My 2012 Goals Journal and light tent

Hi all! I hope everyone had a fantastic New Year Celebration.

I had a grand day crafting. It was so good to be spending some time doing what I love after the hustle and bustle of the holiday season.

I already posted my goals for 2012, and I decided to make this journal to record my progress as well as a place to make notes on projects throughout the year.

It is my entry into the Cricut Circle Weekly Challenge. The challenge is a project to reflect/record your resolutions. It needs to have two cricut cuts.

I started with a grid paper journal I picked up at the start of the school year for one dollar. The patterned paper is called the Daily Grind from Fancy Pants.

I cut the words explore, create and simplify from Home Decor in vinyl. The 2012 is stamped.

I added a few flower gems from my stash, and tied a bow and some charms to a binder clip.
The flowers were cut from Mother's Day Bouquet. I embossed them with some Cuttlebug folders, Script texture and Swiss Dots.

I made a pocket on the inside cover with a scrap of the paper from the front cover. I stamped the word "contents" on the first two pages, front and back and added a journal card with my 2012 goals written out.
I printed out these calendar pages I downloaded from Paper Crafts Connection Blog. You can get them here.

I stamped page numbers in all the corners using some older clear stamps I had. I love the font. I wish I could remember who made them.
I made the back pocket simply by folding the paper around the cover and adhering it to the inside only on the edges. Here is where I am storing the calendars until I put them in the book.

I am really looking forward to having a busy, crafty year, and I hope to reach all of my goals.

On a side note:

The lighting in our house is dreadful, and I was so tired of my pictures coming out so poorly, that I constructed a light tent from a design I saw on the internet.

It is simple and cheap! I used two sheets of 20x30 white foam core board. The first sheet I scored and bent in half. The other sheet I cut in half, then made cut out squares in the sides. I then taped them to the bent piece to form a box. The top half was constructed with some left over strips.

I covered the top three sides with some cheap cotton Muslin I picked up at Joanns for 2 dollars/yd.
Inside I taped a drape to the top edge. Here is a pic of the inside. I just use work lights that my hubby had on the outside.

Its not a professional piece, but it gets the job done good enough and it cost me about 6 bucks to make, unlike the $100 price tag that many light tents carry.

Well that's all for today.

I am encouraging everyone to go and make something today!

Have a Great and Crafty Day!

Jan

Kindergarten Scrapbook Pages

Hi All,
I am sorry to be neglecting my blog so much lately. I had been feeling so frustrated with my lack of energy and creativity. So to jump start things, I was cleaning up my scraproom and trying to fine-tune my organization. I am having a hard time finding places to put all my stuff. I swear this room is shrinking! LOL (perhaps I am shopping too much too! :) )

So in my cleaning, I discovered that I have 4 bankers boxes full of school memorabilia that I have been saving to put in the girls scrapbooks. I really could use that space better, so I decided to pull out their school books which have been started and not finished, and get caught up on the school pages. I bought these scrapbooks from Creative Memories back when the girls were babies, and my scrapping style has changed so much since I started these books, however, in the spirit of getting caught up, I am not making the fanciest pages.

So here are the pages I made for Mads Kindergarten year. They follow my typical school year formula.

1.) The First Day of School: We always take a picture on the first day with the girls holding signs with what new grade they are starting and the date.

2.) The class composite picture page.

3.) I do a few layouts on various school activities that I may have pictures for. This one is for Spirit Week's Crazy Hair Day.
I always choose only a few really good pieces of artwork/homework to go into the scrapbook. I also use this method of including 8.5 x 11 page protectors into the book for awards and homework pieces. Here I have taped it to the edge of the 12x12 page under the paper. This works well in the Creative Memories Strap-Hinge albums. I have also just cut extra slits/holes to add them onto the straps or posts in my other albums.

Here is is closed :
Here it is opened up:
I had to include Mads drawing of the Human Body in here:

Here is the page with the rest of the chosen artwork: Some times I also use the girls artwork as my background papers in the school book layouts

I have a few more layouts to do to complete Mads Kinder-year. I hope to share them in a another post soon.

Carts Used:

Mother's Day Bouquet cart for the flower in the first layout

Printing Press for the Crazy Hair Day title.

Birthday Bash & Best Friends Patterns on the Imagine for the Banner Pieces.

On 'My Lil Artist' I used all Sizzix dies for the titles and scalloped square.

If you have any questions about my school albums please feel free to contact me.

Thanks for visiting today.

Have a Great and Crafty Day.

Jan

Teacher's Gifts- Greenbean's Hand Scrub

Hello all! I hope everyone has been having a good summer vacation so far. I am glad the school year is over, it seemed like it was such a long year. The start of Summer vacation was quite a hectic time, because of Alex's birthday party.

I realized that in focusing so much on Alex's birthday party, I completely forgot to make Teacher Appreciation gifts!..EEKS! So in addition to prepping for her party I had to quick whip out some teacher gifts.

Well its Greenbean's Crafterole to the rescue! I remember a post Greenbean did about homemade hand scrub and I decided I could whip up a few of these for the girls teacher's quickly. Here is a link to Greenbean's step-by-step on how to make these great little gifts. While you are over there, check out all her other great projects! She is a fantastically crafty lady!

Here is my Completed Teacher gift:
Greenbean labeled this hand scrub as garden hand scrub, so decided to use my Freshly Picked Cart to decorate it. I was able to get these gifts made up rather quickly and in time for the end of the school year. Now I am catching up on my blog posts.

Here is a close up of the little Gnome. He is just so stinking cute! He was cut at 2.5" and finished up with some pen and pencil accents.
Here is the apple bin from page 49. I cut it at 1.35" and used some pens to give some more details. I found a small piece of wood patterned paper in my scrap box and used that to cut the fence layer. I stamped the Thank you using a Stampin' Up stamp and then hand cut the sign.

The flower and leaves on the top of the jar was cut from Mother's Day Bouquet. I inked them up using Distress Ink and stuck a gem in the center. The Ribbon is Martha Stewart Ribbon I picked up at Michael's.


I really like that little Gnome. I think I may have to make one for my Scraproom. :)

Have a Great and Crafty Day!

Jan

Vertical Spring Banner- Weekly Circle Blog Challenge #29

Weekly Challenge #29: Handmade Flower Challenge!
The Challenge: Handcraft a flower using your Cricut and/or Cuttlebug machine and use it on your project.

Rules and Guidelines: Circle Blog Challenges are open to Cricut Circle Members only. You can create any type of project you wish (scrapbook page, card, altered item, home decor, etc.), but your project must be newly created for this challenge and include at least 2 Cricut Image Cuts.

Well here is my entry into this weeks blog challenge. I made a Spring banner using quite a few cartridges: Birthday Bash, Designer's Calendar, Easter -seasonal, Gypsy Font, and Simply charmed. The printed papers all come from DCWV Flower Shower Spring Stack. The Solid cardstock is DCWV Adhesive backed textured cardstock.


I cut the banner base and its layer from Birthday Bash. Its cut at 6". The letters are cut from Gypsy Font, Monogram Shift and its shadow. They are cut at 2.76".
For the S page I used my Gypsy to line up the top banner layer to cut around the cloud and umbrella on the printed paper. I then cut a second umbrella layer out and pop-dotted it on top of the first. I cut the April showers box from a sheet in the stack.
The butterflies and colored flowers were cut from Designer's Calendar. I cut two layers for each butterfly and the flowers I cut 7 times in each color in varying heights from 1.82 down to 1.12. The butterflies have a line of gems for their bodies. The white flowers were cuts from Mother's Day bouquet that I layered with the colored layers. I had spent a day just cutting random sizes and shapes from the Mother's Day Bouquet cartridge, so I am sorry I do not have the measurements on those.
The little bunny was cut from the Easter seasonal cartridge. He and his layer were cut at 1.59". the eggs were cut from Designer's Calendar at 1.94 and 1.59". I then cut them a second time in white to give it a bottom layer. I used my Gypsy to hide some of the cuts on the white egg layers. I cut a second banner layer in green and then trimmed off some for the bottom. I then used my new Martha Stewart Fringe scissors to make the grass. Boy those scissors are FUN!
For this one I cut the little bird from Simply Charmed. He is cut at 2.18"
For this last one I used a few more flowers and another butterfly. The printed paper already had such a nice design I didn't want to cover too much of it up.

All the flowers and butterflies had some coordinating Tim Holtz distress inks used on them, as well as a spritz of pearl Glimmer Mist. I finished off the flowers with some bling.

Finally, I used some ribbon from the stash my Mom just gave me! :)

I am quite pleased with how well this banner turned out, as it is alot easier for me to find a place to hang a vertical banner, rather than a horizontal one. I may be making more banners in this fashion.

This project also used one of my monthly challenge cartridges. I am happy to be plugging away at that challenge. It feels good to use all my cartridges.

Thanks for visiting today.

Have a Great and Crafty Day!
Jan