Babies, Babies Everywhere!

March seems to be the month of babies in my world. I have a friend who had a baby on the 10th, another who had a baby yesterday, my sister-in-law was DUE on the 10th and still patiently baking her little boy until he's ready to make an appearance and ANOTHER friend who's due this weekend. PHEW! I've made a couple congrats cards for the babies who have already been welcomed to the world and I thought I'd share them with you.

The first was made for a friend who had a little boy.



It's hard to see from the picture, but I used pop-out adhesive behind the matted picture to make it stand out. I colored in the stamp with colored pencils as they were all I had on hand and I'm in NO way ready to take on the Copic commitment! :) I'm very please with the way this card turned out.

This next card was made for our friend who had a baby girl yesterday.



I used my Silhouette to create this card. In their online store, I found a cute bib card kit. It comes with EVERY shape you see on this card. I can't seem to pass up kits because you get SO much for your money (even if it's just 99 cents). I wish I had used better background paper when I made this, but you can still see some of colors that I pulled out to create the bib and flowers. I think it turned out pretty cute!

I'm sure I'll have more to post soon as there are still two more babies coming! Until then...

A very Star Wars birthday!

One of our nephews turned 5 yesterday. He is one of the biggest Star Wars fans I know...I think he loves it more than my husband and his brother combined, and that's saying A LOT! We always know we're safe giving him something Star Wars related, but this year my sister-in-law requested that we try NOT to give him any new Star Wars toys. One of the things that she told me he wants a really cool bulletin board for his room. I've decorated one for my oldest daughter's room, so I knew this was something I could do.

Now we all know how popular Star Wars is. So one would think it would be easy to find some Star Wars-themed fabric out there somewhere. Wrong. I went to three fabric stores and came up with NOTHING. I finally found some cosmic-looking fabric with stars and milky-way-looking swirls on it, so this is the fabric I decided to go with.

I bought a plain bulletin board and spray painted the edges silver. I stapled fabric to the cork board and then lined the inside of the edge with ribbon to cover the staples. I thought the color combination was very Darth Vader-ish, so I hope my nephew thinks so, too!

Here's the final product:



Of course, nothing ever photographs as well as it looks in person, but you get the idea. I think it turned out pretty well and I hope he likes it!

Going along with the Darth Vader theme of the day, I decided to make him a birthday card, too. I had remembered that one of the sheets from the Fancy Pants Father and Son collection had a star burst pattern on it. I decided to scan it and print it out in black and white to go better with my idea of black, white and red.



I found a Darth Vader sticker at my local scrapbook store that I thought would work for the card and then looked up a Darth Vader quote off the internet that sounded birthday-ish. I added some star brads, inked the edges of the card and VOILA! Done! This as probably one of the easiest cards I've ever made and I am happy with the way it turned out!



I hope our nephew thinks these things are as cool as I do. :) I'll find out tomorrow!

PS He loved them!! :)

Midweek Mojo, Anyone?

Scrapbooksteals' sketch this week called for one 4x6 landscape picture and I just so happen to have a few singletons lying around. Once I saw this sketch, I knew EXACTLY which picture I wanted to use!

Here is the sketch:



And here is my layout:



First off, I knew right off the bat that I wanted this to be a colorful layout, to mimic all of the colors from the toys in the picture. I think I succeeded in that department. :) I also did some stitched spirals on the page to fill in some of the blank space. I think it worked without feeling too over powering. This layout was a little out of my comfort zone because I don't usually use so much solid cardstock on a page, but I love the way this layout turned out!!

Until next time...

Challenging Challenges!

Scrapbooksteals had an online chat this past Friday night and as usual, challenges were issued a few days before for us to get a head start on. Here's what they were:

Challenge #1 was actually MWM #30 (I'll post that in a minute).

Challenge #2 was to create a layout sharing a secret about yourself.

Challenge #3 was to create a layout sharing something you're lucky to have (in other words, something you're thankful for).

Challenge #4 was a doozy! It was to create a layout that incorporated EACH of the following items:

- 10 metal embellishments
- 9 inches of ribbon
- 8 letters
- 7 non-metal embellishments
- 6 sentences in the journaling
- 5 patterned paper pieces
- 4 solid paper pieces
- 3 photos
- 2 rub on images
- 1 stamped image

Holy cow, right?! When I first saw this challenge, I thought it was going to create one BUSY page, but I'm pretty psyched about how mine turned out. I'll show you what I created, starting with Challenge #1.

Here is the sketch:



And here's my layout:



Cute, right?! Alright, maybe I'm a little biased, but I think this layout turned out pretty cute. :) I decided to make a layout describing my youngest red head. :) There aren't enough words to describe this sweet ball of maddening curiosity, but I figured I'd take a few and put them on the layout and then write a letter to her saying how much I love her for being all of those things. I wouldn't change a single thing about how this layout turned out...and I hope my little Brutus loves it when she gets older. :)

I decided to combine Challenge #2 and #4. (BTW, I didn't complete #3...too much on my plate this past weekend!) I'll show you the layout first and then I'll give you all the details afterwards...

Here's my creation:



I've been very lucky so far in my lifetime that I've been able to go to Disneyland and Disney World on numerous occasions. From the first trip to Disney World back in 1986, my love for Goofy was born. Each time I've been back, I've made sure to take a picture with him. Since I could only use three pictures for Challenge #4, I decided to pick my three favorite pictures. The first was from the first time I met Goofy. (Wasn't I adorable?!) The second picture was from when my friend and I went to Disneyland on our Spring Break, my senior year of high school. The third picture was from when my parents, brother, husband and I went to Disneyland right before Christmas in 2002.

Here's the break down of what I used for this challenge:

- 9 colored, small brads, 1 decorated brad holding the flower together
- 9 inches of ribbon in the bow
- 8 letters (i am goofy - hehe)
- 7 2 flowers together as one, 1 button, 1 row of stitching, 1 sticker (the Goofy sticker in the title), the bracket chip and the star chip
- 6 sentences in the journaling
- 5 patterned paper pieces
- 4 solid paper pieces (one behind journaling, one journaling is printed on, and the #4 is made of two different colors)
- 3 photos
- 2 rub on images (zig zag at the bottom is actually two separate rows that I pieced together)
- 1 stamped image (the circles stamped onto the star embellishment)

And. I'm. Spent! :) Typing that all out was almost as exhausting as creating the layout itself, but for all my hard work, I'm pretty pleased with the way it turned out. I'm not big on using a bunch of different patterned papers on one layout, but I chose these papers from my Fancy Pants "Father and Son" kit because the colors went well with my Goofy pictures. He wears blues, orange and green, and those are the exact colors on the papers.

I should also point out that I created this layout without the help of scraplifting!! This is HUGE for me as I'm not good at creating layouts unless I have something to go by. For not having help, I think I did alright! :)

Now I'm in the Ruby Club!!

It feels SO good to be all caught up on my mojo's! A mere three weeks ago I had more than 16 layouts to catch up on. Whoa! Time flies when you're having fun, right?! :) Here are my Ruby Club entries!

MWM #21:



MWM #22:



MWM #23:



MWM #24:



MWM #25:



MWM #26:



MWM #27:



MWM #28:



MWM #29:



MWM #30:



If you would like to see the sketches that correspond to these layouts, please click here.

I'm in the Emerald Club!

Since I'm all caught up with my Emerald Club sketches/layouts, I thought I'd put them all in one place. Enjoy!

MWM #11:



MWM #12:



MWM #13:



MWM #14:



MWM #15:



MWM #16:



MWM #17:



MWM #18:



MWM #19:



MWM #20:



If you'd like to see the sketches that correspond with these layouts...look here.

Midweek Mojo Time Again!

I've had some pretty awesome ::insert sarcasm here:: headaches the past couple of nights, so I haven't scrapped as much as I would have liked. While my oldest was at preschool this afternoon, I started on my Midweek Mojo layout and just completed it during my girls' naptime. I know I say this a lot, but I LOVE how this layout turned out! Before I go on, maybe I'll just show you the sketch...

Here it is:



And here's my layout:



I NEVER know what to do with the 12 x 12 die cuts that come with various collections, but when I saw this sketch I just KNEW I wanted to use one. And in more than one place! I used my Fancy Pants Love Birds collection that I won from a facebook contest (the best kinds of paper are the FREE kind!). The colors in this collection went well with the colors we were all wearing in the picture.

I still have those six layouts to catch up on, so I'll be back soon!