Banner made for a princess

With the butterflies out of the way and the problem solved on how to make paper dolls stand up, it was now time to focus on one of my favorite projects:  the banner.   I spent weeks looking at banners and making note of what I liked about certain ones.  I discovered I loved many textures, many layers and bling. But who doesn't love bling?  I wanted something that just made you go oooooh!  ahhhhh! and want to just touch it.  MISSION ACCOMPLISHED!

I had a sneak peak of Sadie's room and knew it was painted a beautiful bright green and would have hints of pink in it.  I wanted to make something that her mommy could take home and use in her room, if she so chose to do so.  I asked our friend Dianne to help us.  While I am pretty compfortable with paper, I am clueless about beading.  However, Dianne is an old pro at beading.  I follow her on pinterest and she does amazing work.  So she set out to make the beads and I made the banner.

The first thing I did was cut the banner from the Yummy Imagine Cartridge. This cartridge has quite a few banners and with Cricut Craft Room and the ability to change the patterns on the banners, the options are endless.  Just pick any of the patterns from any of the Imagine cartridges and you change the whole feel of your banner.  I happened to like one of the premade banners on the cartridge.   It has subtle pinks,greens and blues in it and the trim is in pink.  It was perfect for this project.  Because this is an Imagine cartridge, all I needed was white cardstock and my  Imagine would print and cut each banner.  I reinforced each banner with chipboard because I didn't want the hanging gems to tear a whole througth the banner due to weight.  I used my crop a dile to make the wholes, once I glued my paper to my chipboard.  Once the holes were made, I reinforced them with eyelets.wanted to make sure the bling didn't just split the whole at the bottom so I reinforced each banner piece with a piece of chipboard that was a bit smaller than the banner.

I then set out to make the rosettes.  This time I used my Cricut Expression and the Ribbons and Rosette's cartridge. I had so much pink and green Co'ordination cardstock on hand that I knew I had enough on hand to make the roseettes.  I love this cardstock because it cuts like butter in my Cricut machines and if you are patient, Joanne's will have it on sale 5  or 6 pieces per dollar.  That is a great deal!  

After making the base of the rosettes, I had to put the letters on top.  I used my Expression again to cut the circles that made base of the letters. They just seemed too simple so I embossed them with my Cuttlebug.  First I embossed it then I gave it a light sanding.  That is the beauty of Co'ordination paper.  The core of the paper is a different color. I used white core paper for this project.

I then got out....you guessed it...my Cricut Expression and Cindy Loo cartridge to cut the letters and placed them on top of the circles.  because my Gypsy is broken and away at the repair shop, I used the Cricut Craft Room to resize my letters so that they fit perfect within the circles.

I also added some bling to each and alittle texture with a white Signo pen. 

 Next were the rosette ribbons.  I wanted to add another layer of texture so I decided to add pearls to the centers.  I didn't know if I had enough pearls to do the banner so I chose to make faux pearls with my Viva Decor pens.  If you haven't tried them, you don't know what you are missing.  They come in 24 yummy flavors and are so easy to use.  As you can see, the pearls are not pointy on top but round, just like pearls.  I seem to use alot of Cream, Ice White, Lilac, light Green and Light Blue.  I don't have any black on hand but I have some projects I want to do that will have alot of black accents so I may need to look for a sale and get some. 

I let the pearls dry overnight, just to be on the safe side.  The ribbon was from  Hobby Lobby.  This is one of those times that being a scrapbook hoarder, uh I mean, collector, pays off.  I like to buy things on sale. So I bought this ribbon at 1/2 off.  I didn't know what I was going to use it for but I knew that it would come in handy with all the babies being born this year.  However, I will let you in on a little secret.  Later on I am going to share another project that required me to go to Joanne's.  At Joanne's, I found a material sold by the yard on a bolt that looked very similiar and was cheaper. So next time, I will buy it.

Here is a picture of the first two pieces.  If you have never seen a crop a dile, it it the pink think in the top right hand corner.  It comes in handy for so many projects.  Next to it is my Xyron sticker maker that also gets used alot.  And next to that is a coupon because this girl is trying to learn the art of couponing.  As you can see I don't have the skill of organizing your coupons down yet because I have a coupon in the middle of my craft table.  Oh well, that is a work in progress.  I'll tell you about it later.

Here is the recipe I used to make them:

-white cardstock

-Co'ordination cardstock Green and pink

-eyelets

-red tacky tape (to adhere ribbon)

-rosette ribbon

-hot fix gems

-Signo pen

-Viva Decor pens

-tulle pink

-Birds and Swirls embossing folder

-Yummy Imagine Cartridge

-Ribbons and Rosettes Cricut Cartridge

-Cindy Loo Cricut Cartridge

Thanks for stopping by!

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Stand up Paper Doll

In our quest to have a princess theme baby shower, we wanted to have little princesses through out the room.  I knew I had the perfect Imagine cartidge, BestFriends.

But I had a problem.  How do I make the princesses stand up?  I did waht I do best.  I pinterested, I googled and YouTubed.  I did find a nice tutorial on About.com.  I thought  I would make my own to show you how I made mine.

I hope you enjoy it!

 

 

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Very Pinteresting

I am addicted to Pinterest. I love pinning things. I can pin for hours. As a matter of fact, when I discovered Pinterest, I couldn't wait for Saturday morning. On Saturday mornings, my internal clock would wake up at 6 am however, my body didn't want to get out of bed before 10am. (All of you with small children that wake up at 6 am for cartoons and breakfast...be patient. You're day will come when you can sleep in.) So I would lie in bed with my Ipad and I would pin for hours....literally hours.

So when my bestfriend's mother asked for help in planning a baby shower for said friend, I said "heck yeah!" And when she sent me a picture that I recognized from Pinterest....well I became more than happy. I was friggin ecstatic. Over the next few days I will reveal different portions of the baby shower and the origination of the idea. I don't believe I have an original creative idea but I think I can copy alot of paper crafts.

So today we will start with the butterfly drink toppers. I am not sure what they are really called but I had not seen them until I ventured to a website to look at another item and I came across a picture of one.

Now, unfortunately, Tip Junkie, did not tell you how to make these. So I searched high and low for directions. I checked youtube. I googled and checked etsy. To no avail, I could not find a how to. Come to think of it, I have not prepared a how-to either but I will do so this weekend.

Any who, after many failed attempts, I was finally able to make my own version.

I used:

Cricut Expression

Cartridge: Gypsy Wandering

Software: Cricut Craft Room

Paper: Co'ordinations

Pen: Signo pen in white

Let me start by saying I love my Expression and I have grown fond of Cricut Craft Room. My Gypsy died a few weeks ago, so I had to use Cricut Craft Room. I was pleasantly surprised. The concept behind CCR is that you can design with any cartridge (yeah) but you can only cut with carts that you own (boo). And you have to load each cart individually when you use multiple carts for one cut (double boo). If you own a Gypsy, you know that the fact that you didn't have to load your carts was a huge benefit to owning a Gypsy. Thankfully, I only used one cart for these butterflies. They aren't the butterflies I wanted to use but I don't own the Hannah Montana cartridge and it has be prettiest butterflies and I didn't want to buy a whole cartridge for one image. (Ok ok...I know all you Cameo owners are snickering at me...and I don't blame you.)

So the first thing I did was cut the butterflies. However they looked plain to me so I decided to dress them up with dots. I would have preferred real stones but these were going on glasses so I didn't want to risk one dropping into a drink and someone swallowing it.

I think the dots just add alittle of interest. I must admit, I saw Monique Griffith first do this to her die cuts. She usually adds three dots on things.

Once I figured out how to bend them to to add just a small slit on the underside, putting them on the glasses became a piece of cake.

What do you think?

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You Should be Dancing Yeah!

You should be dancing yeah!

I don't know if it was the Glee week of Saturday Night Fever ( I love me some John Travolta in a white suit).

Or if it was just me doing what I love to do.  But this week I started Zumba classes. And I LOVE IT!!  I love dancing.  When the music starts the first 8 count, my toes start tapping and my hips start shaking.  Which could explain why I don't like slow songs.  I can't shake my bootie to slow songs.  

So last night I walked into the Tiger's Den and shook my bootie for an hour.  I had no idea it would be such a work out.  I just envisioned getting out there and shaking my boo thang and having a good time.  But I found myself out of breath and wondering if I was going to last....and we had only done the warm up song.  Hello!  It was during these songs that I regretted not wearing my Polar watch. This data junkie wants to know how many calories I burned.

But the great thing is when I knew the song or I was familiar with the steps (meringue, salsa, cumbias)  I forgot I was working out and just got into the moves...shake shake shake senora...whooooo don't get me started.

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One Year Baby Album V2

My journey into the year of the babies began with a one year baby album.  Now, I have made them before but they were mini albums that were based on a template I received in a class years ago.  It was a class I took at Scrap-a-faire many moons ago.  You can see my post here . I love making that book.  Did it take time? Sure.  Did  like it? Yup.  So why mess with changing it?  Because I love a challenge.  Well to be honest, I love a challenge when it is over.  During the challenge, I whine, complain and think it is a mistake.  

So for this album I decided to make a full size 12X12 album, two page spread per month and title page.  Now this was for a math teacher so let's do the math, shall we?  Rozette wants to make an album for her daughter's geometry teacher.  She decides to make two pages per month and also a title page. How many layouts will Rozette make?

                                 12 months X 2 layouts = 24 layouts  24 layouts +1 title page = 25 layouts in total

Really Rozette?  You are going to do 25 layouts in one month. Are you crazy?  Are you insane?  Yes, yes I am.  I didn't think of it in those terms.  I think if I had, I would have never started and just bought a pack of cute boy themed onesies and called it a day.

So I decided to do 25 boy theme pages and use no bling or pink or ribbons (okay maybe just a little ribbon). Now this is hard for me.  As you will discover, I love bling.  I love sparkly things and all things pink.  So I pretty much took on mission impossible with this album.  

There were a few things I wanted to stay the same with this book that I used in the mini albums.  

1) Make most of the picture spots 4X6 or 5X7.  Non-scrappers can easily print pictures those two sizes at any drugstore.

2) Use three or four templates for the whole album

3) Leave journaling spots to mark down  milestones

I am not a hoarder but I must admit, I rarely throw anything away from my scrapbook stash and I don't care if I haven't used if for years...it stays.  So I had these template creators that I bought from Walmart back in 2007.  I was a new scrapbooker and needed guidance.  I never used them but I kept them.  

Thank goodness I kept them because they came in handy.

Once I had a few basic templates, I was able to repeat them three or four times. They were not all exactly alike but the templates served as a jumping off point for each page.

I used my Cricut for all the titles. I used Cricut Craft Room for the first time and I must say I was quite impressed.  My only gripe is that I had to insert each cartridge into my Expression in order to cut.  Years ago I bought a Gypsy because I didn't want to switch out cartridges and I didn't like want to be changed to a computer when I craft. I am on a computer all day and I just don't want to spend more time on it than I need to spend.  But I must admit, for a computer based program, I was pretty happy.

Yes I will admit I have caved and I am just as crazy about banners as other scrappers.  So I put a few in this one.  The one over the picture placement is not glued down so that mommy can slip her picture on there.  And remember I said I only put a little ribbon in the album?  I just could not resist.

You see what I mean?  It is too cute!  So cute that I went back to Hobby Lobby and bought it in blue, pink and yellow.  They also have little teddy bears that I used on the album.  I adhered them with my Xyron small sticker maker.  If you don't own one, I highly remcommend buying one with a 1/2 coupon from Michaels or Hobby Lobby.  (FYI  never pay more than 60% for anything at Hobby Lobby or Michaels.)  Be patient, what you want will eventually come on sale 40% off or it won't be on sale and you can use your 40% coupon.  

The last page I made was the first page, the title page.  It was my first attempt at a banner title page.  I got the idea from Kathryn from   Life on the {Scrap}Beach.  She made a baby mini album and she used banners for either the title page or for the card. I can't remember.  I saw it on her Ustream channel. If you go to her blog you will see a link to her Ustream. And then you can spend a few days there because she does AMAZING work.  

I used my cricut to cut the ltter, the scallops and the baby onesies..  Thanks for stopping by.

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Baby Album V2 Video

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The Year of the Babies

The past few weeks have been a blur.  As I wrap up my Project Life, for 2011, I realized that last year was the year of family.  I spent more time with my sisters, cousins and father in one year than I had in the whole decade before. My father took us on a tour of York Town, Texas, where he and my aunts and uncles were born.  But this year, this year is the year of the baby.  

I became a grandmother this year.

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My bestfriend is having her first child this year and my daughter's geometry teacher is having her first baby and my aunt had her fourth.  Within the first four months of this year I will meet four new babies, two boys and two girls.  So I have gone crazy making baby things and I am loving every bit of it.

So over the next few weeks I will share some of the projects I did for these precious little ones.

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