School Layouts and Room Makeover

This is the scrapbook page that is currently on my fridge.  I change it up every other week or so.  This is last year's school picture of my little MJ in PreK3.  His first school picture - I'm so proud! This page is entirely done with graphically speaking.  One of my favorite elements is the page alphabet border which few people know is in that cartridge. The other element I particularly like is the book which doubles as an embellishment and my journaling block, where I wrote the important details of the grade, year, teacher and also a description of MJs day as told by him.  

The double page below was a quick layout of photos of him at school that his teacher sent to me at the end of the school year alongside his class photo.

Here's a closeup of the left page - the title is from Sesame Street Font.

Room Makeover

Today I changed Sofia's room around and converted her crib into a little bed.  I wanted to make the room more toddler friendly and give her some space to play (since she never does in there, only in her brother's room).  Her 2nd birthday is soon approaching and a vanity and/or dollhouse are on the horizon, so I wanted to open up some space for those as well.  So here is a short tour of her room - and yes, there is a lot of Cricut in there, too!  From the vinyl letters spelling out her name on the wall, to all the flowers and circles (all made of paper, btw)...

Summer Layouts

I came across these great summer papers that I had bought weeks & weeks ago and decided to play with them. As I started creating the layouts, I started looking at my pictures to find the perfect ones to match the page I wanted to create. They are bright and fun and I love the way they capture some of our summer memories...

The small title on the paper says "Backyard Adventure" and I wanted to bring in photos of my kids enjoying our backyard and it came together like this:

I went through a box from my cruise scrapbook that I knew had tons of embellishments, to see if any would go with this layout and I found some great diecut accents by K&Co Citronella line that really complimented the page, like the "Say Cheese" (which my daughter is doing and they are also eating Mac & Cheese - Love it!), the "Sizzlin'", the swirl and Make a Splash.

The best part was that after I created a collage (love to put tons of pics on my layouts - thank you Picasa!) I wanted it to fill a certain space but none of the print options were working (either too small or too big), so I went another route - I dragged and dropped the collage into Word and made it the size I wanted. While I was in Word, I decided to add another smaller photo and create the rest of my title (hey, I was already printing on an 8 1/2 x 11 sheet of paper, I'm all about maximizing my space!!!). That's where the "summer fun" title came from. I had forgotten how much I love Word and how versatile it can be, especially for scrapbooking! So I'll be using that idea again!

The photo on the left is the inspiration for the title (thanks Lisette!) and showcases one of our boating adventures...

Even brought out the stamps for this one:

Here Comes Trouble & Owie

I recently bought the "B is for Boy" Cricut Lite cartridge and the car cut on that cartridge was a primary reason why - I love it! I had the perfect pictures to be able to use it on in the layout below. I find the Cricut Lite cartridges a little pricey, but I must say, they layer super easily and beautifully!! Here is the layout of my little Sofi and MJ, too...

This is the left side close up...

Had to add a bow, Sofi is always wearing one...
The title is from the cartridge, too!
Decided to make a cute key chain to hang the cute keys (also from the cartridge!) to write my journaling...

This cartridge also has an OWIE title that inspired me to scrap these hilarious pictures that I have of my kiddos during a doctor's visit. I took them to send to my husband, since he wasn't there, and it was quite an experience for me to deal with alone, but one that I decided to laugh at. He has shown these pictures to all of his friends, who have also found them hilarious. My best friend had the best narration of her take of the two photos which I decided to journal. Take a look...

I'm scrapping tonight, so I'll post some more tomorrow...thanks for stopping by and be sure to leave a comment - I love reading them!

Christmas in July

Fantabulous Cricut has a Christmas in July challenge this week and ironically, those are the layouts I've been finishing up! A couple are from long ago, classes that I taught, but I just got around to adding the pictures. I guess it's only fitting that after all the the Thanksgiving layouts I finished, to move on to the next holiday. So here are a bunch of my Christmas '09 layouts (LOTS of pictures to follow!)...Enjoy!

My ultimate favorite Christmas Layout is this one:

It is all done using the Christmas Cheer Cartridge, which is now retiring, I think. What a shame if you don't have it, because it is my favorite for Christmas images! Here are close ups of the details of this layout...

Love, love, love the reindeer on this cartridge!

I love my gypsy, just LOVE IT, and layouts like this one are one of the reason why. I was able to combine 5 different fonts to create the title, but the most beautiful part, was that the words are each welded!

Fonts used here include Lyrical Letters, Sesame Street Font, Gypsy Font, Christmas Cheer.

My gypsy at work here again. I wanted a tall Christmas tree to fill the space on the right so I could put "faux" ornaments (brads) on the tree.

I found a tree I liked and stretched it using my Gypsy and voila

This layout is all done with the George Cartridge!! I use it all the time, especially to teach beginner's cricut classes, so I push myself to think outside the box time and time again, everytime I teach the class, to change it up. This one is fun because it takes basic shapes to a whole different level!

This layout was about my grandma, 100 then, now 101. I loved the pink and green combo of colors - Christmas doesn't always have to be red!

Another mixed font title (I love this look, can't you tell!). The snowflake and "Bisa" are sprinkled with Martha Stewart Tinsel glitter. I also used a combo of pearls on select letters, and bling on the snowflakes.

This one I added a fabric brad to the center.

This last one is from our trip to Stone Mountain where we went tubing and the kids played in the snow for the first time.

Mom Layout and Top 3!!!

I've been away for the week on vacation so there's been a big hiatus to my posting, but I wanted to share just a little tonight because I got some great news and I was very busy scrapping last weekend so I have some new stuff to share. First, I'm super excited because I made the Top 3 at Fantabulous Cricut last week on my first challenge entry...woo-hoo! Couldn't enter this week because I was out of town, but looking forward to what they have in store for next week.

Last weekend I had the best time cropping with my friends at My Paper Treehouse in the All Day Crop, especially because my best scrapping buddy, Marylin, returned from a very long hiatus and it was just awesome having her back!!! I finished a really important layout last week of my mother in the 50's. I have these beautiful pictures of her that I really wanted to scrap and I had started a page a while back, but it needed the right side page and I love the way it finally came together. This is different than my usual style, especially since I never scrap these kinds of pictures, so I really had to go outside my comfort zone to do the pictures justice. I was really excited to show them to her and she loved it! I want to frame them and put them up in my house, but I need to find a double layout type frame. For now, they are up on my scrapbook room wall.

I have lots more pages to share that I finished this past week, but that will be another post tomorrow - it's late (I know, what a surprise, LOL!). So be on the lookout for more coming soon!

My first challenge entry!

I've never done a challenge before, so now that I started my blog, I wanted to give one a try and I found a great blog called Fantabulous Cricut that each week challenges you to use your cricut. That was just what I was looking for! This week's challenge was to use a creepy crawler and the color orange. I wanted to do something a little different and not the usual, "Cute as a Bug", so I found this great title and that was the springboard to my page "Sleep Tight, don't let the Bed Bugs bite!". I have this great photo of my kids cuddling together to go to sleep in MJs bed and I had a story to share so this layout let me put it all together. I really like the way it turned out. I used one of my favorite new cartridges, Create a Critter to create the bugs. The moon came from New Arrival and the big titles came from Cuttin' Up and Sesame Street Font. The words in the little orange circles are just my handwriting. I love to journal so there's always lots on my pages. Like I said, I had a story to tell. Here it is...

Thanksgiving Pages

This week I've been finishing up some Thanksgiving layouts that I had started a while back using one of my very favorite lines - Bo Bunny. This is a big event for me to scrapbook because my sister, Tati and I are literally the paparazzi on this night. I took over 200 photos! Of course, only the best and the ones that help me tell my story will be scrapbooked - but a girl needs choices! So here they are...

This layout is one I created with my scraps - instead of filing them away (and not knowing if they would ever see the light of day) I put something together. I will probably put some more photos taking on Thanksgiving (I still have plenty of photos that I haven't used!).

Me and each of my sister's take family photos to use on Christmas cards, but we have to take A LOT of photos to get the perfect one. However, those OUTAKES are so much fun, that I just had to scrap them...

The title on this one is with my new Cricut Lite cartridge - Celebrate with Flourish which I love!! Not sure if you can tell on the photo, but I added Diamond Glaze so it looks like an epoxy sticker.