizing ans basically not functioning like my arm should be functioning. My arm is slowly recovering. And my hand and fingers have improved a lot now, but they still aren't the same yet. Is this what it is like getting older? I will be the big 4-0 next March and so I am hoping to get into better shape than what I am in right now. My goal!

So enough about all that. I was able to make some cards for this weeks Basic Grey Challenges blog. The challenge is to use "Glitz and Bling" on your creation. So rhinestones, glitter, and just whatever seems shiny and sparkly.

I am working on Christmas Cards right now and thought that some Glitz and Bling and some Basic Grey in the mix would make some very nice Christmas Cards.

Even the paper diecut trees are shiny and glittery. It is hard to see that in the photo.

So that is all for now. I am doing a craft show with my friend Mary and my new jewelry pals Denise and and Michelle tomorrow so wish me luck on that.

Have a great weekend!!

Latest Basic Grey Challenge- A Color Combo

2009-10-22T12:56:00.001-06:00

Hi all1! I am a little late in posting the latest challenge at Basic Grey Challenges Blog. I have a craft show coming up in a few weeks and I am scrambling to make things for it.

The challenge: Use the following Color Combo to create your card. Make sure to use some Basic Grey products on it too.

Here are a couple of cards I made for the color challenge. I thought that the June Bug papers and embellishments would be perfect for this challenge.

Just very bright and colorful paper to use to make a card. How fun!

Well sorry for the quick post! I hope you all have a great rest of the week!

Darth Vader Cards & an Awesome Clone Trooper cake!

2009-10-15T10:55:00.004-06:00

I just wanted to make a quick post to share the Darth Vader thank you cards I made for the Star Wars themed birthday party we had last weekend. My son and his friend Sam had a joint birthday party and it was a blast. The weather was perfect and everything was just so wonderful and super fun!

First here is the most awesome Clone Trooper helmet cake ever made. My friend Heidi (Sam's mom) is just so talented and she was so worried about make this cake since it was her first cake using fondant icing. It turned out wonderfully!!!

And it's Gluten Free!!!

If you want to see some more pictures from the party and the process it took to create this wonderful cake please check out her blog, Adventures of a Gluten Free Mom. You can even see the pool noodle light sabers she made and the Death Star pinata she made as well. She is AWESOME!

So onto my Darth Vader Thank You cards. A super nice gal Theresa (aka Tebug) in the svg.com forum I am a member of sent me a jpeg of Darth Vader that worked perfectly into an SVG file to create these cards.

Here are the cards.

So if you would like the SVG file or the SCUT file for this card here are the links.

Darth Vader .scut file Darth Vader .svg file

To make the card base I just put 2 Darth Vader's on a page in SCAL. The selected weld for both of them. The selected shadow blackout option for both. Then rotated and flipped one of them and lines them up to form the card. I could fit 2 on a 12 x 12 page.

Well that is all for today. Hope you all have a great rest of the week!

Balloon Fiesta has begun & my Basic Grey challenge card

2009-10-03T07:23:00.000-06:00

Hi everyone! Hope everyone is having a great weekend so far. Today is the official start of the Balloon Fiesta here in Albuquerque, New Mexico. We have 550 hot air balloons this year. And they are just starting to go up this morning/ I am hoping the kids will wake up so we can drive down the road and watch them.

There is a new challenge over at Basic Grey Challenges today. The challenge is to use a wonderful sketch created by Martine, who is the owner of this wonderful blog.

So here is the sketch.

And here is my card based on the sketch.

Isn't he a cute puppy. I ordered the June Bug card kit a while back and thought this would be the perfect time to open it. The kits are very nice to have because you get a little bit of paper and embellishments, a sampling you could say, of the whole line. It was fun to mae some cards with it.

Well that is all for now. I hope everyone has a great weekend!

Star Wars Invites and Christmas Cards already?

2009-09-18T19:00:00.006-06:00

Hi everyone! Yes, I am working on Christmas cards already. It has been so hard to make them though. I am not in the Christmas mood just yet. But I really pleased with how these turned out that I may have inspired myself to make some more. I made these 3 cards for the latest challenge at Basic Grey Challenges. The challenge: Use some embossing on your cards (and of course using some Basic Grey on it too).

Aren't those icicles fun? I found a video tutorial on how to make them at Dawns Stamping Studio blog. If you haven't checked out Dawn's blog then you need to hop on over there. Her work is amazing and she has the best video tutorials!

Now onto the Star Wars Clone trooper invites I made. I made the SVGs for these invites for a co-birthday party we are having with my son, Garrett and his buddy Sam. Their birthday's are 5 days apart and we thought that we could just have a fun Star Wars themed birthday party and do it together to save a little money as well. Sam's mom, Heidi, is an excellent cake baker and just awesome all around cook, baker, chef...only her food is gluten-free. I get to sample pretty much everything she makes and let me tell you, gluten free or not, the food she makes tastes delicious!! My hubby will go on ranting and raving about how she doesn't even need to share the fact that here food is gluten free because it tastes so good. She is going to attempt to make a Clone Trooper shaped cake for the birthday party. I think she is going to try and make one like this one here. I told her cupcakes would be good too but I think she can do it. You should see the Hungry Caterpillar Cake she made for her son Luke's birthday and the Chicka Chicka Boom Boom cake and cupcakes she made for my daughter. I hope you take look around her blog.

So here are the invites we will be sending out soon.

We thought the girls would like the purple and pink Clone Troopers.

The Star Wars font is so cool!

If you would like to have a copy of the SVGs I made to create this card you can find them here: 6 x 6 Card Base, Clone Trooper top (White), clone trooper base (not a card), Clone Trooper base card (can size to whatever size you need).

I just updated my Storm Trooper card SCUT file for the SCAL software if you use that. You can find the download here. Storm Trooper .scut2

I also updated the SVG for this card. It can be found at this link. Storm Trooper SVG

Here is just the clone trooper SVG and SCUT files. These are not cards.

Storm Trooper SVG Storm Trooper SCUT

The above (crossed out) SVG links are no longer available.

I am going to use the Clone Trooper (not a card) and make them as big as I possibly can and hang them around the house for the party. I will post more pictures of the cake and all the decorations after the party.

Well that's all for now. I hope everyone has a great weekend!

I hope everyone had...

2009-09-08T11:53:00.000-06:00

... a nice Labor Day Weekend. We hung around the house mostly. Did a little bit of yard work. Grilled some steaks and had corn on the cob. It was a nice relaxing weekend.

I finally have a moment to share a layout that was inspired by this photo.

This photo is for the latest challenge (an inspiration challenge)at Basic Grey Challenges.

I decided to do a layout this week and I used a photo of my daughter and my niece, Brantley. Brantley, my sister, and mother came to visit us in July for Caden's 4th birthday party. This photo was taken during the party. Aren't they the sweetest looking children. Looks can be deceiving-LOL! They get along fairly well but I'm not sure if they would if they lived close together. My cousin and I used to fight with each other all the time when we were kids. Over a thousand miles separate these two, so when they can come for a visit it is nice to have a cousin to play with.

I also used a sketch from the Page Map Blog for there current sketch challenge. You still have some time to submit a layout of your own. The Basic Grey lines I used are Periphery and Marrakech.

The prize pack is awesome, so check them out when you have a chance.

Well that's all for my brief post. I wanted to wish my fellow teamie, Anthea, a belated happy birthday. Keep an eye out in the next few weeks for a card from the States.

Have a great week!

Corset card birthday set

2009-08-29T15:00:00.014-06:00

I just wanted to share this while I had a chance to hop on the computer for a second. School has barely started and both of my kiddos are sick with a virus. It's not as bad as it could be. Some kids get a very high fever and can't eat or drink anything because their throats are so sore. So far a mild fever and they still seem to eat whatever they want to eat.

I made a quick little gift set that went very well with the latest Caardvarks challenge which was to use hot pink, black and white in your card creation. So I converted a pdf I had of an elegant shoe or a witch shoe (whatever you want to use it for) and turned it into an svg that I could size and cut out on the Cricut. The pdf files for this sure can be found on Ellen Hutson's Simple Dreams blog. She has an awesome blog and awesome creations as well. Check her blog out! The card was also a pdf I made so it would cut out on my Cricut and made the card an A6 size. The corset pdf can be found at the Time for Crafting e-Mag. Your should see all the templates and patterns they have there!! Lots and lots! I then put in some eyelets and laced the ribbon on through. You can adjust how much tying and untying you want to do on the card. The inside sentiment was cut on the Cricut also! The shoe will make a great little gift box. I am thinking of some yummy chocolates and maybe a Victoria's Secret gift card to make it the perfect gift for a BFF's birthday or for a bridal shower. There are so many possibilities!

If you would like the svg or scal files for the corset card, please click on the links below.

Corset Card SVG Corset Card SCAL

Well that's it for now. I have antsy squirmy children bustling about. Have a great rest of the weekend and a super week ahead! I can't believe it's going to be September already!

Tomorrow is the first day...

2009-08-24T20:49:00.007-06:00

...of Kindergarten for my son! I can't believe that he is a Kindergartner already. Time flies by so fast. I handed out my teacher gifts today along with a the "kajillion" school supplies we have to buy. We had our meet and greet at school today for my so and for my daughters preschool. She starts preschool on Wednesday. The what to do with my free day...hmmm.

So here are some pictures of some of the gifts I gave the teachers today.

The first is a petal box that I made that holds 12 3 x 3 square cards. I made an svg of the petal box so I could cut it out on my Cricut. You can find the file here. The designer papers are Stampin' Up. The little owl card is from the Wild Card Cricut Cartridge. The sized the box so that it would be a little larger than 3.25 inches (which is the size of the square envelopes). The paper bow I made is from a very easy to follow tutorial on Split Coast Stampers. Here is the link.

The next gift I made is a square diver box from The Cutting Cafe. The barrel and little apples are from the Doodle Charms Cricut Cartridge. I filled the inside with all sorts of desk supplies that I hope the teachers can use.

I am also a bit late in posting my latest creation for the Basic Grey Challenges blog. Every two weeks a new challenge is posted. The challenges are posted every Saturday and this weeks challenge was the use the following color scheme.

I decided I wasn't going to make a card and thought I'd make a box instead. I used the cupcake box template that I got from The Cutting Cafe (my favorite store to shop at...) to create it. I used BG Bittersweet papers and embellishments.

I am saving this box for another time to give to a teacher. I'm thinking Valentine's Day might be good. But please check out Basic Grey Challenges and play along. It's quite fun!

Well I need to catch some Zzzzzzz's. I want to be bright eyed and super happy and positive tomorrow for my son's first day of Kindergarten. Which reminds me I need to get the camera right now. Tomorrow will definitely be a scrapping moment if there ever was one.

Have a great rest of the week everyone!!
Kristen

Some more teacher gifts

2009-08-16T14:52:00.007-06:00

I have been busy the last few days making some teacher gifts for a friend of mine in Texas. She emails me what she wants and I make up a few things, take some pictures of them, and email them back to her, and then she gives the thumbs up. I am getting to know her style more and more, so making things for her is getting easier. She also needed some tags for gifts that she will give in the future so I will show them to you all too.

The teacher gifts are a set of 6 cards that fit inside this wonderful greeting card folder from The Cutting Cafe. I made three of these. The monograms ("B" and "S") are also from The Cutting Cafe. The papers I used for these is Stampin' Up. The owl is from the Wild Card cartridge by Cricut.

Set 1

See the little pocket to fit some stamps inside and a pen or pencil fits easily inside too.

Set 2

Set 3

Here are the petal tags I made for her. They are called petal envelopes and I made the into an svg file so I could cut it on the Cricut using SCAL. All of them are shown opened up. There is one down in the bottom right corner that is closed up the way it would be for a tag. I punch a hole through the upper right corner and then put an eyelet on the top layer only. Then I ran a piece of ribbon or cording through it so it can be tied onto a gift bag or present. Here is the link for the Petal Card SVG.

Here are the tags.

That's all for now. I need to make some more teacher presents for my kiddos' teachers. I have some time. They don't start school until the 25th.

Have a great week!
Kristen

Basic Grey Challenges is back!

2009-08-09T19:54:00.006-06:00

The Basic Grey Challenges blog is back and better than ever. They have some awesome blog candy that is being given away. The deadline to entire is Friday August 21st 10:00PM (GMT). So head on over and add your name to Mr Linky at the bottom of the post.

So out first challenge of the new and improve blog is a sketch challenge. A new change is that the the challenges will be every two weeks. With that said, the wonderful sketch for this challenge created by design team member Tara G. She is wonderfully talented and check out the DT's creations as well. Here is the sketch and a couple cards I made using Tara G's wonderful sketch.

I used Marrakech papers on this card. The tree house is an svg file I found and cut out on my Cricut using SCAL. I need to figure out who made this file so I can give them credit here for helping me create this fun card.

I used Lime Ricky papers and embellishments on my cupcake parade card. The cupcakes are from The Cutting Cafe. My favorite online store!

Another card I made was for the latest Cuttlebug Challenges Blogspot. The challenge was to make a card using some really awesome printable stamps made by Mlammare Designs. Maggie Lamarre who designed the stamps was so gracious to send out her stamps for free if you posted your email address in the comments section on the blog. Here is the card I made using her birthday stamp. I also used my Swiss Dots embossing folder and a little Cuttlebug frog die cut had.

Well that's all for today! I hope that everyone has a great week ahead!

Kristen

Funky baby gift

2009-08-05T11:40:00.004-06:00

So I was inspired by a friend of mine who I always thought was very hip and "artsy" to make a fun a funky baby shower gift for her. I can't make it to the shower but I thought I would send this to her (along with a few other goodies). I hope she thinks it's "cool"!

I used Basic Grey Granola papers, buttons, and glazed brads for this project. I used 4 different ribbons and fibers to wrap around the box and tie loosely into a bow on top. I want her to be able to untie with out too much fuss. The box is the Cupcake Box template from my favorite online store, The Cutting Cafe. On the circular metal tag I used a rub-on sentiment.

This is a closeup of a wire flower I made to put on top of the box. I have 2 pieces of wire attached to it that will wrap around the bow and will just come right up without too much fuss. Then I attached another button to the backside so you can't see the jumbled wire mess I made. But I think it is the coolest thing on the entire box!

This is the onesie that will go inside the box.

This is a closeup of the stamped image I used and ironed onto the onesie. I also crosstiched around the edge so it should stay put. The stamp is from the Scribbled and Scripted clear stamp set from Autumn Leaves. The iron technique is one I got from Taylored Expressions. It really is a great tutorial on how to add a personal touch to a baby onesie.

Well that's all for now! Hope you have a great rest of the week!

Kristen

The last week....

2009-07-26T11:28:00.005-06:00

...of July is here already! I can't believe it! Summer has just been flying by. I think we have done something almost everyday of our summer, swimming, play dates, adventures around the town, appointments, etc. I have loved spending time with my 2 kiddos this summer. I will admit that it will be nice when school starts again so I can get to craftier things. I think I have only made a dozen or so cards this summer, a few layouts, and some boxes and other altered items. But it's been nice to just take a break from it all.

Basic Grey Challenges has taken a sort hiatus this summer too but it is almost ready to kick back off again. I have my sketches and inspirations for the next four challenges coming up and I am starting to work in them. The BGC blog looks a little different but it is going to be just as fun as it was before. The challenges will be good and the prizes when we have them will be awesome too. Hope on over and have a look at the new layout. It's so cute and fun and stay tuned!

I just finished making a card this morning. It is for the latest challenge at Caardvarks, which is to make a baby or wedding themed card. I went to Michael's yesterday and stumbled upon these little kit packages called "Vintage Findings" by Making Memories. I saw the baby kit and thought a cute care could be made with it. I think these kits are geared more toward scrapbook layouts but you could probably make 2 or 3 cards out of one too. The baby kit came with 21 pieces. I think I used most of it on the card I made. The little crocheted duck is just the cutest.

Items used: Making Memories Vintage findings Baby kit, Stampin' Up Cardstock, Daisy D's patterned paper & flower diecuts from the Chasing Butterflies Collection, Papertrey Bitty Blessings and Mixed Messages stamp sets, We R Memory Keepers Crystal eyelet (came with the crop-a-dile)

Well that's all for now. I hear the kiddos and so I am off to see what adventures we will be doing today. I hope everyone has a great week ahead!

Kristen

A few things I have been working on...

2009-07-14T12:47:00.007-06:00

I just wanted to share a few things I have been working on the past few days. I though I would get a head start on some teacher gifts this year. The kids don't start back until the end of August so I think I have made a good start. I used the square box with dividers template from The Cutting Cafe. This box is just so versatile. I have used it for putting candies inside, ice cream toppings, and now for some teacher (desk) supplies. If you have a favorite school nurse you could even put some little band-aids and little packets of antiseptic wipes. I have even see someone use it to put some the hooks (I think they're called flies) for a fly fisherwoman in the family. I am even thinking some kind of small ornaments could go in these for Christmas. The possibilities are endless!

So here is my first teacher gift box for this up and coming school year.

They are just so fun and cute! I can't wait to make some more! The half apple is a free svg file I found at: SVGshop.com. You can find lots of cute SVGs here.

Here are a couple of layouts I have made. I have scrapbooked in quite a while so it was nice to get back into the swing of things. I used SCAL software with my Cricut for both of these layouts.

The first is sort of a Halloween layout that was taken at my daughter's preschool for their Character Parade. Of course she went as a dinosaur .

The cute little dinosaur SVG was made by Lisa Schmidt and it can be found at her blog, Lisa's Precious Piecings.

My next layout is also Halloween themed and shows my son dressed as one of his favorite Ben 10 characters, Heat Blast.

The flames for this layout were made by Benji Park and the SVG file was downloaded at The Craft Edge Forum. I only used 2 things to make this layout, colored cardstock and some mosaic tiles. A first for me not to embellish with a lot more things!

And one more thing to share is my first vinyl wall decal I made using my Cricut and SCAL software. I created the whole thing in Inkscape an then opened it up through SCAL a cut it out. It took a few tries before I found the right blade depth. Thank goodness it lined up right every time I tried to cut it out with just a kiss cut. But everything but the butterflies were fonts (dingbats). I only had white vinyl too but I really liked how it turned out. I can't wait to get my hands on some more vinyl.

That's all for now. I hope everyone has a great rest of the week!! My mom, sister, and niece Brantley are coming in town for a visit this week. So it will be a busy and fun week with them and the kids. I can't wait until they get here!!

Kristen

Changing/Enhancing Eye color in PSE 6

2009-07-09T13:29:00.015-06:00

I was so excited that I learned how to do this a couple days ago that I wanted to share with anyone that uses Photo Shop Elements 6. Take note that I have a Mac so menu items and such may differ slightly. Hopefully you will be able to figure it out.

How to enhance and/or change eye color in Photo Shop Elements 6

First find the photo that you want to change. Select open in the file menu.

Here was my photo of the lovely Sierra. She is my 14 year old baby.

Now this is an extra step, but I want to change my picture to black and white first before I worked on the eyes. So I went to Enhance in the top menu and went down and selected Convert to Black & White.

Make whatever changes you feel that you need to make with you picture.

Then click on the OK button.

So now that your photo is in back and white go to the Quick Selection tool which is on the left side of the screen. See photo below for what the icon looks like. (8th icon down-above the large "T" icon)

Then look at the brush diameter It is in toward the top left side of the screen. In the picture below it says the word brush and has a number 5 next to it. This is the diameter of the brush and you want it to be small enough that it will trace around the eyes properly. So if you are having a difficult time tracing just the eye and getting other areas around the eye in the selection then make the brush diameter smaller (like 5).

Click and drag over each eye. You may have to do this several times until you get the exact area of the eye you want to color. Sometimes a little section of fur would be in the selection. You can go up to the Edit menu and click on Undo Quick Selection and try again.

Now go up to the to to the Enhance menu and go down to Adjust Color and in that you will select Color Variations.

You will get a screen that looks like this.

Then just play around with the color that you want to enhance. I used blue so I increased and decreased the blue in all the areas (midtones, shadows, highlights, and saturation). You can even adjust the color intensity amount with a slider bar (in the left corner). And you can light and darken the eyes to however you see fit. Once you like what you see then click on the OK button.

Then I hit the escape button on my keyboard to get out of the quick selection mode.

You can play around with other features of PSE 6 or you can save right now. One area that I played with was in the filter gallery. You can find this under the Filter menu at the top of your screen.

Once you are there you can reduce the zoom to where you can see the whole photo. The zoom + and - buttons are in the lower left corner of the screen. I clicked on the (-) button until I could see all of my photo. On the right side you will see some folders that say artistic, brush strokes, distort... etc. You can pick and choose different features to try out. The nice thing is that you can do all sorts of stuff to your photo but nothing will permanently change it unless you click on the OK button at the top right. I believe I used the grain feature that is found in the Texture folder.

Here is the final result. My intensely blue-eyed kitty! Isn't she gorgeous!!

Well that's it. Let me know if something isn't clear so I can try and rewrite it.
Hope my little tutorial helps!

Have a great rest of the week!
Kristen

A fun weekend ahead!

2009-07-02T14:55:00.007-06:00

I just wanted to wish everyone a happy 4th of July! I wanted to share a few cards before the celebration begins. The first card is one that I made using Cricut's Wild Card cartridge. I also made the envelope too. Sam is one of Caden's school friends and his birthday party was this past weekend. So I thought is was close enough to Independence Day to make him a fun red, white, and blue birthday card.

My next card was for my last DT assignment at My Sketch World. It was so much fun being on the DT there. But I intend to hang out in the forum whenever I get a chance. It also has an Independence Day theme to it.

My last card is one that I made for the latest Caardvarks challenge which was to make a window card. I used my SCAL and Cricut to design sort of a funky window card. I didn't really know what this card was going to be but when I started using my Scarlet's Letter Basic Grey paper it just reminds me of weddings and lovey dovey stuff so that is what it became.

I also wanted to share a little toot that I had 4 layouts selected to be in the latest Scrap-N-Art eZine issue, which is out right now. All of them are related to SCAL and Cricut and Inkscape is mentioned and I even have a tutorial there to in the special members only area. It costs $9.99 a year to subscribe and I highly recommend that you do. You won't be sorry.

That's all for now. I hope everyone has a great Friday and a wonderful weekend!
Kristen

***Just wanted to sneak this one last card in I made last night for Caardvarks latest challenge. My fist attempt at Iris Folds.

So before I pick the kiddos up...

2009-06-23T14:36:00.007-06:00

...I wanted to share this baby gift I made for a new mommy friend of mine. I was going to visit her and her new son today but he has had a virus for weeks now and is having some "explosive" issues if you now what I mean. Poor thing and poor mommy too. You could hear the stress in her voice. Ahhhh motherhood. Or should I say ahhhhh newborns! But I made here a little photo album, I ironed some cute stamped images on some onesies, and I made a card of course. I got the idea for the onesies from the Taylored Expressions blog. Such a fun and clever idea! The stamp set I used is from Papertrey Ink and is called Itty Bitty Blessings. Such a great set to have!

So here are the pictures:

Well I am off to pick up the kids from their little summer class. This is the last week. I can't believe June has flown by so fast.

Have a great week!

A Quick Post

2009-06-21T11:02:00.004-06:00

have just a moment to say hello to everyone out there. And to post few things I have been making. I haven't been doing very much crafty lately. It is just hard to do in the summer. I'd rather be out and about enjoying the beautiful weather than be cooped up in the hallway making something.

So first I wanted to share my card for My Sketch World June 15th card sketch. My time here at My Sketch World has been awesome. They are having a new DT call for August. So if you make cards or scrapbook pages then go check out the submission requirements. I am not planning on trying out again but I plan on staying active in the forum as best as I can and participating in the card and layout sketches for the month. Should be lots of fun!!

So here is my card:

I bought these Martha Stewart Flowers a while back and thought this was the perfect time to use them.

Another card I made was for my daughter's friend Sophie's birthday. This card is an SVG made my Mary Rudakas and is available at svgcuts.com. You should go and check out all the cool files there. Just Awesome!!!

Cady told me that Sophie really loves the color yellow. So we make the Castle pink and yellow. It turned out so cute.

Another card I just finished up yesterday was for Father's Day. The stick figure on the front is also from svgcuts.com. The inside is a pop-up that I made using a font called Solly Pop Tab and fixed it up just so in Inkscape. You can find this font at the Clever Someday blog and a great tutorial on how to make a pop-up. I used Inkscape but you can just use SCAL and get a great card too.

So that's all for now. Hope all of you have a great Sunday, First Day of Summer, and Father's Day! Have a great week too!!

No slowing down for summer...

2009-06-05T22:55:00.004-06:00

I haven't made a card or anything for almost a week. It's kind of nice actually and I have actually been cleaning and organizing my scrappy area I think I recycled 4 grocery sacks of paper and had enough trash for one very large trash bag. I'm still working on my space and setting things aside that I'm going to sell on eBay or give away to people. Tonight I did make a card for my daughter's friend's 4th birthday party tomorrow. It's not finished yet but I'll try and post it soon.

But here a few things I wanted to share that I have made since my last post.

These two card were made for the May contest at SVGCuts forum. A great place to be if you have any questions about SVG's and SCAL for your Cricut. They store SVGCuts.com has some really awesome files. Including the 3D Flowers file that I used to make the above two cards.

I made this card for a Caardvarks challenge---shaped cards. I found this Adirondack chair svg file on the SVG Cuts forum and turned it into a card. The umbrella, I made using Inkscape and welded it all together. I made the little drink glass too (in SCAL) which was upper easy. The latest challenge called Depth Perception, is to make a 3D paper craft. Sounds like lots of fun!! I have a few things in mind for this. Now it's just finding the time.

That's all for now! Have great weekend!

Kristen

The Whirlwind has subsided

2009-05-23T06:56:00.010-06:00

The last few weeks have been so hectic. The kiddos had there last day of school this past Wednesday. So now the entertainment by this summer's host (me) will begin. Yesterday the in-laws arrived and the house has never been cleaner-LOL! Of course as I am cleaning and packing up some packages I want to mail and my right side (tummy area) starts hurting. It gets progressively worse and worse to where I can hardly stand up. I'm thinking I do not have time for appendicitis as I am frantically cleaning. Finally my hubby tells me to lay down, which I did for a whole 20 minutes. Then I was fine. I had been raking through some gravel trying to smooth and even it out yesterday and I must of pulled a muscle that has never been pulled before or that I knew even existed. That or it was mind over matter and I was getting appendicitis and I told my appendix that I didn't have time for it to be removed right now-Ha Ha! I can get that done after my inlaws leave. I'll have more time then -LOL!

So I have lots to show everyone today. Lots of teacher gifts I made for myself and friends, my DT stuff for Basic Grey Challenges and My Sketch World, and invites for my daughters summer birthday.

So first are the teacher gifts I made.

A fun memo board that I altered, that is by Kaiser Crafts. I also used this for this weeks doodling challenge at Basic Grey Challenges.

Card folder on the left. Of course I used the template from The Cutting Cafe. On the right is a index card "thingy" by Martha Stewart. It has index cards you can write on and tear out. It was plain green and I added the papers to match the card folder. I also bought these 2 metal clips and altered them too.

These are a couple divider boxes (from The Cutting Cafe) that I made with a set of 5 matching cards. Very fun and bright!!

This is another divider box with a set of owl cards that I made using the Wild Card Cricut cartridge. The box was full of little desk supplies like clips, brads, jumbo paper clips, post-it notes, and magnets that I had decorated with owls.

This was a set of cards I made. I used a monogram for the card to personalize it. The monograms are from, you guessed it, The Cutting Cafe.

Now onto the invitations for my daughters 4th birthday this summer. She wanted an "A,B,C" party. I'm thinking what am I going to make and do for that. Then I realized her most favorite book in the world (next to all her dinosaur books) is Chicka Chicka Boom Boom, the ultimate A,B,C book. It has bright colors and coconut trees, so I will be ordering a lot of tropical themed items from Oriental Trading soon. The card is obviously based on the book, Chicka Chicka Boom Boom.

So the tree and the square with the dots cut out were designed by me using Inkscape and SCAL for the Cricut. The coconuts and the letters were also cut out using SCAL. The coconuts were cut on some fun crushed velvet cardstock by Doodlebug. I had to use the deep cut blade to cut them out.

My Team B card creation this month for My Sketch World I made this fun and colorful card. Awesome sketch to work with Lucy!

The one last card that I made a while back. I don't think I posted it on my blog yet. But I had made it for the April Spring Crop at My Sketch World. I think I would like to have what's on it right now. Wait, it's 7:30AM, I guess I'll fill it up with coffee instead. Maybe for dinner tonight...LOL!

Have a great Memorial Day Weekend! Remember those that have served our country!
Kristen

Happy Mother's Day

2009-05-10T15:24:00.006-06:00

So far I have had a relaxing Mother's Day. Right now both kiddos are taking naps so all is quiet and peaceful here at home. My wonderful husband even made me crepes for breakfast this morning, which were absolutely delicious!

I had 2 more boxes that I wanted to share today. Again, these were made from template from from The Cutting Cafe. The Mother's Day sentiments are from there as well. These were made for my friend to give to her mom and MIL. They were filled up with candy too.

I also wanted to share my card for this weeks Basic Grey Challenges. My card is based on a sketch by my wonderfully talented teammate Anthea for challenge #34. I used the Granola line to create my card.

Be sure to keep a look out in June for some changes at the Basic Grey Challenges blog. We will be closing the blog down for a couple weeks to put all the wonderful and exciting new changes that Martine and the team are putting into place. Hopefully you will like what you see!

Well that's all for today. I hope that everyone has a Happy Mother's Day today and a great rest of the week too!
Kristen

Mother's Day Candy Boxes

2009-05-07T17:20:00.004-06:00

I just wanted to share the finished Mother's Day boxes I made for my mom and mother-in-law. I have 2 more that I'll post later for my friend Heidi. The box and the Mother's Day sentiments all come from The Cutting Cafe. The Cutting Cafe is also a sponsor of this weeks Basic Grey Challenges. There is still time to play and maybe you will win 2 downloads from the Cutting Cafe.

I think I am going to use this same box for some teacher gift's too. But inside I am thinking about making some decorated large/jumbo paper clips, mini post-it notes that are wrapped in some pretty paper, and some other things I haven't thought of yet.

That's all for now! Have a great weekend and a Happy Mother's Day!
Kristen

I can't seem to blog this week...

2009-05-04T20:30:00.006-06:00

I'm really just not in the mood to blog these days. First, I am the slowest typist ever. I think I had a D in it in high school way back when. I use my index and middle fingers to type and one thumb to hit the space bar from time to time. So chat room things are not fun either because I can't keep up with the conversation. And I have been super busy with all kinds of projects that I really need to get done this week.

So I wanted to post some things I have been working on this week. The first is my card for Basic Grey Challenges. This weeks challenge is a color combo challenge, black and gray plus 1 other color. I chose red as my other color and used Scarlet's Letter papers for my card.

Another card I made was for the Caardvarks latest challenge. I haven't done a Caardvarks challenge forever so it was nice to be able to finally do one. So now I'll wait and see tomorrow what their next challenge will be.

Another project that I started today and will need to finish soon so I can get them mailed out are some divider boxes that I am making for Mother's Day for my mom and mom-in-law and for a friend's mom and MIL. They are so quick and easy to make and I think I am going to get some yummy little candies to fill them up. The template for these boxes are from the Cutting Cafe. I just love this place and all the awesome templates and printable stamps they have. The sentiment is also part of a printable stamp set from there too called All About Mom.

You can see the other one that is almost finished in the pictures above. It won't take too long to get the other 2 finished and sent on its way.

One other thing I wanted to share was that I am going to be published in the July/August edition of Scrap-n-Art eZine. They are going to have two of my layouts plus some other layouts possibly for a feature that they are going to have in that edition. So I am working on getting that stuff done as well.

That's all for now. Have a great rest of the week!
Kristen

Tuesday's here already??

2009-04-28T09:54:00.006-06:00

Time is just flying it seems. The kids have 3 weeks left of preschool so I am starting to work on teacher gifts for the end of the year.

I did make some really great folders with cards inside for a friend of mine to give her teachers. The greeting card folders template comes from the Cutting Cafe. I sized it done so that it would fit some 4 Bar sized cards and envelopes. I also attached some ribbon so they could be tied close with a cute little bow. The monograms also come from the Cutting Cafe and can be sized too. I sized them so I could punch them out with my 1 3/8 circle punch. They turned out so cute and I made all 6 of them in a weekend. I am probably going to make some for my teacher gifts too.

Can you see all the adhesive I got stuck all over the counter. Yikes! Thank goodness for Goo Gone.

For Basic Grey Challenges this week we had a wonderful sketch to work with from my very talented teamie, Chris. You have to check out her amazing blog too. And she also makes wonderful digi-images too so you have to check that out as well.

Here is my card that I came up with. Isn't she cute? My coloring doesn't do her justice.

I wanted to share a digital layout I made using Photo Shop. It's my second or third one I've made. I made for one of the challenges in last weeks My Sketch World crop. The challenge was to use some or all of a quote. I used most of it on here and I thought it was perfect for this photo I took in our backyard back in February. The kids thought there was a pot-of-gold out there since it was around St. Patrick's Day.

Another challenge in last weeks crop was an art inspired challenge. I made this 6 x 6 layout for it.

And one more layout I made for the crop was a color combo challenge. I just loved the colors for this one and had so much fun with this layout.

And while I am on a roll I might as well share the cards I made for my challenge at the crop. My challenge was a recipe challenge (I had 2 recipes to choose from). Once recipe was to use a recycled item on you card and the other was to use paper piecing.

Well that's all for now. I have a complete silence this morning at home. Everyone has slept in, except me of course, and I have been enjoying the peace and quiet that rarely exists here-LOL!

Have a great rest of the week!
Kristen

A busy weekend is coming up!

2009-04-17T20:47:00.006-06:00

That's right! The My Sketch World Spring Crop starts tomorrow. You should see all the card and scrapbook challenges we have lined up. And some prizes too! So if you want something fun to do this weekend then stop on by!

Now for my Basic Grey Challenges reveals this week.

"This weeks challenge is is a firm favourite for a lot of people (including me), so for this weeks challenge we would like to see some paper piecing in your creations :), please remember though that you must use at least one item from BasicGrey somewhere in your creation, and most of all have fun creating"

Here are my paper pieced cards I made. The cute elephant and turtle came from My Scrap Chick. They have some of the cutest paper piecing stuff there. You pick out the patterns you like, pay for them, and then you download them onto your computer. I cut them out on the Cricut and do a little distressing with the ink and out them together. You can adjust the size to fit your needs. Check them out if you like paper piecing.

Here is a card I made using (and I'm sorry I'm not sure if this was from Martine or Chris) some wonderful stamped images to play with. I pulled out the Pastels and went to work on it. I smudged pastels so badly on it. Thank goodness I could erase mostly all of the boo-boos.

I also used the April 1st card sketch from My Sketch World to make this card.

Another card I made was using some really cute cupcake SVG files I bought from SVG Cuts. If you have a Cricut and SCAL then this is the place to check out. Everything made is the best!! It is double checked by the people that design them so they will cut right and work right and not cause some hiccup that freezes your computer. In the forum, they will even look at files you bought else where and fix them. They have the best quality SVG files around and they do take requests if you are looking for something in particular.

Anyway, my card won in the "It's Your Birthday SVG Contest" they had there a week or so ago. I won a $10 gift certificate to use in the store. I bought some awesome files and I can't wait to try them out.

One last photo is one I made of my son playing at his very 1st T-ball game last week. I had used a sketch and theme of the page from the Page Maps Blog's latest contest, "What's on my mind...". I took some pictures of his 2nd T-Ball game so I am thinking of making a separate album or mini-album of his baseball activities.

Isn't he the cutest!

The weather should be warmer and sunnier tomorrow. Today it snowed rained and sleeted all day. Yuck! In 4 days it's supposed to be 80 degrees. I can't wait. This weekends goal: To set up the new sandbox for the kids. And to find some decent sand to put in it. I stash one of Garrett's Thomas the Trains in my pocket to check the sand out. It has a magnet on it. One time the sand we had gotten had so much iron filings in it we had to dumped it out and get new sand. His train's magnets would be covered in black iron filings and I would have to try and wash and wipe it off. A little disturbing but now we know what to look for in "good play sand".

Well have a great weekend everyone!
Kristen

Rain

2009-04-11T10:01:00.009-06:00

Finally we get some much needed rain and no wind to go along with it. I really hope this "greens" up the grass in the back yard.

Well I have been busy making cards this past week. The latest challenge at Basic Grey Challenges this week made me think of baby cards for some reason so I just went with it.

Challenge #30 is entitled Soft Chocolate Centers and . . . "As its Easter on Sunday we thought we would have a challenge inspired by all those lovely chocolate treats you will be scoffing into hehe, so this week we would like you to take inspiration from your favourite Chocolates :), so say your favourite chocolate is Mint chocolate, well you could then base the colours of your card on this so your card would be Brown and Green :), sounds scrumptious doesn't it, i cant wait to see you chocolate inspired creations this week, but please don't forget to use at least one item from Basic Grey on your creation."

With that said here are some cards I made for the challenge this week.

Okay, so this one is not a baby card.
A very belated Valentine's Day Card perhaps.
I was experimenting with doilies, so fun!

So be sure to stop by and take part in the challenge and be sure to check out my fellow teammates wonderfully gorgeous cards as well. Very inspirational, for sure!!!

A couple other baby cards I made were created using this wonderful digital paper that Martine, who owns the the Basic Grey Challenges blog, had made. It is so gorgeous and fun and I love all the colors she had in the pack. I hope she makes some more papers so I can play. It was the first time I had actually printed off papers and used them on something. The only downfall I can see is that I will be using a lot of printer ink to make these papers come to life. Well worth it in my opinion!!

You can check out Martine's other blog called "The Craft Table" for lots more inspiring creations. She does amazing work!!

Here is something you will want to mark on your calendar.

Head on over to My Sketch Work for more information on this week long crop. There will be all kinds of wonderful challenges to do and lots of prizes too! Hope to see you at the crop! And be sure to stop by on the 15th to check out the latest scrapbook page and card sketch for the second half of April.

Have a great week!
Kristen

A new week

2009-04-05T08:39:00.006-06:00

I really wish the weather would make up it's mind around here. A few weeks before it actually turned officially spring, it was sunny and warm. Just beautiful! Now that spring has sprung it's been cold and super windy! I mean the wind has just been the worst. And with no rain the dust is awful too. One day the sky was brown because of all the dirt. The weather today looks cool but no wind, thank goodness. It seems whenever Garrett has T-Ball practice the weather is not the greatest.

Yesterday was Garrett's opening day for the Little League baseball team he is on. He is in T-Ball and got to wear his little uniform and run the bases. Orbit, who is the Albuquerque Isotopes (our Triple-A farm team for the LA Dodgers) mascot, was also there to high-five the kids.

Isn't he a cute little Mascot!

Then there was a big group photo of all the teams. It was soooo windy and cold, we didn't stick around for too long. Too bad, it would have been nice to be out and about there yesterday.

Here are some pictures from yesterday's event.

What a cutie!!
Although he prefers I say handsome!

Altamont Little League

So I am keeping busy these days. My big project, that I just finished yesterday and mailed off, was some barn card birthday invitations and cow card Thank you note cards. So a couple months ago a friend of mine in Texas asked for some birthday invites for her son's 6th birthday. They are going to have it a a farm with a petting zoo and lots of other fun things I am sure. I had just gotten SCAL for my Cricut and thought I am going to make a barn shaped card for this. Well, I wasn't sure how to do that so I researched the Web and found all kinds of sites that had svg. files on it to use in SCAL. But I couldn't find a barn anywhere. Instead I found Mary Rudakas. She makes all these wonderful .svg files and there was a link to send her a picture or sketch of an idea and she would turn it into the .svg fies for you. So I did just that. I drew up a picture of a simple barn and emailed it to her. In less than 24 hours she emailed me a picture of what she had come up with. It was amazing. So then I was off to create. Her is a link to Mary's Etsy Shop. Check out all her great creations. You can also find her stuff at SVG Cuts (see link further down in this post).

Here is the end result of my little adventure.

This was so fun to do. Then I discovered Inkscape. You need Inkscape to make yor own .svg files and then use those files to put into SCAL for your Cricut. I decided I could do this and I made the cutest cow shaped note card that my friend also wanted to write than you notes for the party.

Here is the card that I made from scratch.

If you are interested in the files for this card, I have it in .svg format and .scut format (for and A2 size and square sized cards). Please drop me a line and I'll figure out how to get them to you. I even flocked the white spots on the cow. It was so fun to make!!

For Basic Grey Challenges this week we were to make a card with a spring and/or Easter theme.
Again, I used an .svg for the cute bunny of this card. I bought this wonderful Easter Set and Bunny set from SVG Cuts. The set with the bunny can be seen here. And of course we were to use some Basic Grey on our project. I used the Blush and Bittersweet lines on my card. I also used a sketch from the Cardmaker's Sketch Book from Tanya Fox. Such a wonderful resource to have handy.

SVG Cuts also has a forum you can join and a blog to browse too. It's a great place to get information on SCAL and Inkscape and troubleshoot any issue you may be having.

I have some more cards and things to post. But I will have to do that later this week.
Until then, I hope you all have a wonderful week!
Kristen

Reveals for this week

2009-03-29T07:47:00.009-06:00

Just a quick post this morning before everyone wakes up.

I had lots of fun with this weeks challenge at the Basic Grey Challenges blog. This week's challenge is Follow that Sketch. "This week we have a fabulous sketch for you to follow, which was designed by our fabulous Design Team Member Rica, feel free to rotate, resize and flip the sketch or even all three if you want to :), you can also add any more embellishments etc that you would like to, but remember to use at least one item from basic grey somewhere on your creation, and most of all have fun :)

So here is the sketch:

And here are a couple cards I made with it. A little over the top but so fun to make.

I am sad to announce that this will be the last layout I make for Page Plans. Chris and Lesli have decided to not do their challenge blog any longer. They feel like they do not have the time they need to devote to it. I completely understand how they feel. Challenge blogs must be so time consuming and they do really take up a lot of time. I know I couldn't do something like that now. I'd be on the computer all the time and my kiddos would not understand that at all. When I am on the computer they are there within a minute asking me questions, wanting me to help them with something, etc. I don't even keep up with this blog so well so I can't imagine a challenge blog of some sort. So good luck Chris and Lesli!

Yesterday I had a chance to pay around with the March 15th layout sketch at My Sketch World. You can always find the latest sketches on the left side of the blog. You can also finds lots more challenges in the new forum there too. It's always hopping and lots of fun!

So here is the current sketch. The newest card and layout sketches will be revealed on April 1st.

Here is my layout I made with the current sketch.

I had some fun playing around with Adobe Photo Shop. I added the film strip on top of the photo of my daughter. I really like how it turned out. I also played a little will SCAL for my Cricut and made (welded) the word Sunshine. The papers I used are by Paper Trunk. Aren't they so bright and colorful!

That's it for today! Hope everyone has a great week.
Kristen

More prayers for Rachel

2009-03-26T12:14:00.004-06:00

Rachel is in surgery this very minute and will be in there for most of the day. Please prayer for her, her parents, and the surgical team and that everything goes the way it should go and it will be a successful surgery.

Here are some links to check out on this disease.

http://abcnews.go.com/2020/Health/story?id=1951748&page=1

http://www.ninds.nih.gov/disorders/rasmussen/rasmussen.htm

Thanks so much!!!!
Kristen

Prayers for Rachel

2009-03-22T11:39:00.006-06:00

So I have been in a funk for weeks now. A neighbor friend of mine from where I grew up in Iowa has a daughter, Rachel. Rachel has been having seizures for quite a long time. She is 5 years old and is the same age as my oldest, Garrett. They finally named the disease she has as Rasmussen's Encephalitis. Rasmussen's is a degenerative brain disease that effects one side of the brain, causing it to atrophy. If left as is, the healthy side of the brain will eventually become affected and quality of life will not be good. So Rachel's parents decided that a radical surgery is the best option fer her. They are at the UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles right now. They have been there for a week and tomorrow they find out if Rachel is a candidate for the surgery. I really hope she is and that it successfully ends the seizures she has been having. The surgery, as I said is a radical one. It involves removing the hemisphere of the brain that has atrophied. That would be her right side. Once that is done she will have to go through intensive therapy to basically relearn all the things she knows how to do now, walk, talk, eat, etc. She will have some physical disabilities after the surgery but 80% of children that have this surgery have fewer seizures that are controlled by medication and some eventually become seizure free with no medication. So I am hoping for the best and really hoping she is a candidate for this surgery and that the successful results will happen. Tomorrow is my birthday (my last year being 30-something) and that would be a nice present to have. So if you pray and have a prayer circle or prayer chain could you please add Rachel to your prayer list. If she has the surgery it will be this week on the 26th. They won't leave L.A. until the end of next month until she is able to be moved to a facility back in Iowa closer to home.

So I have not been feeling very inspired to do much in terms of creating things. Everything is in a pile on my dining room table and is just sitting there staring at me. For my layout this week at Page Plans I was very pleased with. The photo was taken last summer of daughter when we were visiting family back in Iowa. Cady was tickled by the baby calves. She also enjoyed the samples of ice cream we got to try later there at the creamery.

So here is the lovely sketch by Lesli we were to use.

Here is my layout.

For Basic Grey Challenges this week we were to use texture on our creations. I love using different textures on my cards or layouts.

Here is what I came up with:

I uses my Marrakech papers and for the textures I added a felt button and the word "celebrate" was a 2 sided sticker so you could add flocking or glitter to it. I used orange flocking.

Some other things I worked on this week were some thank you cards for a friend of mine. They were for her son to thank people for coming to his laser tag birthday party. How fun! So I tried to make them as hip and boyish as I could. I found a bunch of metal edge tags in my stash. They were well hidden! So it was fun to use them on the cards.

Thanks for stopping by. I want to apologize for not getting around to everyone's blogs to check out the latest happenings and creations and leaving comments and all that good stuff. I have just been avoiding the computer and spending more time with my kids. I feel so blessed that they are healthy and happy. I can't imagine what it would be like to have a very sick child. What would I do? Would I be strong enough or just have a big emotional breakdown and not function and shut the world out. But when I spoke to Rachel's mom on the phone as she was passing through Albuquerque, I was amazed how strong and encouraging she sounded about their trip and the surgery. I'm sure it's is very hard to feel positive and deep down she is wondering if she made the right decision and second guessing the choices she has made and she probably does just want to break down and cry. So again, please pray for the best for Rachel and her parents, that all is successful and that they keep their faith up. I'll post an update when I hear something from the family.

Kristen

I'm Back!

2009-03-16T16:21:00.005-06:00

I picked my computer this afternoon and now I am complete once more. Isn't it just sad how much I depend on my computer for day to day things. Pretty much everything is done on the computer, banking, paying bills, printing postage, etc. I don't even have log in names and passwords memorized for all the sites I need to have a log in name or password for. I also discovered that when I am scrapping or making a card, inevitably I will need to use the computer for it in some way or another. But now, I can function again.

So this past weekend since I had no computer I didn't get the time to do my Basic Grey Challenges project made. This weeks challenge was called All Around and "the challenge for this week was suggested by our very talented DT member Anthea. This week we want to see rounded corners, not an angle in sight ! Please interpret this how you would like, but of course not to forget to use at least one item from BasicGrey somewhere on your creation :)" Please go and check out this weeks challenge there. The design team came up with absolutely wonderful creations.

I did manage to get my Page Plans layout made and emailed out last weekend. However, you need to actually attach the photo to your email, which is what I forgot to do. I guess I was distracted. Fortunately I had sent my sister a photo of it, just to show her so I was able to get it to Chris and Lesli. But there are some wonderful sketches this week there and wonderful creations from the DT. Please hop over there a take a look and try out a sketch or two.

Here is the lovely layout sketch by Lesli.

And here is what I came up with... I took this picture just the other day of my son and Sierra just sitting on the floor looking at each other I think the cat was asking him, "Are you going to pet or not!" She's very demanding that way. Garrett always tells me that when Sierra looks at him (I guess in such a way) that means she loves him. An she does! We also needed to use a green monochromatic scheme to this week, which was fun since I don't use green much, or at least all green.

My card for My Sketch World was based on a wonderful sketch made my the owner of My Sketch World, Lucy. She is so talented and her sketches are so versatile. You should see what the Team B design teams came up with for the second half of March.

I was so excited I got to use my new BG Marrakech papers to make this card. I also used my tag maker to punch out the words "Happy Birthday." I just cut a thin strip of paper to fit into the tag maker and the I rubbed a white ink pad over the top of the letters to make stand out. Kind of fun and inexpensive way to make custom sentiments for your card. I also forgot to mention I used the tag maker for my journalling on my "Buddies" layout above. It was so fun!

Well that's it for now. Now I need to finish up all the upgrading I was doing when my disk drive went out. I also bought Windows for my Mac too. I know, I know, that's like against all of my being and sacrilegious or something to install Windows on a Mac, but if I want to use Cricut Design Studio on my Mac then that's what I need to do.

Ohhh, the sacrifices we must make - LOL!!

Have a great St. Patricks Day! I am thinking a glass of green ale might be good. Actually my hubby brewed an Irish red a month and a half ago. Hopefully I'll get to try a glass of that tomorrow (and hopefully it will taste good too since he's opening a brewery soon). Have a great rest of the week too!

Kristen

Blogger Blahs

2009-03-08T00:05:00.007-07:00

Do you ever feel like you have the Blogger Blahs? You just don't feel like bogging anything, posting pictures, nothing. Well that has been me for a couple of weeks now. I'm still not feeling it but I figure if I just do it maybe something will click and get me back on track again.

So this is going to be a picture filled entry for today. I didn't post any of my DT stuff last weekend and I have a couple things that I have been working on and some announcements too.

So I have been keeping busy with Page Plans. I just finished organizing the rest of the sketches and photos and papers I will use for the rest of this month. Chris and Lesli make such wonderful and very versatile sketches. I don't think I have ever run into a sketch that I couldn't make something wonderful.

This is this weeks sketch.

And here is my interpretation of it.

This was last weeks sketch.

And this was my layout using that sketch.

I am hoping to get the rest done this week so I can take my computer in to be repaired. I think it just needs to be cleaned so hopefully I won't be without for too long. I seriously go through a major withdrawal when my computer is down and is away for repair.

For Basic Grey Challenges this week we had a wonderful sketch created my Martine. I had time and a very cute picture of the kids to work with, so I made a layout this week.

Here is Martine's sketch.

Here is my layout.

Here was last weeks challenge which was to make something with a pocket. So I altered the criss cross card instructions that can be found at Split Coast Stampers. I made mine taller and narrower to accommodate the Hershey's Bar that is in it.

I have my first DT card made for My Sketch World but I can't show it just yet. I am on Team B and those card and layout creations will be revealed on the 15th this month. However, you should check out Team A's layout and card creations that have been made. Talk about the talent...it's awesome!! If you do decide to make a card or layout using one of Lucy's sketches then post it to the gallery so we can see it. The gallery link is along the right side of the blog page. Also check out the forum she set up. Lot's of fun, lots of chatting, lots challenges, games, and all sorts of things to do. It has been a hopping place and everyone is so incredibly nice, helpful, and talented too.

Here is my card I made with the March 1st sketch.

So I finally found a copy Your Invited which is an idea book put out by Scrapbook Trends magazine. If you have a copy or see a copy at Michael's or wherever they carry these great idea books be sure to check out page 52 & 53 in it. You'll see my first ever published card. It was an invite for my daughters birthday last year. I was so excited to see that it was the beginning chapter for Kid's Birthday Invites, which is a 2 page spread. It's just so cool to see your name published in something that you really enjoy. Here is a picture of the book if you happen to see it somewhere when you are out and about.

I also had my first layout published in the Scrap N' Art, a scrapping and paper crafting eZine. It is the March/April issue and I am on page 18 at the bottom. They even referenced my blog tutorial for the Medallion Flowers I used on the layout. I really should make another tutorial sometime since the Medallion Flower tutorial is the one and only tutorial found on my blog. I am amazed how many people have stopped by to check it out.

One more card I wanted to share was one I made for a friend of mine to use as a thank you card she will send to Jack Prelutsky. If you don't know who Jack Prelutsky is, he is an incredible poet that writes wonderful children poems. His books are illustrated by wonderful illustrators like James Stevenson, Arnold Lobel, Marc Brown, and so many more. He has over 50 books of his poems and my kiddos are just starting to enjoy his poetry. So I thought about the card for a while and how I should make it. I knew I wanted it to be somehow based on his poetry or the illustrations used in his books. Then I found his website and after a few clicks I found this wonderful page with all kinds of moving fun things.

Anyway, I love the tree on there and turned it into a card. I hope he likes it.

Well that's not all but it is for now. I will post more soon.

Have a great week and think spring!
Kristen

Sorry I meant to post this on Sunday...

2009-02-25T12:36:00.004-07:00

Lots of things going on and I almost go into shutdown mode. So I am getting it back together, frantically working on some new DT things. I am really not one to procrastinate. I get my assignments and I finish them up right away. But not this week! Oh the pressure! Not really. I actually work better when I pressed for time.

With that said, here is my Plan Plan reveal for this week.

There was a lot of cutting involved in this layout. But well worth it. I love how it turned out.

Happy Hump Day! Have a great rest of the week.
Kristen

What a week!

2009-02-21T07:43:00.008-07:00

This week has been packed full of all kinds drama for me. Monday night I found out I got on the new Card Design Team for My Sketch World.

Totally surprised me on that one and it really made my day after arguing with my darling husband. Lucy, who owns the this awesome sketch blog also started a forum. The forum is a very hopping place right now and by the end of today I think there will be 100+ members. that's pretty good since it just stated this past Wednesday. So please come and sign up. A
Blog-a-versary crop is going on now too with all sorts of challenges to do. A lot of the have RAK's so it could be worth your while. If you do sign up please mention that I sent you. There is a little contest for that too. :wink:

The next day, Tuesday my sister forwards an email to me about a high school friend of her's daughter. She has been having seizures practically her whole life. It is finally taking its toll on her. Doctors finally figure out that she has Rasmussen's Encephalitis, a rare and degenerative brain disease. So the treatment for this is to have the right half of her brain removed and hopefully she will be one of the 75 to 80 percent of those that no longer have seizures. Such a dramatic procedure and only 20 surgeries like this are done in a year in the US. I know 20 is small number but that still seems like a lot of people to me. I have heard and seen some documentaries about people that have had portions of their brain removed and go on have fairly normal lives. I really hope this works for Rachel. Surgery will be at the UCLA Medical Center with a team of surgeons on March 26th. So if you could, please pray for her and her family.

So on Thursday a long time family friend (my mom's very good friend) passed away. She was very ill last year and was in the hospital for months. Then a few weeks ago they find a tumor (I think on her kidney) and tested it for cancer. It was and so she did a round of chemo. She came from that and started having breathing problems again so back to the hospital. They couldn't figure out what was going on with her. So they check her bone marrow and found she had blood cancer. I never knew you could have blood cancer. So she is moved into hospice on Wednesday and is gone the next day. I didn't think she would go that fast. A few weeks maybe. So there is some sadness in my heart.

Because of all this I felt a bit rushed to get my other DT projects done in time for reveals this weekend. My Page Plans reveal, which will be tomorrow, wasn't too rushed thank goodness. I had most of it finished last week. My Basic Grey Challenges card that I made could have been better. I look at the other DT's creations and feel a bit underdone. But this weeks challenge is a color combo challenge. " We would like you to pick one of the following colour combos for your creations (Skin and white card colours are allowed too),

Pink and Green

Pink and Brown

Blue and Brown

So what are you waiting for, pick your favorite combo and get crafting :), but of course not to forget to use at least one item from BasicGrey on your creation. As a special treat from the DT this week we were given a cupcakes download from The Cutting Cafe. you have to check this place out--printable stamps. Printable stamps are images that you download onto your computer. They are in a PDF format which can be read by Adobe Acrobat, which I think everyone has on their computer. They also can be opened with Preview for you Apple users. I became very familiar with Preview when Adobe took their sweet to upgrade their reader to work on the new OS on Macs last year. But I digress. Back to The Cutting Cafe...I just hopped over their and I see some stuff I am going to get....so cool. Also check out the owner, Regina Easter's blog, Hand to Paper. Lots of good inspiration there too.

Here is the link for the cupcakes printables we got to use for this weeks challenge. Aren't they awesome.

Here is my card. I used some Doodlebug sugared glitter for the frosting and some Stickles too (it's a little hard to see that though-sorry). I also used the Big Printable Frame from The Cutting Cafe too on my card. I used my Granola papers for a blue and brown color combo.

So with all that has gone on this week, Tuesday was our 8th wedding anniversary. It seems every year around the time of our anniversary we have an argument. We don't fight or argue much, probably once a year. And of course it's around our anniversary which is sort of funny I guess. Tonight we are going to Indigo Crow (my favorite restaurant) for dinner to celebrate 8 wonderful years of marriage. I can't wait.

Well that's all for today. Check back tomorrow for my Page Plans reveal and a new program called SCAL that I downloaded for my Cricut. I am so excited about it.

Kristen

Sorry for such a long post.

Sunday things

2009-02-15T20:58:00.001-07:00

What a nice today so far. We went to breakfast this morning at our favorite breakfast place. And now we are just hanging out and taking it easy. The kids are playing "kitty school" which is a school for all of Cady's kitty stuffies and a few other animals. She is the teacher of course. I am organizing my scrap area and making a few things. And of course today is the Daytona 500 and that is what my hubby is watching today. He does have some chores to do and I keep reminding him of that every 15 minutes or so.

My layout for today at Page Plans is a nice wintry reminder that it is still winter and spring is a little over a month away. I had a lot of fun making this one. I used some snowflake brass stencils, snowflake rub-ons, snowflake chipboard, and some mini snowflakes that were supposed to be used as ornaments are all over this layout. The abbreviated poem is by Ogden Nash.

I had a chance to do the latest cupcake challenge (#55) at Taylored Expressions today too. It's been a while since I have done a challenge there and it was lots of fun. I dug out my stash of pirate paper and embellishments and made a birthday card with a gift card holder inside. It's so cute and I am so pleased how it turned out.

Then I took out some new paper I just got a few week ago from Tinkering Ink Becoming Green line. Really gorgeous stuff! So I had fun with it too with the same challenge from Taylor Expressions.

Well that's it. Everyone have a great week!

Kristen

Adding a couple more things today

2009-02-14T11:03:00.005-07:00

I don't think I've ever had 2 posts in one day. But I just wanted to share the little gift the kids and I made for Daddy on Valentine's Day. I also wanted to show another card I made for the Caardvarks heart challenge.

I bought the frame yesterday at one of my LSS here. Then I used my Cricut to cut out the scalloped frame to go around the picture. All the papers and most embellishments are Basic Grey Bittersweet. I took the picture this morning and printed it out. Now Daddy will have a great picture to sit on his desk at work. On the back of the frame I had the kids write their names and decorate it a bit.

I saw a picture in a book by Carin Berger called The Little Yellow Leaf. She is an illustrator and her work is so simple and beautiful. So this card was inspired by that picture. You can see her wonderful work at www.carinberger.com. But I think I was dreaming about this picture last night and after the kids had their breakfast I went to work on it.

Kristen

Last of the Valentine's cards

2009-02-13T19:23:00.001-07:00

I am glad Valentine's Day is tomorrow. No more cards to make. It's been fun but I am so ready to work on other things now. I had a couple of cards I made for the latest Caardvarks challenge which is to use hears on your creation.

So here they are...

I used a faux mosaic technique to make this card. I was using some leftover circle punch outs from the teacher appreciation gifts I had made earlier this week.

For this card I used a sketch from my Card Maker's Sketch Book. I have a bunch of these felt heart stickers and I am trying to use them up. So I flipped them over and put some micro beads on the "sticker part" of the hearts. The hearts have a neat look to them now.

For Basic Grey Challenges this week we were to use hearts somewhere on our creations. So I used a bunch of hearts and my Bittersweet papers and embellishments and went at it. I have had this picture of my niece Brantley for a while now. I was taken by the vivid blue sky behind her and wanted to really pull that out of the photo. So I wondered what royal blue paper would look like with the Bittersweet papers and this is what I came up with.

Check back Sunday for my Page Plans reveal.

Have a wonderful Valentine's Day and a super weekend!
Kristen

Midweek reveal at Page Plans

2009-02-10T22:16:00.007-07:00

I have finished up the kiddos Valentine's treats they will give out this Friday at their class parties. Everything turned out so cute and they both can't wait to pass them out to their friends. I also wanted to share the bonus sketch we got to do this week at Page Plans. So please go and check out the bonus sketches this week and give them a try.

So here is the lovely sketch I used for my layout.

And here is my layout. I thought the photo should be in Sepia and it really worked with the Basic Grey Bittersweet papers I used. I love this sketch and I used it for my Basic Grey Challenges layout for this coming Saturday's challenge. Make sure to take a peek then.

Here are the treats I made for my daughter Caden to give to her classmates for Valentine's Day. I saw the shovel idea on SCS and since she loves dinosaurs I thought this was just so perfect for her to give out. I found the red shovels on ebay.

My son, Garrett, wanted to have Robots for his Valentine's Day treat bags. I actually made the treat bag toppers a couple weeks ago. Today I made peanut butter cocoa rice krispie treats in the shape of a Valentine. They turned out so yummy. I had never tried to make them with the Cocoa Krispies cereal. But I figured they had to taste something like a Reese's Peanut Butter cup which are my son's favorites and they did. Thank goodness there wasn't much left over.

The recipe is very simple. My mom always made rice krispie treats this way when I was growing up. I never really had the marshmallow version until much later.

1 cup peanut butter
1 cup sugar
1 cup Karo Corn Syrup

Put those ingredients in a pan on the stove and bring to a rolling boil for a minute or two, constantly stirring.

Have a big bowl filled with 6 to 7 cups of Rice Krispies or Cocoa Rice Krispies cereal. Then pour the peanut butter mixture over the cereal and stir it up. Then pour onto a greased cookie sheet and press it out to 1/2 inch to 3/4 in thickness. Then while it still soft, cut into what ever shapes you would like. I did hearts. Once the shapes were cut I placed them on wax paper and then I assembled the treat bags.

Here is how they turned out.

One other thing I wanted to share was another layout I did for the Friday Free-for-All contest on the Page Maps blog. You have until February 16th to make a layout based on the sketch by Becky Fleck. You should see the awesome prize package for it. I just love her sketches! I had bought this houndstooth patterned paper and wondered what I was going to do with it. I'm not a houndstooth fan but when I saw the sketch I knew this was the time to use it.

Isn't it just so colorful. The flowered papers are by CherryArte and it's hard to see but the green background is a houndstooth print too. I did some handstitching too. The letters for "frogs" are from Basic Grey and I ran them through the CuttleBug in the Tiny Bubbles embossing folder and then brushed them over a green Distress Ink pad. Kind of a fun thing to do with simple white letters.

But on top of dinosaurs my daughter loves frogs too. Mention the words baby doll or Barbies to her and she will give you a look of disgust and tell you she'll never play with those things. My cute little tomboy!

Well that's all for now. I am going to play tomorrow and work on some card sketches with a friend. Have a great rest of the week.

Kristen

Teacher Appreciation Gifts

2009-02-08T17:13:00.004-07:00

About a month ago I told my daughter's room mother at school that I wanted to make the teacher appreciation gifts for the 4 teachers we are honoring this coming Wednesday. I thought about what I wanted to do and I decided to make a paper flower bouquets with pictures of the kids on them. Then put the flowers into a vase filled with candy. So today I was very busy assembling them with lots of help from Kathleen and Katie (mom's to Jaclyn and Ben who are Cady's classmates). Thank goodness I have a Cricut or this would have never been possible. But they are 95% done. I am waiting for a few more photos to come in and then I can finish them up. Since it was so close to Valentine's Day we thought we'd kind of go with that theme so I threw in a few hearts and went with a pink and red color scheme for the the flowers (with a few extra colors thrown into the mix too).

Here is what we made today.

I also wanted to share my Page Plans layout for today. The sketch was created by Chris this week.

Congrats to Laurel! She won a new Slice from the contest at Page Plans.

Well I hope everyone has a great week. I'll try and post the kid's Valentines I am making later this week.

Kristen

I think I have a cold...

2009-02-06T21:32:00.005-07:00

I'm not sure though. I have this nagging cough but my throat isn't sore and I don't feel achy or anything. Maybe it's because I didn't really sleep last night. As soon as I post this I'm off to bed.

I wanted to share my Basic Grey Challenges card I made for this weeks challenge.

Challenge 21 - Lets Mix it Up

This week we would like you to mix it up, we would like you to use at least two different BasicGrey ranges in your creations, for eg Blush papers and Boxer Brads or Archaic chip stickers, Sultry papers and cupcake fibers, the possibilities are endless, so what are you waiting for lets mix it up

This week one lucky winner will win this fabulous prize which has very generously been sponsored by the Artistic Stamper.

I just love my design teamies came up with this week. Here is the card I made for the challenge. I used Blush and Bittersweet papers and embellishments. And of course it is a Valentine's card.

Well that all for now. I am off to bed and I hope when I wake up tomorrow my cough will be gone. I don't have time to be sick right now. That usually helps when I say that to make it go away.-LOL!

I'll be posting my latest Page Plans layout this Sunday.

Kristen

Getting ready for an exciting Sunday!

2009-02-01T00:05:00.001-07:00

So my man, Kurt Warner and the Arizona Cardinals are in the Superbowl! I am so excited for them and I'm not sure I'll be able to watch. I tend to go a little crazy when I watch certain sporting events. This game is one such sporting event. But I went to the University of Northern Iowa when Kurt Warner was the quarterback there. I think I graduated a semester before him and we were in the same building for our degree. I think he was Communications and I was in Communicative Disorders. So I have watched him from college, to arena football, to NFL Europe, to leading the Rams to Superbowl victory in 2000. His career has been one incredible ride for him.

For Saturday at Basic Grey Challenges... "we have another sketch for you to follow, you can resize and even flip the sketch but please make sure that the original sketch can be recognized easily in your creations, feel free to also add any other embellishments etc to your creations and of course not forgetting to use at least one item from BasicGrey."

Here is the wonderful sketch.

And here is the card I made.

For Page Plans this week we had another wonderful sketch to work on made by Lesli.

And here is my layout.

I was on a roll this weekend with doing some challenges on some of my favorite challenge blogs.

I finally had a chance to do the Caardvarks challenge this week called Seeing Spots. It's been so long since I have done a challenge with them. I was so happy to get back into the swing of things again. My card is based on a sketch by Becky Fleck and was featured on a Cuttlebug Challenge (#15) I had done a week or so ago. I just loved the sketch and loved the card of the winner of the challenge, that I had to try my own version of it.

Here is what I came up with.

It is super flowery. Definitely not something I would send in the mail but to take to a wedding or something along those lines. I barely attached the sentiment to the card, just in case I wanted to make it a birthday card or something like that.

Another card I made was for Cuttlebug Challenges Be Inspired #16 which was to use distressing on your creation. I have been wanting to try these clear cards from Short Cuts and decided to try and distress them somehow. So I ran the front of the card through my Cuttlebug using my Swiss Dots folder. Then I applied alcohol inks to the now "dotted" front and back of the card. I did this mainly to hide the adhesive I used on the cardstock since it is a clear card you'll be able to see the back of the cardsotck on the inside of the card. Then I ran a piece of Coordinations cardstock through the Cuttlebug using my D'Vine Swirls folder and then sanded it down to bring out the pink color. Icut and embossed the butterfly too and distress it on the edges a bit and rubbed Distress Ink over the dotted texture. I tried to go with the polka dotted theme of the card. I think it turned out pretty good for my first attempt at making a clear card.

The next 2 cards I made using Sketch #18 by Laura from the 2 Sketches 4 You challenge blog.

It's been a while since I have done a challenge here too. But I had these circle Valentine's cards from My Minds Eye that I bought last Valentine's Day and decided to cut them up. The circle heart on the front is from that card set. The first card is for Valentine's Day and the 2nd card I think I will give to my hubby for our 8 year anniversary coming up next month (right after Valentine's Day).

Well that's it.
Not much scrappin' for me today. I'll be rooting for Kurt and the Cards later today.
I hope they win!
Kristen

Valentine's Day cards quick post

2009-01-29T15:06:00.003-07:00

Just wanted to post some of the Valentine's Day cards I am making for someone. The first card features the Medallion flower that I made a tutorial on a few months back. You can find the tutorial here.

That's it for my very quick post. Watch out for my Page Plan and Basic Grey Challenges reveals this weekend.

Kristen

Cuttlebug Challenge

2009-01-26T20:42:00.000-07:00

So I thought I would give the Cuttlebug Challenge blog a shot for the first time. The challenge was to use one of Becky Fleck's sketches. I love her sketches and use them a lot when I am making a card or scrapbook layout. I really like this sketch and I have used it before.

This is the sketch (by Becky Fleck) we are to use for the Cuttlebug Be Inspired Challenge #15.

Here is one card I made for the challenge. I pulled out all the flower dies I own and started cutting away. I stamped "Happy Birthday" on a piece of Tim Holtz Fragments and attached it to the card.

This card is probably taking the sketch to it's extreme. I layered all the elements on one side of the card. So you would start at the Sun and scan down to the clouds, the ship, the big fish, and then finally to the seaweed. I used all kinds of Cuttlebug dies and embossing folders. It was really fun and I have been wanting to make something with the pirate ship die for quite a while now. But this is going to make a super cool birthday card for a little boy.

So I'm not sure if I can have 2 cards in this challenge so I'll pick the pirate ship card for the official card of the challenge.

That's it for now.
Thanks for looking.
Kristen

Reveals for this week

2009-01-25T07:50:00.009-07:00

I had to get up early to get this post done. This is my favorite time of the day. No one is up and the house is quiet. I can think about what I am going to do for the day (or for the week if I'm lucky).

For Basic Grey Challenges this week... "we would like you to follow a recipe, you can of course add more embellishments etc to your creations but please make sure to use all of the ingredients in the recipe on your creations, and of course not forgetting to use at least one item from
BasicGrey."

Here is the recipe:

Ingredients
2 Patterned papers
1 Button
1 Ribbon and Bow

Did I mention the prizes this week? You will need to go a check them out.

So I made a small 6 x 6 layout this week of my daughter for the challenge.

For my Page Plans layout this week I was a little panicked about. Not the sketch, it was great, but the subject. We were to do a layout for Valentine's Day featuring adults. I don't take pictures of myself of my hubby very often. It's all about the kids for me. And I didn't have any "cutsie, love-dovey" ones of us to work with. I decided this was time to dig out the wedding pictures. I wasn't a scrapbooker back then so all my weeding pictures are crammed into a picture album and that's about it. I also decided this was the time to try my hand at a little digital scrapbooking too. I really don't an to go out and buy all kinds of "wedding themed" papers and embellishments. Yikes! $$$$ So I thought digital would be the way to go. So I tried out Adobe Elements and played around with it. I still have no idea what half of the features available are on Adobe Elements. I really need to get a book on it. But it was fun and I am going to continue to play around with it.

Here is this weeks sketch by Chris.

And this is what I came up with.

Not too bad for my first digital layout. But I do need lots of practice with it still. That will be the fun part, hopefully.

This is the final week for the Slice contest at Page Plans. The contest is open to everyone so please go and check them out. I thought I would list the rules here as well.

The rules:

1) Pick any 2 sketches from the Page Plans catalog (it doesn't matter if they are both cards, both LO's or one of each).
2) Now create something wonderful (entries must be new work - nothing previously done)
3) Please send us a link or downloads by 7PM Saturday, January 31st. (You have a whole month) - let us know which sketch numbers you used.
4) Send to Page Plan Email - pageplans@gmail.com

This contest is open to everyone!

We will create a poll for everyone to begin voting on Sunday, February 1st. We will have the poll run for seven days - during that time everyone can vote for their favorite Card or LO (one entry each day).

The winner will be announced on Sunday, February 8th. We will also select our March Guest Designers from the entries we receive.

Please feel free to share the give-a-way news with you friends and family! Let them know when voting begins - they can stop by and vote for their favorites too!

I wanted to share a birthday card I made yesterday for one of Garrett's classmates. I don't get to make cute and pretty princess cards very often. My daughter, Cady, is quite the tomboy. If she sees a princess or Barbie or baby doll she will let you know her disapproval of them. I wish I could find some very girly dinosaurs out there. She loves dinosaurs! But I love how the card turned out and his classmate, Zoe, seemed to like it (and her mom really liked it too).

Well that is all. I have some more Valentine's cards to post later this week.

I hope everyone has a great week!
Kristen

Faux Mosaic Valentine's Day Card

2009-01-21T13:03:00.005-07:00

I just wanted to share my card I made for a challenge over at Split Coast Stampers. It is a faux mosaic technique I just had to try. It took a lot of time to do and I am going to try and figure out an easier way to do this technique. We'll see. But I thought the sentiment for this card was kind of funny too. It's from my new Papertrey stamps I just got a couple of weeks ago. I also used my BG Blush paper I still had from last years Valentine's Day stash.

Well I am off to make more Valentine's stuff. Thanks for stopping by.
Kristen

It's warming up here...

2009-01-18T00:05:00.004-07:00

Finally we are getting into the 50's here. Later this week it will be 56 degrees. I'm thinking play time at the park for the kiddos. So after this nice and long weekend I have gotten around to posting a few things.

For Basic Grey Challenges this week "we would like to see you use one (or all even if you want to) of these fabulous illustrations which have been designed by our own fabulously talented Kim , (Only people taking part in this challenge are allowed to use these images (for now anyway) and of course when the challenge is over you can continue to use them if you wish but please remember that these images are copyright to Kim and should only be used according to her terms of use), oh and course not forgetting to use at least one item from BasicGrey somewhere on your creation :).

Kim is just so talented and I decided to make a Valentine's card for the challenge.

The papers, chipboard stickers and glazed brad are from the new BG Bittersweet collection. I used a sketch again from the brand new Inspirational Card Sketches blog. It sure saved me some time when creating this card. The "P.S. I love you." stamp is from Papertrey. I colored in Kim's wonderful image with my SU Pastels and a blender pen.

My next sketch challenge reveal is from Page Plans. The awesome sketch this week was done by Chris and we were to do a Valentine's Day theme focusing on children.

And here is my layout. I don't really have any pictures from Valentine's Day last year. I think I scrapped most of them already. But I saw this picture and knew it would work perfectly of my daughter and the kitty she just loves so much. She always wanted to hug the kitty. Even now, she knows the kitty likes to have a "nice pet", she still wants to sneak a hug in. Sierra (kitty) is not as resistant anymore.

I decided to do an oval rather than a circle. I printed out some oval shapes I made with AppleWorks on my computer and then just traced around the the picture and cut it out. I didn't do such a hot job cutting the ovals out, so I distressed the edges quite a bit. It gives it a much softer feel. The papers are (mostly) from MME. The "Love" is chipboard from Basic Grey and the heart for the letter "o" was flocked in red. I used a piece of Tim Holtz Fragments and colored it red using alcohol inks and then just used some silver colored letter stickers on it.

One more card I wanted to share was one I made using some more of the BG Bittersweet collection. It's a pretty big card, just under 6 inches. The heart I pieced together, again, with some flower petal shapes I had. I embossed on petal and stamped into it and the other petal I used some gold leafing on it. The large brown embossed heart in the center was made using some brown and red Coordinations cardstock. I ran it through my Cuttle Bug and lightly sanded it to bring the red color out. this was the first time I used Coordinations so I am pleased with how it turned out. I think this may be a potential "hubby" card for Valentine's Day.

I received another blog award from one of my Basic Grey Challenges teamies, Heather. Please check out her blog, Rica's Haven. She makes such gorgeous stuff!!

So to keep the award going on and on I need to pass it on to 7 of my favorite blogs. Do you know how many blogs I consider my favorites? You should see my blog bookmarks. I even have them categorized into sub areas. And I think I add a new one almost everyday to my list. So I am passing this on to...

Chris
Lesli
BethieJ
Mara
Julie
Michelle
Jen

Well I hope everyone has a great week!
Kristen

A Twist at Page Plans

2009-01-14T05:56:00.006-07:00

We had a fun little twist on our card and layout sketches today at Page Plans. The card sketch was to be used by the layout team and the layout sketch was to be used by the card team. This was a great challenge and it really show versatility of the sketches. So here is what I came up with for Sunday's card sketch.

I just love using white chipboard letters and coloring them with Distress Inks (or whatever is handy).

Thanks for looking and happy hump day!
Kristen

More Valentine's (this is not the end)

2009-01-12T00:05:00.004-07:00

So I am in full Valentine's Day card mode. I just got my new Basic Grey Bittersweet papers and embellishments on Friday and yesterday I cracked them all open and started making so cards. I got some new Papertrey Ink stamps too and so I decided to start having to creative fun. The card I made Sunday was based on a sketch from a brand spankin' new sketch challenge blog called Inspirational Card Sketches. There is a call for 6 new design team members. So if that sounds like fun then go take a look. How fun to start a brand new challenge blog. I've always thought about doing one. But when things slow down maybe I'll give it more thought. Does it ever really slow down though?? So I thought my new Bittersweet papers, my new stamps, and the sketch would be perfect for each other.

So here is the sketch from Inspirational Card Sketches.

And here is my card.

The hearts, the "Hugs & Kisses" and the multiple xoxoxo's are the Papertrey stamps. All the paper and glazed brad are Basic Grey. I used lots of Distress Inks and my nesties. The card base is from Paper Source (which is just such an awesome store to buy stuff from, by the way).

I also got an award from one of my fab teamies, Kim, at Basic Grey Challenges this past week. She is the sweetest. Check her blog out, Paper Babe.

The rules of accepting this award are:-

You have to give it to 5 others and link to those people as well as who gave it to you. Those 5 should also pass it on to another 5 people. Plus you have to write down 5 things you are addicted too.

Just 5 things, huh!!

Well #1 is patterned paper, I have way too much. Well no I don't! You can never have too much!! OK I've calmed down.

#2 Would be alphabet stickers. I just love have a variety to choose from for my layouts and when I don't want to drag my Cricut out.

#3 Coffee--have to have it or I will have a massive headache in the afternoon.

#4 My computer. I have had withdrawals from it when it's been broken down. This computer I have now has not down anything yet (knock on wood). But I get very irritated and grouchy when I get online to check something out.

#5 Gum--I just need to chew gum all the time. Weird, I know.

So I need to pass this blog award to 5 of my favorite blogs. Let's see I have more than 5 but here it goes...

Lorie
Angie
Mariska
Heidi
Mothermark (Cindy)

Well that is all for today. Have a great week everyone!
Kristen

Well thanks for looking.

Reveals & some naughty (but nice) Valentine's cards

2009-01-11T00:05:00.004-07:00

I wanted to share my layouts this week for Page Plans and Basic Grey Challenges (BGCB) for this week. I have been so busy again, working on Valentine's stuff, design teams things, figuring out Photo Shop Elements for a digital layout I want to try out and making gift cards and brochures for a hair and nail salon that I frequent. I thought it would be calmer after the holidays. I think it was for 3 days and back to all the "busy-ness".

This week for Page Plans we had a great double layout for out sketch this week. I used to to do double and multiple page layouts all the time when I first started scrapbooking. I used the same papers and elements and everything just matched so well. I have to laugh at how I used to do things. I think my scrapbooking has definitely evolved significantly. I wonder if I should go back and redo what I have done? Have you ever revamped a layout because it just wasn't your style anymore? That would be quite a daunting task. But back to the Page Plans layout...I made 2 of them this week. The first was a single page layout I made to show the versatility of the sketch and the other layout was actually 2 pages. They were lots of fun to make.

Here is the lovely 2-pager by Chris.

Isn't bubble wrap so much fun. Not only for the kids but for me too. I love the Heidi Swap Ghost letters. I embossed them in my Cuttlebug with the Tiny Bubbles embossing folder.

Remember to take a look at the contest at Page Plans. You could win a new Slice. What fun toy to have fun and play with.

For Basic Grey Challenges this week I made a 6x6 layout of my son, Garrett. This weeks challenge was to use chipboard somewhere in your layout or card. I used to flower petals from some Stampin' Up chipboard elements. On one petal I used some really thick embossing powder and then stamped into it with a diamond patterned background stamp. The other petal I coated with glue and adhered some multicolored gold leafing to it. Then I layered the petals to look like a heart. I want to make a similar one with a picture of my daughter, Cady too. I used Basic Grey Blush paper and a rub-on that came with the Blush card kit.

These are a couple of Valentine's cards I have made this week. These obviously aren't for the kids. They are very risque and were lots of fun to make and embellish. The pattern is from Stamp Owl's Studio blog. There are also lots of these cards at Split Coast Stampers in the gallery to look at as well.

Well that is all for today. Have a great week and hopefully I'll have some more to share later in the week.

Thanks for stopping by.
Kristen

Happy New Year and new reveals

2009-01-04T00:05:00.007-07:00

I hope everyone had a wonderful New Year's Eve and New Year's Day celebrations. We went out with friends to an awesome Italian restaurant and had such a great time. We came back to our house with desserts in tow and had a champagne toast. It was lots of fun. On New Year's Day we kind of just relaxed for most of the day watching the Tournament of Roses Parade and various Bowl games. I was happy to see that New Mexico's float in the Parade won the Bob Hope Humor Award for most comical or amusing float. It was rather cute. For dinner we had crab legs with all the fixin's. It was yummy!

So Basic Grey Challenges is back in full force again. To start the new year we were given a sketch for this weeks challenge. I had all intentions of making a layout but time slipped away too quickly so I made a card instead. I used Periphery papers and thought they would be perfect for this bridal shower card I needed to make.

I had lots of fun with my Page Plans layout this week. You can also see by the layout that I am ready for summer to be here. I had gotten this fun paper from Luxe a while back. I hadn't really dreamed of using this particular sheet for a layout of my son but it fit so well with his outfit. The photo is one of way to many I had taken for his 5 year old pictures. The fab sketch was created by Lesli.

I just love how the wire circle turned out and I am so glad I bought that basket full of sand dollars years ago. They really have come in handy in some of my layouts and cards.

So how would you like to win a new Making Memories Slice?? Check out the Page Plans blog to see.

Some news to share. I received an email a few days ago and I am going to have a layout published in Scrap N' Art scrapbooking & paper crafting eZine. It will be the March/April issue. How exciting is that! So be sure to check them out. I just got the latest issue downloaded onto my computer so I will be browsing through it later tonight. Anyway, I am supposed to have the layout removed by February 1st so please check it out at this earlier post on my blog before I pull it off of there.

What New Year's resolutions have you made for 2009? I haven't quite narrowed it down. But last year I picked one thing to do for 2008 and I really stuck to it and will continue on with it. It was to try and recycle more items instead of throwing them in the trash. Now the recycle bin is always filled to the brim and we only have pickup for it every other week. I am hoping it will become a weekly pickup soon. But since I focused on recycling I have noticed that we rarely pull both trash cans to the curb every week for trash pickup. So I will have to pick my one thing to do for 2009 pretty soon.

I hope everyone has a great week!
Kristen

I have killed the fish!

2008-12-29T18:53:00.002-07:00

Well just one of them and it wasn't my fault. The aerator thingy on my son's tank was not making bubbles like the one on my daughter's fish tank. I kept checking it and moving it around, but then I would see bubbles coming out so I though all is well. I guess as soon as I closed the lid it would stop working. Poor fish! We had it for just over 24-hours and it's dead. My son was so sweet. I asked him if he wanted to say anything about his fish before its burial (which was a quick flush). He said this little prayer, "Dear God. Take care of my goldfish in heaven. I really liked having you. You were a good swimmer. I'm so sad now." Then he walked out of the room all teared up. I am standing there in tears. What a sweet and sensitive boy I have. On the day he was born I looked at him and told my husband that he had thoughtful eyes. He was going to be such a thoughtful and compassionate child. I told Garrett I would get a new tank tomorrow and some new fish. Daddy said he could have three and he has already named them. Ben (like his first fish), Jerry, and Tom. He has a cute sense of humor too. Wish me luck on the new fish. I don't want to go through this ordeal again. Doesn't it just crush you to see your child so sad. I am going to make sure the aerator works on the new tank.

Kristen

Hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas

2008-12-28T16:58:00.006-07:00

We had a wonderful Christmas! The kids were so fun this year and they got lots of great stuff from Santa this year and from the grandparents and Aunt "Mimmy" too. All the new toys kept them entertained for a few days while we had some brief winter weather and very cold temperatures. This weekend we finally got out of the house and went to the Natural History Museum and then today to the pet store to get some goldfish. The kids have been asking for 6 months if they could have a fish for their room. So today they each got a goldfish. Caden named her's Rexy (after her T-Rex of course) and Garrett named his Ben (after Ben 10, his favorite cartoon). They seem rather lonely so hopefully they will stay healthy (and live or more than a week) and then we can get some more (I have had bad luck with goldfish or any kind of fish in the past). But I have confidence in my "fish-raising"abilities-LOL!

This weeks Page Plans sketch (by Chris this week) was lots of fun. The pictures were from a little snow storm we had over a week ago. I faded the large photo so that it seemed almost transparent. Then I added the two smaller pictures to the side. It came out with a unique look I think.

So here is the sketch.

Here is my layout.

Page Plans is having a New Years' contest some up soon. Be sure to check them out. Next week all the details of the contest will be revealed. It should be lots of fun!

**********

I wanted to share a wreath I made this year that was inspired by a visit to Starbucks. I had noticed these wreaths and garland hanging around the Starbucks I go to once in a while. They were basically yarn balls of different sizes and colors and small colored glass ornaments attached to it. I kept looking at it thinking I could make something like that, so I headed to Hobby Lobby. I knew I didn't actually want to make yarn balls because it would waste a lot of yarn and I didn't have a lot of time. So I bought some Styrofoam balls of various sizes along with different red and green yarns. Then I wrapped the yarn around the Styrofoam balls. Then I added some ivory/gold-ish looking glass ball ornaments and one very ornate green glass ornament and was done. I attached the yarns balls and ornaments (with my hot glue gun) to a foam wreath that I wrapped it some pretty Christmas ribbon. It turned out pretty cool and I impressed myself even. It didn't take long to make at all and it was a nice addition to my front door.

Well I hope everyone has a wonderful New Years eve and day this week! We actually get to go out for a little bit. I promised the babysitter we would be back by 10:00. So I am looking forward to celebrating with my friends this year.

Kristen

Happy Sunday

2008-12-21T11:11:00.004-07:00

Only 4 more days until Christmas! My kids are just so excited about this year and have really gotten into the whole Christmas spirit! They made Christmas chains a few weeks ago to count down the days until Christmas. The weather here has been cold but no snow. We have chances of snow on Monday through Thursday this week. Although I doubt we have a white Christmas. That is a rare thing here. Today we have a birthday party and tonight we are going to see the River of Lights down at the Bio-Park. My daughter is especially excited to see the new moving T-Rex this year.

So this week at Page Plans we had a very awesome sketch to work with this week and I hopefully worked out all the quirks of why my emails with my layouts (of course) were not getting to the Page Plan gals, Chris and Lesli. How mortified I was that they were not getting them. Even though I wasn't getting any kind of message saying otherwise. I had so much fun with this sketch. The theme was a tradition we do for the Christmas holidays. We decorate the tree and buy special ornaments to hang on the tree each year. This year I let the kids pick their own ornament. Garrett picked a Buzz Lightyear ornament and Caden picked out Rocket form the Little Einstein's. Then I picked out one for the tree too. The kids ahd so much fun decrorating the tree this year and I took some great photos. I used an antique option on iPhoto to alter the colors a bit on the pictures. I used more of that fun paper from Tinkering Ink.

So here is the sketch by Chris.

This is what I came up with.

Well I hope everyone has a great week!! Have a wonderful Christmas, Hannukah, and Kawanza!
Kristen

A Blustery Day

2008-12-18T13:44:00.005-07:00

Blustery but warm and so it's been raining rather than snowing her today. I love it when it snows here. It doesn't stay around too long and if I don't have to drive anywhere then I really love it. I have become "impaired" since moving here to New Mexico and can no longer drive in snowy weather. I'm just like everyone else that lives here now. I think during the last snow storm, there were 60+ accidents in town. And it wasn't that bad out there. But if you are not used to driving in it then what do you expect.

I have had Michelle Giraud's blog, Twisted Chick Creations, bookmarked for a very long time. One the firsts I ever read and now subscribe to. I found her through Embellish-It when she was on the DT there. Anywho, she has just started a sketch challenges on her blog and I thought I would give it a try. So Challenge #1 was to make a 4 x 4 mini accordian card. I actually made mine 5 x 4 just to see how it would turn out. Check out her fab blog and a new sketches to come.

My card is a Christmas themed one. I used some really cool Tinkering Ink Yuletide papers on it and then I used my computer to make the Christmas sentiment inside. I had made these little gingerbread men ornaments from a cinnamon dough recipe I had and decorated them with Stickles, buttons and this really cool stuff called Glistening Snow Writer. I attached it to the card with a large glue dot so it should come off the card pretty easily. I like how it turned out and I have a few more I want to try and make.

If you would like to make cinnamon dough here is the recipe. It's a lot of fun to make and it smells so yummy.

APPLE CINNAMON DOUGH
1 cup cinnamon
1 cup applesauce
1/4 cup white school glue (like Elmer's)

1. Add the cinnamon to the applesauce until you get a clay like consistency.
2.Add the glue for added thickeness (adding glue is optional)
3. Once mixed, create chapes with your hands or roll the dough out and us cookie cutters. Roll the dough so it is at least 1/4 inch thick (6 milliliters). I make just a little bit thicker than that.
4. To make an ornament, punch a hole in the top with a straw or pencil (do this carefully).
5. Let the dough dry on a cookie rack. Turn occasionally.

It will take a few days to dry. If you dry them in the oven it tends to warp them and darkens the color of them too. But if you need them dried quickly then do 300 degrees (approx 150 degrees celsius)for 20 minutes.

Well that's all for now. I hope everyone has a great weekend!
Kristen

Cleaning up and waiting in long lines

2008-12-14T00:05:00.001-07:00

So I am trying to clean up the dining room area that I have spilled over into. It is a disaster! Even worse than the picture I posted a week or so ago. I have stuff lying on the floor and on every chair. The cat has been having a field day in there chewing on pieces of plastic and string she is finding (which may cause an emergency trip to the vet if I'm not careful). Then the waiting in lines this time of year. The post office is the worst. There was a line of 20 people ahead of me on Wednesday morning at the post office and one person working. One person! Come on, this time of year! Then I read in the morning newspaper about the "gross mismanagement" of the post office in here in Albuquerque. They were even suggesting that we use Fed Ex or UPS if we wanted our packages to arrive on time for Christmas. Maybe try managing and stop acting like my time is not important and I deserve to stand in line for over half an hour to post some letters and mail a package. OK, I'm done venting. But the dining room needs to become a dining room again by Christmas so we can have Christmas dinner in there.

So on with my Basic Grey Challenges reveal and Page Plan reveals for this week.

This week for Basic Grey Challenges "we would like to see you use some recycling on your creations, eg, cardboard, parts cut from another card, material from old clothes, postage stamps, it can be anything you like, the list is endless, also its not essential that the recycled item has to be old and used, you could simply use the inside of a business envelope for example as i know they can have some lovely patterns that can be used as backing papers etc, so have fun and of course not forgetting to use at least one item from basicgrey somewhere on your creation."

I used a piece of corrugated cardboard that came in a package almost a couple of months ago. I held onto it because I saw that this challenge was going to happen and thought it may come in handy. I used the Ambrosia line along with some letter stickers from the Granola line (I ran out of the letter "s" so I improvised).

For Page Plans we had another great sketch by Lesli this week and a holiday theme to go a long with it. The theme was to scrap a tradition we do at Christmas.

We always go to the Delancey Street tree lot and pick out a tree to put up at home. We decorate that day and listen to Christmas music and have some hot chocolate to drink. So this year I made sure I grabbed the camera and took a ton of pictures. This was my favorite! I changed it to a sepia color and had these awesome Christmas papers from Tinkering Ink to make a great layout.

Well I hope everyone has a great week! So much to do this week. It is the last week of school so errands I need to do without the kids have to be done this week.

Page Plan reveal

2008-12-07T09:57:00.004-07:00

Such a gorgeous morning here in New Mexico. I went on a date with my husband last night. Something we have gotten to do in a while. I wanted to post my latest layout for Page Plans this week while I had a moment this morning. Although it isn't posted there for some reason (hopefully it will be soon).

Here is the lovely sketch by Chris.

And here is my layout. It was so fun to reminisce when Cady was one-year-old. My little baby is growing up so fast. All the papers and sticker elements are from Stampin' Up (except for the "Christmas 2006 stickers).

Hope everyone has a great week!
Kristen

Basic Grey reveal

2008-12-05T20:07:00.004-07:00

I just wanted to do a quick post of my layout for this weeks challenge at Basic Grey Challenges.

"For this weeks challenge we would like to see some charms on your creations, you can have as many as you like, and of course not forgetting to use at least 1 item from BasicGrey somewhere on your creations."

So with that said here is my layout. My "charms" are metal heart shaped magnifying glass and 3 round metal tags which I used some sentiment rub-ons. The picture is from our trip to San Antonio, Texas last March. They have the most beautiful River Walk near the down town area. Also home of The Alamo and we sent to Sea World while we were there too. They had little boat rides along the River Walk and Caden just enjoyed herself and the "cruise" on the river.

I used a really fabulous sketch I found on the Mothers and Daughter Creations blog. The sketch actually was from another sketch (#12) challenge blog call 52 Sketches...52 Weeks. A very cool blog that I hope will keep going for the 52 weeks in 2009 so I can play along.

Have a great weekend!
Kristen

More Christmas cards that aren't all for me.

2008-12-04T15:21:00.006-07:00

I am helping a friend make some Christmas cards. So today I finished up a card for the latest Card Positioning Systems sketch #93. I just love this old SU Christmas paper that I really should be using up. I just hate it when paper retires. The rub-ons I used were also SU. The snowflakes came from Michael's.

CPS #93

The other cards I made today are based on older CPS sketches that I had and just love using over and over again. My friend Heidi gave me these gorgeous cranberry red rub-ons to use. I was playing around with them and wondered how well the would work and look on mulberry paper. So I layered mulberry paper on some cardstock. I used a light blue mulberry on the top and white mulberry on the bottom so it would look like the sky and a snow covered ground. Then I adhered the rub-on. It worked really well and it just has a nice soft look to it. Then I used some diamond (and other clear colored) Stickles on the mulberry paper for an added effect. You can sort of see that in the close ups. Of course I had to use some foil lattice on at least one card (the bottome one). I just love playing around with that stuff.

Today I started decorating the house for Christmas. I need to do a little Christmas decoration shopping I decided. But I had made a holiday house a month ago and I finally got to set it up today for display. It took about week to make and I had a lot of fun just seeing what I could keep adding to it before I thought it was complete. First I did was roof. I bought these minature wood shingles from Hobby Lobby. They are used for those minature dollhouses that people make. I also used minature windows, bricks (for the chimney), and a brass door handle as well. The papers I used to decorate are Basic Grey Wassail and Fruitcake lines. I used a lot of chipboard, stickers, a fun string of Christmas lights, and my Cricut to make all sorts of little things throughout (like the fence, the snowman, and the little mailbox). I think used an entire bottle of Zip Dry to make it too. The house is by Maya Road. You can click on the link to take to their webpage to see the chipboard houses they carry.

So here it is...

Comes complete with pretend snow. Isn't that mailbox so cute.

This is one side of the house. See the yummy turkey sitting on the table.

This is the bck of the house. Mr. Snowman is waiting for Santa to come with milk and cookies in hand.

This is the other side of the house. Do you see the little photo on the fireplace mantle? Those are my to little ones, Garrett and Cady. I order pictures from Shutterfly a lot. When you get your photos thy always have a contact sheet of all the photos you ordered from them. Kind of like the size you would use in a locket. This picture fit so well in the little picture frame I just had to use it in the house.

Also included with the chipboard house is a mini album. The roof comes off and you can fit the album right inside. When you fill it up you could fit another mini album or two inside. I have filled mine up with pictures from the past Christmas's we've had together. Good memories!

Well that's it for today. Hope everyone has a great rest of the week!
Kristen

I'm a messy scrapper

2008-11-30T10:12:00.006-07:00

I am a slob when I get on a roll with things. I don't just work on one thing but maybe 3 or 4 things at a time. My scrap & card area is in the hallway. There are some really great built in desks, bookcases, and cupboards in the hall outside my kid's rooms. They will be their desks for homework and studying when the get older. So for now it is my area that I have really outgrown. My wonderful husband said I could have his office. He never uses it so YAY!!! he will take his desk and other things down to his brewery office as soon as the brewery office is finished. You should see it down there, disastrous! But that is another story. So when he can take his office furniture down I can order some Ikea and Container Store furniture that will work perfectly for my new scrap room. I can't wait. But for now I have "spilled" out into the dining room table. I took a picture of it so you can see what a slob I can be. Will this change when I get a new scrap room, NO! But it will be in it's own room and not the dining room or other areas of the house, like the kitchen counter which has adhesive all over it and I really need to get some Goo Gone and clean it up.
Pretty messy but not too bad as I look at this picture. I've seen messier!

On to my Page Plans reveal for this week. We were to use nontraditional colors in a Christmas themed layout or card. I have pretty much scrapped all of last years Christmas pictures. I have found some more to use for some future layouts I need to make so that's good. I decided to use some winter pictures I took last year of my daughter playing out in the snow. She was wearing her lilac colored winter coat and though that would be the color theme I would use for the layout. It is so fun! I love how it turned out. The sketch this week was made by Chris. Isn't it just lovely!

The paper came from Michael's , I used my Cricut for the lettering, and my Cuttlebug Swirls embossing folder.

I made a dozen or so cards yesterday. Some for Christmas and some for birthday and none for me (they are for some friends of mine). I took some pictures and wanted to share. You can see when I get on a paper kick I will make a bunch of cards with that paper.

I wanted to say thanks to Susanna Boyd for the 2 shout outs at Card of the Week. I really appreciated it and it made my day. For those that don't know about Card of the Week. It is a super blog and A super community. Please check it out and see all the wonderful creations that people have made. Also some fun contests going on too right now. I am hoping to give one a try.

I still need to post my holiday house. I will do that later this week. In the meantime, have a great Sunday and a super week.
Kristen

Basic Grey Challenge reveal

2008-11-28T18:18:00.003-07:00

I had to really think about this challenge at Basic Grey Challenges.

"For this weeks challenge we would like to see an Aperture in your creation, It can be any shape, size or quantity that you like ( for those of you not familiar with an aperture, An aperture is a hole or opening that acts as a window on your creation), And of course not forgetting to use at least one item from BasicGrey somewhere on your creation."

First, I wasn't sure what an aperture was. Then Martine very kindly let me know what one was. She thought about doing something different for a layout challenge but I thought, "no, I can come up with something." So I decided to not just do a single page but a mini album. The album is by Tinkering Ink. It is called a Peek-a-boo album and features all kinds of "apertures". It was a lot of fun to make but I have to say you really need to think about where you are going to place the pictures as well as all the little embellishments and rub-ons and such. The album also has acrylic pages inside of it so that added to the challenge of placing everything in the right place. So I took lots of pictures of it so you cold see all the cutouts and the acrylic layers too.

So that's it. It was a lot of fun to make. I am planning on one for my son. I just need to figure out a theme.

Kristen

a quick post

2008-11-25T14:36:00.004-07:00

Just a quick post while I have a moment to post my Basic Grey Challenges layout and my Page Plans layouts for this week.

My Page Plan layout as based on a lovely sketch by Chris. I wasn't to sure where to start on this layout. Once I finally settled in on the papers I was going to use it just fell into place.

The pictures were taken at White Sands National Monument just outside Alamagordo, New Mexico. The kids can't wait to go back there again. White Sands is infamous as the place where the first atomic bomb was detonated.

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This week at Basic Grey Challenges, "we would like to see some embossing on your creations, it can be heat embossing, dry embossing or even a combo of both :) its entirely up to you :), and of course not forgetting to use at least 1 item from BasicGrey on your creation."

So with that said I used my A-2 embossing folders and added texture to some of the paper pieces in my layout. It is a little hard to see in the pictures, but it's there.

The picture was taken outside the Rocky Mountain Dinosaur Resource Center in Woodland Park, Colorado. Lots of cool fossils to look at there. We will be going back again when we drive up to visit Grandma and Grandpa.

Basic Grey Challenges is looking for two new design team members. If you are interested then please check them out.

Well have a great rest of the week! For those of you in the States, have a great Thanksgiving feast with your family and friends.
Kristen

Awesome card kit!

2008-11-22T08:00:00.001-07:00

I ordered this very awesome and gorgeous card kit the other day. It got here so fast and yesterday I had a chance to play and make some cards. The kits are from Dream Designs by Iralamija. And also check out her wonderful blog (iralamija) for lots of card inspiration. Just some gorgeous things to look at there. I will be keeping my eye out for more kits to come out by her.

So here are some cards I made with this wonderful kit. There are just a few embellies (the snowflakes) that I had that I added to some of the cards. All the sentiments I added were rub ons or stamps.

This one is going to be for my hubby.

Aren't those papers just so gorgeous!! I love them.

Keep an eye out for my Page Plans and Basic Grey Challenges layout reveals this Sunday.

Have a great weekend!
Kristen

I'm dreaming of Christmas cards...

2008-11-20T09:27:00.007-07:00

...and I'm not sure if that's a good thing. Especially when they wake me in middle of the night. I think of the layout mostly and I have to think about something else. I try and think about other things, like what I need to do this weekend, or errands I need to run, or my favorite -- Orlando Bloom, he is such a cutie and very nice to think about at 3AM . I think I need go watch Pirates of the Caribbean now. Anyway, before I do I have more cards to share. This week at 2 sketches 4 You are two great sketches to play around with and make some wonderful cards.

The first two cards I made is based on Laura's sketch #13. I really like this sketch because it is very easy to make wonderful cards. Simple and elegant is always good! I will be making a lot more Christmas cards based on this sketch. (Actually I have, I just didn't post them all here.)

I don't think I can grow weary of that Santa stamp. I just love it!

The next sketch is from Kristen (isn't that a great name). It was a fun sketch too!

Again I did the foil leafing behind the Merry Christmas epoxy sticker and attached it with some glue dots. It really makes it stand out more and has a very elegant look to it.

Page Maps is having a November card contest. Check them out and make a card. I made a few. Now I just need to pick one out to submit for the contest. I am working on the latest CPS sketch too. It is another one that will just be great for a Christmas card. So I will try and post it by the weekend.

Hope everyone has a great rest of the week!
Kristen

On a role...so far

2008-11-17T20:05:00.006-07:00

I have 10 things I need to do, all at once of course. I am working on boy birthday cards right now and I think I am nearing the end of that phase. Next will be girl cards and I need to get in a girly card making mood. So in the mean time, I will work on some more Christmas cards. One card I made last night was using Taylored Expression Cupcake Challenge #42. I haven't done a challenge there for a while and I really liked the sketch this week. So why not make a Christmas card. I had lots of fun using my foil lattice and gold leafing . I used the leafing behind the Merry Christmas epoxy sticker. Which no longer makes it a sticker so I used some pop dots instead for a little dimension.

Here are some gift bags (with tags) I made using my Cricut.

And here are some more boy cards using the super fun Granola line from Basic Grey. I used sketches from CPS to make these cards.

My hubby things the elephant looks a little crazy. Crazy but cute!

Tomorrow is supposed to be warm and sunny. I am planning a trip to the zoo or the botanical gardens with the kids. A near 70 degree temperature day in November needs to be taken advantage of for a day of fun!

Thanks for looking and have a great week.