Beachy Photo Albums

Hello! Wanted to share a project I made for 2 of my nieces as a little gift for their end of the summer pool party. I wanted to decorate some small photo albums so they could each put in photos of their favorite summer memories. I found the 2 4x6 albums at Michael's for $3.99 ea.
I used my Cricut E2 to cut the crab, sand castle, beach umbrella and shells. For the sand, I simply tore two shades of Core'dinates cardstocks and layered. Since they are little girls after all, I had to add some stickles to everything for a little bling!

Since the photo albums are fabric covered, I used craft glue to attach everything to the fronts.
I took a cue from this months Cricut Circle challenge to "create a scene".
Thanks for stopping!
Hugs- Kelly

August Sparks!

Hello! This month's Sparks challenge at Paper Smooches is an inspirational photo challenge of a beautiful handmade headband with different fabrics laying on a bark background. Beautiful! Lots of inspiration from this! This is my first project taking inspiration from it in using fabric on my card. I used a die cut border from felt, using floss to sew on red buttons in each of the circles before adhering to my acetate card.
I colored the images with pencils/gamisol, cut and adhered with pop dots.
The half circle with the sentiment is adhered on the inside.

I die cut another border out of red paper and adhered to the inside of card so I could use that to write my greeting/signature. When the card is folded tight, you can only see the felt border and the red is hidden behind it.
This is also going for the Fabulous Felt Challenge in the Moxie Fab World!
Thanks for stopping!
Kelly

Autism Speaks Walk

Hello! I just wanted to quick share some info here. For those who don't know, we have a 6 year old son, Lucas, with Autism. He is the light of my life :) He is the reason I choose to work with kids with special needs. He is beautiful, loving & hilarious. He is our youngest child.

Autism is a tricky thing. A lot of people don't understand it, most don't know how truly different it can be from child to child. There are many degrees of Autism Spectrum Disorder or ASD from very mild to extremely severe.

Lucas and I will be participating in the Walk for Autism Speaks at the Mall of America at the end of September. We would appreciate donations of any amount, which you can make online right HERE or by clicking the Autism Speaks Walk pic to the right/top, both will take you directly to our donation page where your tax-deductible donation will go straight to Autism Speaks!

If you are unable to donate, please visit Autism Speaks anyway and just learn something new so you can better understand people with ASD. There is tons of information for anyone on their site as well as info on how their donations are used.

Thanks so much!
Hugs-Kelly

Christmas in July- I mean August :)

Hello! I just received a new die w/face stamps from Peachy Keen- the adorable Cottage Cutz penguins die with 2 Peachy Keen faces, sooo cute!
I wanted to make an entry for both the Peachy Keen Tuesday sketch as well as the CottageBLOG Christmas theme challenge, so I combined them both along with The Paper Variety challenge to use more than 4 circles. Whew! :)

The Peachy Keen challenge was the sketch I used as well as the color combo, now looking at it I mabey should have turned the penguins a bit because you can't see the green circles that are behind both their heads, but oh well! :) I stamped the plaid background paper on top using the 3 challenge colors as well and used a Cuttlebug folder to emboss the bottom blue paper. I just hand cut the small white border at the bottom for snow.
The small blue circles are stamped in white with a small snowflake from PTI- the sentiment is from the same set.
The CottageBLOG challenge was a Christmas card, so I couldn't wait to use my new penguins to fit right in with the theme! I used the same challenge colors for their feet/bowtie/buttons/mittens to go with the paper I made.
The Paper Variety challenge to use more than 4 circles just fit right in here because the PK sketch already had a row of circles!

Thanks for stoppin!
Hugs- Kelly

MojoMonday #202 Scrapbook Page!

Hello! I was inspired after seeing a scrapbook school page by Heather Nichoels this week and after looking at the MojoMonday sketch- it was a sign! :) I had to use it to get one of my kids class picture pages done. I used my daughter's from 2nd grade.I used my Cricut for the penant cuts and all the stamps are from PTI.
Thanks for lookin'!

Hugs- Kelly

Paper Smooches July Sparks Challenge! Take 2!

Please CLICK HERE for my Skateboard challenge card, thanks!

Ok, so I didn't get to do ALL the sketches (Paper Smooches) like I would have liked. Had to help my daughter make her teacher a card for the last day of summer school tomarrow, which kept me busy for some time (but sooo worth it!), than while finishing my 3rd challenge card, my husband had the nerve to want to do what??? Go to bed! :) The nerve! :)

My studio is at one side of our loft-like bedroom, so I can't have my lights on while he goes to sleep. Bummer.

Well, I did finish one more card that I'm just in love with using another of the sketches.

That gnome is one of my favorite images from Kim! Sooo stinkin cute! I just had to give him some plaid pants and matching hat! And of course his little birdie friend needed one, too. My oldest son has his hair long in the front, so he's constantly moving it out of his eyes, so I thought it would be funny if the birdie had a low-rise hat, too! :)

Well, thanks for stopping! I had so much fun playing along with Paper Smooches July challenge and now that I know where it is, I can guarantee from now on I'll get started on them a lot sooner!

Hugs- Kelly

Paper Smooches July Sparks Challenge!

Hello! I just happened to stumble upon the Paper Smooches blog the other day and I can't believe I hadn't found it already! I've been a HUGE fan of Kim's stamps for a long time and have most of them from CHF and love them! I'm so excited that now I've got all new goodies from her to oogle and buy one by one! :)

Anyhow- they have a great Sparks Challenge going on that ends tonight! There are 10 different sketches along with a bunch of color combos-you can use either or both and do as many as you want. I'm trying to do as many as I can before time's up! Six hours and counting :)

Here are my first two based on some of the sketches. Since I don't have any of Kim's new stamps (YET!), all stamps used are from Kim's collection at CHF.

I made this card for my daughter for her first riding class in 2 weeks! LOVE it! The horse, sentiment, hat and boot are all from the same stamp set.

My oldest son is a big skateboarder, so this will definately be a note in his backpack when school starts! :) I made the background by repeatedly stamping the skateboard in red and blue, than stamped the "hey dude" sentiment- also from that set.

Hopefully i'll be able to add on more for this challenge tonight!
Hugs- Kelly