Cut & fold post 1

 This is the lattice fold down the left-hand side. Isn't it cool? This card is really very simple, but the lattice fold dresses it up immensely.

And this is iris fold. I cut out the the frame with my cricut, designed it with my gypsy. And then the 4 different papers are the iris fold. This took me a long time to figure out and I scrapped one in the process. Now I'm consumed. :D

A wild and crazy bunch of...

 This is a spinner card that I made for my father-in-law for his birthday. I have a fairly large selection of zoo animal stamps to pick from. I coordinated them with animal heads from my cricut cart Animal Kingdom.

 I cut out the white mat using my gypsy. It doesn't cut a mat from the wild card cart. So I designed my own mat for the spinner card. Cool, eh? I love my gypsy!

 I colored the animals in with my crayola markers. I wasn't happy with them, but it was those or chalks and I wanted them to be bold. Now I've got my Bic Mark-It markers which are not as good as copics, but they'll do for what I need.

I liked the end result, although now it would be cuter with my Mark-It markers.

It's been too long.

It's not that I haven't been doing anything. I've been paper-crafting crazy. But it's not the usual paper-crafting. I've been working on a quiet book for my kids for church. Actually 3 quiet books, one for each kid. What's the point in taking a quiet book for them if they'll fight over it in church. It's been a huge amount of work, but I'm in the final stages of putting it together. When it's done I'll post pictures. So cool.

I wanted to share some cards that I've done in the between though. No scrapbook pages. Scrapbook pages are a completely different mindset and it takes me a while to get in the groove for scrapping.

 Take a look at these though. Tell me what you think.

 This card was for my father-in-law when he had knee replacement surgery.

 A baby girl card.

 A baby boy card.

 I love this wedding card. It took me a long time because I had trouble getting my cricut to cut and not slaughter a wedding cake. All paper for these previous 3 cards was originally white CS.

 I made the tie paper and embossed paper. I stamped the blue spritz on the embossed paper.

So this little ballerina card is special for a number of different reasons. I made it for my oldest on her first day of school. I was putting them to bed the night before and I was saying the prayer and I was a little weepy. And when I finished praying, Mady said to me "Mother (she calls me mother sometimes), will you make me an 'I miss you' card while I'm at school?" I was a little choked up when I said of course, Mady. Well, I did and this is my masterpiece. It's still here in the house and she carries it around. I love this card for all it symbolizes about that first day. :')

Isn't this a cute card? Again the pink flowers I stamped. I don't know if you can see, but I stamped little green dots in amongst the pink flowers on the white CS. This birthday card was for my GF's 4yo birthday. Mady put 4 blings on the crown for her 4th birthday. Don't know my GF figured that out, but Mady understood.

It's almost like Christmas...

Dec 2008 a scrapbook distribution warehouse had a huge inventory sale for their excess 2008 inventory. I went. A lot of the product was K&Company which I love. When I finished picking out the things I'd like to buy and went up to the till, the lady asked me if I seen some of the albums they had for sale. I said no. So she showed me.

They had some 12x12 post-bound albums with paper mache like covers. So, so beautiful. I bought 3 because we have 3 kids. :D Each album has the 10 page protectors that are standard in albums that you buy.

They also had 12x12 3-ring albums. I picked out 3, green, blue & red, thinking that we have 3 kids. One of the reasons I bought the albums was each album has between 30 - 40 page protectors in them, K&Company brand. One of the albums was 1/2 full of pattern paper. Another of the albums is completely full of pattern paper.

I came home from the sale, showed my honey what I got, and then I've gotten busy with life. Now I'm scrapbooking again. Last Saturday, I went to a crop (so much fun), and I completed up to when our youngest was born. I had it in my mind that when I scrapbooked up to when the youngest was born, I would complete the scrapbooks I had going for the oldest 2 and start new ones for all of them. Hooray! I'm there.

Yesterday I put all the pages in, put the pictures on the front of the albums, and now I've been thinking of what I have to do to get ready to start the 3 new scrapbooks. I knew I had albums in my craft area, and I thought I'd better go look at them.

I have 10 albums total. Crazy, I know. 1 is a baby girl one that I bought specifically for when our youngest was born. Taking that one out, I have 9 left. Yes, you can guess. I bought them in sets of 3, 3 silk ones, 3 paper mache ones, and the 3 3-ring ones.

I thought I'd better take the pattern paper out, and this is where my mini-Christmas started. Wow. There is some seriously great paper in there. I bought each ring album for $10, just the page protectors are over $25 in each album. There is some vellum in there, some velvet paper, a lot of embossed papers with matching pattern paper. Seriously gorgeous, and I would've never spent money on this paper by itself. It would've been too pricey. Honestly when I bought the albums, I knew there was paper in there, I just didn't know the treasure trove it would be. I was just trying to be thrifty.

More scrapbook pages

Started out with white cardstock. Rubbed a red stamppad over it, then stamped a present background stamp across in blue, then randomly stamped green candles. #1 tag and "it's a party" cut with cricut using Celebrations cart.

Castle cut from white cardstock using Paper Doll Dress Up cart. Rubbed pink stamppad on it. Stamped "My Little Princess" stamp on 12 x 12 cardstock, then using cottonball, rubbed green ink around the "My Little Princess" stamped images. Stamped "My Little Princess" in a darker ink on more white cardstock, but the images out, and then used them for higlight images.

Nothing that isn't obvious except that I smooshed a pink stamppad all over a piece of white cardstock to give me the background piece.

One of my favorite pages, I think because of the colors. Tree stamps are from the SU! Lovely As A Tree stamp set. Waterton is cut from the Calligraphy cart.

Again a white piece of cardstock that I stamped pink and purple flowers on and green leaves. See the cute paperclip. Guess where I got it? Office Depot.

Started out with a pink piece of cardstock and then stamped SU! Big Blossom in green and then stamped itty bitty background flowers from SU! (sorry don't know the name of stamp set). Adorable was cut with my cricut. Don't know the cart that I used. Tried my best to color match her dress with the colors that I used for stamping.

Scrapbook Page First To Show

I started with a piece of 11 3/4x11 3/4" white cardstock, stamped mango flowers, then the green leaves and then the pink flowers. I tried to color-coordinate the stamped colors with the flowers in the picture.

I had too many pictures to put on one page, so I stamped the same pink flower on a piece of patterned green cardstock.

I cut the words Evan & Julie & I(heart)U out of green cardstock with my cricut using the Calligraphy Collection cart. I cut the heart out again of white cardstock and then scuffed it with the pink stamppad so it would color match. Put the pictures on. The 11 3/4 x 11 3/4 piece of cardstock is matted on a piece of 12x12 black cardstock. I like to do this as you will see. When I used adhesive, I only went around the 2 sides and the bottom, because...

See, the green tab at the top of the previous picture. The 8 1/2 x 11 page goes between the other 2 pages. It's a sneaky way to add more pictures without cluttering up your main page. Cool, eh? I had all these cute pics of our oldest daughter that I wanted in her scrapbook, and that's how I did it. The tab attachment on the green page was cut from the Fabulous Finds cart. That cart is so wonderful for scrapbooking, so nice and versatile.

So I did 2 pages, pretty much identical, one was for our oldest daughter's scrapbook (previous pictures) and then this one was for our son's scrapbook. He wasn't in any of the pictures as he was napping. Again I didn't want to journal on the page, so I cut a "recipe card" from the Fabulous Finds cart, scuffed it with the pink stamppad, and used that for the journalling. Hopefully you can tell that I hid it behind the wedding picture leaving just the tab part out.

My first post - Hooray!

This card started from white cardstock. There is no colored or patterned paper used.

This is a tri-fold card, so you need a piece of 5 1/2 x 12" paper. You score it an cut it (exact instructions can be found on splitcoaststampers.com). Once I had the cardstock scored, cut and folded, I took a green stamppad and rubbed it all over the white card.

I use SU! stamppads - they have the nylon covering. I tried using my silver colorbox stamppad once, and just about wrecked it.

I then measured and cut out white cardstock for the layers, this was complicated and I'm going to create a project in Design Studio to do this for me from now on. Once I got the white cardstock layers cut out. I stamped the pink flowers from Hampton Arts. I love these big flowers and I got them on sale. The 3, 0 , happy, birthday, and celebrate I cut out with my cricut. The purple stamp background is from a Stampendous set as is the background stamp that I used for the yellow. The big accordian flower (fan-fold flower is the technique) is a piece of white cardstock cut at a 1x12". I used a scallop border punch to punch along the one side. At every notch, I scored it, and then once it was all scored, I folded it accordian style (complete instructions on splitcoaststampers.com). Before I scored and folded it though, I stamped on it with pink and purple and yellow flowers from the same Hampton Arts set. This one of my favorite stamp sets.

This is the same style of card. I made this for my niece who turned 12 in January. The little girl is from Everyday Paper Dolls (cricut cart). I stamped the flowers on her shirt and colored them in. The stamp is from SU! stamp set. Again, I started out with all white cardstock. The only part that was colored cardstock is her hair and her jeans. Doesn't she have the cutest face. It's a face from the peachy keen faces. If you have the Paper Dolls carts, you really should have the peachy keen faces. So cute!
This was the first time that I had ever used bling. Aren't those little flower blings so cute!? They totally added the final touches to the card. I remember when I added them, my thought was - so cute, why haven't I done this before??

This card I made for brother who plays in a band and has countless guitars. The embossing is done with my cuttlebug and the music fiskars embossing template. I scuffed over it with my colorbox silver stamppad to bring out the embossing. The rocker dude is from Everyday Paper Dolls cart. Love that cart, one of my favs.