Winter Page Layout

Over at the Pink Stampers blog, she is doing a winter/Christmas challenge. As I read about it I thought, "I can do that." Last year at Christmas time, we spent a week with our friends in a cabin where we went snowmobiling, sledding, and enjoying the beautiful scenery of that time of year. It was a lot of fun so for this challenge, I thought I'd do a layout for some of those pictures and this is what I came up with. I used my free file set from Treasure Box Designs to do these trees and cabin. I love how the little cabin turned otu. It is so cute and perfect for these pages. I probably should do a few more of these pages as I have too many for just this layout, but it was a good start and I thought it would be fun to enter her challenge. I've never entered one of her challenges before so.......

SVGCuts is at it again....

SVGCuts is offering a GREAT blog candy. Woohoo.... if you'd like to see what they are offering jump on over to their blog and look around..... http://svgcuts.com/blog/?p=8033

I WON!

I am so excited. Today I was reading my google reader on the blogs I follow and I WON a blog prize. I am so thrilled! I've only won blog candy once and I never received it so I'm crossing my fingers and toes. Thank you so much! Wanna see? Go here. I can't wait! Woo hoo! Thanks Amanda! I can't wait to try one of these punches. I've never used a border punch before. How fun! Thank you, thank you, thank you!


http://amandascraftsandmore.blogspot.com/2010/12/merry-martha-giveaway-wednesdays-4-of-5.html#comments

Blog Candy

Paper This and That is giving away blog candy! If you'd like to sign up for a chance to win, go here: http://paperthisandthat.blogspot.com/

Christmas Train Pages

I LOVE how these turned out! I know I posted recently about the files that I bought at www.treasureboxdesigns.com, but I just had to share these. She recently came out with a train set. Well, I had just bought several sets and even won a new one! Yep...me who never wins, won furniture and files this year! Love it. Anyway, since I had just bought several sets, I decided not to buy any more. However, I had purchased her bear set and so I set out to make my own train and I LOVE it! Someone had shared a free train file, (sorry...not sure who) but it wasn't exactly what I wanted so I set about modifying it in MTC. I LOVE the result. Super cute, super fun, and really easy. If you notice, there are only three real colors to the train, black backing, cream wheels, snow, etc, and red train car parts. The fat bear I already had cut out, but I did cut the two side bears to on it. The stripes on the cars are actually scraps that I just added and the bow on those is a punch that I used to punch from the scraps. Anyway, I LOVE how my train turned out and I didn't have to buy any more files. I've seen these cute little trains done for all the holidays so I just may have to make another one for something else. The pieces are all big enough that paper piecing it together was fairly simple. It probably took longer to ink everything than to actually put it all together. Fun fun.

SVG Cuts Giveaway

Woo hoo. SVGCuts is at it again! This time they are giving away cameras, files, etc. Yeah! If you'd like to check them out and have a chance at some great prizes, go here: http://svgcuts.com/blog/?p=7798 Wish me luck!

SVGCuts is having 12 days of Christmas!

How fun is that! If you'd like to see what they are up to, go visit their blog here... http://svgcuts.com/blog/?p=7764

They have wonderful freebies all the time! Love it!

Gift Card Holders

Hi. Well I had a few minutes tonight and decided to do one more challenge for the cyper crop. The challenge was to make 3 gift card holders. Each of these cards when opened has a pocket inside that will hold a gift card for the holidays. I actually only needed a couple of these, but..... since it called for 3, I made 3. My favorite is the z-fold card on top! I love that one. That one was also the fastest to do and the easiest to put together. I'll be making more of these types of cards in the future but since I needed 3 different ones....The second one is using the new lattice feature in MTC. I hadn't used it before so I thought I'd give it a try. Super easy and I love the results. It only took seconds to create the lattice cutting file. Way cool. And last but not least I decided to do a shaped card. I love penguins and this one was "fat" enough to hold a gift card inside. LOL. All in all, it was fun. If you like the bear file, he is the "fat bear" from the Treasurebox Pals set at www.treasureboxdesigns.com. He's the second bear I've cut from that set and I LOVE him! I love love love the bears but I have been having a heck of a time trying to find anymore textured brown cardstock. I used to buy this at my local scrapbook store for 4.99 for 50 sheets and then used a 40% off coupon so it made it really inexpensive. I only have a few sheets left and can't find any brown locally in a color that I want for my bears. I did find some, but they wanted $.69 cents a sheet for it! Are you kidding me! For a single colored cardstock! NOT. So my quest continues and I have to admit, even ebay has failed me on this one. Sigh. We'll see......

Santa and Snowman Tile

Hello! Tonight I have been working on this Santa and Snowman Tile. I'm still doing the challenges over at the MTC board and this one is for the miscellaneous gift....a gift you would give to a male/female at the last minute when you needed an extra one. I think it turned out really cute.

Happy Holidays Nugget Box

Hello! I got this cute little idea from one of my friends. Thanks Cheryl! She was making them for gifts and cutting them all buy hand. You know me, I thought there is an easier way and so since one of the challenges on the cybercrop was to decorate a gift, I made a cutting file to hold the little candy nuggets and made my own! I love how they turned out. The one's she did held 9 nuggets, but I wanted to cut it on a 8.5 x 11 inch paper and so I made my cutting file to hold 8 nuggets instead of 9. I can't decide which ones I like better. The decorated box or the one that says Happy Holidays. Hmmm.....some of both maybe? LOL. I love the poinsettia on top with this paper. Pretty pretty! Anway, the top one is the one I entered in the cyper crop that I joined. It was fun, but I decided that 11:00 pm is NOT the time to try to make a box file. Needless to say, I had to redo much of it to make it work today! I think they look great though and a cute gift!

Wise Men Still Seek Him

Hi everyone. I made a bunch of these last year to give as gifts but I wanted one for me so....here's mine! LOL.

Poinsetta cards, tag, bag

I joined a cyber crop on the MTC forums a couple of weeks ago and it started yesterday. I had to create a bag/box with a poinsettia, a matching tag, and a card with two poinsettias on it. I had some left over pieces so I made an additional card just for fun and a few more tags. Here is one of my entries for the crop. I've never done a cyber crop before and so far it's been fun. This poinsetta file created by Penny was so easy to cut and assemble. I LOVE it. I also love the shimmer bazzil cardstock. I think it makes this flower look so beautiful. I think I might make even more of these to put on packages as bows this year. We'll see how much time I get. Thankfully my daughter is feeling better. She has been sick and running a fever for 11 days! She even missed Thanksgiving Dinner. Darn it! The medicine the doctor gave us hasn't been working, but thankfully she's feeling better and actually went to school today. We'll see how she feels when she gets home. If you want Penny's file, go here: http://pennyduncancreations.blogspot.com/2010/09/so-now-lets-say-p-is-for-pdc-poinsetta.html Penny also has a tutorial on how to assemble this flower if you want to watch it. If you want the purse file it's free and can be found under the MTC challenge file but you have to be a member of the forums to download it. Being a member is also free. If you aren't a member, you might want to sign up as there are lots of help files posted on this forum and tutorials on how to use MTC. Here's the link for that tote file. http://forum.make-the-cut.com/discussion/9522/christmas-challenge-one-gift-set-by-michellemybelle/#Item_1 Enjoy!

Christmas Bears Border

Ok...so I wanted to show you my cute little bears. Aren't they cute! I've been working on last years Christmas pages since this Christmas is fast approaching! LOL. I needed to get them scrapped before I have new ones to worry about! I have to admit, that I actually made these bears from the basic shapes in MTC patterned after the bear on Treasure Box Designs. I followed a video on the Make the Cut forums that taught us how to make a cat using the basic shapes. If you want to learn to make your own bears, here is the link to the page that has the webinars on it. You will need to select the one that says make a cat from scratch by Julie. http://forum.make-the-cut.com/discussion/3191/webinar-recordings-updated-10192010. I think he turned out really cute. I must admit though, that he is the bear that inspired me to make my purchases at Treasure Box Designs yesterday. Since, I loved all of the bears on the Treasure Box Designs site not to mention the animals, the cocoa cafe etc. and wanted several of them, I bought the sets. It was worth my time and effort to buy her set and get using them. I have several bear files already, but...... isn't he cute! I can't wait to cut the others. Well worth the purchase! LOL. My next one to cut is going to be her "fat" bear. I think he is so adorable. :-) So if you want to purchase these cute little bears, go to www.treasureboxdesigns.com and have fun! If you haven't been to her site, spend a few minutes looking around. She has some really nice files! Enjoy!

Snow Stinkin Fun

Ok....I couldn't resist. After getting up at 4:00 this morning to go shopping on Black Friday, I came home and decided to "buy" myself a Christmas present. LOL. At Walmart, they had their Cricut Lite cartridges for $20.00 and I thought about buying Four Legged Friends, but as I thought about it, I decided that I wanted to buy some files from Treasure Box Designs instead. Now for those of you who know me, I rarely buy images or files because their are so many for free. However, hers are just so cute that I finally gave in. I have been pondering purchasing some of her files for a very long time and finally decided "why not." Merry Christmas to me! I love her files and bought several sets as she was having a black Friday sale herself at 55% off. At those prices, I decided it was worth my time to buy her files instead of searching for images that I could create and then spending the time to create some myself. So, I spent my money here instead of on a cartridge and I am thrilled with my purchase. If you want to check out some really cute files and don't mind paying for them, go to http://www.treasureboxdesigns.com/ This cute little skunk is from her Treasure Pals set. I also bought some others including her pet shop, camping fun, bears, cocoa shop and can't remember the others now..... I also made some cute little bears that I'll have to do something with later and then post those. In the meantime, aren't these skunks cute! I created the border with a snowflake and repeated it until I had 8.5 inches of it and then attached a rectangle to the bottom, welded it, and voila, one snowflake border! I love Make the Cut for it's ease of making anything I want, when I want it. I always have the perfect embelishments because I can make anything I want when I need it without having to buy any cartridges or images unless I LOVE them all!!! Love it!

Fall Border Layouts

I thought I would post a finished layout for you to see because I had a couple of people email me and ask me what I used the borders for. Since I still scrapbook 8.5 x 11, here is how I used these for this layout. I think it turned out cute! Hope that gives you some idea of how fun borders can be and why I've been doing so many lately.....it's easy to create a border one piece at a time and then actually put them together on a page when I get a few more minutes. Easy to do with kids and interuptions.....I'd love to see what you are creating and if you do any borders too! Have fun! (If you like some of these cuts, if you scroll down on my blog, you will see the links to the ones that I know where they came frome. Enjoy!)

Pooh Fall Border

Friends to scrap with, cute projects, all in all, a great afternoon! Love it! My friend came over today and we created a tabbed recipe book for her to complete in no time. It was fun. (Thanks Erika! Come on over again SOON and we'll do it again!) I created these cute little fall Pooh bears. I fell in love with him and his adorable hat and knew he would look great on a border with the left overs from my other fall borders plus these other cute pumpkins I found. So....here are a couple of pictures of my pooh bears and my border that I created with them. If you want the pooh bear file, I found it here.... http://www.jenniferscrapshack.com/2009/09/scarecrow-pooh-svg . If the other files belong to you, please let me know so I can give you credit.

Christmas Borders

I'm so excited, I have spent the last couple of days playing in my scrap room while it's been snowing. How fun is that! This is what I came up with, isn't it fun. And guess what, today they are doing a bloghop over at http://www.cookingwiththecricut.blogspot.com/ and I think I'm going to enter these into their contest that they are having. Wish me luck. I've never been in a contest before, but I think it will be fun. I have really enjoyed doing these borders lately. I've had the turtles and hedgehogs done for over a year trying to decide what to do with them. I think they are a fun twist to the normal Christmas stuff. What do you think? I can't remember who shared these ornaments, but if they are yours, please let me know so I can give you credit. As for the hedgehog, if you search my blog for animals, I listed the font that he came from. The turtle is an old cricut cartridge cut (like I said I've had then done forever!). After making the borders, I still have lots of pieces left over to put on the rest of the pages when I actually put them together. What do you think. I know it's silly, but my favorite thing on these borders are the little bows in the corners with the button in the middle. Why???? I have no idea, but I like them!

Snowman card or bag fronts.....

I was on the MTC message boards earlier today and Beanie posted some adorable cards that she made! I thought they were so super cute! I think my favorite thing was the crooked little nose on them. I asked her if she minded if I "scraplifted" her idea and she said she didn't mind at all so here are my scraplifted versions. I plan on using these on the gift bags for my neighbors/friends. I think they will love them. I know I do! Thanks Beanie! These are awesome! If you would like to see her creations, you'll have to go to her blog here: http://beanies-tag-your-it.blogspot.com/ While you are there, take a peak at her blog, I love it and if you see something you like, make sure to drop her a note!

Bee Cause

Tonight I wanted a quick project and so I dug through my pictures that I hadn't scrapbooked and found these flowers that my hubby picked one day for me and left them on the table with a note saying I love you. Because I love these simple expressions of love, I took out my camera to capture this sweet memory. I love you too sweetie! Anyway, I happen to have one bee left and all of these cuts done and left over from something else. Even the color paper added to the border were scraps that I didn't throw away because I liked the colors. Well, that means all I had to do was cut the borders, title, and put it together. I LOVE how this turned out. You know...some layouts come together and some just don't...I actually scrapbooked one the other night just to get it off my table....it had been in various stages of incomplete for almost 2 years and "never" did come together. It ended up in the book with the pictures just stuck to the page with a title. Nothing fancy, but I was so tired of looking at it, I just didn't care anymore. This layout, I love how the colors came together and softly whisper to me and how all these leftover cuts just seem to go together. That's rare for me to have it look intentional when it was all scraps....but I'm glad and love it.

Print and Cut

Woohoo! I just had to try this new feature in the MTC beta version. This is my first attempt at print and cut! Who needs the Cricut Imagine???? Not me or anyone else who has this wonderful program! It's not exact....my printer is an HP and took a little tweeking, but for my first try, I'm not complaining! It wasn't too far off, but between my Cricut and the printer I had to adjust quite a little. I printed him at x=1 and y=1, but when I cut him, I had to adjust x=1.25 and y=.9375. It's late so I'll have to play some more another time with a different image and see if these numbers hold true, but for now, I'm pretty happy with the results. Interestingly, many Imagine customers aren't getting any better results with a $500 machine. Yikes. I've heard of several of them returning them because they didn't preform like they expected them too for the price. Overall, I'm quite pleased with the results! What do you think?