Ms. March Guest Designer at the Cricutolics Forum

 Top of the mornin' to you!

I am this month's guest designer at the Cricutolics Forum over in the UK. If you have not previously visited the Cricutolics Forum please do follow the link and pop on over.  It is a fun site.

Given that I am guest designing on an International forum, I decided to skip right past Presidents' Day (because really, the UK doesn't care about our silly colonial celebration!) and jump ahead to a fun holiday we can all sink out teeth into.... St. Patrick's Day!!!  I feel certain that my Irish ancestors are all cheering this choice, just as surely as I know the Scottish and English ancestors are rolling their eyes in my direction!

I used three cartridges to create this card, George and Basic Shapes for the base card and the printed sections, Designer's Calendar for the large and the single shamrocks as well as the hat, and A Child's Year for the shamrock border.   My design calls for a white base card, green and white solid cardstock, and three to four Celtic or green print papers.

 The cut file for this card is available for free download in the left column of the blog, under the title Shuttered Tri-Fold St. Patrick's Day Card.     Even if you do not want to create a St. Patty's card, the cut file does contain the base card pattern.

I am so happy to be home again!!

Traveling is always fun and seeing family is especially wonderful during the holiday season, but I must admit that I am sooo happy to be home again.  I truly can't decide who was happier to be back in our bed, Doug, me or Duncan the pomeranian!  Duncan went to bed when we arrived home and did not move for fourteen hours.  And then he just moved to his bed after a brief stop outside!!

The laundry has been caught up, the gifts are put away, and I have actually spent a few hours in my scraproom.  But, I cannot share THAT project yet.   So, I am sharing last of my 2010 family calendar, created with Cricut's Hello Kitty and Designer's Calendar cartridges.  The photos above and below are, of course, November.  Special dates in November include Nov. 6, Aaron's birthday, Nov. 23 and my 29ty anniversary.  And like the other eleven months, I used extra family photos to fill in the blank spaces at the beginning and end of the calendar.

And finally the month of December.  December had two special dates:  Dec. 6th, Ian's birthday and Dec. 25th.  I used a small Christmas tree cut out between December 24th and 25th to accent Christmas.

The full page view includes photos of my children on Christmas morning 2009. 

This calendar used up so many leftover photos from throughout the years - I had such fun making it.  I think if I do another I will probably use the circle grid only.  I alternated circles and squares on this calendar, but over all I liked the look of the circles better.

2010 Calendar - September and October

This is a quick post to bring you up to date on my 2010 12 x 24 inch calendar.  I was lax in the last month and forgot to share the September pages (gasp).  September featured Hello Kitty in her cheerleader uniform as she too must be a football fan.  Kitty was so happy to see college football again!  Though in deference to my husband I did not put her in Michigan State Green and White.  Though had I known back in January when I made this calendar that my MSU Spartans would currently be sitting a 6 - 0 I would have changed the color scheme and she would SO be wearing a MSU outfit!! So much for my psychic abilities.....

Oh in my school spirit excitement I forgot to mention the photos (oops!).  The photos were taken four years ago and are my daughter with my husband and I each separately.  Note the matching jackets.  Thank you Coldwater Creek for designing clothes that we will both wear.

I have to tell you that October turned out to be one of my favorite of the calendar months.  I love the papers and I LOVE Hello Kitty in her Halloween costume.  She is so darned cute as a ... Kitty!  Oh what a sense of humor she has.  Though you know, I am not sure that Kitty has noticed that spider sneaking down off of the 31 to frighten her!

The background paper on the upper page is from a Basic Grey Halloween line.  The photos are old leftover photos.  One of the best parts of this calendar is that I was able to use a plethora of photos that were in storage drawers.  I had scrapped the events depicted in these photos, but as with most scrapping projects, I had leftovers.  I place the leftover photos in storage drawers and this project helped me empty some space in the drawers.

Here are some re-cap photos for those who may have miss the calendar pages thus far this year:

 

I will be back tomorrow with a new project to share.  See you then.......

Sugar & Spice - Really?

This week's BBTB2 challenge cut is the Gecko/Lizard from the Life's A Beach cartridge.  The design team could use the cut in any way we wanted so I decided to make a layout.  I found these two fun photos of a a sweet little girl playing with the lizard she found at the beach.  I remembered that girls are made of sugar and spice and everything nice; boys are snakes and snails and puppy dog tails.  I had a difficult time visualizing sugar and spice for this little cutie with the lizard on her nose!

I used five cartridges to create this layout:  Designer Calendar for the grid (with some hide contour action), Life's A Beach, Plantin Schoolbook for the photo mats, Graphically Speaking for the second half of the phrase, and Once Upon a Princess for the Sugar & Spice title.

I used Amy Chomas' pen holder and mini pens to create the top half of the title.  I used a pink glitter pen in the holder and selected cut.  By replacing the blade housing on my cricut with the mini pen holder housing, the cricut wrote the words instead of cutting them.  I love Amy's products. You can purchase your own products by clicking here.  I will tell you that I also use Amy's embossing set on one of the DVD projects!

I used a large prima flower over the sun, which photographed dark.  It is not as "mustardy" as the photo implies.  I also used my trusty white pen to add dashes on the layout.

The lizards/geckos were cut in three different papers.  I placed them in four different positions inside the grids on the page.

What is the date?

I just realized that I have forgotten to share the last two months of my 12 x 24 wall calendar.  For those who may not know what I am referring to, I created a large Hello Kitty themed wall calendar for my kitchen using Hello Kitty Greetings and Create a Calendar cartridges.  I have enjoyed this calendar so much this year that I truly feel it was worth the 25 hours I have in creating it.

The top photo is, obviously, the month of July.  It features photo of my husband and his siblings at a family picnic last year.  Doug is the on the far left in the photos.

The page below is August.  It features our family at Disney World and has a water theme.  Note the Nemo photo in front.  I love the little floating Kitties at the bottom of the page.

So that is July and August.  But I would like for you to notice MFK's b-day is August 22!  My friend Peggy's bday is also in August, the 14th.  Lots of cake and ice cream opportunities for August!

As I get back into the swing of scrapping I will have to begin working on Christmas cards.  I know that sounds crazy in August, but last year I was on a schedule where I made six Christmas cards each month.  It was so nice to have all of my cards all made by December.  This year is going to be a bit more rushed, but perhaps if I begin soon I can manage to spread out the work.

My Hello Kitty 2010 Wall Calendar

I am embarrassed that it is Thursday and I have not posted a single thing all week!  For shame!  I did add a two part cake post to Busy with the Cricky Cake on Tuesday and Wednesday but I have neglected my paper crafting entirely.  That being said, I realized that I never shared my 2010 calendar that I made (in other words, I looked through the "not yet posted projects" and picked one)!!!

I made this 12 x 24 inch wall calendar back in January for a Cricut contest.  Need I add that I did not win?  Well, I did not win the contest prize; I did win by having a lovely, personalized calendar for my kitchen!  Nice, huh?  The calendar was designed in Design Studio using two cartridges, Designer's Calendar and Hello Kitty.  Each month features a cute Hello Kitty scene that for the most part coordinates with the month.  The May calendar (above) features Kitty with flowers, because of "May flowers".

Above you can see the January, February and March pages.  And the April page is below - April Showers.  I liked both the square and circle monthly templates on Designer Calendar, so instead of picking one, I alternated the design.  Also, I made the boxes/cirlces 1.5 inches each so that I could use paper punches to cut the photos I planned to insert into the calendar. 

One of the big advantages of the calendar, other than being stinkin' cute(!) is I was able to use about 80 of the photos I had leftover from scrapping projects (whether due to repeats, or lack of space, or whatever).  We all have a stash of unused photos (don't we?) and this allowed me to use a great many of those.  I placed photos into the empty spaces at the beginning and end of each month, and also used photos to designate birthdays, Mother's Day, Father's Day, anniversaries, etc.  I probably will do another calendar next year so that I can use more of the leftover photos!