So Long 2010!

I can't believe how fast the year went by. For me, 2010 was my introduction to the crafting world. Specifically with the purchase of my expression. I have learned so much in the last few months and am amazed at how much I enjoy making cards.

I continue to learn so much from the blogs I read and am amazed at all of the talent that is out there! You are all so inspiring to me and honestly, without your blogs, I would probably be still trying to figure out how to use my expression! LOL. :)

One of my resolutions for 2011 is to start scrapbooking. I have so many pictures of my son that are either sitting in photo boxes or on my computer. He went from this....

(first day of 1st grade)

To this......

...and that was just four years ago!

So that's my crafting goal for the year! Hopefully at this time next year, I'll be able to do a "Favorite Layouts of 2011."

Keep your fingers crossed and wish me luck!

Happy New Year!!

Preserves Notecards

Since my expression is the newest member to our family, I thought it was appropriate to include some handmade items as part of my holiday gifts this year. Because this is my first major "mass" production of various cards, I decided to go fairly simple. I think the Preserves cartridge is perfect for notecards. All the fruits look so cute on small 4 x 4 cards. So that's what I decided to do....

Preserves was actually the first cartridge I ever bought! It pairs perfectly with My Fruits and Veggie Pun stamps from Robyn at My Pink Stamper. I think they make great "Thank You" or "Thinking of You" notecards for a wide variety of people without being too cutesy.

Here's the whole bunch. There's actually one more card that will go with each set and for some reason, I'm not sure why I didn't include it with the picture. It's a "When life hands you lemons..." card. The sets will be boxed or bagged up (haven't decided yet which I'm going to do) and will be given to my son's teachers along with this great idea for Christmas fudge I found on one of the blogs I read called, Allread Design.

She has some great and cute ideas for last minute gifts for neighbors or co-workers. Check it out.

Holiday Cards for Co-Workers

I've been busy trying to get everything done for the holidays and for some reason, there never seem to be enough hours in the day! I did get these little holiday cards done for my co-workers. The cards are 3 1/2 by 3 1/2. You can get three of them out of a regular piece of cardstock.

The base is just simple kraft cardstock. The next layer is cut at 3 1/4 by 3/14 in a patterned holiday paper from DCWV. The ornament is just from Joys of the Season at 3 inches. I then used a Recollections Holiday Stamp set for the Jingle Bells stamp and embossed it with white embossing powder.

The Joy is from Create a Critter. It's the phrase on the reindeer cut. I added white stitching to both, just to give them a little more interest. On the inside I stamped "Merry Christmas." I made 10 of each card, one for each co-worker.

Now on to make cards for my family and friends...maybe this year everyone will be getting Happy New Year cards instead! LOL

My First Blog Award

I received a special Thanksgiving surprise...my first blog award courtesy of Pigtails and Paper Trails. I am very thankful to be recognized and even more so to be considered Stylish. It certainly puts a little spring in my step...so THANK YOU!




The rules for accepting this award are:


1. Thank and link to the person who awarded you this.

2. Share 8 things about yourself.

3. Pay it forward to 8 bloggers you have recently discovered.

4. Contact those bloggers and tell them about the award.

8 Things About Me!


1. I am deaf in my left ear and have been since the age of two.

2. I LOVE to cook and get the most pleasure sharing what I cook with others.

3. When I am not crafting, cooking, or spending time with my family, I love to read. My favorite book I have read recently is "Sarah's Key."

4. I dream of one day buying a house at the beach or as people around here like to say...Down the Shore.

5. In college I actually did live at the beach and sold Hawaiin Shave Ice on the boardwalk as one of my summer jobs. Best summer ever!

6. I'm still very much a newbie at crafting and have only had my Expression since July.

7. One year I actually forgot how old I was until my birthday when I realized I was a year younger! LOL

8. One of the biggest perks of my previous job in tv was getting to interview one of my favorite celebrity crushes, Kenny Chesney.

The 8 blogs I am giving this award to are:


1. http:62cards.blogspot.com
2. http://luvscrappingtogether.blogspot.com/
3. http://4craftyangels.blogspot.com/
4. http://tinklovescupid.blogspot.com/
5. http://scrappinwithkimmy.blogspot.com/
6. http://laurenscreative.blogspot.com/
7. http://septemberninth.blogspot.com/
8. http://sweetscrappingwithhoneyb.blogspot.com/

Advent Calendar

I saw this great idea for an Advent calendar in my recent issue of Family Circle and knew I had to make it.

It's actually made from the aluminum favor tins you can get at AC Moore and Michaels. They come in a pack of 25 tins and with a 50% off coupon, they were just $10.

In fact, this could be considered a Cricut-less project. While I did use mine, all you really need is a 1 3/4 inch circle punch and number stickers. I used four different patterns of paper that came in one of the holiday stacks I bought recently. Then, I cut six 1 3/4 inch circles from each pattern of paper.

I cut the number using Plantin Schoolbook and then attached them to the circles and then the circles onto the lid of the favor tin. The only thing left to do was attach a magnet using a hot glue gun.

We filled the tins with M&M's and put them on the refrigerator in the shape of the tree. All in all, it was a pretty simple project and we can use it year after year.

Projects - Altered Notebook

So I haven't had time to post anything recently because I've been working on a few projects. The first one is for our school's upcoming "Santa Workshop." In addition to the normal items you find at these things, our PTO invites local crafters to bring in items to sell. I am going to be selling a couple of items, including these altered notebooks and the bookmarks I made earlier this year.

They are nothing fancy. I bought the notebooks back in August during the Back to School sales and bought all of them for either 10 or 25 cents a piece. The paper I used to wrap is a pack I've had lying around for a couple of months. I don't use it for cards because it is really thin, but it's great for wrapping items. It's a little thicker than wrapping paper, but not much.

I then used my ever growing scraps to make the little critters from my Create a Critter cartridge. The stamps are from My Pink Stamper and Scrappy Moms. Both of which I highly recommend!

The hardest part was actually wrapping the notebooks. At first I used my ATG gun, but it was actually too sticky and if you laid the paper down and it wasn't lined up correctly, there was no chance of getting it off without ripping the paper. I actually ended up using some double sided tape I had in the house and it worked a lot better.

I'm off to start making some of our dishes for tomorrow. I like to get a couple of them done early to free up the oven.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Busy Weekend With Expression, But No Pictures

I had a busy, fun-filled weekend babysitting my BFF's kids. Her youngest and I spent a lot of time playing with my cricut cutting out animals and making cards. The only thing i forgot to do was take pictures of all of our creations...and let me tell you there were a lot!

What's really great is how simple the cricut is to use, even with a 4-year old. She loved it and before I left was already picking out what she wanted to make on my next visit! I'm getting some work done now around the house, but hopefully this afternoon, I'm going to work on either some more Christmas cards or gift tags....decisions, decisions.

The Spirit of the Season

I wanted to enter this week's Cricut Cardz Challenge, which is to design a Christmas card using the card feature on any cartridge and any color you wanted. I used my Wild Card cartridge and the Tweety cut for my card base, the liner, and also the frame around the sentiment.

The card itself is a 5 x 5 card. And surprise, surprise....this time I actually remembered to write down the names of the paper!

The base of the card is just white cardstock. The paper that I used for the liner is from the DCWV Christmas Combo pack. That's also where I got the paper for the frame. On the tree, the base is just kraft carstock and the gree on the tree is from K & Company's Yuletide pack.

The stamp is from recollections pack and the brown ribbon is from Michaels.

Snowman - Holiday Cheer

So the big trend this year for the holidays seems to be using "non-traditional" colors. Hot pinks, blues, aqua...very retro in my opinion. Kinda makes me think of the 70's and people had those aluminum colored trees in pink and silver.

I decided to jump on the band wagon and since I thought I could use this cute paper I got the other day at my local scrapbook store. See the hot pink snowflakes....very cute. The other snowflakes are blue and kind of an olivey green, though in the picture it looks more gold. Originally, I thought the paper was from Echo Park's new Wintertime collection, because I did buy a couple of sheets of paper from that line, but after looking at the entire paper pack online, that's not the case. So if the paper looks familiar and you know the brand...let me know!

I cut the snowman from Joys of the Season at 3 1/2 inches and coordinated his hot pink scarf with the pink in the snowflake paper. I even broke out my son's colored pencils for his carrot nose and on his broom.

The blue paper at the bottom is a leftover scrap that's kind of an aqua color. Again, I used a Recollections stamp set from Michaels and did a little more embossing. Slowly, but surely I'm getting the hang of it.

To finish the card, I did just a little faux stitching on the bottom. Again, nothing too fancy, but clean and simple tends to be my style.

Hope you like!

Happy Holidays - Pink Tree

I thought I would try a really simple card based off a holiday gift tag I saw at the store the other day. The concept is easy, use a bunch of small circles to create a tree and use a bow as the trunk.

This would be an easy card to make if you had a bunch of circles leftover from another project. That wasn't the case for me so I cut 24 circles from Plantin Schoolbook at 1/2 inch in two different shades of pink. That was the easy part. The hard part was trying to organize all these little circles! LOL.

Eventually I got the design I wanted and attached them to a white A2 card I had. The ribbon is from Michaels and it is actually the first time I've ever used a bow on a card. I can do the whole knot thing, but bows are definitely a lot harder for me.

The stamp is from a Recollections pack I grabbed at Michaels and has a whole bunch of seasonal sayings. I then used my newly purchased Versamark stamp in dazzle, white embossing powder, and new heat gun to stamp the tag. I know I little more practice with the embossing, but I though it turned out okay for my first time!

To top off the card, I added a hot pink gemstone as my star.

Again it's very simple, but I like the contrast of white and pink with just a little bit of brown.

Cupcake Notecards

Who doesn't love a cute cupcake??!! I made this set of notecards using my Wild Cards cartridge. The image comes with the candle attached, but I wanted the cards to be fairly versatile and only left it on for one of the cards. The patterned paper is from a DCWV Designer pack that for the life of me I never remember the name...(sorry about that).

I used my Xyron and Martha Stewart glitter for the frosting of the cupcakes. I really like martha Stewart glitter because it's so fine and I have to say I always use my Xyron when I'm adding glitter to something because it gives a nice even coat of adhesive.

The stamp sentiments are from the Scrappy Moms Sweet Something stamp set. I added a cupcake stamp onto the envelopes, which I think was from the $1 bin at Michaels.

There you go...Cute as a cupcake!

A Little Birdie Told Me it Was Your Birthday!

I've been wanting to use this great paisley patterned paper for months and finally had a card and a person who fit it perfectly. I made this card for my friend Trish for her birthday. The bird is from Create a Critter and the stamp is from My Pink Stamper. I've always thought Trish had the coolest clothes and the funky colors in the paper really match her personality.

I also really like the turquoise and brown color combo together. Kinda like retro chic, but not too kitchy.

Cute Lil' Pumpkin

Here's a cute little card I made to send to my nephew, Kail for Halloween. It's from the Mini Monsters cartridge. I used the card feature and cut it at 5 inches. I cute the tag from Sweet Treats at 2 inches and then added the "little pumpkin" sentiment from an I Clear stamp set I picked up at Michaels for $1.

Something Cute

Make something cute...that's one of the challenges this week at My Pink Stamper. Honestly, I feel like I really haven't had a lot of time to jump on my Cricut this week and I actually made these bookmarks about a month ago, but haven't ever posted anything about them.

I actually saw the idea on Momo's blog, (thanks Momo) but tweaked it a little. So here are some of my "cute" or so I like to think, bookmarks.

I wanted to do an owl because despite all of the owls cards I've seen on the blogs, this is the only project I've made so far using this cut. The owl and monkey are from Create a Critter, the Strawberry is from Preserves, and the skull and cross bones are from Mini-Monsters.

Halloween Treats Raffle

This weekend my friend Kirsten and I were happy to co-host a fundraiser in memory of our friend and mentor Jerry who passed away three years ago from brain cancer. Jerry was an amazing award winning television photojournalist who was taken from us all too soon. Just prior to his passing we were able to create a scholarship/award that is given annually by the Mid-Atlantic Chapter of the National Association of Television Arts and Science to a high school in Pennsylvania for their broadcasting department.

This weekend's event was a great way for a bunch of current and former tv personalities to get together and raise money for the award. As part of the night we have a raffle and I was happy to make some "Halloween Treats." The winner received a pack of cards, an altered notebook and a bucket filled with some sweet treats.

Thanks to all of our friends for coming out and supporting such a fantastic cause. We'll see you again next year!

Thank You Berry Much

Last Saturday I ran my first-ever 5k. Honestly, it's not something I would normally do. I've just never been a "runner." But, my best friend from high school is and encouraged me to try it. I trained for a couple months and when race day arrived I was ready to go. My only goal was just to finish and I'm happy to say I did it and I wasn't last!

This is the card I made to send to my friend Trish. Not only did she run with me the entire race, but she encouraged me all the way to the finish line and I know I couldn't have done it without her. Thanks Trish!

Card Specs:
Strawberry - Preserves
Thank you berry much - My Pink Stamper Fruits & Veggies
Paper - DCWV
Circle Border Punch - Martha Stewart
Brown Ribbon - Michaels

I Dream of Argyle

I have always been a HUGE fan of argyle, especially argyle socks. LOVE THEM! When I was younger, I would steal them out of my dad's sock drawer. LOL. Eventually, I purchased my own and had a pretty good stockpile of them when I was in college.

This leads me to my argyle card. I recently got Wild Cards as part of a bundle deal at AC Moore, which I might add was a steal considering I was able to use a $10 dollar reward certificate so I got four cartridges for $40. Not too shabby!

It took me a little bit to figure out Wild Cards as to which function goes with the card and which one goes with the envelope, but I thought it came out pretty good. It still need a little something extra when I was finished, so I found the flower from my stockpile. I think I cut it from Accent Essentials. I added a little stitching and the "dream" sentiment is from My Pink Stamper, Friends and Family stamp set.

Nuts About You

This weekend I wanted to make a card for my son. Since getting my Expression, I've been making cards for other people, but not for him. I've been wanting to do something with the squirrel in Create a Critter and using it for my son is a perfect fit. I say that because he LOVES squirrels. Me, not so much...LOL.

We have a giant acorn tree in our front yard which is usually home to at least one family of squirrels, so they are always in our yard. I also think he loves them so much because he and his buddies used to always sing the "Squirrels In My Pants" song from Phineas and Ferb on Disney Channel. I must admit after hearing the song, I had to laugh and of course it doesn't hurt that I think Phineas and Ferb are hysterical. It's a perfect show for kids and their parents.


Now onto the card. I decided to try out an S-fold and I think I actually got it right! I made the card a little bigger than I normally do since I wasn't putting it in an envelope. I know the paper is DCWV and it's one of their designer packs, but for the life of me I don't remember the name and am not at home to look. So without further adieu...my card.

When you open it up, it looks like this....

In Honor of Robyn at My Pink Stamper

So, I am a big fan of Robyn at My Pink Stamper. She has been instrumental at helping me learn how to use my expression and given me great ideas on cards.

One of the first cartridges I purchased after getting my expression was Create a Critter. I had also recently seen a Get Well card she made using this cartridge and her Punny-licious stamps.

So, in honor of My Pink Stamper, here is my pink Get Whale Soon card, using some of the techniques I learned from Robyn and of course my newly purchased set of Punny-licious stamps!

Best Witches

I recently purchased the Mini Monsters cartridge and have been wanting to put together a card with the witches hat. Here's what I came up with.



The patterned paper is from K & Company. I used my Sizzex again, but this time used the Divine Swirls folder for the Cuttlebug. When I first made the card I just used a plain orange layer on the top, but it just looked like it was lacking something, so I added some texture. I think it looks a whole lot better.

On Your Special Day

Each week, I'm trying to teach myself a new technique. Recently I purchased a Sizzix Textured Boutique at Michaels and since I had a 50% off coupon, it was a great deal. The other great thing I found out by reading the blogs is that the Cuttlebug folders also work in the Sizzix.

I made the layers using two different colors of paper, but the same Happy Birthday folder from Cuttlebug. I was really into the orange and aqua colors scheme this summer and did a Graduation Party using the same color scheme. It just screams fun and I think it makes the card fairly gender neutral.

I then used my Sweet Treats Cricut cardtridge to make the present and the tag. The "On Your Special Day" is from My Pink Stamper and the Friends and Family collection. This is a FANTASTIC stamp set, especially if you're just starting out like me, because it has some many sayings for all types of occasions.

Too Cute to Spook

I love the little pumkin on Create a Critter and thought he would be adorable on a "Too Cute to Spook" card. I attemped to do a joy fold, but am not sure if I was successful.

Cards, Cards, and More Cards

When I told my mom how much I am enjoying making cards, she laughed and said, "Who would have thought you'd be crafty." I have to agree as art, while I appreciate it, was never my favorite subject in school. But each day, I become more and more confident and I'm sure it has a lot to do with all of the amazing blogs I've found that give me so much inspiration.

Here are some of my most recent projects...I thought he would be cute for a boys birthday. I know it's a very simple card, but remember, I'm still learning. I originally made this card because I thought the crab was really cute. Then my cousin got engaged (her fiance proposed on the beach) and I tweeked it to send to her. I removed the sun and added a big diamon ring in the crab's hand. Sorry I forgot to take an "after" picture.

So I am recently the proud new owner of a Cricut Expression courtesy of my mom and have found a new love of card making. Who knew it could be so much fun! Slowly but surely I am learning the tricks of the trade and have already started buying cartridges to add to my collection.


I've been searching the internet for sites to help me develop my "style" which, so far I think is clean and simple. Here's one of my first cards...my "Cute" Hippo from Create a Critter and My Pink Stamper. All I have to say is thank goodness for Robyn! I have learned so much from her in just a few weeks!

This is another first favorite. Isn't she cute? Again, I used Create a Critter and MPS.

As i continue to learn, I'll post some more.

Wish me Luck!

Let's Go To The Movies

Planning a birthday party for an 11-year old boy is a lot harder than you might think. Idea #1....Minute to Win it party. My son and I love watching the show and I thought he and his friends would love trying out the challenges. The only problem for us....vacation.

When you have a summer birthday, it's hard to find a time when you can get all or at least most of your child's friends together. It's even harder when your birthday is the week of the July 4th holiday.

After realizing our guest list was going to be fairly small, we regrouped and came up with idea #2...Movie Party.

I designed the invitation and made each of his friends a ticket to see Despicable Me at our local movie theater. For favors, we wanted to do something simple and useful. I knew I wanted to do popcorn buckets, but was looking for a cute label for idea. , After searching lots of sites, I stumbled onto the Domesticated Lady and found this.....Using the same graphics I did for the invitation, I was able to make my own favor tags. Since we already had the popcorn containers, I included a bag of microwave popcorn, swedish fish, and a cowtail into each bucket....easy peasy.....Here is the final product.