5 for $5 - Halloween Treat Containers

This is my first class after having our new baby daughter, but she is now 9 1/2 weeks old and it's time to get back into the swing of things. The next couple of months are going to fly by, with lots of holidays coming up, ih ave a long list of everything I would like to get done. But my first 5 for $5 this month is for Halloween, we are making treat containers. These fun little things perk up any Spooky gift giving.

this easy little bag is made with patterned paper from Close to my Heart's New Hooligans line. Fun Halloween colors and the stamp set used is called 'Beware'.

This scary popcorn cup is made with Orange Close to my Heart Cardstock, cut on the Cricut, and embellished with some creepy patterned paper. To finish this cup off we cut tags and added some ribbon.

You can't see it in the picture very well but each box we will make has been random stamped with CTMH's September stamp of the month, 'Thriller'. Great art on this stamp set. I also used glimmer mist to give each box and eerie green shine. Fun and easy to fill, the clear front let's you show what's in the box...no suprises here.

Easy to make, this bag topper can be attached to any ziploc bag and given away with lots of candy inside...what a way to dress up a boring snack bag.

Super fun Frankenstien Matchbooks, just attach your candy to the inside and give away. I first saw this great idea on Vicki Wizniuk's Blog, thanks for the inspiration Vicki!
The class is tomorrow night and I hope that this one sells out...I am also opening this up to anyone who wants to do this in the afternoon if they can.

Stay in the Line!

So the next challenge for Whimsical Scraps and Bugs was a color challenge. You can see the colors in this post. I am a firm believer that companies put thier products into 'lines' so it makes you, the scrapbooker's, life easier. When you combine all the elements that you can find in a line from a manufacturer, you will always get a beautiful layout! I know that the trend is to mix and match, and in the beginning, that is all you really could do. But don't make your layouts harder then they have to be by doing unessessary extra work. This layout was made from Making Memories 'Chloe's Closet' and I think it worked out fabulously.

Take a challenge!

What a hard challenge I had this last time from Whimsical Scraps and Bugs Challenge Blog. I found it hard to create with 'Vintage'. Everybody, including myself is living in the now and loves to create using the 'now'. But we are here preserving not only our families memories but also my Grandma's, Grandpa's, nieces, nephew, cousins twice removed and so on. I, every now and then, love to do an older picture to try to update it and make me love it even more. Still lovin' my Cricut though, it is finally paid for (last payment has gone through) and now I can use and abuse it!!! Thank goodness I have WSB Challenge Blog to help me along. Are YOU up for the next challenge, submit your best Cricut made layout/card, see what you can make. The next challenge is a color challenge,

So break out your Cricut and make something wonderful!

Work for you...

What a great week to get things done. And I am done. Off to 'visit' the family again. So I will be incomunicado these next couple of days. But before I drop off the face of the earth, I wanted to share with you a peek at this great home decor item I made using my Cricut. It was inspired by Whimsical Scraps and Bugs Cricut challenge site of which I am a design team member. The challenge is to create something using an 'ampersand', I chose this great 3-D decor item. You have till this Sunday to submit your creations and possibly win a prize. Play along with us!

Zoo Train

Look at how cute this 'Zoo Train' turned out. I made it for the challenge on Whimsical Scraps and Bugs. The fun thing about this is that I can add onto the train if I want to make it a room border or even for a pary, it is really cute. I am just in love with how this turned out. I did leave the train cars kinda plain but I did some great distressing techniques on them which makes them more rustic. The design came right out of my head, no pattern or nothing. Now if only I had a boy I would decorate his room in these cute animals.

DT Submission - Pile it On

These projects were made for a new challenge site called Pile it on! A fantastic idea that takes other challenge sites and incorporates thier challenges in with other challenge blogs. For example; The Animal Train is a challenge from Whimsical Scraps and Bugs, they are challenging us to use animals this time, but Pile it on asks us to also use 4 buttons or more. Get it? New Addition is a layout I made from a sketch I got off 2sketches4U, and Pile it On wants us to also use Purple. Makes more sense. Thank You Card was a sketch I used from Color Chef and Pile it On's challenge was a Non-stamped Setiment...thus the Rub ons! I think they all worked out really well and being told what my layout kinda had to look like really sped up my creative process! I am hoping for the best, I hope I used thier link properly! Hope to hear good news!

Capture These Sketches Team Search

This Layout is based on the Sketch provided by Capture these Sketches.

This a sketch I drew to jump my creativity,

This is the layout based on the sketch above and one of my favorite at the moment, it captures one of my daughters looks perfect...I think it worked out great.

All of the above was made for Let's Capture our Memories , for their first Design Team.
I am applying and it seems like a really great sketch challenge site and online store. I know it is going to be good because I recognize a lot of thier followers as being some really talented designers from other design teams. I have not yet been picked for a sketch challenge site and would love to opportunity to design some great layouts and push my scrapbook boundaries.

I hope everyone gets a chance to look at this up and coming site, I got a chance to look around and it already has a hopping Gallery and great Forum. If you think I should get choosen to be on the Capture these Sketches design team, I would love to hear from you, leave a comment and some encouragment! Finger Crossed!

Latest Addition

This is my layout for the first challenge from Whimsical Scraps and Bugs - Cricut Challenge Site. The challenge was to use the letter 'S'. I may have over done that but I thought all the intertwined 's' looked kinda like Barrel full of Monkeys! It is a layout about my daughter at the park and I thought all the color and motion made it a fun layout.
And this little ball of fur is our newest addition. We just got him this week and we named him TANK. He is an adorable 8 week old Daschund. Pretty cute. Don't know alot about the breed yet, but he is a vast improvment over the last couple of dogs we have owned. I am sure I will be scrapbooking these pictures soon. If only they could stay that cute forever!

Spotlight Gal

This week has been an amazing week, first I get announced as part of a great design team for Whimsical Scraps and Bugs, and then today I am the Spotlight Gal for a major scrapbooking manufacturer, GCD Studios. You can see me on thier blog being showcased. I am very honored and had a lot of fun playing with all of thier products, as you see above I created some additional projects using thier lines of paper. Thank you Heidi Sonboul and GCD Studios for this opportunity. You can see my Spotlight Info here.

Also, occasionally I will be doing give-aways for followers of my site and those of you who leave comments, I would like to encourage you to become a follower and leave a comment if you like something. Thanks for looking,

A new team to be part of!

Awesome!!!! I have been holding this in for a week...Whimsical Scraps and Bugs have asked me to be part of thier Design Team! If you don't know about whimsical scraps and bugs, it is a Cricut challenge site, they have a challenge at the beginning of the week and you submit at by the end of the week using your Cricut to make the challenge. By the end of the month all your submissions are put in a draw, the more submissions the more chances to win. It's a really cool site, especially if you want some more ideas on how to use your cricut more effectively. The link is http://www.whimsicalscrapsandbugs.blogspot.com/ . The above are 2 baby cards I made using my Cricut, cartridge was the Pooh font, for my friend Tracy, who had her first baby, Peyton! Check back as I will be posting my challenges here as well as on the site, I have lots of great ideas to get the most out of your Cricut!

Working Away!

Busy, working away. I am almost cleaned up from my long trip to Canada. I took about half of my stuff and most of it is now put away, but as my friend said 'the artistic people are always messy'. That would be why I haven't posted a picture of my scrap space yet...it's never clean. I did get some great work done while I was away, the layout pictured above is my creation using the REAL paper packs from BWScrapbooking.com . There is a hidden journaling tag behind the picture...sadly with nothing on it yet. And the little flowers from on the side are made from my Cricut. It's a really cute picture and I wanted to use it. Love it. Hope to put put up another great layout tomorrow.

All in a day's work.

Just wanted to show you all the cute little things I made today at the crop. I made this cute little Miss You card that I am going to be giving away today to our friends the Ratcliff's who are moving from Denver back to Calgary. This was made using my Cricut.

This adorable little purse is filled with chocolates for the girls...something cute they can play with. I think they will have fun with it! Also made using my Cricut.

And here we have some weird looking bottles for the bathroom that I had just bought. They looked so boring before I felt like I had to jazz them up a bit. All the colors match the fabulous wallpaper I have in my bathroom. Believe me the bathroom needs a bit of something cute! Hope you like them .

Vacation VS Visiting

I just got back from my 3 week long 'visit' with my family in Calgary. It was a great 'visit' and I did more work trying to see everyone I knew that I zonked out at 11pm every night. So just before I was to drive the 1200 miles back to Denver I had to have a 'chat' with my husband about the difference between vacationing and visiting!!! However when I came home there were over 115 emails that hadn't yet been looked at. I was deleting all the kid's store coupon emails when I came across an email from Scrapbooking.com. For those of you who have read my blog before you will know that Scrapbooking.com picked up one of my layouts for thier Father's Day features. Thank you Jami Petersen! I then found the email which Jami wrote saying that she had put my layout on the COVER!!! You can see the cover pictured above, well I thought that was awesome, it is available today to view online and I do believe free to subscribe to. I will continue to send in my work and see if any more publications like them. I am in the mood to create as I now need a vacation from my visiting trip!!

Easter Brunch

It is going to be a good Easter. I have already had too much chocolate and my dentist is probably happy to be getting lots of money from me in these upcoming months. But Easter is a great time to be with family and have some good food. I think I am most excited about the Easter egg hunt that Quinn is going to have this year. She is as excited about the Easter Bunny as she was about Santa Claus! It is also neat that we have a bunny living in our yard, or near it anyway, we see him every couple of days, he comes to eat our grass. Of course he MUST be the Easter Bunny.
The layout above is from last Easter when we went to Kelowna, BC with Jim's parents. It was really nice out and we like to have brunch at this great lakeside restaurant called ' The Eldorado'. The best shot glass sized Creme Brulee EVER! I just had fun with this sparkly layout and gave the ghost butterflies a little bling along with the chipboard. Doesn't Quinn look cute in her Easter outfit that Grandma gave her. Of course she does.

My Hubby is gone

So my DH has gone on a business trip for about 11 days. This is day 2 and I have already gotten 6 layouts done. Didn't know that he took up more time than my daughter. It has been good as I have been getting alot of my deadlines done, even ahead of schedule. This lovely picture which I submitted for the first GCD Studios desgin team, you can pick up a paper pack at Michael's, they include die-cuts, glitter letters and lots of great paper. I hope you like the little dragonflies I made out of flowers and rhinestones. Just the right touch. Hopefully I will have some good news for you soon. Wish me luck!

A couple of days of rest

I haven't been doing much creating lately, been doing all the other things that I neglect to do when I am creating, like laundry, dinner and cleaning the bathrooms (don't want to do that!) As of tonight...after Survivor...I will be back at it, I have 8 calls for this weekend and a crop all day Saturday (hopefully someone comes this time). Lots of time to really get something done. The above layout was for a contest on some obscure scrapbook site, obviously I didn't win! But we will keep plugging away and it seems the magazines think MORE IS MORE...much to my previous statement. I always love comments, so leave one if you have something to say.

Keep Pluggin Away!

I feel like my creative juices are flowing and I am creating more interesting pieces of art! I also feel like the scrapbooking industry is asking for more, layering and techniques, sometime I think it's too much and the page just looks squished and confusing. I like to keep my pages simple with a common theme in mind and just one or two techniques to round it out. Less is more!