Happy Birthday layout

 Happy Monday!   I hope you are all able to stay safe and cool in these dog days of summer!  It has been EXTREMELY hot and humid here in KC, with heat indexes of 105-110 every day.   My husband and I are working on finding our new empty nest groove, which has included spending some time floating in the pool!  I can report the kids are all doing well.  Probably better than us, lol!

The BBTB2 challenge for the next two weeks is a birthday theme.  I had some family birthday pictures from June to scrap and this challenge prompted me to get them finished.  I find that many of our challenges nudge me to actually keep on track getting pages into my scrapbooks, which I love!  I cut some background overlays with the stars from the CTMH Artbooking collection, as I didn't have any birthday bg paper in the right colors to use.  Then I picked a gift and Happy Birthday from the many many choices on Cricut Access.  You can share any new birthday projects with a cricut cut included with us over at the BBTB2 site for the next two weeks.

Cricut:

Artbooking-star background overlays

Paper Lace-Happy Birthday

Stretch your Imagination-gift

Autumn layout

Happy Monday!  Well, the rain in my neck of the woods has just gone on and on, but nothing like what those experiencing Hurricane Michael have endured.  The KC area has been in a drought, but I'm not sure getting all the rain at once is a good thing....   I am more than ready for some sunshine and crisp fall days instead of the gray gloomy ones of this last week!

Our BBTB2 challenge this week is to use a word fall or autumn related word on a project.  I used two of my favorite oldie but goodie cartridges to make this Autumn layout.  The title comes from Lyrical Letters and the sweet pumpkin man is from Stretch Your Imagination.  The designers over at BBTB2 have some great fall projects shared and you can also link one up there over the next two weeks.

Cricut:
Lyrical Letters-autumn title
Stretch Your Imagination-pumpkin man
Paper-Echo Park prints, CTMH solids
brown chalk ink

summer theme

Happy Monday!  It's summertime and I'm ready to kick back with some cool drinks and summer fun. Since I'm hosting at BBTB2  this week, I picked a summer theme for the challenge.  The cricut cuts on my layout have all my favorite things about summer...sunshine, yummy treats, and getting wet!  The title is from an oldie but goodie cartridge-Stretch Your Imagination.  Go check out the designer's awesome projects at BBTB2 and link your own up this week.

Cricut:
Artbooking-sun
CM Traveler-sunglasses
Doodlecharms-popsicle, watermelon
Life Is A Beach-waves
Stretch Your Imagination-title word summer
Paper-CTMH solids, Green solid Echo Park, Echo Park Happy Summer yellow print bg paper
brown chalk ink

card with a flourish

Happy Halloween Monday!  I had to hide all the candy in the garage to keep the fellas out of it for the trick or treaters tonight!  I've managed to keep myself out of it too, until I had to sneak a few nibbles this afternoon...too much temptation!  It's hard to believe it's the end of October already!

Our BBTB2 challenge this week is to use a flourish or swirl on a project...there are SO many to choose from that I had a hard time narrowing it down!  I'm in the middle of making Christmas cards andI always like to make at least one all white version, so  I used the poinsettia from the new Flower Market cartridge that I got for my birthday, but cut it all in white.  The flourishes are from the Stretch Your Imagination cartridge, an oldie but goodie!  Sorry my picture is so dark...the glare off of the white made it really difficult to photograph.  The design team has some great projects over at BBTB2, so go take a look!

Cricut:

Stretch Your Imagination-flourishes

Flower Market-poinsettia
Paper-white heavy weight cardstock
rhinestone-American Crafts

Happy Spring card (for Exploring Cricut and BBTB2)

Happy Monday!  Did you have a great Easter?  We had such a terrific day with beautiful music at church, a big cookout with the extended family, and lots of chocolate after the Easter egg hunt!  I think it's possible I actually ate too much chocolate (gasp!)!  The post-Easter diet is starting immediately.  So, on to more crafty type topics….

It looks like there will be some gorgeous spring days this week, so I have a springy card for you.  The BBTB2 challenge this week was to use a cricut bird and the Exploring Cricut challenge was "It's a Spring Thing", including a flower.  I used the Stretch Your Imagination cartridge for my sweet little singing bird, flower, and bee.  The print papers are from American Crafts.

Cricut:
Stretch Your Imagination-bird cut at 3 inches, flower cut at 3 1/4 inches
Paper-American Crafts Color Crush 6x6 pad for prints, CTMH solids
Ink-Stampin Up Lucky Limade, Versamark Jumbo Java chalk ink for edging
Ribbon-American Crafts
Stamp-Inky Antics Ducky's Eggs set

I hope you all have a wonderful week with some fun and craftiness in it.  Hope you make some projects to share with these fun challenges!  

Field Trip school bus layout for (BBTB2)

It's almost back to school time for those of us with kids-I cannot believe it's on top of us already!  Don't ask how much I had to spend on school supplies this weekend!!!!  On a happier note, our BBTB2 DT leader Susan has challenged us to use a school bus on a project this week.  This immediately made me think of the little kid song "The Wheels on the Bus Go Round and Round"-see, aren't you hearing it now too?  We used to sing that a lot when my kiddos were in preschool :)  I used the Stretch Your Imagination cartridge for my bus and my favorite Mickey Font for my title.  I've actually never cut this bus before and I really like the way it came out!

Cricut:
Stretch Your Imagination-bus
Mickey Font-title
Paper-DCWV prints, CTMH solids
brown chalk ink

So get in the back to school spirit and join us with a school bus at BBTB2!

I've also linked up to the Craftin' Desert Divas back to school linky party.

Dyeing Eggs layout (for BBTB2)

Egg-ceptional Easter Eggs is the challenge theme for BBTB2 this week!  (Those yummy-licious chocolate eggs....definitely egg-ceptional)  We have a family tradition of spending an evening dyeing Easter eggs, which my kids love!  It's messy, but SOOO fun!  Last year I got 2 dozen ready for dyeing and they begged for more-we ended up dyeing almost 4 dozen eggs!!!!!!   So join us at the BBTB2 this week with an egg project.

So, on to my layout!  I always take lots of pictures of the dyeing process so I made a layout, using Stretch Your Imagination for the cute little bunnies with the paintbrushes working on some eggs.  I especially like the bunny on the tall stack of eggs, hard at work!   My beloved Doodlecharms cartridge gave me the basket and eggs (it is my favorite cricut basket on all my carts) and the title is from the Mickey Font-love the big fun chunky letters on that font!

The background papers are from from The Paper Studio and that Easter Egg paper inspired the whole layout.  Note:  For the Stretch Your Imagination cuts, I cut the main image/layers and then put the silhouette cut on top of it, and backed the whole thing with the shadow cut.

the whole layout:

my favorite stretched bunny who's been hard at work:

and my other cute little bunny:

Cricut:
Mickey Font-title
Doodlecharms-basket and eggs
Stretch Your Imagination-bunnies
Paper-background papers from The Paper Studio, solids are CTMH and CM, glitter paper is Target
brown chalk ink
ribbon-Stampin Up bashful blue
stickers-Echo Park, leftovers from an old collection

Christmas Wishes layout

Ready for a gingerbread house?  This layout is mostly from Stretch Your Imagination, except for the title, which is from Winter Frolic.  I've had this cart forever and never cut the gingerbread man or his house before- soooo cute!  Now I did use ALL the possible layers and cuts for almost everything, which took a bit of thinking to sort out what colors each should be.  I'll list it out below if you're interested.  But I am very happy with how it all came out and now I want to go make some gingerbread with cool whip on top!

Cricut:
Winter Frolic-title
Stretch Your Imagination-all other cuts, including the snowflakes
     gingerbread house-base layer brown, shadow espresso, blackout yellow, layer red, silhouette white
     tree-shadow espresso, base layer green print, silhouette-green
     large holly-shadow espresso, base layer green print, silhouette green, layer red
     gingerbread man-shadow saddle brown, base brown, blackout white, layer red, silhouette espresso
     stretch holly-shadow espresso, base green print, silhouette green, layer red
Paper-prints Echo Park This & That Christmas collection, solids CTMH
brown chalk ink, brads from the stash for the gingerbread man's buttons

I'm going to link this to the Die Cuttin' Divas Holiday Spirit challenge.  Lots of GREAT projects to look at over there-over 100!

Give Thanks layout

Thanksgiving is just around the corner-well almost!  Are you a turkey or ham family?  We go back and forth, but last year my husband smoked a turkey and it was the absolute best turkey I've ever had!  So it is definitely turkey again this year.   So when I saw the BBTB2 challenge to use a turkey, it was time to make my Thanksgiving scrapbook page.   I used the stretched turkey from Stretch Your Imagination, and he turned out looking mighty fine.   I also cut some leaves from SYI.   Two use the Silhouette feature over the blackout leaf cut, which I thought looked pretty.  The layered"Give Thanks" title is from the Phrases cart.

And the story behind the pie, which is from Simply Charmed (without the smiley face part) is that my extended family LOVES pie, so all family gatherings and holidays include lots of pie.  We even have birthday pies instead of cake sometimes!   When I saw the Pause Dream Enjoy challenge to do a food/beverage project, I added my cricut pie to represent all the delicious pie we will be eating over Thanksgiving.

Cricut:
Phrases-title
Simply Charmed-pie
Stretch Your Imagination-turkey, leaves
Paper-DCWV All Seasons print, CTMH solid card stock
brown chalk ink

"Sweet" layout

I miss all the ice cream we ate on vacation (although my waistline is paying the price), so I did a layout of my pictures was of us eating ice cream!  I scrap lifted the base paper choices from a layout I saw that used the Miss Caroline Dilly Dally paper from My Mind's Eye, but then I had to change up the rest to suit my pictures and die cuts.  The title is cut from the Groovy Times cartridge (I used My Cut Search to find all the cartridges that had "sweet" on them-there are a LOT of choices) and the journaling spot is from Elegant Edges.  My yummilicious ice cream cone is the stretched version of of the cone on Stretch Your imagination, although none of the real cones we ate had quite that many scoops :)

Cricut:
Groovy Times-title
Elegant Edges-scalloped square
Stretch Your Imagination-ice cream cone
Paper-My Mind's Eye Miss Caroline Dilly Dally
twine/brown chalk ink
Stamp-Fiskars It's a Sweet Life set
Ink-Stampin Up island indigo

I'm going to link this to the Cricut Chirp Challege "too sweet to eat".

Snow Much Fun

This layout is for winter fun pics (although we haven't had much in the way of snow yet, but I'm sure it will come) and the Fantabulous Cricut challenge to use a snowman or snowflakes.  I've been looking forward to using this paper from the Doodlebug stack-it's just fun!  I used Stretch Your Imagination again (forgot how much I like that cart) and Winter Frolic. 

Cricut:
Stretch Your Imagination-snowmen cut at 4 1/2 in. and 5 1/2 inches, snowflakes cut at 2 in. and 4 1/2 in.
Winter Frolic-title cut at 3 1/2 in., journal box cut at 3 1/2 in.
Paper-Doodlebug stack

Let the Good Times Roll birthday layout

This will be for pics of a  birthday party where we played board games at the party.  It uses Birthday Bash and Stretch Your Imagination.  I tried out the banner cuts on Birthday Bash and liked the effect!  (I know banners are trendy right now-but I've never tried one before.)  I pop dotted the banner over the corner pic so the pic can slide underneath.

Cricut:
Stretch Your Imagination-stretch cut of the cake
Birthday Bash-all other cuts
Paper-DCVW stack for the prints and assorted CM solid cardstock
embossing folder on the cake

2011 calendar month pages

This was my calendar that I had hanging this last year, with all the pages together.  I've shown a few of them separately.  I used Designer's Calendar for the grid and month/day names and numbers, and a whole variety of cartridges for the decorations.  Doodlecharms and Simply Charmed were the carts I used the most (besides Designer's Calendar).

January:

Stretch Your Imagination and Graphically Speaking

February:

Doodlecharms and Paisley

March:

Simply Charmed and Stretch Your Imagination

April:

Simply Charmed and Paisley

May:

Doodlecharms and Simply Charmed

June:

Doodlecharms and H2O

July:

Doodlecharms and Graphically Speaking

August:

Mickey and Friends and H2O

September:

Doodlecharms and Locker Talk

October:

Doodlecharms

November:

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Doodlecharms and Simply Charmed

December:

Doodlecharms and Winter Woodlands



Playing in the Surf

I started this layout over a year ago, and never finished it!!!  So, the challenge at TPV to use an ocean/nautical theme got me to dig back in the box and complete it.  (Now I need to do the rest of the stack in there too....)  This uses Stretch Your Imagination and Life as a Beach.  I had not tried the silhouette cuts from SYI before this, and while they were hard to glue down, they came out looking cool.  I had a lot of pics to get on this layout!  It was a very cool cloudy day and the pics reflect that, so I struggled a bit to find paper that would work. 

Cricut:
Stretch Your Imagination-turtle, sandcastle
Life as a Beach-font
Paper-from JoAnns, don't know the line
twine, jumbo java chalk ink

Giving Thanks

I am very thankful for all the many blessings we have been given.  God has been amazingly wonderful to my family.  I made this layout using Celebrate with a Flourish and SYI, about last Thanksgiving.  I'm linking it to the Give Thanks challenge at Creative Cutter Room.  (I must say looking at the pictures with all the pies has made me feel like I need some pie right now!)

Cricut:
Celebrate With A Flourish-all cuts except leaves
Stretch Your Imagination-leaves
Plaintain Schoolbook-circles
Paper-DCVW fall stack (old)
lots of jumbo java ink on the edges