A New Year.. A New Start

I can't believe that it's been almost a year since I last wrote here. I used to enjoy it so much and then just fell off the wagon. So it's time to start again... if for no other reason than to post my scrappin' projects.

I managed to do a few layouts last year (maybe 30 or 40). I posted the ones from last year's craft weekend but will slowly pull the ones together that I have done and take pics of those as well and post them when I have nothing else to share.

I also took on a few new projects last year. I organized a few card making sessions with the ladies from work and we made 225 cards to send to the Cards for Soldiers group on the Cricut Messageboard. I've made some cards in the past but never like that before. There may be more cardmaking in my future.

I also made some Christmas presents this year. This year one of the fantastic blogs I discovered was Scrap~A~Doodle~Dee (Papercrafts by Candace). She is really talented. One of her projects was a set of flash cards that I thought would be perfect for the triplets. Thank goodness I started early in November because it took me right up until Christmas to finish them. I think I spent about 40 hours working on them. But I have to say that they turned out absolutely adorable. I didn't get pictures of them but I plan to when we go to visit in 2 weeks.

And another Christmas project was floating frames. These are all the rage on the Cricut MB and look pretty darn awesome. Plus this was a project Jeff and I could work on together. I bought ugly pictures at Goodwill strictly for the frames. Jeff sanded and painted them black. We then cut last names and the years of marriages out of black vinyl (bought from Expressions Vinyl) for Jeff's parents and two sisters. We then cut out the names and years using Sure Cuts Alot and my cricut and placed them onto a glass for each frame. One of the frames already came with 2 pieces of glass so we had 2 more pieces cut to match the other two frames. The vinyl names and years were then "sandwiched" in between the two pieces of glass and placed into the frames (with no other backing). Again didn't get pictures...yet. Another thing to do when we next visit.

Since I don't have any pics of the presents we made, I will share two layouts that I did this last year.
Whoooo's Crying - This one I am actually making a companion page to in order to focus on the journaling. Poor Kendra was so devastated when she didn't get to go to school with her brother and sister. This was my first time using the Create a Critter cricut cartridge and I loved it! Isn't that owl adorable? I ended up using this cartridge many more times on the flash cards.


Bee Happy - And here was another simple layout (my style of late) of Kaitlyn picking apples. Not sure why I went with the whole "BEE" theme except that I had the bee patterned paper (words) and had fallen in love with the Bee on the Sentimentals Cartridge and had desperately wanted to use it. The title is cut from the Pooh Font cartridge.

So I'm not very good at making New Year's Resolutions and one blog I read today mentioned setting goals rather than resolutions. That sounds like a great idea. The following are my goals for my crafting this year...

1) Keep this blog fairly current - I won't pressure myself to blog everyday but a couple times a week would be nice.

2) 50 Layouts - This should be a manageable goal. I still have my craft weekend in April plus we are trying to schedule 2 craft nights and 1 craft day at the office each month.

3) Submit my Work - Doesn't necessarily have to be for a magazine submission but even for a challenge blog. I have a hard time sharing my work and this will help me to overcome that.

4) Make Cards - Send homemade cards to loved ones this year instead of buying them (or even worse sending none). I have the ability, the materials, I just need to plan ahead and make the time.

5) Try Something New - A new product... a new technique... a new style... or even a new craft... who knows? Maybe that something new will become my something usual.

Okay, those aren't too bad... they shouldn't be too difficult to manage. And since I am posting them here publicly it will help hold me accountable to them.

Here's to a great 2011!

My Craft Weekend

The second weekend of January "the ladies" met for another one of our annual craft weekends. We used to them in late March but ran into Easter so last year we decided we needed to move our weekend. Unfortunately there were not many open weekends and we ended up with the second weekend of January. It meant that I would now miss the large family Christmas but I am not willing to give up my craft weekend... it's my annual shot of sanity!

I had a hard time settling in this year. I was better prepared than I have been the last two years especially emotionally. But still I had distractions to deal with. The biggest of which was my fault... before I left home I sent an order of pictures to Target in the town where I was meeting my sister-in-law. The only problem is... they never received the order and I didn't have those pictures. Now I had other pics to scrap but for some reason I just kept letting that plague me. It got to the point on Saturday where the ladies convinced me to have my daughter at home resend the pics to the Target and I would drive and get them. It was a 45 minute drive one way and shopping time... I spent/wasted 3 hours on it. Maybe wasted isn't the right word for it... I did get 4 layouts done out of those pictures... which was just about half of my production. Nine layouts for a full weekend of scrappin'. It just seems wrong.

There were other minor distractions. We had four cricuts running that weekend and in some ways I am the most knowledgeable about them... which isn't saying a whole lot. And there were questions to be asked and answered. This I honestly didn't mind. These machines do so much more than just cut paper and I have so much to learn about all that they can do. I love sharing what knowledge I have. Plus, I get to share a table with my SIL. I love her to death but she needs to trust her own judgement more on her choices. She's putting together a really cute 8X8 album on Lions Sculptures that her town had out one summer. But she questions and wants opinions on each detail of each page. I've tried telling her that there's no wrong way to scrap and what I might like, she might not. Now this doesn't mean that I don't want to offer any opinions at all... I know when I get stuck it's great to have someone to bounce ideas off of... so I need to keep quiet. But truly her book is looking great!

Here are the layouts that I managed to get done at Craft Weekend '09...

This is my daughter at Halloween when she was in 2nd Grade. I love these pictures of her. The paper is from Once Upon a Time by DCWV. Love those papers and they seemed to be appropriate for this. The title and the frame were cut from Storybook. (Ooops, just realized I didn't put the date in the frame).


This is a layout of my son and his girlfriend from Homecoming this year. I don't know what the pink paper is but it was a slick shiny coated pink (of course, it doesn't show up in the picture). And I have to double check the font it was either Jasmine or Ashylyn's Alphabet (neither of which I own). My SIL, Amy, owns them. I've always liked Jasmine but that weekend AA became a new favorite... trying to convince myself that I don't need to have it.

The next two layouts are of my daughter at her first Homecoming. She's a freshman this year. She did a great job of picking out a dress that completely fit her personality. After looking thru all the local malls, she finally found this one on Ebay. It was a Jessica McClintock and I think it cost us $55 (40 of which she paid). Since I had to convince her to get her hair done I paid for it ($35 plus $15 tip) but we were both extremely pleased with the results. The embossed pink paper on the first layout was really difficult to work with... no adhesive sticks very well to it. I cut the frames from Storybook... the first at fit to page and the second at fit to lenghth. I added Stickles and Jeweled brads to the first page for some bling.

This next page isn't done yet since I never added a title although it's pretty self-explanatory. The pictures I had were really dark but I had bought the Disney Dreams Come True cart before I left that weekend solely because of Ariel (Kaitlyn's absolute favorite). All weekend long I wasn't sure if I was going to keep the cart until finally the last few hours of craft weekend I finally just ripped open the packaging and decided to keep it. (I had already bought and returned the cart once before). Ariel's tail, her top and the seaweed were all from the DCWV Glitter Stack. This was my first attempt at one of the Disney characters. I am pretty pleased with how it turned out.


This one was just a quick, fun one to do. I really liked this picture of my kids with one of their cousins all wearing 3D glasses so I had it blown up to a 5X7. The bacground was a frame from Accent Essentials (I believe) cut at fit to page (that weekend was the first time I had used that function key and I had fun with it). The title and subtitle are from Graphically Speaking.

This is one of my favorite layouts, even though it is so simple. Just before that weekend I had bought some carts at Michael's buy one/get one sale. I needed another cart to even it out and couldn't decide which to get. I finally settled on A Child's Year, not sure if/how/when I would use it. Ha! That turned out to be the most popular cart that weekend. Even though it is primarily silhouettes, just about everyone found something to use on it. This layout is of my daughter and her best friend, Maria. They met in Kindergarten when Maria came up to her and asked Kaitlyn if she would be her best friend... and still are to this day. The two pictures signify there personalities so perfectly as Kaitlyn and Maria and as their alter egos, Gilda and Erma (I have no idea where those came from but it fits).



The next two layouts are from our Agency's anniversary party held at a Brewer's Game at Miller Park (my first time in the new stadium, even though it's been open for quite a few years). We had a blast! Our seats were in the Toyota Tundra area where we got to sit in full recliners with tv screens in front of all the chairs. It was a great time!



And this is a saying that I put together for my husband's grandmother. I had played with a co-worker's Happily Ever After cart a few months ago and made the pumpkins (which really are gorgeous close up). I wasn't sure what to do with them and had plans to put them on a Thanksgiving present for grandma. Well, it didn't get done for this past Thanksgiving but I'm sure she will put it up anytime. I don't know which font I used as it was done using my SCAL, where I welded letters for the first time.

A little Christmas Interlude...

I haven't been around much lately... busy, busy, busy with work for last 6 weeks... but here is my favorite American Idol singing my favorite Christmas song...

Craft Night Tonight!

I love our after work craft nights... usually only once a month but this month we are trying to squeeze in two due to the holidays fast approaching. I brought way too much stuff this time but I wasn't sure what I was going to work on. I will have access to the Christmas Solutions cart and the Happily Ever After cart (both of which I don't own) so I may just cut some of those for future use. I also need to take pics of the cards I have been working on. So look for a post later.

More Blog Candy...

I love the scrapbook world... it is filled with the nicest, most talented people. I mentioned earlier winning two prizes this past weekend just by leaving comments on their blogs. Well, I found another one where the talent is amazing and once again... more blog candy. It's over at Crafty Chatter . To enter to win, I just need to leave a comment on her post and link to it from my blog. She is offering a surprise candy package of approx $100 worth of goodies. Please, pick me... pick me! :)

Pumpkins 2009

Before we get too far into November, I guess I should post pictures of our pumpkins. Once again we have grown our own ginormous pumpkins... aww, who am I kiddin'... Jeff grew the pumpkins. He did a real bang-up job this year too. We were able to harvest 12 large ones. We kept one for each of us and gave the other 7 away. We also set a new family record... the largest one weighed in at a whopping 79.8 pounds!!! That will be the Jack Skeleton head in the upcoming pics.

This year though Jeff was busy working overtime and didn't have time to carve them until - gasp! - Halloween day... then he got stuck carving 4 of them by himself... he told me if I wanted one then I needed to carve it.

Here are our masterpieces:

Our record breaker!

Maleficent

The Pirate Fish (see the eyepatch?)

Bat in the Moon


The Wise Old Owl

I Never Win Anything...

But this weekend received notice from two separate contests that I won! The first I found out about was from one of the hostesses of the BBTB (Bitten by the Bug) Blog Hop, Creative Candy... It's a Sweet Thing. How cool is that?!?!? The blog hop did a challenge where they all had to use the tag from Stretch Your Imagination cart and to use it in a Halloween themed idea. Because of this blog hop, I was introduced to a bunch of talented ladies all of whom I have become followers on their respective blogs. It is such a good way for me to learn how to think outside the box for scrappin'. What did I win? Creative Candy mentioned in her blog post that it would be cartoon dimensional stickers... very, very cool!

Tonight I was reading a new post for Bo Bunny blog. And reading it, once again, saw my name. Now Carrie isn't exactly a common name but it's not all that unusual either. So I went back to the comments on their post about "BOO"ing two people... one from Facebook and one who left a comment on the post commenting on their favorite Halloween memory/tradition and linked them to their blog. That was me... my favorite tradition... growing our own pumpkins and carving them Halloween week (but how sad is it that I don't even have pics posted yet). I wasn't sure how I was supposed to be contacted. Had to search my comments from the previous post and there it was.. on the one from August 3... again, very sad that it's been so long since I've blogged. As for the prize... some goodies from their Boo Crew Bo Bunny line... which is pretty dang awesome! Their paper is fantastic. Bo Bunny is a new product line for me but one that I will definitely be looking for.

So right now I am feeling like I should go buy a lottery ticket... aww, but what could be better than winning from 2 scrapbooking sites... guess I'll forget the lottery ticket, save my money and buy some scrapbook products instead... definitely a better investment!