Good Teachers Are Hard To Come By

One of my daughter's school teacher is once again leaving and moving to a different school. I get so sad when I see notices about good teachers leaving and looking for something somewhere else, be it closer to home or higher compensation. Over the years a lot of teachers in my daughters have come and gone, and I'm sad to say I haven't seen a replacement as good as the one that left. So here I am again, sad, that the after school program teacher is leaving. I always catch her telling stories, reading books to the kids, and just being a stern but loving teacher. I will miss her, as I'm sure my daughter will too.

To show my appreciation I made this card for her, hopefully she'll know that she's been truly appreciated, by me and my daughter.

I used some leftover papers from Chalk It Up paper pack, and I cut up the image of the teacher and blackboard from the Cricut Create a Friend cartridge. Since the school has the blue uniform as standard apron color, I decided to do that, since I always see her in that uniform anyway. I used Chalkboard font for the word "teacher" on the board, so it reads Awesome teacher. I added some doodles to the border of the card, but I'm afraid I didn't do quite a good job at it.

And here's the sentiment that I stamped inside the card. I'm not good at doodling, so please forgive the imperfection. I put on the black enamel stars to serve as "bullet points", and also as kudos, for being a wonderful teacher. I used the stamp set Teacher Appreciation to express my gratitude.

And here's what the stamp set looks like.

D1612 Teacher Appreciation

Enjoy!

Summer Hip Pics Album

Slowly I am inching towards my goal of finishing up all the memory preserving for the year 2014. This is one of them, which I promised I'd give as a gift to my sister.

I used My Creations Hip Pics Album. I love how nice and compact this is, and how easy it is to decorate and put pictures and make a mini-album out of it, perfect for just a single event. I mainly used last year's Free To Be Me paper pack to decorate, and just a single pack of Recollections embellishments.

I used a variety of stamps for the sentiments inside, but most of all I love how versatile the Picture My Life is. I used a mix of Surf's Up and Wanderful and cut them up and decorated them to make them into embellishments. I most especially like the quotes, and how well they go together with the Free To Be Me colors. The best thing about Picture My Life is that they are now available to purchase in just the cards alone. For only $14.95 you get 122 cards if you don't wish to get the memory protector sheets. Here's the Wanderful PML cards only, and here's Surf's Up. I love using them on my scrapbook layouts, cards, and now I love how they can also be used in mini albums like this. The designs are just simply gorgeous!

I have yet to write down notes, which I intentionally left blank since they'll be too personal.

Hope you're able to grab some inspiration from this and create your own mini album! Enjoy!

Sympathy Card

I finally finished our 2014 scrapbook so I'm hoping to be back more often now making cards. Unfortunately for the start of the year my 1st card is a sympathy card. Our cleaner's dad passed away this week and I thought I'd send her a card to let her know we are thinking of her and her family.

I used Cricut Artfully Sent cartridge to make this card, and cut everything at 4.25". I used the retired Ivy Lane papers as my inside lining, and Colonial White cardstock for the outside. I lined the flowers inside with Cocoa and cut out the heart using Hollyhock cardstock.

I used Sincere Expressions to stamp the sentiment outside with Cocoa ink, and lined a border decoration from the Ivy Lane paper.

Here's the inside of the card.

Here's the stamp set I used.

A1146 Sincere Expressions

Thanks for stopping by!

Erin Condren Planner

I have been so obsessed and in love with my Erin Condren planner. This is my first and it took awhile for me to decide to take the plunge. At $50 it's not cheap, but now I'm so happy I made the investment. 

There are so many things you can do, and I've been hooked on accessorizing and decorating my pages. Etsy has a lot of options in case you're looking for quick and easy ones, but I've also created some on my own. Since I have a ton of washi tapes, I cut my own. I've purchased the cute icons from an Etsy seller, but have since done a couple of my own. Here's a view of my Janaury page.

And here's a look of the weekly.

I've finally done my own background squares, and I picked some floral backgrounds thats shabby chic.

This has taken so much out of my time lately. I have a couple more scrapbook pages to finish to round up my 2014 book, and hopefully soon I can go back to creating cards again. I know, I am so behind! 

Reindeer Tote Bags

I had a blast putting these treat bags together! Sure my fingers were covered in Liquid Glass but it was the only adhesive I trust to be strong enough to hold the treats I planned to put inside.

I used My Mind's Eye Christmas paper pack from last year to make the bags, then adhered the reindeer image in front. I still plan to put on tags later on, after I put them in clear favor bags and tie them with a string. Given my kid's classmates age, I'm guessing they won't be handled gently so to be sure it makes it home in 1 piece, I'd feel better knowing it's in  plastic baggie.

These took time, but I had so much fun! I hope the kids will love it too!

My weekend well spent!

Christmas Cards Project

With what little time I have, I've been trying to make as much Christmas cards as I can. I thought I'd use the Snowhaven Cardmaking WOTG, but instead of following the 3 patterns to make 15 cards, I thought I'd challenge myself and come up with 15 individual unique cards. You can actually make more, as I have almost full sheets of cardstock left and 1 patterned paper left. Here's my take on it.

I am so in love with this winter themed colors and papers. I used a variety of Christmas stamp sets to add more flair to the cards. Below are the stamp sets I used.

D1610 Christmas Post

C1506 Flakey Friends

C1567 Santa Claus

And of course, here's the Snowhaven Cardmaking WOTG.

G1085 Snowhaven Cardmaking WOTG

It's Christmas Time!

I apologize for being absent for over a month. With Thanksgiving and relatives coming over to stay, I got so busy and put my crafting aside. Now that things are back to normal, (unfortunately a bit late), I'm scrambling to make things for Christmas.

When Close To My Heart came out with the Cut Above program this year, I swore I wouldn't be one to buy and use it, after all, I thought, when will I ever need that anyway? I make my own cards, take pride and time in designing, why would I buy the Cut Above Kits? But now I'm in a time crunch, I realized these Cut Above Kits Christmas Card will be my lifesaver.

For $11.95 the kit comes pre-cut and ready to assemble. You can make 10 cards out of it. It took me less than an hour to make them all, and voila, I now have Christmas cards to send out!

Z2064

I paired it with this stamp set, which has the appropriate sized greetings to go with the tag. This stamp set is so versatile you can also use them as sentiments on the inside of your cards.

B1468 Merriest Christmas

Happy Holidays everyone!