PTI November Blog Hop & Happy Thanksgiving!!!

This months PTI blog hop challenge was to make tags, which is funny because I had just made a bunch right before the challenge was announced! Here's some holiday tags using various PTI sets. Enjoy! Hope everyone has a great Thanksgiving!

Hugs-

Kelly

Coloring: Copics
Inks: PTI

Vote for a Great Cause!

I am loving this whole Pepsi project to give money to tons of great non-profits trying to get help! Check out this amazing little girl & vote for her project HERE. Also, get entered for a great giveaway at the same time.
Thanks!

Hugs- Kelly

Papertrey August Blog Hop Challenge

This month's challenge is a brown bag challenge! Use a simple brown paper bag in your crafting project. I often use lunchbags for projects, so I was so excited about this and had so many ideas I couldn't keep them straight! Finally, today a new idea came to me & I had to do it.

I used my Cricut to cut a door hanger (black) I than cut another one smaller in Harvest Gold and just cut the top off to use as a layer. I stamped the Harvest Gold layer with the Alphabet background from School Time in Pure Poppy. I than attached the gold layer and stamped "lunch money" with Outlines Alphabet in Fresh Snow.

For my pocket, I cut the lunchbag to a single piece of 4x4 and scored 3 sides at 1/2 inch, folded and attached along the 3 edges to make a pocket.

I used the Fillable Frames #7 frame stamp and die and Simple Alphabet to stamp my daughter's name. The top circle and apple are from the School Time set as well, and I just stamped on Chartreause cardstock and used a circle punch to punch out. A little Harvest Gold ribbon is added on top.

Now, I can just put this on the door whenever my daughter needs to bring in lunch money for school or a special field trip! (By the way- she loves it!) :)

Thanks for stopping- I can't wait to see all the great projects for this fun challenge!

Hugs- Kelly

Challenge Me Monday #23: Lake Girls

I don't know if I forgot about the great challenges at the Fantabulous Cricut: Challenge Blog or if I just haven't visited in awhile, but I had to finish this weeks challenge when I saw someone post about it today.

This weeks challenge was: The Great Outdoors. I've been very un-scrappy this summer- or just uncreative period. It's been such a crazy summer getting ready for all 3 kids to head off to school for the first time.

My youngest, Lucas, is developmentally disabled and is headed to kindergarten this year. It's been a big challenge dealing with all the issues that come up sending a young, special needs kid to school. He'll be attending a different school than his brother did & his sister does. So, i'll have 2 elementary kids at different schools, plus my oldest at Jr.High.

Anyway, for obvious reasons I've been a little preoccupied this summer and haven't crafted nearly as much as usual or as needed for my sanity :)

So, here's my challenge project:

The coloring's a bit off due to a late-night photo shoot :), but the papers are Cosmo Cricket's Snorkel line, the main polka dot paper for the background is yellow.

I used my Gypsy to put together my layout before doing all the cutting, so I used a few different cartridges. Grafically Speaking was used for the notebook edge largest circle as well as the plain circles. Life is a Beach for the wave border. The Girls is from the Farm Life cartridge. After cutting everything, I inked all the edges of my cuts with the Papertrey Ink tea duo inks.

Thanks for stopping! Off to view everyone elses amazing projects for this challenge!

Hugs- Kelly

Cricut Expression Giveaway!!!

Hey everyone! In case you haven't already, head on over to the Everyday Cricut blog to enter their National Scrapbook Day contest to win a Cricut Expression! How awesome is that?! Just follow the link, leave a comment & subscribe... easy peasy! Contest ends tonight.

Hugs- Kelly

ScrapbookPal Design Team Entry

I just found this great site ScrapbookPal.com, they have fab prices on Cricut products and I was very excited to find a call for Design Team members! I have been using my Cricut like crazy lately doing some much needed catching up on my thousands of pictures needing to be scrapbooked! :) For today, I'm going to share this layout which is my favorite lately! (Sorry about the pic- it's really dark here today! I'll fix it tomarrow) and my entry for the DT.

Love this! I used the new Cricut Easter seasonal cartridge as well as Opposites Attract for the font. Cosmo Cricket papers for backgrounds and PTI cardstock & patterned paper for "hunt" and the bunny's bow.

I cut the two grass pieces on a curve and layered them with foam to add some dimention and hide the eggs behind!

Tomarrow I will be back and share some other recent layouts with some Cricut love! :)

Hugs- Kelly

Cards, cards, cards!!!

Hello! Like I said, I have been creating a lot, just not keeping up on blogging with our busy few months here. :) Fortunately, that is now over and I can get back to life as normal. Lucas is officially signed up for kindergarten in the fall, the school year is almost over (yikes...when did that happen!) and the kids are signed up for their list of summer activities!

Besides my cards, I have been catching up on some scrapbooking and falling in love with my Cricut all over again! I will be sharing some of those pages later today :) In the meantime, I'm posting some of the cards from my absence.

Thanks for lookin & come back tonight to check out some scrappy goodness :)

Hugs- Kelly

Hello Old Friends!

Wow- it's been a long time since I've blogged! I have been creating, so I guess i'll have some catch up posting to do this week! It's been a crazy year here and the last few weeks have been tough. My youngest, Lucas, has special needs and is going to kindergarten in the fall. We've recently realized that our elementary school which is a block away & my daughter is in 2nd grade there, is not gong to be the right place for Lucas. Unfortunately, they just don't have the staff & resources for him to do his best. So, we've had to make the decision to send him to another school in our district about 5 miles away. Not too bad, it's just a bummer that he won't be at the same school as our other kids, which I also went to as a child. Ok, enough about that :)

I just had to blog today because Becky Oehlers posted a challenge today to make a new card with her CUTE stamp set "Wonderfully Whimsical". This is such an adorable set & with everything going on, I hadn't inked it up yet- so I had to today! I took inspiration from Becky's card today HERE and made another version using a boat from the PTI Tiny Treats Valentine set.

CUTE! I used the hill image from the set to make the grassy hills as well as the waves of the water. I inked the sky background with Spring Rain ink as well. The house image, boat, hills and waves are all stamped, cut and adhered. I used different foam dimentionals to attach the waves at different dimentions.

It's finally starting to feel like summer's coming here in MN, so I thought this card with the cute little boat would be a great thanks card for when we get to spend a day at the lake where my husband's parents live. It's so nice to spend time there and they are always so nice to have everyone over to play in the water, boat and fish!

Thanks for stopping and check back this week when i'll be posting some of the projects I've been working on lately!

Hugs- Kelly

Time for the PTI Bloghop!

This months challenge was to find inspiration from a PTI design team member (not hard to do!). I love every single member of the PTI DT and find inspiration in all of them along with several past PTI DT members I still stop by to check out! I chose Heather Nichols as my inspiration today. I definately have a soft spot for Heather's style & always love her projects. Mabey it's because we're both Minnesotans?

I rarely used to make tags, but was inspired last year by Heather's adorable tags she does for each holiday for all the kids. I started last Easter doing the same for my kids and love the fun small scale of designing tags for each holiday! This is Heather's most recent tag project:

http://pinefeather.typepad.com/pine_is_here/2010/02/egg-hunt-easter-tags.html

My tags are for my two nieces birthday party tomarrow. I used the same papers to match their giftbags and stamped the butterfly tag image from Tags for Spring in white with their name's stamped in Plum. I also stamped the butterfly image from Egg Hunt (which matches the tag image btw) in white randomly on the tag-backs.
Thanks for stopping!
Hugs- Kelly

Ingredients (all PTI supplies):

Papers: Kraft, Spring Moss, Plum Pudding, Lavender Moon, Egg Hunt PP

Stamps: Tags for Spring, Egg Hunt

Inks/Ribbon: Fresh Snow, Plum Pudding, Lavender Moon ribbon

PTI 3rd Anniversary Sketch Challenge

Another exciting day for the PTI 3rd Anniversary celebration! Today it includes a sketch/color challenge and here's what I came up with:

Head over to Nicole's blog for more info on this challenge & much more fun as well!

Hugs- Kelly

PTI 3rd Anniversary Technique Challenge!

Papertrey Ink's 3rd Anniversary celebration is going strong! Everyday I look forward to what the new exciting news will be! Today's announcement was major to me- a new technique challenge every Monday from PTI along with a chance to save points to use towards PTI stuff just for trying! Very cool! Since becoming a PTI addict, I've often wished there was some kind of system to earn discounts or free merchandise for being a loyal customer (besides the yearly anniversary set, of course!). Anything to help feed the addiction :)
So, today Nicole put up a technique challenge to use the resist emboss technique. As soon as I saw some samples, I knew just what I wanted to do. I do LOVE using this technique with big bold images to just show through the background, but today's card is a little simpler. I wanted to use these cute hot air balloons and create the look of them floating over as the sun is rising.
I think it turned out pretty good :) I used 3 different PTI blue inks, yellow, orange & terra cotta.
Thanks for stopping!

Hugs- Kelly

PTI 3rd Anniversary Day 2 Contest!!!

Today is day 2 of the Papertrey Ink 3rd Anniversary Festivities! Today was the announcement of the stamp designers working with PTI for 2010. Can't wait to see what's to come! Each designer had a digital stamp/element to print and use for a birthday card. I got 7 of them done so far and here they are:

This was a lot of fun and now I've got some new bday cards done and ready to go just in case :).

Hugs- Kelly

PTI Blog Hop - A Total Package

It's time for another PTI blog hop! Here's this month's challenge: A Total Package. Make whatever kind of card you want and step it up a notch by decorating the inside, back, envelope, ect. besides just the card front. I often stamp something smaller inside my cards to coordinate with the front, but I decided to really go for it with this challenge and do the front, inside & back.
I started with Hibiscus Burst as my card base (cutting the long way to make the card open at the bottom). I cut two pieces of Kraft cardstock at 4"x5.25" and stamped them both with the large background stamp from Simple Valentine using Versamark ink. I also stamped the card back using Versamark, starting about 1/3 of the way up the back. I than stamped the border image with Versamark under my background stamping and the "made by" stamp below that in black.

For my card front, I used the dotted heart from Simple Valentine and stamped it with Fresh Snow on Hibiscus Burst cs to make a flower & cut out. I stamped once on Pure Poppy cs and cut out. I glued the red heart to the middle of my flower and adhered a rhinestone. I used the large stem from Wishing You and stamped in New Leaf. I also stamped a sentiment from Simple Valentine in black and adhered my flower on top the stem.

For the inside, I repeatedly stamped the small stem bunch from Wishing You across the bottom. I topped the stems with flower hearts using hearts from Simple Valentine. The inside sentiment is from Everyday Button Bits, stamped in black.

This challenge was a lot of fun! Can't wait to check out what everyone else did, thanks for stopping!

Hugs- Kelly

Ingredients:
Stamps: Simple Valentine, Wishing You, Everyday Button Bits
Papers: Kraft, Hibiscus Burst, Pure Poppy
Inks: Fresh Snow, Hibiscus Burst, Pure Poppy, True Black, New Leaf & Versamark

Cards A Plenty! Bdays & CPS150

I don't normally make New Year's resolutions because I just think if you want to make a change, you should do it when you make up your mind, not just because it's New Year's. So I don't have a resolution for the year, but I did make myself a challenge. My challenge is to make and send out (on time!) cards to all our family for birthdays, anniversaries, ect. for the entire year! I sometimes make cards and don't send them in time, or forget to check the calendar in time to get one out. Not this year! :) I've got everything down on the calendar as well as alarms set on my phone for a week before each birthday so I can get it in the mail.

So here's two of the bday cards I made for January:

There are some other ones as well, but the pics are on my other computer, so i'll share those next time.

The next card was for a challenge on PCP for Sweet'n'Sassy stamps, I used one of their digital images.


This card was created using this weeks CPS sketch 150 challenge.

LOVE that cute little bunny! For the heart background, I colored in the tiny hearts with a glitter pen, as well as the little heart bunny tail!

Thanks for stoppin'! I finished putting the pics in my Christmas mini album today and put the finishing touches on the cover, I just want to add some journaling and i'll be sharing the entire thing here.

Hugs- Kelly

Happy New Year!!!

I hope everyone had a fabulous holiday and that your new year is starting out right! We had a busy Christmas with all the kids home, but so much fun! Playing with new toys, new games and just being able to hang out with the kids in jammies all day :)

I do have a few projects to share from the past few weeks, but for right now, I'd like to share the card I made using The Color Throwdown #75 challenge. These are not colors I usually use together so I was definately out of my color element, but I do love the end look.

Unfortunately, I needed to make a sympathy card for a dear old friend of our family who lost her husband over Christmas. As soon as I looked at these colors I knew what I wanted to do.

I used PTI colors that are similar for my project.

Thanks for stopping by, i'll be back soon to share a few other cards as well as a Christmas mini-album I'm finishing up.

Hugs- Kelly