Moving Forward

Hi you all and yay to the weekend. Since I have blogger I get this wondeful morning informational email of what all my favorite blogger sites are doing and sketchabilities had this super cute sketch that I knew I had to try. So this is my take on the sketch:

and this is the sketch:

Isn't this a fun sketch :) So I had this up for a couple of days on my computer, so I could see what I wanted to do with it and Wednesday night I started digging through my top drawer for some pictures and came across these 2 thought yep they are the ones. I used my current counterfeit kit for the layout other than the holly & berries paper that was from another layout I did this past week.

I painted the right side with Making Memories paint effect kit: Springtime, I liked the effect so much that I painted a border all around the page.

 The pictures are of me and Buddy Christmas Eve 2005, I used the frames in the kit to frame the pictures, the chevrons were punch out with a SU punch and CTMH: Charming Chevrons Flair stamp set was used with perfect pearls to create the metallic look. Added a sticker from the colorbok Antique Paperie collection. The doily was a cut out ad I finished up those negative cut dots on the doily with some glossy accents. The words moving forward thought was fitting cause we moved on from one shot to the next trying to get the perfect picture which didn't happen but got these 2 supper cute pics instead. The heart came from CTMH Florentine sticker pack

 I finished up that scallop tape for one of strips, and included the gold cutout I did one night doing a variety of cuts on my cameo, and the top strip was just punched with EKsuccess  punch scallop scallop. The hearts are the negative cuts from something I cut, to cute to throw out so I finally got a layout it would work on. The variety of sprinkled dots is from stickles: waterfall

 The bow was cut that night too, did a few of these bows in a variety of papers and weights of papers too. The first ones didn't come out so well but after chatting with an online friend found out you have to curve it with a boner first like you would for ribbon to give it the spiral look after that it didn't look to bad, I added stickles to the center piece of the bow. The journaling card was cut in half and came from Simple Stories documented line.
I haven't gotten the jist of the splattered look yet, but I'm enjoying working on it.

1st Christmas Layout

Good Morning to you :) We took over Zachary's 1st year album last night to our son and daughter-in-law's place and the album was well received, just the look on their faces while looking through the album sure does make it all worthwhile :) Well a 1st year album needs a 1st Christmas Layout:

This is probably the 1st layout I did in quite awhile that wasn't made up entirely of my counterfeit kit, but I did get a bit of it in  and on the layout with that journaling tag and the puffy ribbon attached to the tag :) I pulled out my Christmas box full of Christmas related paper and found this fun kraft style snowman paper for the double page layout. The first Christmas title was a laser cut I had gotten from our local store a few years ago just for this project.

 The left side of the layout is to mat the main Christmas picture and journaling of the day by his mom.

The right side includes the mats for other pictures of the other grandparents, we are the 3rd set of grandparents and usually are the last to see the kids over the holidays, but made sure to include the 2 Christmas pictures that I had from that visit in the center of the layout.

The journaling tag did come from the tag cutout sheet that was in my April Counterfeit kit  (totally forgot that I did cut that out and added it to the layout I just covered up the image that was on there with a Christmas sticker from the dollar store Christmas Laser Saying stickers pack.

 Here I fussy cut a strip of cardstock to have that word border a cross both pages of the layout and another sticker

 The plaid and the holly paper both came out of that Christmas box full of paper too.

Lots of stickers used throughout the layouts.

I feel pretty good that I was able to get this book accomplished (a goal for this year), I spent my free time on Easter finishing up the album with this 2-pg layout and 7 other pages that were mainly just done up as pre-made pages and all Katherine needs to do is add the pictures and the journaling.
Thanks for stopping by today and stop back tomorrow for the Counterfeit Kit challenge-April blog hop.

Watch Me Grow

Hi you all and I hope your having a fantastic weekend :) I was able to get in the craft room a little bit today and put together this 2-page layout:

As I'm finishing up this album I've come to have a few extra pictures left over so I thought this would be a good set of pages for the Album and it used up some of the pictures too. I'm missing one picture when Zach was 7 months we didn't get a chance to visit that month, that is the month I broke my wrist, but I expect that Katherine will have a picture of him for that month and I let her include it :)

The left page:

Zachary's birth picture with pictures of him from Month 1-Month 6. Also a little note from us that we were blessed to see him grow (a bit more than that :) and a sticker that I had saved back for this page.
The right page:

Includes Month 7-Month 12 and a picture from his birthday party. I also included many stickers that were in a K&Company embossed sticker pack, the birthday picture was layered with 3 layers of paper from My Mind's Eye Lime Twist 6 X 6 paper pack and worked well with the colors of the stickers.
Some close up shots:

The layout was done with last month's counterfeit kit and some alphas from the current kit.

I will be including this into this challenge for the 3 layers of paper under the First Birthday picture.

Stash A Thon Birthday Challenge #1 ~ Cake/Layering

1st Tractor Ride

Good Morning and I hope you are all having a fine day today, I wanted to get this post done before I really dive into the paper work for my tax appointment later today.

The layout is about Zachys first tractor ride on the big gold tractors :) Our Minneapolis-Moline tractors is always a favorite with the grand kids and the kids in general big or small, but this was Zachy's 1st time for a ride and smiles galore from all the adults but shoot I don't think we got any from Zach other than a half smile.
The layout came from my Counterfeit kit from Jan or maybe it was Nov, but either way it's a done deal.

The left side of the layout was all about Dad and Son on the Tractor. The tractor is Gold and Red so I kept my color scheme the same. I used stickers from the Simple Stories Harvest Lane sticker sheet at various spots on the layout.

The right side holds pictures of Zachy with Pappy and Grammy :) Pappy was well pleased to take the grandson for a ride and I was having fun holding him up on my tractor for a photo op, he was enjoying the steering wheel and playing with it saying brrmm brrmmm. More of the stickers scattered around

the die cuts on both of these pictures were from the Country Life cricut cartridge with shadow. I fussy cut the girl off the tractor. I'm seeing I did forget to add the red stickles for the center of the wheel rims yet.






the photo mat for the photo of me with Zach was from a sheet of a variety of different images to cut out and this was a post card style cut thought it was a cute vintage style mat

The title was created with the letters from the sticker sheet that I added to a piece of Creative Memories cardstock I had in my stash and I cut it to give it a pennant look.

this will be for the journaling I have to do yet, need to look it up in my journal to get the right feeling into it and the date.

the photo mat for the top photo was a sheet of a variety of different images to cut out and this was a Polaroid style cut.
So I have one more layout to do for this album WOW I can't believe I'm nearly done with this project working on it now 2 years and I think. With all the Big Picture Classes (Starting a new one today Before You Story more to come on that) and The Counterfeit Kit Challenge Blog that I have to thank them for helping me through this project. Plus I want to do the 10 min card challenge yet and then I can say I killed the kit :)
Thanks a bunch for stopping by my little corner of the world today and I hope you have a fantastic day :)

I have included this in the following Challenges:
Fantabulous Cricut Challenge: All About You-Use your favorite colors-one of mine is Gold

The Gifts-Layout

Hi and glad that your here with me today, were getting a bit warmer here the January thaw we call it here in PA, coming a bit late now that we are in February, just glad to get away from those negative temps for a while. The finale of the birthday party is when Dad and Son opened son's birthday gifts.

Pieces for this layout came from the November Counterfeit Challenge Kit besides some cardstock from my stash.

On the left page I used 2-black and white die cut labels from the Life's Little Occasions pack and the together came from K&Company EcoModern Die-cut cardstock pack

Added a little velum quote to the top corner of the mat. the mat was Accent Essentials at fit to page

 

the presents came from a cutout sheet: Oscrap Sampler. I also used glossy accents to embelish the presents a bit

The 2nd page of the layout holds most of the pics of the toys :) I definitely like to include as many pictures in a layout that I can. I have some saved back for a personal layout for us to hold on to, cause we found out through the pictures that we scored major grandparent points with the wooden train that we gave Zachary :)

 The die cuts: B is for Boy: Train @ 3" and the Dump truck @ 2.5" and from Boys will be Boys the phrase Toys @ 2"

The corner sticker came from Pebbles share & tell Party Time Boy 4 X 6 creative pad the 2 orange border pieces came fromdoodlebug Paper Frills-tangerine pack

This bottom section shows the frame and birthday gift cut out from Oscrap Sampler with glossy accents added to the gift and the scattered star stickers are from the 4 X 6 pad mentioned above

2 more close up shots of the layout

This was a fun lay out to put together and I loved the additional die cuts representing the toys but out all the photos of this day even the one here with Zach playing with the train we got him. Is the photo on the 1st page where Son and Father are looking directly at each other, Yep I think Brad will be Zach's favorite toy.

  Thanks for stopping by today and don't forget to join in for the blog candy this week:
Oh yes their is some blog candy to talk about :)
 
My intentions are to blog each day this week so you'll have numerous chances to get in for the candy. You can comment each day this week which runs from today till Sunday Feb 2 (Superbowl weekend :) ) midnight eastern time. 2 conditions you have to leave a comment and you have to be a follower of my blog. The winner will be announced Thursday Feb 6th. That's it!
 Have a Fantabulous day!

Super Excited for FCCB-Spotlight Layout

Hi you all! I'm super excited because I'm the Guest Designer this week at Fantabulous Cricut Challenge Blog. Today begins their weekly challenge to use 3 pattern papers mix and match and my project is being featured along with the Design Team's isn't that cool! I was so excited when I was asked to join in, so I want to say thank you to them for including me this week! To enter the " " Challenge, click HERE.
I made a layout for my G-Son's one year book, His First Steps...

We've been waiting days for Zach to take his first steps and then we see the top picture on facebook, there he is taking his first steps to his Grandfather-Katherine's father. It was wonderful to see this :)
With a little help of the lawnmower he's just getting around so well that week all on his own, so proud :)
Okay so back to the making of the layout, the challenge was to use 3 pattern papers (mix and match) I'm lucky enough to already had my paper picked out from my  November Counterfeit Challenge kit (yep that one is still hanging around)  so I chose the red cardstock for the background and included

 the blue paper and yellow graph paper to make my die cuts for the layout. The Look Here came from Cricut Sampler cartridge cut at 2.5" and the negative of the cut was brought into the actual picture to point at the step he was making. I also used B is for Boy for the Footprints they were done with the layer option in real dial size of 1.75 for the foot and 2" for the shadow.

 Now the 3rd pattern piece comes from the diagonal vellum piece of blue footprints and thought is was fitting for this layout.

 The journaling block came for a cut out sheet in the Jan kit and that could also be considered a pattern piece too. This was a fun layout to do and I just love seeing the big milestones in Zach's life. Just a few more layouts and the album will be complete.
Used various stickers in this layout also and the vellum Moment in Time for a cut out sheet.
Thanks for stopping by the blog today and thank you to Fantastic Cricut Challenge Blog for choosing me to be their spotlight designer this week it is a special honor for me.
Tomorrow I'll have a Thank You card for Card A Day Blog see you then....

I'll be entering this into the Exploring Cricut challenge this week: Cricut Choice with using the color blue-2 cricut cuts-pattern paper

Oh yes their is some blog candy to talk about :)
 
My intentions are to blog each day this week so you'll have numerous chances to get in for the candy. You can comment each day this week which runs from today till Sunday Feb 2 (Superbowl weekend :) ) midnight eastern time. 2 conditions you have to leave a comment and you have to be a follower of my blog. The winner will be announced Thursday Feb 6th. That's it!
 Have a Fantabulous day!

 

Happy New Year-2014

Happy 2014 to you! I wish you all a fantastic year!

I have to say that 2013 wasn't so bad I became a GrandMa once again by welcoming little Tristan into the world just in time for Thanksgiving. I had a good scrappy year-didn't finish alot of my goals, but I was actually scrapping this year, so that is a good thing. Found Counterfeit Kit Challenge blog and glad to say I enjoy what they are doing for challenges and looking forward to 2014 with them making my kits and playing along with the challenges.

I don't know how many of you follow the one little word but I have chosen mine to be 2 little words: On Time

I need to get into some better habits of being On Time by actually working on things early instead of waiting to the last minute.
I have decided on my yearly crafting goals and I like to put that written down the 1st of the year so I have it for a reference also. It may seem like a large list, but most won't take long to complete and some are just an ongoing thing that either will take the year to complete or doesn't get completed at all. This is the year of scrapping and I want to get lots of pictures I have printed scrapped and make a dent out of my stash of paper and kits. I'm also planning to organize a bit better and situate the machines so I have access to all of them (mainly in reference to the Cricut Imagine). My list:

2014 Crafty Goals

• Finish Zachary's 1st year album
• 2013 Dec. Daily Book
• Cruise Album
• Start Tristan's 1st Year Album
• 2012 Vacation Album: Steamtown/Canadiagua trips
• 2013 Vacation Album: Alum Bank show and surrounding area spots
• 2012 Dec. Daily-Learning the cameo in the process of making this album
• My 50th Year-Smashbook-Finish it
• Get caught up with Smashbook Challenges & Smash Your Stash 2013 challenges
• Project Life 2014-Stay up to date with it by working on it weekly
• Project Life 2013-Finish it
• Project Life 2012: Start & Finish it
• Pictures that are scattered: Get together and Organized
• MGCA album-work on when I can
• Finish up the Big Picture classes that I took in 2013
• Chronilogical-work on it in-between other projects
• Heritage Album
• To learn more new techniques and folds in my cardmaking
• Work on Cards throughout the Year
• Christmas in July: Cards and Tags done then for Christmas

2013 Personal Goals

• Closer walk with God and Jesus. To get to know him better-to be in the word each day
• Will be starting a fitness/weight loss smashbook (ongoing) and working on my fitness for the year
• Try to blog each day by setting up the posts on Sunday/Monday
• to spend less time on Facebook

Have you made your goal list for the year? Have you made any changes from crafting this year from last year? I wish you all a productive year ahead.....