Love is in the Air Blog Hop!

Hello everyone! Welcome to the Love is in the Air blog hop hosted by Paulette from Around the Block with Scrapalette! Paulette is such an awesome person, whom I've had the fortune to meet in person.  She's got a smile you can't resist! 

Hopefully you arrived here from Deb. If you didn't, or if you are just arriving here yourself, you can go to Around the Block with Scrapalette to start at the beginning of the hop. 

All of our projects are all about love and Valentine's Day. My project is a coloring book to give to my daughter on Valentine's Day.  It is tailor made just for her!  

Warning: lots of pictures below!  I'm going to share with you how I made this.  


First I decided on using the Paisley cart.  A lot of the cuts on this cart already have hearts worked into them.  For other cuts, I replaced a flower or something similar with a heart.  I used my Gypsy for this.  I placed all of the layers together on my mats and used my Cricut Markers to "cut" them.  This is how the blackline of the image is created.  

Here is my Cricut Expression "cutting" the images.

And what it looks like after one set is finished being drawn:

All of the pages I cut:

All of the pictures are from Paisley, somewhere between 3 and 4 inches, whatever I could get to fit in a 4x6 space.  The four phrases are from the Sugar and Spice Lite cart. 

The next step was to score all of the pages at 1/4 inch on both sides of the page.  This is so that the pages can turn freely after they are bound into the book. 

Next up, get my YourStory Photo out of the box for the first time!  :)  And yes, I bought it on launch day hmm... I think 2 Novembers ago???  LOL!  This thing is so simple to use!  And it's fast!  Here is my album being bound: 

Here are some pictures of the pages inside the album.  Scoring the pages really did help the book to stay open, a huge plus since this is a three year old that is going to be coloring in it!  


The first page with her name drawn from Birthday Bash at 1".  She is loving spelling her name right now so I thought this would be a great first page!

 And the last page with a message from Mom... 

For the cover, I cut out the elephant at 3.75" with all of his layers.  My daughter's favorite color is green so I worked that in there with the envelope!  Lastly, I put it all together.  The ribbon was in my stash from the Target Dollar Spot once upon a time. 

I really hope you enjoyed my project.  It's made for a three year old to handle and color in and toss around!  :)  As a thank you for stopping by, I'm giving away this blog candy: 

For a chance to win, please leave a comment below.  Be sure to leave a way for me to get in touch with you if you are the winner!  You do not have to be a follower to win but I would sure love it if you were! 

Thanks for hopping by and now hop on over to Carolyn!  Bye!

Here's the Blog List for your reference:

Paulette from http://scrapalette.blogspot.com/

Dana from http://danascraftycorner.blogspot.com/

Beth from http://thunderbirdlindybydesign.blogspot.com/

Sis from http://papercraftscissors.wordpress.com/

Doreen from http://polkadotpaperprincess.blogspot.com/

Cindy from http://www.inlovewithpaper.blogspot.com/

Deb from http://www.queenmommy.com/

Michele from http://www.michelegreen.com/

Carolyn from http://cccscraproom.blogspot.com/

Colleen from http://scrappycol.blogspot.com/

Elizabeth from http://www.217creations.com/

Sukie from http://www.scrappindhilly.blogspot.com/

Sharon from http://designsbysharon.blogspot.com/

Renee from http://icameisawicreated.blogspot.com/

Tammy from http://www.scrapcavecreations.com/

Brenda from http://happyscrapper64.blogspot.com/

Amy from http://scrap-pix.blogspot.com/

Jami from http://thepaperfarm.blogspot.com/

Terri from http://scrappinwiththebug.blogspot.com/

Meg from http://peacockpaperie.blogspot.com/

Nail Gun Birthday

I recently created this card for someone in my life who is an awesome handyman.  It also gave me a good reason to use the Handyman Lite cart! 

The blue background paper is printed from the Imagine Heirloom cart.  I thought it looked like a nice blueprint to put in the background.  The nail gun was cut at 3", using the flip button so it would face the right way on my card.

The confetti stamp is Imaginisce and "celebrate" is from Pink by Design.  To emboss it, I used Martha Stewart embossing powder and heat gun.

Be sure to stop by this weekend for a valentine blog hop!

Cricut Cartridge Storage

Hello!  I'm back as promised to share how I store my Cricut cartridges.  It's nothing too fancy or special and it works for now although I am already running out of room!

I use shelves from Menards.  My husband hung them on the wall in an L-shape which follows the flow of my space.  I like to keep my carts in the boxes.  I don't know why, I just like them in their original shape.  Although I know it works for so many people, I just can't imagine taking them out of their boxes.  All of the regular carts are alphabetical on the top shelf.  (As you can see, I'm starting to overflow so I will have to come up with more storage sometime soon!) The Lite carts are on the second shelf, also in alphabetical order.  I don't have that many Imagine carts so those are just lined up along the front right now.

This works for me because I can see all of them and they are within arms reach.

Tomorrow is the last day to enter the Sweet Stamp Shop's design team call if you are interested!!

Scrap storage

The next area of organization is scrap paper storage. This is an easy one for me. I don't keep that many scraps.  I keep all of my scraps in the bottom drawer of this rolling cart that fits right under my desk.  (It came with the desk.)  The bottom drawer holds file folders that are legal size, 8.5 x 11.

When you pull out the drawer, it looks like this.  The front half is scraps, the back half is misc.  :)

The scraps go in rainbow color order.  Not every color has it's own folder, some share like green and blue (although this is my fattest folder so maybe they need to split up!) and orange and yellow.   When I am looking for a scrap, I just pull that folder out and find what I need.

Next up will be Cricut cartridge storage!

Valentine Mini Cards

Over the weekend I attended the Itty Bitty Valentine class at Archiver's.  It was a lot of fun and I picked up some little tips along the way.  I feel like I really got the bang for my buck with this class.  We did so many different things!

Here are the projects we made (again, this was from Archiver's - not my ideas):

We made six 3x3 valentines and one mini bag.

I used Liquid Applique for the cupcake top.  I never knew you used a heat gun for this and it was so simple!  Inside the bottle cap is a quilled heart.  I've never done that before either and it also was easy!  I'd like to give this a closer look sometime.

Then we embellished the envelopes as well.  A fun tip I picked up here was to use a border punch on the envelope flap!  Makes it so cute!

If you live near an Archiver's and have a chance to take this class, it's definitely worth it! I can also say I've never had Valentines ready in January before!! :)

It's a Green present!

My niece is having a birthday.  She is a tween and is definitely into teenage things.  I'm really happy with the way this card came out.  Also, I'm going to use it as part of my application to the Pink By Design design team too!  Eek!

Ok, ok, here it is:

Isn't that just so cute?!  I used the Slumber Party Cricut cart to cut the black circle and present at 3.5".  I cut off it's original bow and tied my own on with white ribbon.

I created the tag by first stamping the PBD sentiment from Scripted Year and just rounding the corners of a small piece of pink paper. I added an eyelet and used pop dots to keep it up off of the present a little bit.

I hope you enjoy this card as much as I do!  I am also entering this into the Ribbon Carousel Challenge Blog!  The challenge was to use ribbon, twine, lace, anything that comes on a spool.  Check out the challenge HERE.

Paper Storage

Hello all!  I hope your new year is going well so far.  It seems like this is the time of year when everyone is organizing.  There is a thread going on the Cricut message board about organizing paper.  I'd like to share what I do.  Everyone is different in what papers you like, what size you use most, how you use it and how you want it organized.  Here is what I do:

For my 8.5 x 11 paper, it simply sits on the shelf right above me.  As I am working with my Cricut, this tends to be the paper I use most for cutting so for me it makes sense to have it within arms reach.  Some of you may be thinking that's not organized but it's what makes sense for me and the way I use 8.5 x 11.  :)

My table is L-shaped and at the end of it, I have four JetMax cubes stacked together.  This is where I keep the majority of my 12 x 12 paper. 

Here's a closer look.   I label the spines of my paper stacks so I can tell what they are easily.

Lastly, I was lucky enough to purchase a paper rack from a scrap store that was going out of business.  My sister-in-law gave me a ton of Creative Memories 10 x 12 (I think) paper and that is what I have in the top of this rack.  The bottom is other 12 x 12 paper that I don't keep in my JetMax cubes (mostly solid colors).  At the time that I bought this, I really debated buying two but after I got it home, I realized I love my JetMax cubes more and fitting right at the end of my table works so much better for me.

I hope that you enjoyed my paper storage system and we will be organizing more areas of our scrap rooms soon so I'm sure I will be posting more ways of storage soon! 

Santa Boxes

Earlier in December, my mom was inspired by this idea on OhMyCrafts.com.  They turned gift boxes into Santa Claus!  My mom has been involved in different sorts of crafting over the years but I would say she is new to paper crafting.  She prepared as many of the materials she could, then brought everything over to my house and we finished the boxes together.

This project started with a simple white gift box. We used sweater size for most of the presents.  The box was wrapped in solid red wrapping paper from Party City.  Then is was time to decorate!

The shirt flaps and seam are simply white cardstock, trimmed to the correct size.  Most use 2" x 7" for the middle seam.  The belt was black vinyl and cut to be 2"x16".  The belt buckle is from a layer of the Santa on Winter Frolic, cut at 24".  (I used my Gypsy to make it larger, hide the other cuts and get 12 to a 12x12 piece of vinyl.)  The silver sparkly vinyl is this from OhMyCrafts.com.  The last step was to add embellishments.  The holly stickers are Jolee and the black buttons just came from my supply stash.

Here is my mom working diligently on the assembly.  See that pink ATG in her hand???  I taught her how to use it because she was going to open one for her Christmas present the next day!! :) :)

Here is the pile of completed presents!

I hope you all had a very wonderful holiday!