Easter Eggs

So I found these cute little plastic eggs at Michael's and thought they'd be a fun alternative to the traditional Easter basket.  After all my kids are grown and at they're ages who wants paper dolls, toy cars and stuffed animals?  Well maybe the stuffed animal.  Mind you I only picked up eggs to do for those who still live in town near me - trying to mail chocolate for a minimum three day journey could get messy.  LOL

 

Using my printable vinyl and cuts from both Cricut and Marjorie Ann Designs I went to work.  The bunny with the egg is from the Seasonal Characters Cricut digital cartridge.  The bunny with his bunny peep is from You're Eggstra Sweet and the chick with the lamb is from the Easter Tweets file - both by Marjorie Ann Designs.

 

I then used one the Cricut cartridge Baby Steps to cut the names for each of my eggs.  Here I have to tell you that I'd never placed vinyl on a curved surface and must say that it was challenging.  Even now you can see where I have a bubble on one of the eggs trying to lay it out smoothly.......oh well, something tells me that my child won't be that concerned given all the chocolate inside that egg.

 

And there you have it.  My quick little Easter goodie treats.

Brr - It's Cold Out There

Happy Wednesday everyone and welcome to another DoubleClick Skittles Challenge.  This week we're going to the birds.  That's right create a card or project using any kind of bird.

 

For my card I used the Cricut cartridge Graphically Speaking for the tree and Baby Steps for my bird in the nest.  I found this great paper with the foiled flourishes and thought it would create the perfect background for a cold, blistery look.

 

Once I got the card laid out I added some snow effects to the tree branches using my DecoArt Snow Writer.  My stamped sentiments are from the Winter Wonderland stamp set by My Craft Spot.

 

The skittles at the bottom of my card are the colors Stream and Frosty Kisses.  Be sure you check out all of the exciting colors available here.  I don't know about you but I am addicted to these little gems!

 

Now that you've see my take on this week's challenge be sure to create your own, link up and play along with us.  Happy crafting.

Friends Through Thick and Thin

I have finally managed to reach the end of my owl card series that I have been creating using the Autumn Owls file from Too Cute By Jessica.  And now I'm kinda sad because I had so much fun choosing layout designs, styles, papers, colors, etc. for these guys.  You know what they say though........all good things must come to an end.  That's okay though because it just means I get to move on to another great file. 

 

For this card though I chose to make my first ever center step card.  I've seen these floating around but admit I was intimidated at the thought of creating one.  That is until I found a file for it over at Pretty Paper, Pretty Ribbon.  Yeah!  Someone else did all the guess work for me.  LOL

 

To spotlight my owl I used the scalloped oval from the Cricut cartridge Baby Steps.

 

For my sentiment, I used the Jaded Blossom stamp set Best Friends.

 

And now I'm off to enter this into the following challenges:

 

Anything Goes - Die Cuttin Divas - ends Monday October 6th

 

Shape Up - Fantabulous Cricut Challenge - Ends Sunday October 5th

Diaper Baby - Baby Gift Basket

Happy Fourth of July Holiday everyone.....well for some of us at least.  Some of us lucky ones still have to work.  But that's okay because it means I'm gainfully employed.  ;o)

 

I wanted to share a gift basket that I made for a friend with you today.  I found this wonderful idea for making a "diaper baby" on the internet the other day and just had to give it a try.  It was so easy and I had a lot of fun making it.

 

Once I finished the baby I put my basket all together which included a onesie mini album I made a while back and having been waiting to have someone to give it to.  If you're curious as to what it looks like inside you can view that post here.

 

The card is one that I just made using the Baby Steps cartridge.  I swear that's my favorite cartridge when it comes to making baby items.  The little toy on there was put on one of those action wobbles so that it would spring around just like a toy.

 

Needless to say my friend was delighted with the basket....

Baby's First Birthday

Happy Friday everyone.  I don't know about you but I am thrilled that it is Friday.  It has been such a busy week and I am ready for some down time.....

Today I have another challenge to share with you.  This one is for the Pause, Dream, Enjoy design team where our challenge this week was to use either a baby or cupcake on our project.  So I thought why not use both and create a baby's first birthday card.  Pretty smart thinking huh?

I used only one cartridge for this project, and that was the Baby Steps cartridge.  This cartridge very quickly became my favorite go to cart for all things baby.  It has such a great variety of cuts and the project possibilities are just endless.

But back to the challenge......

Our Sponsor for this week's challenge is Clear Dollar Stamps!.   And they are offering a $5 gift certificate to their store.  So hop on over to Pause, Dream, Enjoy and check out the other awesome projects that our design team created for this challenge.  Then submit your project by Thursday, Aug 9th Midnight EST to be entered for this challenge's prize.

First Father's Day

It's time for another Cricut Cardz Challenge and with Father's Day just a couple days away prepare to be inspired by all the great cards our Design Team created this week.  But first I'd like to share my quick and easy card for a First Father's Day.

For my card I used:

Father's Day for the recliner
Baby Steps for the baby - of course you can interchange the baby from a boy to a girl (probably need to do that myself)

That's it, two simple cuts and you have a great card to give daddy on his special day.  Now that you've seen my card be sure to stop by and check out all the other great cards from our team.  Then after you've been amply inspired create your own, link up and play along with us.

Last of the Onsies

Finally, finally, finally I have finished the last of all the onsie albums I needed to get made.  For the longest time I had an inspirational block but then I found the Cricut Lite cartridge 9 months and it was game on.  Not all of the pages for these albums used the new cartridge but it at least got me out of my funk.

And with that I wanted to share the new pages I made for these particular albums.

For the covers I used 9 months for the blocks and the heaven sent.

This cute little elephant is also from 9 months.

Now I know that the tubs are nothing new, but I found these great "bubbles" with the cutesy buttons at Michael's this past weekend and just had to redo these pages.

And finally, these cute rubber duckies were perfect for this new baby print I found.  The ducks and the hands are both from A Child's Year.

New Pages for Baby Album

As I get closer to my first craft show of the season I decided to get a few onesie albums made up and I thought I'd add some new items to the pages this go round.  I changed up the way I did the covers by adding in some embellishments.  I love the way that they look and think it's more inviting than just having the words on the cover.

Other new additions include a couple of pages with the baby birds from the 3 birds on parade cartridge.  You'll see them here along with some of the other pages I've made.

I also added in some new journaling tags.

But this one is  my favorite.  I got this idea while shopping around on Scrapbook.com and decided to try my hand at creating my own journaling strips.

I used Wild Card for my pocket and A Child's Year for the crawling baby. The journal strips were created in Microsoft Word and to hold them in the pocket I added the little foot paper clip.  If you like this page and would like to make some of your own you can download the cut file as well as the strips file by clicking on the  link for the tutorials page on the right hand side.

So what do you think?  Do you have any ideas for what you'd like to see in a baby album?  Have you made one that you'd like share?  Drop a line and let me know.

Baby Dreams

Today's card was made for a friend of mine who's due in a couple of months.  The idea to have baby dreaming about their bottle of milk just popped into my head the other day so I wanted to commit it to paper.  Then I thought it wold be perfect for using one of those action wobbles and thus I incorporated that into the card as well.

Each one of the cuts used are from Baby Steps.  I cut the sleeping baby at 4 1/4" and the hearts were all scaled to various sizes in Design Studio with the largest heart measuring 1 3/4" tall.  The smallest hearts were pop dotted and the largest has the wobble.  I had to trim a bit of the wobble along the heart's edge but that was easy enough to do.

I found the sentiment on the internet and fell in love with it.  It says, "Babies are a gift from heaven.  You must be special to have one of its angels."

Official Visit from the Tooth Fairy

I was inspired to create these tins thanks to a stamped version I saw.  I found my tins in the dollar bin at Michael's but now that I've made these two I'll have to go back and pick up a pack of the wedding favor tins.  They'll be smaller versions but will cost less to make in the long run.  Not to mention the fact that I couldn't find a tin in boy colors in the dollar section.

For my version I used George for the circle cut at 2 1/2".  Added the verbiage using MS Word - Arial font and using word art to create a 2" circle.

The tooth is from Baby Steps cut at 1 1/2".

I made the pillow myself as well, but the pic doesn't show the dimple I put in the center of the pillow very well.  Could be because of the button I added in order to give the tooth a perfect resting spot while waiting to be 'cashed in'.

Girlie Mini Onsie Album

My sister asked me to created a onsie album for her to give to a girlfriend that's due within the next couple of weeks and this is what I came up with.  Now before I get started on filling you in on all the deets I have to give credit to IslandV over at Scrap Innovations because she enabled me to create my first one and a couple of the pages I used in this one I scraplifted from her.  So if you haven't checked her blog out before you really should......

Once again I used my Sizzix onsie die for the pages.  Don't have Sizzix?  No problem....if you have the New Arrival cartridge that is.  Just use the onsie cut from New Arrival cut at 5.5 inches and you'll have the onsie base for all your pages.  Be sure to cut your pages from chipboard to give the album a sturdy base.

I also used A Child's Year, New Arrival, Baby Steps, and Accent Essentials for my other cuts.

For the first pages pictured I used Accent Essentials for the scalloped oval  -originally a circle that I skewed in Design Studio and cut at 3.5 x 2.5 inches. 

From Baby Steps I cut the bear at 2" and the baby's head (from the baby in the bathtub) at 1.5".  I cut two of the baby's head, flipping the second one and hiding all the facial features for the backside of the baby's head.  I then cut a piece of paper 3 x 2.5", used my corner rounding punch and ran it through my printer for the verbiage.  The blanket was made using a piece of double sided paper cut at 6.5 x 3" folded in half from the long side.  I then cut a slit from the top down on the front side, folded the edges back and glued along the side edges only. 

For the baby crib page I used Baby Steps and cut the crib at 2.5".  The mat I used was cut at 3 x 2.75".  I then glued the mat down and then adhered the crib on top of the mat gluing along the bottom and side edges only so that a picture could be slipped in.  (Next time I create this page I will pop dot it some for easier access though)

For the next set of pages I made the following cuts:

New Arrival - Stork, Baby, Bottles and Moon cuts all at 1.5"

Baby Steps - Little Girl cut at 1.5", words baby steps, highchair, food jars all cut at 2"

A Child's year for the mom holding a baby cut at 3"

Accent Essentials for the other mats cut at 3 x 2.5"

The Giraffe and baby bib are stickers that I found in my stash.

To put it all together I added 3/16" or 4.7mm eyelets and used 1" loose leaf binder rings.

Gift Bag & Card for Baby

I've been working on this project off and on since 6am this morning and finally finished it up.  About a week ago I won this wonderful Sizzix scoreboard die blog candy from Melissa and I have been dying to play with it.  Thankfully today was the day! 

Armed with my new Sizzix die, Zooballoo, Baby Steps and a couple of embellishments I created this baby bag and gift card holder.  I cut the bag out of chipboard and then came back and cut it from paper, making a second cut of just the flap for an accent piece. 

After adhering the paper to the chipboard I added a couple of white heart eyelets to the top so I could add a ribbon handle. 

For my gift card holder (2 3/4" x 3 1/2" folded) I cut some grass and a cloud from Zooballoo and the little girl clothesline from Baby Steps.    On the inside I cut a section from a vellum baby saying sheet I have, ran it through my Xyron and adhered to the top portion of the card.  For the gift card holder I created a "place card here" the same size as a standard gift card and added a couple of glue dots to hold the card in place.  Until it's time to add the card though I've left the protective cover on the glue dots - thus the little squares you see. 

Baby's Toy and Action Wobbles

This past week I received my first shipment of action wobbles and I have been dying to try them out.  Ok not literally dying but I have been as anxious as a dog chasing a cat.  So with this weekend's show over and two new orders about a quarter complete I decided to set them aside and play for a few minutes.  But then my play ended up working into work for one of the orders.   Don't you just love how that happens sometimes? 

Anyhoo, I decided to go with a baby's toy as my action item because those are generally wobbly things.  I mean what better for my first use?  Baby Steps was my cartridge of choice for this card. I cut the baby girl at 5" and the toy at 2".

And in case you haven't seen or heard of action wobbles here's a little video to show you what they do.

Baby Dreams

Happy Wednesday everyone!  Today is Cricut Cardz Challenge day and our challenge for today was to create a baby card using any cartridges and colors we desire.  What a perfect opportunity to break out and use my brand new Baby Steps cartridge.  This is another great new cartridge that is chock full of adorable cuts and I love that they have cuts specific for a boy or a girl! 

For my card this week I used Baby Steps for the following cuts:

Baby Girl on the Moon cut at 5"
Bottles cut at 3/4"

George for the ovals, the large one skewed to measure 1 1/2" tall and 2 1/2" wide and the smaller ones skewed to a proportionate size.