Button Up

I've been seeing buttons popping up all over cards & layouts these days, so I wanted to try and spruce up an early Mother's Day card I was making.

Here's the outcome:

I used the Plantin SchoolBook Cricut Cart to cut the grass/flowers at the bottom of the card (5" wide x 3" tall) and used small Zots to adhere the buttons over the flowers. The card title was also cut from Plantin using the Design Studio to weld the letters together. Background paper was from an old "stack" I had lying around.

All in all, I'm REALLY happy with the way this one turned out!

You're Invited

My youngest niece is turning ONE! I wanted to help my sister create an amazing invitation to send out to celebrate this very special day, and she decided on a Disney Princess theme! We bought the Happily Ever After cart, and decided to use Cinderella & Snow White as the 2 main characters. We couldn't very well let the inside of the invitation go out plain, so we picked Dopey for the inside of Snow White, and a glass slipper for the inside of Cinderella.

Snow White, Cinderella & Dopey were all cut at 5" and put on a glitter mat (any smaller and it becomes very difficult to place all of the layers together), and the glass slipper was cut at 3". The invitation stamp is combination of a Reflections set & a Stampendous set.

Here is the final product...while it was A LOT of hard work (12 hours to assemble 36 invitations, with 3 people working on them), it was well worth it for our little princess Marley:

A Mermaid's Crafts Blog Candy

Head over to "A Mermaid's Crafts," she's got some awesome Blog Candy up for grabs. She does some awesome paper crafting too, so follow along and she what she's creating! All you have to do is click on the title of this post, and it'll take you right to her Blog :D

Big Love for my Little Man

My cup runneth over...I never knew my heart could love so deeply! Don't get me wrong, I love my family, I adore my husband, but the love for your child compares to nothing else in life! I think that's why I am so mushy about this post, LOL!

There's really not much you can do to celebrate an infants 1st Valentine's Day, so all I did was throw on his bib and snap a few pictures (okay, there's a TON)...it's still worth documenting in his scrapbook, right?!?! That's the first of the two pages in this layout. The second page, "Cupid's Cutie," has to do with a contest he won on my "Mommy Message Boards," What To Expect When You're Expecting website. I submitted that picture, and he received the most votes and WON! His first award, it was a proud Mommy Moment (still is I guess).

The pages were put together with a $1 kit I picked up at the Target Dollar Spot (you never know what you'll find, so keep your eye out). I placed the tags on with eyelets to add a little something, and did a double mat for the photos. The title for "Cupid's Cutie" was cut using Plantin on the Design Studio to weld the letters together (measured the empty space on my layout and adjusted the size, once welded, to fit).

Cards...not my strong suit

So I know I had said I was going to post about "Love Day" today, but I realized that I haven't gotten a decent picture of the 2-page layout, so we're going with the 3 cards I've made recently. I try and be creative, but really, cards are not easy. I just haven't been able to figure out how to really jazz up a card, but not have it look like a complete mess. Here are the last few attempts I've had at card making:

First up is the card I made for my sister-in-law. I wanted to put her age on the front, but I think my mistake was making the numbers too big, and not leaving more room to embellish around it...it's a learning curve:

Numbers and balloons were cut using the Celebrations Cart

Next up is a Baby Shower card I made for my friend who's due a month before me. I like this one a little better, but I still think I could have done more...maybe a thicker ribbon perhaps?!?! If you look closely, the blue mat on the front is embossed with tiny hand & footprints:

B-A-B-Y was cut using the New Arrival Cart

Lastly, this is the card I made for my Gram's birthday. It says "Tutu," which is what my son calls her (it's Hawaiian for Grandma). Instead of creating layers for this card, I decided to cut out the frame in white and color it in, just to do something different...did it work???

"Tutu" was cut from George & Basic Shapes (welded together with Design Studio), the tulip frame was cut from the Stretch Your Imagination Cart (I think).

I've created a new birthday card, but it hasn't been given yet, so I'll wait to post that one...I have to say, the more I practice, the better it's getting. Still have a long way to go though! Happy Crafting all, and thanks for stopping by. You can always contact me at sandiegocoley@yahoo.com

Eggs-tra Special Easter

A baby's firsts are always exciting, but celebrating my sons first holiday's were such a special time, and I sure did try and make the most of them. Today's post is just one of the 2 layouts for Brody's first Easter. I didn't have to do much to put these together, I just pulled from my "box o' goodies" that I saved for the last 2 years and played with it until it fit the way I wanted. The only items I created myself was the Month & Year from the Designer's Calendar Cricut Cartridge. The other thing I really like to do with each layout, no matter the theme, is mat my pictures. It only takes a few seconds, and I just think it makes it look like you've taken some time with your layout.

Here's the 2-page Easter layout:

Thank you for taking a trip down memory lane with me. The "love" holiday is up next!

My Lucky Charm

Seeing that St. Patty's Day has just passed, I thought I'd share one of the recent layouts I created for my sons baby book. I had started out of order with 4th of July, and found no reason to jump back in order now. I used what I had saved away in a box...a couple of cards (one tucked away in an envelope), and his 8x10 I took during an impromptu home portrait session with my Mom. In order to spruce up the page a bit, I took to my Designer's Calendar Cricut Cartridge and created a few embellishements - a phrase, hat/clover, clover in a box & the year. Because these images don't come with a layering feature, I created my own layer by reducing the size of the top layer by just 0.25".

Here it is: