Updates, Minnie Layout with Ribbon and More!

Hello everyone!  I have lots to share today, so this might be a lengthy post.  Let me begin with...
Wow, did I have a busy weekend!  Thanksgiving was absolutely wonderful - it is the best kick off to the holiday season together with my wonderful family!  Here is my favorite picture of the night:

  I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving, as well!  But as soon as Thanksgiving was over, it was off to my Black Friday escapades!  I started at 2:30am and went straight through to noon - what a crazy adventure!!  My Black Friday partner in crime, Marylin and her sister, joined me a little after 4am.  Although not as spectacular as other years, it was still a great adventure.  I had to cut it short because I had a wedding in the afternoon.

My favorite find, though, didn't exactly happen on Friday, more like Saturday, by accident.  I found out about the NEW cricut cartridge lites that Walmart was going to debut on Friday on Thanksgiving day.  I researched them and found the pictures on cricut.com and made it one of my need to get on Black Friday items.   Unfortunately, my Walmart didn't even know what I was talking about and had none.  The Walmart in Kendall did carry them, but didn't have the ones I wanted.  I ended up getting the "Carousel" cartridge for $20, though :)

On Saturday night, my family and I drove to the Pembroke Pines Walmart in search of lights for our house and while walking around, they had a whole display with all the new cartridges and the beautiful Cricut Expressions in color.  I was able to get the ones I wanted for $20 each - so excited, can't wait to use them!!!!!!!!! 

There is a NEW GYPSY UPDATE for all of you Gypsy owners out there.  I updated tonight and linked all my new cartridges.  I went on a little Cricut Christmas shopping spree for me the past couple weeks and I have five new cartridges that I need to explore and play with (as soon as I find the time, hmmmm, when will that be??).  So for those of you that want to see what the new cartridges have, check cricut.com (under the "shopping" tab, click on shape cartridges, they are right at the top, click images) and/or update your Gypsy to play with the images.  Hopefully I'll be able to create something soon to show you all the absolute cuteness of these cartridges!!

Next, I wanted to share a layout with you all tonight of one of the classes that I am teaching at My Paper Tree House on December 15th!  It was inspired from my need to finish my Disney Album, which I am still in the process (and what a long process it is!).  When it's all done, I will post the entire album, but it is a crazy month, so it might not get done till 2011, lol!

This layout is also great for this week's ribbon challenge at Fantabulous Cricut!  I used ribbon in all sorts of ways - from borders, to photo corners to photo frame & embellishment accents!  If you're in the Miami area, be sure to sign up for the class HERE.  Also, be sure to join in on the fun at FCCB this week and submit your own project for the ribbon challenge!  

Here are some close-ups of the layout...

As many of you know, I am on the Fantabulous Cricut Design Team.  Well coming up on December 13th, we are having our "Deck the Hall Crawl" which is FCCB's version of a Blog Hop!  I'm excited because it will be my first one!  I am working on a couple projects - one that I will debut on the day of the crawl and I will probably feature others that week, too!  So be sure to mark your calendars, save the date and keep coming back here for more inspiration!

Finally, I also received two blog awards last week and I wanted to thank Savahanna and Angie for giving those awards to me!  I will post the awards and the details of them on another post this week, but I need some time to get those together and I've run out of that tonight.  I did want to let you all know that I did visit your blogs to pick them up and I am so honored!!  You both are so sweet....Thanks again!

Thanks for reading through the extra long post - I figured, I had been away for quite a few days, I'd get you all caught up!  Thanks for stopping by and feel free to leave a comment (I love those ;)

Have a great week everybody!

Whoo's Adorable Layout

I had all these scraps left over so I decided to create something with them and this layout is the result.  After I had put the bottom strips on the paper, I started looking for some pictures that might go with what I had so far, I found the pictures of my cute kiddos playing outside.  I also had the "adorable" die cut leftover from the princess page I had posted before.  I decided to create an embellishment in the top corner that included an owl to use the title "Whoo's Adorable".  I freehanded the branch and cut out more leaves from the scrap I had.  I welded "Whoo's" on my gypsy (A Child's Year font).  The cute owl is from one of my lite cartridges, Hoot n Holler.  I really love the end result, take a look...

Tomorrow is one of my favorite days...THANKSGIVING!!

I hope you all have a blessed and wonderful Thanksgiving with your families.  

Thanks for stopping by!

"Grateful for..." - FCCB DT Challenge #37 Layout

Hello everyone!  In the spirit of Thanksgiving, this week's challenge at Fantabulous Cricut is what are you "Thankful for...".  I wanted to create a layout that showcased what I'm most thankful for which are my children, my husband and my family!  So they are the focus of the photos for my layout.  I especially love the picture of my kiddos (which I had forgotten I took and came across it and loved it, especially for this layout).  I had found this great scalloped paper and I used some scraps from my fall layouts that had "give thanks" which I thought would go perfect.  I knew I wanted a graphic title, so I started searching in my gypsy and I found this great premade phrase in the Gypsy Wanderings cartridge.  I matched it with a 4 from A Child's Year cartridge and of course, used george for the dot, dot, dot.  I still had an open space in my layout so I decided to freehand a tree and use it for my journaling.  I literally cut a scrap of brown to create the trunk and punched 3 circles.  Inside the "tree" I journaled the things I'm grateful for in mixed fonts with my own handwriting.  I also cut a couple leaves to place at the bottom of the tree.  I added some doodles to the title and some faux stiching around the two smaller photos.  I love my white pen, it brings that little added touch, don't you think?

 I really love the way this layout came together - it made the wall!  I will put in on the wall of my scrap room this week.  Here are the photos of the layout and all the details...

Be sure to stop by Fantabulous Cricut and join in on the challenge this week!

Also, tonight is the kick off party at My Paper Tree House...hope to see you there - and bring your gold - it's a gold party, too!

Have a happy Monday everybody!

Thanks for stopping by, be sure to check back again tomorrow for another layout!

To Infinity and Beyond...

We recently went to Kennedy Space Center which my son absolutely loved!!  I bought this picture of him as an astronaut because I thought it was beautiful.  So I created this page to hang on the wall of his room.  I used Opposites Attract to create the title, which I welded on my gypsy.  I used George for the stars in different sizes and the dot, dot, dot.  I added stickles and popped the stars.  Here is the layout with some close-up shots so you can see the details...  

Tomorrow is a new challenge at Fantabulous Cricut, so check back then for my DT project for the week!  Tomorrow is also the Class Kickoff party at Paper Tree House Studio and I have two great classes that I will be showcasing.  If you're in the Miami area, be sure to stop by - it begins at 6pm.

 I have a lot to share this week so be sure to come back often!

Have a great rest of your weekend!

Thanks for stopping by...

Princess Fairytale Layout

Sorry I've been m.i.a. lately, but this has been an insane week with 3 events at my school that I was in charge of plus all the other things in my life.  Today, I finally got to scrap with my friends - I haven't been to a Friday GNO in forever.  When I got to the scrapbook store, they had just gotten the new imaginisce princess line and I was instantly inspired.  So I started cutting paper (one of my favorite past times - cortando papelito! LOL) and popping.  I found the perfect pictures of my little girl on her actual birthday with her princess vanity.  So I printed them right away to add to the layout.  This line also has a cute stamp which I cut around and stickled.  Here is the finished layout...

Thanks for stopping by!

PreK Layout and Birthday Card

Hello everyone.  It's been a rough week - I hate being sick!  Late last night I finished a layout and a birthday card, but my internet was acting up, so I'm posting it now.  The layout was inspired by a page from CK magazine a couple months back and I used my son's school picture.  The birthday card is from a bunch of scraps I had lying around my scrapbook table that I decided to make into a card, instead of putting the scraps away. Here they are...

The background is embossed with one of my favorite folders, divine swirls

Hope everyone's having a great day.
Thanks for stopping by!

All Boy Fun Layout

I'm feeling really under the weather.  I need to use that card I made last week for myself with how I'm feeling :(  But I recently finished this layout with the pictures of my son riding all of the rides at the carnival in Myrtle Beach and I hadn't shared it yet, so I figured I would tonight.  I had a lot of fun mixing all sorts of different patterns  for this layout.  I created gridlines with black paper and used black stars as accents throughout the pages.   I used my white pen to faux stitch them which really makes them pop.  I love how the color of these pictures compliment the papers beautifully.  Here are a bunch of photos of the layout...

As always, thanks for stopping by!

Fantabulous Cricut Challenge #35

I am so excited to share my first design team project for the Fantabulous Cricut Challenge Blog.  This week's challenge is a color/shape challenge, for this week it is green and a circle.   If you got here from the FCCB blog, welcome!   I hope you like what you see and I hope you choose to come back often and become a follower!

Now before I show you the pictures of my project, I have a story to share...

I teach middle school and although not customary for middle school teachers, I decorate for every holiday.  After I brought down all of my halloween stuff and put up my Thanksgiving decorations, my room looked a little empty.  So I went on the hunt for more Thanksgiving decorations.  I went to quite a few stores and they had NOTHING.  Why does Thanksgiving get skipped?  It is one of my very favorite holidays, but the stores seem to go from halloween straight to Christmas and Thanksgiving is completely overlooked.  Seriously, I think I saw a couple paper cups, some tablecloths and very little else.  It's sad, really.  The only usable thing I came across were these placemats which I found at Big Lots...

That made me think...wait a minute, I could hang these from the lights in my room and I could scrap the green circle ones.  So I did!  It fit in perfectly with this week's challenge and as a solution to my Thanksgiving decor dilemma.  I used Celebrate with Flourish (one of the Lites and an awesome cartridge, btw!), which I was finally able to link to my gypsy (I've been trying to do this since I got this cartridge in the summer and was only now able to with the latest update) for all the images.  The font is from one of my go-to font cartridges - Sesame Street Font.  These are all three circles...

I chose to create a large image on each with words of the season around each image.  I wanted to make all three different.  To expedite the process of assembly, I put all the letters through my xyron and the images were all popped.  A word of advice for centering titles, start with the middle letter and then work your way to the beginning and end of the word.  

Now some close ups of each...

I did a lot of embossing and used a lot of stickles on this one...

This is what they look like hanging up in my classroom...

Now my classroom decor seems complete :)

I hope you've enjoyed my project and I hope you join in on the fun this week at FCCB!

I'd love to know you stopped by my blog... be sure to leave a comment!

Thanks for stopping by!