Bug's 3rd Birthday

My son just had his third birthday a few weeks ago, and we had a Cars birthday party, since that is his all-time favorite movie. I made Lightening McQueen invitations using the Cricut Cars and Alphalicious cartridges.

I started by cutting some 4.5 x 3.5" rectangles out of a light brown paper (for the dirt), 4.5 x 3" rectangles out of light blue (for the sky), and some 4 x 3.5" rectangles out of black (the road). To make the road more dimensional, I used a pencil and marked the edge of each sheet .5" in from either side of the top edge. I then used my paper trimmer to cut from the pencil mark on the top to the bottom corner. To make the center lines, I used a ruler and my American Crafts White Galaxy Marker.

I cut McQueen at 2", and since I used the image that was facing straight forward, it wasn't too terrible to put together. I embossed his wheels with black metallic embossing powder to give them a shine (plus it shows up better against the black background!). "It's a Party" was cut from the Alphalicious cartridge at about 2.5".

For the inside, I used my Hobby Lobby "You're Invited" stamp for the details of the party. This is where the Stamp-A-Ma-Jig comes in really handy, because with this particular stamp, I have trouble stamping it straight! To use the Stamp-A-Ma-Jig, you take the plastic sheet that came with it, line it up in the corner of the Stamp-A-Ma-Jig, ink your stamp, and slide the top corner of the stamp down the corner of the Stamp-A-Ma-Jig. The cool thing about this tool is that you can use it right OR left handed!

After you've stamped the plastic sheet (smooth side for water-based inks, textured side for pigment and dye inks), lay it over your paper where you want to stamp. Holding down the plastic sheet, put your Stamp-A-Ma-Jig back at the top left-hand corner (or right if you're a lefty). Once it's lined up, remove the plastic sheet while holding down the Stamp-A-Ma-Jig - you don't want it to move!

While holding your Stamp-A-Ma-Jig still, take your stamp (re-ink it if necessary) and slide it down the corner and side of the tool, and viola! you've stamped it straight (providing it was lined up straight! That's hard to do sometimes!)!

I hope you've enjoyed my little tutorial. I regret that I couldn't post earlier than this, but we have been busy with his birthday, family visiting, and other activities! I hope you have a great day!

Bon Voyage!

Hi all! I'm sorry I've been so slow in posting this week. It has been a hectic week at church with Vacation Bible School! We just wrapped it up today, and I'm exhausted! I did want to share this with you before I hit the hay, though :)

We recently attended a farewell party for one of our Bible study leaders from college, and even though the group was going in together on a gift, I wanted to make a card for him just from me and Nate. I grabbed my Everyday Pop-up Cards cartridge and got to work.

I used a pastel blue card base, then grabbed my Pebbles chalk to color some clouds on the card. I also accidentally cut some clouds from the phrase function that were too small, so I just kept them and attached them to the card as well.

I used a couple of red gemstones on the banner edges, and stamped the basket with a Bo Bunny Stained Texture stamp, using the American Crafts chestnut pigment ink. I put all the pieces together using my Xyron.

For the inside of the card, I used a stamp from the Stampin' Up Heard from the Heart set, again with the AC chestnut ink. I also used my Stamp-A-Ma-Jig to help me stamp the image straight! I know I've mentioned it before, but this tool is a must-have for all stampers!

Thanks for stopping by! I hope you have a relaxing weekend! 

Fisherman Birthday Card

My husband's birthday was last week, and I wanted to make something that represented part of who he is. He loves fishing, so I grabbed my Everyday Paper Dolls Cricut cartridge, a scrap of Bo Bunny Knight in Shining Armor paper, and the paper I needed to make the cuts, and got to work.

I cut a cattail border in dark green at 1.5". Since the borders on this cartridge are single color borders, I used my Burnt Umber Copic Ciao marker (E29) to color the tops of the cattails. I then cut the man out at 4". I decided I wanted the big smiley face rather than the one that comes on the body, so I cut the head off the body and put the big smiley face in its place.

I then cut out all the clothes (<Fisher>), the fishing basket (select Accessories 1, then Shift, then <Fisher>), and the fishing pole (select Accessories 2, then <Fisher>). I decided to put some fishing line on the pole using Sew Easy's bakers twine, and used my Zig Two-Way glue pen to glue it down. To give the man freckles, I used my Brick Beige Copic Ciao marker (E31).

When I was at the National Scrapbook Day crop, I won a couple of stamps in a door prize, and one of them was a little stamp that said "Give me the simple life." I felt that was appropriate for this card, so I stamped it using American Crafts Chestnut ink. For the inside, I used Tim Holtz's Way With Words stamp, and then used a "Happy Birthday" stamp that I had from another collection.

I used a really neat tool called a Stamp-A-Ma-Jig by Inkadinkado to help me stamp straight. If you are a stamper, I highly recommend getting one of these tools, especially for those stamps that just aren't mounted right! I won this at a crop, and now I wish I had been using one all along! 

My husband really liked his birthday card, and had a great birthday all around. Thank you for joining me today, and happy crafting!

Thank You Card

Earlier this month, I spent the majority of a weekend at my local scrapbook store for the National Scrapbook month crop. Spending ten hours a day there + hubby still on outage hours = needing a babysitter for the toddler! We are blessed to have family in town that are willing to watch him for us, and my brother-in-law and sister-in-law spent the weekend chasing after him AND their two little ones! My son and their oldest are three weeks apart, and they are best buds.

I wanted to make a special card for them, because I know this was a huge sacrifice of time for them to add a third (very active, might I add!) child into the mix for two days straight. I had a hard time getting started on the card, but knew I wanted to use one of my new mini embossing folders from Cricut. I chose a green card from my K&Company Color Basics, and used one of Bazzill's dark brown textured cardstocks layer on top of the card base. I used my Cuttlebug "thank you" embossing folder in the lower right hand corner, and inked over that and around the edges with a brown Prima chalk ink.

I then took a scrap of Bo Bunny pink Double Dot paper, trimmed it to 1.5" x 3.5", and cut a triangle out of the end to make a pennant. I used a white Prima chalk ink to ink the edges, and used my glue dots roller to attach it to the brown paper. The blue paper is from Out of Print, and is embossed with the cherry blossom folder from Cuttlebug's Asian bundle. I then wrapped some Tim Holtz white elastic ribbon at the bottom of the blue paper, then layered that with the brown Bo Bunny Ribbon. The flowers are by Bazzill and are attached using glue dots.

Before I placed the card in the envelope, I embossed the flap with the cherry blossom folder. This card was particularly difficult to get in the envelope because it is so bulky. I hand delivered it, so I'm sure they didn't mind that it wasn't sealed!

Thanks for stopping by, and happy crafting!

Cars Birthday Card

My son loves the movie Cars. There isn't a week that goes by that we don't watch both movies! I decided several months ago that it would be a good idea to invest in the Cars Cricut cartridge. To be honest, it hasn't gotten much use yet, so I took advantage of the fact that we were going to the birthday party of one of his little buddies and made a Lightening McQueen card.

I began with a solid blue sheet, and used one of the embossing folders from Cuttlebug's Oriental Weave set. I then took one of my Prima Cold Ice chalk edger and lightly ran it over the top of the page. I had a few uneven spots. Okay, maybe more than a few spots! I need some practice.

I then set out to cutting all the pieces to Lightening McQueen. Now, if you've never made a cut from the Disney or Pixar carts, let me warn you: there are a LOT of pieces, and many of them are very small. Because of the size of some of these pieces, I wouldn't recommend cutting the Cars characters at a very small size. I believe I cut McQueen at 3 3/4", and I even ended loosing one of my pieces because they were so small. Look at all those pieces!

Before I started putting him together, I took the wheels and stamped them with my VersaMark embossing ink pad (I have a tiny one that is really useful for this!), and used my Zing! black glitter finish embossing powder to add some texture to them. The brown mat you see in the picture is a great tool to have if you do a lot of stamping and embossing. It's the Ranger Non-Stick Craft Sheet, and not even embossing ink or powder sticks to it. I still had some flakes of embossing powder on the sheet when I heat embossed the tires, and they still came right off the sheet with a baby wipe!

I used my Xyrons to make the pieces sticky. I have the 5" and the 1 1/2" machines, and used both for this project. The 1 1/2" Xyron is really useful for those tiny pieces.

I felt the card wasn't quite complete, so I used some Inkadinkado clear stamp letters to stamp the name in the upper left hand corner. The ink I used was Memento's Tuxedo Black. 

On the inside of the card, I put the "Start Your Engines" cut, and stamped "for a happy birthday," again with the Tuxedo Black ink. The stamps came from Stampabilities "Everyday Expressions" clear stamp set. This is a neat set because all the words are separate, so you can make your own phrases!

Thank you for visiting with me today! I hope you like Cars as much as my son does, because he is having a Cars birthday party next month, so I will have some posts about his invitations and party decorations!

Hope you have a blessed day!

National Scrapbook Month

Happy National Scrapbook Month! On the 3rd and 4th, I got to go crop at my local scrapbook store with my amazing mom. She's new to scrapbooking, but is a very crafty and creative woman.



Here are a few of the layouts I did while at the crop.



These were fun to make, but also made me a little teary to see how much my baby has grown since these were taken! He's almost three now, and these were taken right around his first birthday. He was just learning how to climb when I took these.



I used Tie the Knot to cut the pendants, and stamped and embossed the letters on them. The "sunny days" and Sun with the cloud were cut using Celebrate with Flourish. "Let's play" is one of the phrases on Create a Critter, and the tree is from Pooh and Friends.

Isn't my boy adorable?

This next one I absolutely love. We had gone to a splash park and had a picnic, and he leaned into his daddy, and it was a picture perfect moment!



I cut a card layer from Damask Decor, and embossed a sweet sentiment - "There's no place like a spot in someone's heart."

The circles are cut from Accent Essentials, and I cut the banners with my trusty paper trimmer and scissors. The paper is from Bo Bunny's Knight in Shining Armor.

Thanks for stopping by!

Bo Bunny Mini Edgy Album

A few months ago, I picked up a Bo Bunny Et Cetera Mini Edgy Album at my local scrapbook store. When I saw it, I thought it would be the perfect album to put some of my grad school pictures in because it had music printed on some of the pages. This week I finally got to start working on it, and here's the end result. 

I began by stamping the letters. The capital letters are Inkadinkado stamps, and the lower case are American Crafts (or AC). I then decided to glitter the letters, so I used my Zig two way glue pen to go over the letters and used AC Wow glitter on them. After placing the flowers and Pebbles stones on the cover, I decided to ink the edges in dark brown. In hindsight, I should have made that decision before I placed embellishments that close to the edge. It made things rather difficult. Live and learn, right?

I used Cricut's Quarter Note cartridge for every cut in this album. I cut the word "solo" because oddly enough, this cartridge doesn't have "recital" anywhere on it! I used Paper Studio self adhesive pearls, but used my ColorBox dark brown chalk to tint them. The stamped flowers are from Stampin Up's Delight in Life set. The larger flower is a 2-step stamp, and I used the AC brown sugar ink for the background of the flower, and AC chestnut ink for the outline and the smaller flower.

The lines of glitter were made using Provo Craft's Terrifically Tacky tape, and AC's chocolate and copper glitter. The stickers were some I had on hand, and I think they're Paper Studio brand, but don't quote me on that. The tag and envelope are Maya Road, and the stamps are the other two stamps in the Delight in Life set. On the tag I wrote a couple of details about the trip to New York with the Wind Ensemble.

The picture on the left is of me standing outside of Carnegie Hall! It was an amazing experience, and like I wrote on the envelope on this page, a dream come true! Above the tag is a verse that says "With God, all things are possible." I stamped that on this page because going to Carnegie had been a dream of mine since high school, and God orchestrated everything in such a way that I was able to do just that during grad school. 

On the next page I used the Fleur de Lis Cuttlebug embossing folder to emboss the dark red paper. The flowers are embellished using cinnamon and pink Stickles.

The Quarter Note cartridge has a few fonts on it, and I used Font 1 to cut out "Wind Ensemble" and "lovely flutists." I used my cinnamon, frosted lace, and icicle Stickles to glitter the words and flowers.

The cute little flowers on the left page are from the Doodlebug Tidbits lily white collection, and I tied them with a little bit of We R Memory Keepers black and white twine. Aren't they cute? The journaling tag is from Maya Road. I will probably go back and add a note that I was about 6.5 months pregnant during that recital, though I am unlikely to forget that fact! On the last page, the embossing folder I used on the red paper was Cuttlebug's Divine Swirls, and I used the dark brown ColorBox chalk to ink the edges. I again used the AC letter stamps to stamp "graduation" and completed the project with more tinted pearls.

I hope you've enjoyed getting a glimpse into some of my past. I enjoyed putting this album together, and can't wait to make more mini albums with my Cricut Mini Books cartridge!