A Wonderful Gift Card Holder

Good evening, friends! Anyone else ready for Christmas to be over with? {raises hand} It seems like the middle of December raced to get here and the days have been creeping by ever since. Maybe it's just me.

ANYway, I thought I'd make a card to put a gift card in. We all know how attractive the card holder that comes with the gift card usually are. I decided to put a different spin on them this year. And I'll tell you something...this is SUCH an easy and cute way to dress up a gift card!

I used a craft pocket as the card holder and then decorated around it a bit using twine, an edge punch and a little tag I made.

This card probably took me 20 minutes to make. That's quite an accomplishment in this crafty novice's book. :)

I hope I inspired you to put a new spin on an old (an unattractive) idea.

I hope you all have a Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!

Until next time...

The 80s are BACK!!

Hello all! Hope you are having fun hopping along on the Back to the 80s Birthday Blog Hop! If this is the first you've heard of it, go back to Emily (the birthday girl's) blog for all of the details!!

The 80s seem like such a long time ago, but also seem like just yesterday. My earliest memories are from the 80s...everything from the toys to the clothes stick out in my mind. The strange thing is, a lot of what I had, saw or experienced in the 80s are BACK! Guess I grew up in a pretty cool decade. :)

This is a picture of me from about 1985-ish.

Anyway, for my project I decided to scrap a picture that was taken of a friend and I back in 1985. I had just moved from Colorado to Arizona with my family and was going to be going to Disneyworld with my best friend from Colorado and her family. I flew - SOLO - from AZ to CO, then on to Florida with my friend and her family. The picture in my layout was taken at the airport in Denver before we left on our amazing adventure. The things that scream "HELLOOO 80s" in this picture are what my friend and I are holding: a Rainbow Brite doll complete with Sprite sidekick (me) and a Cabbage Patch Kid (my friend). Doesn't get more 80s than that, folks. :)


I used Echo Park's Little Girl line for this layout because the colors and patterns seemed very appropriate for a layout about the 80s. It was a very colorful decade, that's for sure.


I also decided to turn my picture into a polaroid-like picture as part of the throw-back theme.

I have to say, creating a layout to go with this picture was really fun. The memories of all of my 80s toys took me back to a happy place, which is something I needed after the last few days I've had.

Don't forget to post on all of the blogs along the hop because as Emily's post stated, there will be some FUN prizes given away! Have fun hopping!

The next stop on the hop is Heather!

Here's the blog line up in case you get lost along the way:

Emily
Lisa
Abby
Candace
Nicole
Julie Ranae
Stephanie
Tanya
Candace
Elizabeth
Angelica
Michelle
Erin
Sarah
Dawn
Kathy
Jeannie
Cristine <-- You are here!
Heather

Hopping along with Authentique and Scor-Pal!

Hello visitors and returning friends! I am excited to be taking part in the Authentique Paper and Scor-Pal Blog Hop today! If this is the first you've heard of the hop, make sure to go back to Authentique Paper's blog to take part in the whole thing!

Here is the blog order for our fun hop: {click on the name to take you to the specific blog}

Authentique Paper
Tifany DeGough
Steph Ackerman
Emily Lanham
Gini Cagle
Misty Buck
Lisa Andrews
Brenda Smith
Katie Tate
Cristine Redmond <-- You are here.
Kittie Franken
Scor-Pal

Be sure to comment on each blog as you hop because there are some great prizes up for grabs! Authentique Paper is offering TWO winners a fantastic paper prize pack {$20 retail value} and Scor-Pal is offering a Scor-Buddy {$20 retail value}! {Winner will be chosen randomly from all comments on the manufacturer blogs AND the DT blogs. Winner must have a US/Canada address.} Blog comments close Monday, December 19th at 11:50 pm {Pacific} and winners will be announced Wednesday, December 21st on the Authentique Paper and Scor-Pal blogs.

Now on to the fun stuff! For my project today, I decided to try something I've never done before...making an elaborate paper ornament. Here are the supplies I used:


I used my Silhouette to cut out 15 2-inch circles. I used some chalk ink to ink the edges of one side of the circle. Then I scored each circle so that a triangle was formed.


I used my Xyron Mega Runner to put adhesive on the backs of the flaps formed by creasing the circle, then I started sticking the edges together. Once I got the first five pieces together, I made the bottom cap of the ornament by stringing a button and some Jenni Bowlin pearl charms with twine.


The next row consists of 10 more circles, then finish it up by adding the final five. I added another button, then tied off the twine to make a loop for hanging the ornament on the tree.


I am so happy with the way this turned out! I've never attempted anything like this before and judging from how easy it was to put together, I don't think this will be my last!

Thank you for hopping by my blog today! I hope you'll become a follower to see what other fun things I have up my sleeves!

Next stop on the blog hop is Kittie Franken.

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas...

Hello all! I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving and are getting into the Christmas spirit! Today I am showing you a project that I made after being inspired from a post I saw on my scrappy friend Heather's blog. She made an adorable "Dear Santa" book for her daughter to write her Christmas list in every year. What an adorable idea!

We have a resident elf named Holly. She showed up this time last year and made sure the girls were being good throughout the season, then reported back to Santa each night. This year, Holly told me that she wants to deliver some journals like the ones Heather made. So today when Holly showed up, she had these journals with her. I'm excited for this new tradition in our family. :)

"Holly"

I started with a couple journals I got for $1 each at Michaels. (Sorry for the crummy picture.)


I covered each journal with kraft paper. (Again, blurry picture...sorry!!)


And then I decorated them with Authentique's Wonder collection and some Twinery twine. The "Dear Santa" alphas are from Scenic Route. I'm pretty sure my oldest is going to figure out I did these when she sees the twine as she knows I have some, but I'll just have to tell her Santa wanted me to make them. :)


As I mentioned before, I am so excited for this new Christmas tradition. Hopefully we'll be able to continue it for many years to come.

Until next time...

Gathering Thoughts

Hello again! Sorry for my lack of posts lately. Seems I've been doing more napping than crafting as of late. Must be entering my winter hibernation mode. :) I have been working on the following project for a few weeks now and finally finished it up this morning.



Before the school year started, I volunteered to be my daughter's teacher's Secret Pal. By signing up, I was agreeing to do something special each month for her teacher to let her know how much she's appreciated. I admit, I've slacked off a bit as I forgot to give her something last month, but this month I hope to make up for it. I made her this magnet board using Authentique's Gathering line, which seemed fitting for this occasion. I thought it would be a nice place for my daughter's teacher to put her thoughts, grocery list, etc.

If you saw my post for Authentique on October 24th, then you'll know that I have been making magnet boards and magnets for gifts recently. It's a fun and easy way to put together a cute gift for a friend, family member, neighbor, etc.

Here is a closer look at a couple cute flowers I made. I've never attempted these with paper before as I've only made them with felt, but I think I like the way they turn out with paper better! I just cut out five circles of the same size and one circle a bit smaller. I got the circles wet, then crumpled them up. I kind of shaped them the way I wanted them to dry, then let them dry over night. I used a hot glue gun to glue them to the smaller circle and voila! Cute flowers to add dimension to any project!

This is a close-up of the magnets I made. SUPER easy to do. I purchased a bottle cap kit, used some clear craft glue that I already had, then cut three one-inch circles. I did a tutorial for Authentique on December 4th, which explains the process with pictures.

I hope you enjoyed this little slice of Gathering heaven. :) If I am not back before then, I hope everyone has a wonderful Thanksgiving. This year I have much to be thankful for. I'm thankful to be on the Authentique Design Team. I'm thankful for the amazing scrappy ladies I've become friends with this year. I'm thankful for a husband who might not understand my scrap habits, but never complains when he sees new stuff come into the house. :) I'm thankful for my two beautiful red heads, who challenge me and make me laugh daily. And last but not least, I'm thankful to have picked up a craft hobby that calms and centers me. If I didn't have my scrappy time, I'd be a much different person. :)

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Blissful Organization Part Two

If you can recall, I did a post for Authentique last week with a tutorial on how I made this wonderful little magnetic bulletin board:

Today my post over at Authentique is a tutorial on how I made the magnets and pins. Be sure to check it out! My post is part of the Handmade Holidays Blog Hop. Follow along to get great ideas for making handmade gifts this holiday season!

Winner! Winner!

I am so excited to announce the winner of my VERY FIRST giveaway! As a reminder, the lucky winner will be receiving the magnetic bulletin board that I made for a recent Authentique post!


Thank you to random.org for taking all of the guess work out of the process. :)

Congratulations, Staci!! I LOVE seeing the layouts that you create with Blissful and I'm so excited that this project will be hanging in your craft room soon! Congrats again!!

Thank you everyone who entered!

I'm not perfect...

My Dear Friends,

I created a scrappy sin recently and I need to repent. :) I used a sketch from an AMAZINGLY talented paper crafter and I did not give her the credit she most certainly deserved.

In my post showcasing my "Too Cute To Spook" layout for Authentique, I mentioned that I used a sketch, showed the sketch and then didn't give the creator any credit. The sketch was created by a friend of mine, too, so that makes me feel EXTRA terrible. (In all honesty, I left the entire blog post unfinished as I usually write them late and night and I needed my Authentique blog post to go live so I could use the link in my blog post, but I digress...)

I'd like to take this moment to correct my wrong-doings. The sketch was created by Van Nguyen, whom I hope to craft like someday. Some people just make paper crafting look easy and Van is definitely one of those ladies. Van, thank you for inspiring me to create a layout which I love. I definitely could not have done it without your inspiration and I feel terrible that I didn't review my post before it went live. You are uber-talented and I am in awe of what you create. I am truly sorry.

Very Sincerely,

Cristine

I'm feeling Sketchy...

I saw today's Sketchy Thursday sketch and I knew exactly what I wanted to do with it. First off, here's the sketch:

And here is the layout I created:

I used Authentique's Gathering collection because I thought the colors went perfectly with my daughter's hair and eyes. Plus, it's just a gorgeous collection. I used Glimmer Mist to add the splatters. I love that The Twinery's Caribbean twine goes so well with this collection. I'm completely in love with that stuff.

Just a little close-up of the title.

I used some of the Icons and Tabloids to embellish the top corner of the page. The little butterflies are so cute. :)

I made my first paper flower from this tutorial, which was done by a fellow Scrapbooksteals fan.

I love the simplicity of this layout and the colors. The Gathering line just speaks to me with the brown and teal colors. LOVING it!!

Hope you enjoyed this layout. Until next time...

Need some Mojo?

Thanks to a fantastic sketch by the fantastic Kristy Lee (of Scrapbooksteals fame), I made a layout that is one of my faves to date. You know those papers that come in some collections that are printed with all kinds of stuff? They make you wonder, "Now how the heck am I supposed to use THAT?" Well I finally used one of those sheets and now I wonder why I didn't try using one sooner!

First, here is the sketch I used:

And here is the layout I created:


The only things I added to this page were the picture, the papers under the picture, some embellishments, some twine and some alphas. I didn't have to think about how to fill up the white space and I didn't have to add too many embellishments as the background paper was busy enough.


I am in love with this layout. :) The papers are from My Mind's Eye's Fine and Dandy line, which is one of my favorite collections EVER.

I hope I was able to show you how easy it is to use these fun background papers. Until next time!






PS Don't forget about my giveaway!

Cards for all occasions...

Happy Tuesday, friends! I thought I'd post some cards that I've made recently. There has been a lot going on here lately, with friends finding out the sex of their baby, dogs crossing over to the other side and family totally spoiling my girls. :) Here are the cards I made for those occasions.

The first card I made for my aunt, who came in town for my daughter's 5th birthday and spoiled the heck out of her (not necessarily a bad thing). :)

I used Authentique's Free Bird Series in Delight because the colors are vibrant and pretty. I also used a little twine to add a little more dimension to the card. I thought this would be the perfect card to say thank you to my auntie, who has managed to have a presence in my girls' lives even though she lives 2,000 miles away. I love her for that.

This next card I made for my brother, who had to put his German Shepard down this morning.

His dog, Divitt, is the only thing he's been loyal to for the past 7 years. Unfortunately, Divitt developed cancer in his leg and the tumor has been growing rapidly for the past few months. We had to put our dog down - who just happened to be my brother's as well, but we gained custody of him when we got married - a few years ago, so I know the pain of losing a pet.

This last card is for my bestie and her husband and has a double meaning. They recently found out the sex of their baby and the husband just got his first job after law school (after looking for a job forEVER).

They found out they're having a boy so I used predominantly masculine colors, but also used papers with mixed colors to liven it up a bit. I'm excited for my friend and her hubby as they venture into this new world of babies and new jobs.

Don't forget about my giveaway!! Until next time...

How About a Giveaway!?

Happy Monday, everyone! I woke up with a great idea this morning. First, I'll start by asking if anyone saw my blog post over at Authentique this morning? I made a cute magnetic bulletin board that looks like this:

Here's my great idea: I'm giving it away! To win this cute piece of organization, you must do two things for me:
~ Become a follower of my blog (over there-->).
~ Leave me a comment telling me what you'd use it for or who you'd give it to.

That's it!! Talk about easy, right?? Leave me a comment by Thursday, October 27th at midnight CST and I will draw a winner on Friday, October 28th!! {MUST have a US or Canada address only, please.} Don't forget to leave me an email address! I can't notify you if you're the winner if I don't have a way to! :)

Good luck to all!!

Too Cute To Spook...

Today I am featured over at Authentique's blog, so be sure to head over and check out my post! I created a layout using Authentique's Glowing collection, Glue Arts amazing adhesive products and some cute pictures of my hubby, daughters and nephew from Halloween last year.

I just happened to use a sketch created by the amazingly talented Van Nguyen, who was a guest sketcher over at Scrapbooksteals recently, as a spring board for this layout, so here is the sketch:


And here is the layout I created:


I think this is probably my all time favorite Halloween layout that I've ever done. It's not overly spooky, doesn't have bright colors (like the greens, purples, etc you usually see in Halloween lines) and is fairly simple. But I love it.

As I noted on my Authentique post, The circle was a labor of love. The patterned paper I used originally looked like this:


Because I didn't want this layout to have too many bold colors to distract from the colors in the pictures, I chose to cut out a bunch of the diamonds, using only the cream, black and mildly decorated lighter pieces. It was a bear to put together, but I am so happy with the way it turned out!

This was also the first time I tried bunching up ribbon and using sewing pins as decoration. (See my Authentique post for more detailed photos.)

Hope I was able to inspire in some way!! Until next time...