Christmas Crafts

I'm sure it comes as no surprise to you all that my kids didn't cooperate for the Christmas card photo shoot. I think I made the best of what I had. Here is my Christmas card this year:

front:

back:

For Noah's teacher and bus driver, I made gift boxes and a set of all-occasion cards to go in the gift boxes. I am really proud of myself this year. I did not have to buy one single thing to make the gifts... I used everything already in my stash of supplies!

gift box for bus driver:

gift box for Noah's teacher:

the cards:

Halloween- Basic Grey paper(Eerie) and Paper Dolls Cricut cartridge for spider and web

Summer: Die Cuts With a View paper and Life's a Beach Cricut cartridge for flip flops

Baby Card- Making Memories (Animal Crackers-Ella) paper and New Arrival Cricut cartridge for rattle

Winter- Basic Grey ( Eskimo Kisses) paper and Accent Essentials Cricut cartridge for snow flake

Valentine's Day- Basic Grey ( Bittersweet) paper, Fiskars border punch and Studio G-bird and "Happy Valentine's Day" stamp

Spring- K& Company paper, scallop punch and spring stamps by Studio G

Basic Grey ( Mellow) paper, leaf punches

Christmas- Basic Grey ( Figgy Pudding) paper and stickers, Cuttlebug for embossing snowflakes

same supplies as above

birthday- Basic Grey ( Lemonade), Martha Stewart border punch, Cricut Accent Essentials cartridge for flowers and Doodlecharms cartridge for ladybugs

Circus Get-up

I thought Zoe needed a birthday outfit to match her theme. I'm neurotic like that.

I scanned the adorable clown from her banner and then used my handy dandy Photoshop CS4 to make a little birthday picture and sentiment and then printed it out on iron-on transfer paper.

Voila' ! Mad skillz, I'm telling you, mad skillz. Bwahahaaaaa!

I also made a matching tutu. I am pleased with how cute it turned out.

Unfortunately, I can't get her to wear it! She loved the clown when I first printed him out for her banner, but Grandma is here visiting and brought this: ( Little Mermaid nightgown- she LOVES the Little Mermaid, or "Meme")

I cannot pry it off of her. She won't even get dressed during the day. Yes, that little glimmer under her right eye is a tear.. because I- GASP- tried to take the gown off of her!

The gown is going to disappear tonight and not reappear until AFTER her birthday party.

Uh-huh.. THAT'S going to work.

Birthday Projects

I've been busy working on things for Zoe's birthday party. I initially wanted a girly theme, but since most of the guests will be boys, I decided on a gender-neutral Circus theme. I used CS3 to make the invitation:



I attached the invitations to boxes of animal crackers for delivery:

This is going to be the centerpiece. I needed something sturdy enough to hold the big swirlie lollipop, so I took a square glass vase I have and made a red cardstock sleeve to slip over it. I then cut stripes for the cardstock to give it a popcorn box look and used my Cricut to cut the "pow" shape and letters for "popcorn"

I wrapped boxes in colorful wrapping paper for the cotton candy and then used the Cricut again for the cute little sign.

These popcorn bags are what I used for the gift bags. They include small swirlie lollipops, tattoos, foam clown noses, play doh and blowouts.

The candy came from the Christmas Cheer cartridge.

Noah's Invitation

This is the invitation I made for Noah's birthday party.  I used a picture off the internet of Legos and added the Halloween picture I had of Noah dressed as a Lego to it.  This was much easier than the Star Wars invitation I made for his birthday last year.

Another Digital Layout

This is a lift of a traditional layout in my CK magazine, April issue. It looks much better side-by-side as it is meant to be a two page layout, but I can't get the two pictures to post side by side.

Background paper, polka dot paper and striped paper are all from Raspberry Road Designs - Clovis the Clown. The notebook paper is from Shabby Princess- Promise, "play time" tag, blue binder clip, red file plate, blue brads and "fun" sticker are all from Raspberry Road Designs- Clovis the Clown embellishment pack. The star tag is from Red Wagon Elements by Raspberry Road Designs and the buttons are from Color Your World Elements by Raspberry Road Designs. The fonts used are, CK Ali's Hand_Official for journaling, KidTypeRuled "Pre-School", Papyrus "Days to" and Perpetua Titling "Remember".

Through the Eyes of a 5-year-old

I thought I would tell the story of what sprang forth from Noah's mouth last week with a digital scrapbook layout.

Digital Stuff

The thread header I designed for this month's scrapbooking board:



I used the same digi parts to make a new siggie for my signature line in my emails and posts.

I used those awesome scattered rhinestones again.. I do believe that is my new favorite digital embellishment! All embellishments except for the rhinestones are from the Shabby Princess, Promise kit. The rhinestones are from the Winter Chill mega kit at iMotion studios.

Two projects

Now that Valentine's Day has passed, I can post the valentine card I made to send to family from Zoe. The aforementioned picture of Zoe with the heart lollipop was taken with the intentions of making them into a sweet valentine card to send out to everyone. Based on the results of the photoshoot, I had to once again get creative.

My second project is a digital layout I completed today for my friends. This is my group of friends that met when our oldest children were in playgroup. Even with the transient nature of the military, we have managed to stay for awhile. We've lost a few of our buddies to orders elsewhere along the way, but there are four of us left. We've all had more children since we first met and even though our oldest children have started school now, we wanted to find time to get the kids all together for a Valentine's Day party mainly because we are aware of the fact this is our last Valentine's Day together. One family has orders to Italy in the fall and another does not yet have orders but it is an almost certainty that they will probably be leaving as well. Amber took the pictures and emailed them to me and I made this digital layout with photoshop today to email to them. I am very pleased with how it turned out.

Do you like those awesome "scattered rhinestones" on the layout? Well, you can buy them in a digital kit designed by my very talented friend Vicky on her website, iMotion Studios. They are in the embellishment pack, but if you are going to pay 2.99 for the embellishments, why not pay $2 more for the whole mega kit. And it is a MEGA kit!

Finally to my photoshop obsession

A few things I enjoy doing with photoshop:

I made the invitations for Noah's and Zoe's birthday parties:

I also made an invitation for a friend whose little boy was having a Wiggles party... we took a picture of him and inserted it in the car with the Wiggles:





My Christmas card this year:




And I also love manipulating photos! I set up my camera on a tripod Christmas Eve and told my son that we were going to try and "catch" Santa and that the camera would take pictures when it sensed motion. This was so much fun to do!