Happy New Year to all of my followers and friends!

I made this card today, simply because I felt like actually crafting again for the first time in about a week.  Once it was finished, I thought about who I should give it to, and then it hit me - this card is for all of you!!!  All of my followers, readers, commenters, and friends out in blogger land.  Having just started my blog almost a year ago, I have been so appreciative of all of your support, encouragement, feedback, and comments!!!  So, to all of you out there, HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!!  I hope 2011 is a wonderful year for all of us, having had my fair share of CRAP this year.  The crap will never go away completely, but my hope for all of us is that we have a great year!  So, here's to all of you!

Oh yeah, I used Wild Card for all of the cuts, and clear acetate which I colored with alcohol ink for the bottle.  Some swiss dots on the cork, Divine Swirls on the "foil" label, and the last two letters of Moet on the main label finished this card.  Thanks for visiting, and happy 2011!

Look at this face!! : )

I got a lot of grief for this from men - namely my boyfriend and my best friend's husband.  Am I the only one who thinks it's cute???  It was only on her for a minute, and she was eating treats while it was on, so she was fine!!  Although, she does have quite the look of shame on her face, doesn't she??  Oh well.....she came over and curled up on my lap a minute later, so she couldn't have been too mad! 

I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas, and I will probably start making some projects again later this week.  If you have some time off like me, ENJOY!!!!

Merry Christmas, blogger friends!

I just wanted to take a minute to wish everyone a Merry Christmas.  Hope everyone has a great day!!!

Last minute cards

So, today I realized the one pitfall of having my Mom and brother buy cards from me - all of my brothers and their families are possibly about to get 3 sets of the same card.  Yuck...SO...off to work I went.  I made these pretty quickly, and I love easel cards, so it was fun!  Let me start by saying I scraplifted this from the Cricut MB, but I have no idea from whom, so I apologize for that!  I did change mine up a little, if that helps, lol.  I used Winter Frolic for the trees, Winter Woodland for the tags, and DCWV Tis the Season paper (not cardstock) stack for all of these.  I added stickles for lights, and used Divine Swirls for some texture.  I also cut the middle layer in the darker color and pop dotted it for some interest and dimension.  The stamps are from SU!  Well, that about covers it so, thanks for visiting today!

You HAVE to try this website!!

A friend of mine came into work yesterday, and said, "You have to go to this website - it's so much fun."  Well, I was hooked.  It's a site where you can customize a free, yes FREE, phone call from Santa to anyone you want!  You can input your own phone number so it looks like the call is coming from your phone.  And if they don't answer??  It leaves a voice mail.  I made one for my boyfriend, and he pormptly sent me a text that read: "Don't you have work to do at work?"  Nope, not this week!!  HAHAHA!!  I sent one to my Mom from her cat, and she called me cracking up.  Highly recommend it!!  Here is the website:

http://www.sendacallfromsanta.com/

Have fun, everyone!!   : )

Simple Christmas nativity card

I threw this one together in about 2 minutes, and the choice of papers aren't my favorite, but I am at my boyfriend's today, and didn't bring my stacks with me, so....this was kind of a last minute, "Oh crap, I forgot to bring the card to include in his parents' package."  Sooo...I went in the other room and searched through some scraps and found these, which ended up being the exact sizes I needed.  Phew!

I used Inspired Heart for the cuts, and the tag was from Winter Woodland.  I am addicted to the pop up cards now, and they are so easy, why not jsut pop it up??  LOL.  The stamp on the outside is from Scrappy Mom's stamps, and the inside are both SU! stamps with Real Red ink spot.  The card base is paper from Anna Griffin, and the inside mat is a K&Co piece.  I think that about covers it all, so thanks for visiting today!

Santa gift bag

Well, I can't believe that today is the last day of school!!  We are officially on Christmas break as of 2:00 PM today, and it is going to be nice.  Of course, I'm still going to have to be there for the sports, but at least it will just be a couple of hours each day.  Hooray for break!

So, I put this together for my friend at work, and SVG Cuts has done it again!  This is from a set called Big Christmas Bags, and they certainly weren't kidding.  This Santa is 11.5" tall - what a great set for gifts!  I made it out of some thicker cardstock to give it some strength, and then used regular cardstock for the details.  The picture doesn't really show the details well, but here goes.  For his hat, I used paper from DCWV that says Ho Ho Ho all over it - can you see it?  Also, his beard, mustache, and pompom on the hat were all run through the Cuttlebug with Divine Swirls.  I used 1/16" pop dots on the mustache, and 1/8" on the nose and eyebrows, which also is not visible here.  Some more patterned paper on the sides from DCWV Tis the Season, and that finished it off.  The second picture is the assembled gift all finished with tissue paper and a ribbon to top it off.  It really looks much cuter in person, seeing all the dimension and details.  Oh well - thanks for looking today!

A few more cards by guest designer Noah...lol

He wanted to do some cat themed cards for our family members with cats, so I used My Scrap Chick's Cat's Life set, and Peachy Keen Stamps' Critter Faces.  I thought they turned out really cute.  Again, he picked out all of the papers and patterns, the faces, embellishments, stamps, etc.  The inside of all three are the same, so, again, one picture is sufficient!

These are the last of the cards, so thanks for visiting, and I am letting him read all of your comments, so thank you!

Christmas star bag

Another from the SVG Cuts set, this is really easy too!  They do a great job of putting these SVG's together to make them super simple to assemble.  This is the star bag from that set, and I decided to leave off the "Joy" banner and make it out of a cardstock with words on it instead. 

The tag was cut from Winter Frolic at 2.5"x1.6", and I added some small adhesive gems to the tree to give it a little bling.  The paper was from DCWV Tis the Season pack, and I really liked the non-traditional color scheme.  I believe my Mom is going to use this for giving a gift card, and it is the perfect size for it.  A little tissue paper and it will be ready to go!  Thanks for visiting today.

Another Christmas gift box

This is another in the set from SVG cuts that also included the double gift bag below.  I really, really like this set, and it is easy, despite the mistakes in folding you can easily see on this one, lol.  It was definitely a test run, and I have some playing to do with the siazing of the scalloped layers, but all in all I think it turned out OK.  I used DCWV patterned papers, with the one for the base of the box being from last year's "The Christmas Stack" and the scalloped layer patterns from this year's "Tis the Season".  I used plain white and hit it with the CB Divine Swirls for one of the layers, and finished it off with some adhesive gems. 

If you have MTC and want this set, go here, to find it.  That's about all, so thanks for visiting today!

Super cute cocoa holder!

This was so easy and turned out so cute!  I got this set from Treasure Box Designs, and I love it!  I am definitely going to make more, and next time I think I will try using my Peachy Keen snowman face stamps with it!  I sized this to hold a standard cocoa packet, and then the snowman layers to scale.  The snowflake paper is Bo Bunny, and I got a bunch of these loose at Joann's.  The first picture is empty, and the second is with the cocoa inside.

Hope you like it, and thanks for visiting today!

My turn, finally! Lol

I have been dying to try these Christmas bags and boxes from SVG Cuts for a couple of weeks now, and finally had some time last night!  This is one of only five adorable patterns, and I didn't really do it justice.  I'm not entirely happy with my selection of patterns and embellishments, but I was so excited to just try it that I didn't put a whole lot of thought into the details, lol. 

Anyway, this was all done on 12x12 paper and the overall bag is 9" high and 5" wide.  The inside area of the bag that would hold a gift, etc, is 4.5" H x 3" W, so it's a good size.  If a company ever makes 12x24 Christmas or holiday patterned paper, you could make this even larger, but oh well (hint, hint someone!!!).

SVG cuts broke this down into 2 pieces, and it was really easy to put together - I highly recommend this set for anyone with MTC or SCAL.  The patterned papers are from DCWV new Christmas stacks this year and I got them from Michael's.  The stickles are uneven, but again....rushing in my excitement to get it together, lol.

Hopefully I can get the rest of these done this weekend and show you more.  So much I want to do, so little time!  Thanks for visiting today!

More of my nephew's Christmas cards

Here are a couple more we worked on this weekend.  I plan on actually making something myself soon, I promise!  For these, we used the Mickey Christmas Cuttlebug die and for the deer card we used Jolly Holidays.  I really like that cart, by the way, and can't wait to use my Peachy Keen face stamps with the elves and Santa!  The inside of the card is the same on both, so I only took one picture.  I figured for simplicity's sake, we would keep it the same.  He did all of the stamping, except the wheel, which is an SU! wheel.  The tree is from a Recollections set I picked up at Michael's. Thanks for visting today!

My first ever pop-up card!

And boy, did I fall in love with this technique.  It was so easy with the tutorial from Split Coast Stampers site, and this was created by my 7 year-old nephew Noah.  Here's the story: a couple of weeks ago, he came to me and said, "Aunt Kim, I was wondering if maybe one day we could spend time together and you could help me make Christmas cards with your machine for everyone in the family."  WELL, how cute is that??  He quickly ran off all of the themes he wanted, and my mind started going.  Once he said gingerbread house for one, I knew it was time to try a pop-up card.

For this, I used a MTC and a My Scrap Chick set called North Pole, and it is so adorable!  I did use Jolly Holidays for the gingerbread man, simply because it was a simple cut.  I added a few stickles to him, pop dotted some elements of the house. and did the pop-up portion of the card.  My nephew did everything else.  he picked out all of the colors, the papers, the layout, the ribbon, and the saying!  He wanted me to write inside, "Run, run as fast as you can, you can't catch me, I'm the gingerbread man."  So that is exactly what I wrote, and you should have seen his face when it was all done.  Well, actually, you can see it below!  Lol.  Of course, I wasin charge of the Cricut and the glue, but I was so impressed with what he came up with.  Sunday we are doing a few more, so stay tuned.  Thanks for visiting today!

Cookie box

This is an entry for our cybercrop over at MTC that I made.  Dana over at SVG and MTC files graciously provided it to everyone for this challenge, and here is what I did with it.  This is nice and big, and it was cut out on two pieces of 12x12 Bo Bunny paper.  I used vellum for the cutout area, and the tag is a basic tag with Amy Chomas' gel pen holder and St. Nicholas font from Freefonts.com.  The final product is 7: tall and 7" wide, and it was so simple to put together!  Thanks, Dana!

Probably not deserving, BUT....

Two wonderful ladies have passed along an award to me, so I wanted to take a few minutes to acknowledge the honor!  I do truly feel honored for this one, because I feel like I have been neglecting my blog lately.  Long story short, I have been working a TON and crafting has been put on hold right now.  I'm also spending most of my spare time trying to get all of my Mom's Christmas decorations up for and with her, since she is still walking with her cane and cannot do much.  I even got on the roof last week - aren't you all proud??!  I'm shocked I didn't break my legs!

Anyway, on to the subject at hand!  Stacy at Love that Bug, and Maria at Stamp, Cut, Create both gave me this award, so I want to start off by thanking them!  I have "known" Stacy for a while in blogger land and admired her great talent, but Maria is a new blogger friend, so I had an amazing time discovering her blog - she is AWESOME!!  Given the rules of the award, I would love to give it back to her having just discovered her, but I guess that would be silly!  So, what I can do is encourage all of you to head on over to Maria's and Stacy's blogs and check out all of the great projects they have been working on lately (check out Maria's test tube candy holders)!

OK, this is really long, so here are the rules for this award:
1. Thank and link back to the person who gave you the award - DONE!

2. Share 8 things about yourself
3. Pay it forward to 8 blogs you have just recently discovered
4. Contact those bloggers and tell them about the award

8 things about myself:
1.  I work TOO MUCH!!!  Lol
2.  I have seven nieces and nephews, ranging in age from 23 to 7!
3.  I got a Master's degree that I will never be able to use.  Blah....
4.  This was the sixth Thanksgiving without my Dad, and I still cried like a baby all day Wednesday.  Ugh.
5.  I discovered crafting and card making a year and a half ago after seeing the Cricut infomercial!
6.  I am JUST starting to get into stamping, but will never have the time or patience to do the whole coloring in thing.  God bless those of you talented people who do all of that!
7.  I sometimes tend to be clumsy, and my boyfriend points and laughs.  : )
8.  I love animals, and cry and look away when I see those stupid commercials with Sarah McLaughlin singing, with pictures of abused animals flashing on the screen. 

Now, the 8 blogs I would like to pass this along to (disclaimer: they may not all be recently discovered, sorry):
1.  A Beanie Creation
2.  Greenbean's Crafterole
3.  TX Scrapper Mom
4.  Creating With Scrapbooks
5.  Cut By Connie
6.  Card Creations By Lorraine
7.  Staying Crafty
8.  4 Goofballs

Thank you again Stacy and Maria for passing this along, and I hope to get some actual crafting done this week!

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas....

...everywhere you go, including my blog!  I hope no one minds that I once AGAIN changed the look of my blog - I tend to do that with the seasons/holidays.  Let me know what you think.

Thanksgiving placecards

I know these aren't as fancy as some people's placecards I've seen posted, but this idea was from Carrie over at Greenbean's Crafterole, and I loved it when I saw it.  I used the pumpkin cut from Create A Critter for some, and the turkey from Doodlecharms for some.  I wanted to put some more details on them, such as the lines on the pumpkins and coloring in the plate on the turkey, but everyone came so early that I hadn't even finished the names yet, and they were all up in my face wondering what I had, LOL!!  Oh well.  The nieces and nephews all liked them - even my 23 year old niece loved it! 

Eww, look how awful my handwriting is!  Yuck.  Anyway, I used thin chipboard that I got off of eBay a year or so ago, but you could use cereal boxes too, since that is what I normally use.  I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday and weekend.  Thanks for visiting!

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

I couldn't decide which  I liked better, so I decided to post both!  We got an extra special surprise this monring when it started snowing here in Philly!  We have the parade down the Parkway every year, and it looked so beautiful with the snow falling!!  Anyway, I hope everyone has a wonderful Thanksgiving Day, and takes time to be thankful for everything we have!

Just in case anyone didn't believe me, I just took this picture a few minutes ago!  So pretty!

Finished MTC print and cut project!

Whew, I can't believe that it has been almost a week since I've posted!  I have been putting in so many days and hours at work, I am EXHAUSTED!  Literally - I have worked every day since last Sunday, the 14th.  I have yet to get a day off since then, so crafting hasn't been happening much lately.

I was able to crank this out last night, though, and I think it turned out OK for being thrown together in literally 5 minutes!  I used a printable set from Treasure Box Designs, and how cute is she?!?!  I also got a stamp set from Scrappy Moms, and I LOVE how perfectly this picture went with the sentiment!  So, I printed her on the MTC mat at 5.5"x4.5".  Once I saw it, I knew it was too big for a card, so I had to get my brain working to figure out what I could do.  I ran to Wal Mart and got a $1.00 cheap picture frame, and used only the easel back of it to make this.  I covered the easel with a 5.5"x7.5" mat from American Crafts Merrymint pack from last year, then I used a 6.5"x8.5" piece of green, cut the square out of the middle, used an SU! lights wheel stamp, the Scrappy Mmoms stamp for the sentiment, and that was it!

I don't have a picture of it, but I also cut out extra layers of just the bear and made her dimensional.  Maybe I will try to get a picture of that later to illustrate, but basically I printed out the entire image, then adjusted the settings in MTC so it would only print and cut out the bear parts.  I then used pop dots to layer her face, arms, and feet!  Have I mentioned how much I LOVE MTC?!?!  Lol!

Ok, definitely going to try to get a picture of the dimensional aspects up, maybe with some screen shots of what I did in Make the Cut to achieve this??  Anyone think they may like to see that??  Thanks for visiting today!

Print and Cut with Make the Cut....WOOO HOOOOO!!!!

OK, so I have been really excited about this for over a week, but have been working until almost 10 every night and unable to play until now.  I think you are all aware how much I LOVE my Make the Cut, and now, Andy, the developer, has added in a way to print and cut images.  The ones below are from Treasure Box Designs, and I cannot be more excited about how they came out!  I got the paper placement just the slightest bit off, but for a very first try, I think it came out pretty well!!  I am going to need to buy printer ink every week, I'm so hooked! 

The newest version of MTC also has a rhinestone template feature, for which I bought a new iRock tool.  Hopefully, I get to play with that feature soon!!  Thanks for visiting today - now I need to turn these cute cut outs into projects!!!

Glitter ornaments for the cause

This week, my school is hosting a Coaches vs Cancer basketball tournament in honor of my co-worker's mom, who passed away from ovarian cancer in 2008.  People usually donate items to be sold to raise money, so this was my contribution.  I used Stand and Salute for the awareness ribbon, and did the floor polish technique we all know and love for the glitter, lol!  I thought lavender was the color for ovarian cancer, but just found out it is turquoise, so OOPS!! 

I only made eight for now, since these were such an epic fail at the craft fair I did a few weeks ago.  If they sell, I can always make more for later in the week, as the tournament runs all week and weekend!  Thanks for visiting today!

T-shirt painting

This was another project I did for the craft fair, that I had forgotten to photograph and post - oops!  This was very simple, and I used Hello Kitty Greetings and Pooh Font for it.  I love Pooh Font for these baby onesies, as it is so simple and cute.  Anyway, I just did the blackout for the orange base, and then cut the layer, ironed on the second piece of freezer paper after the orange was dry, and painted in the black.  Simple!!  Thanks for visiting today!

First time playing with.....

Chalkboard paint!!!!  I first learned of this after seeing Carrie at Greenbean's Crafterole do her tutu chalkboards, and I had no clue prior to that there was such a thing as chalkboard paint. So I decided it was time to go to Lowe's and give it a shot.  This was so easy, it's ridiculous!  I cut the penguin at 10" tall from Animal Kingdom out of a cereal box, and painted it with the chalkboard paint.  I then used the face layer to paint the white for the face and orange for the beak.  I have written and erased several times, and I love it!

I chose the penguin because I made this to keep at my boyfriend's, and he loves penguins!  Every time we see one on TV, he gets a big smile on his face, so this was a no brainer.  Sorry about the quality of the picture, but I had to use my cell phone, so it is marginal at best, but you can get the idea.  Anyway, this was a lot of fun, and I highly recommend playing with this paint and technique to everyone!  Thanks for visiting today.

Third and final old Thanksgiving card

I think maybe this one is my favorite, but I don't know.  What do you all think?  The beard and mustache are from Paper Doll Dress Up, and they are supposed to be Santa's, but I made them black for his "disguise".  More stickles on this one and (thank you for the comment in the first post) the turkey is from Animal Kingdom.  I'm currently working on my first project in over a month, so hopefully I will be posting something brand new in the next couple of days!  Thanks for visiting today.

Old Thanksgiving card #2

OK, here is the second one.  I used a Cuttlebug folder on the mat, and I thought the googly eyes gave him the perfect expression for the sentiment.  Stickles galore again on this one!  Thanks for visiting today!

Old Thansgiving cards

For the next three days, I will be sharing three Thanksgiving cards I made last year.  Again, this was in the first few weeks of my cardmaking, and it's funny to see how elementary my first few weeks were.  Notice the overuse of stickles - yeah, I had just bought them and this was my first work with them!  LOL.  I don't even remember what cart the turkey is from, since this was long before my Gypsy or design studio days.  I used my printer for the sentiments, and a few stickers here and there.  I also used the Bazzill swiss dots papers on two of them.  So, here is the first one, a Thanksgiving card circa 2009.  Thanks for visiting today!

Attitude aplenty!! LOL

I want to thank Stacy, over at Love that Bug, for giving me this award!  I was very surprised, and not sure I deserved an award due to my sporadic posting lately, but when I saw the title of the award, I was like, "Yeah, there's one I can accept!"  LOL!  Well, Stacy is jsut so sweet, and she always takes the time to comment on many of my posts, and I am always so appreciative of that.  She does some amazing work over there, so please take a minute to check out her site - and her adorable monkeys!! 

The rules for this award are simple and few - to list three things about me and my blog that make it unique, and to pass it along to five other bloggers.
OK, three things that make me and my blog unique:

1.  I like to change up the background for every holiday and season.  It probably drives some people crazy, but I'm goofy like that.  Sooo...get ready for the Christmas look soon!  Heehee.
2.  I like to share tidbits from my personal life in addition to my crafts.  For example, pictures of my new cat, the most recent post before this one.......sorry if that annoys anyone!
3.  I bring my goofy personality and "tude" into every post write up I do!  I really am this silly in real life!!  : )


OK, so the five people I would like to pass this on to are:

1.  Barb at Snowmanlover's Paperie
2.  Carrie at Greenbean's Crafterole
3.  Melissa at Melissa's Scrappen Place
4.  Jin at Under a Cherry Tree
5.  Marcia at Scrappin Times

Thanks again, Stacy, for thinking of me on this one!

Looking for some good advice, please!!!!

Well, here's the deal.  I have a lot of student loans, and some credit card debt, all from going back to grad school.  I had no debt and a good amount in savings before I went to grad school, and now, well.... Today I received a bill for my final student loan going into repayment, and it is not good.  Over the last few months, I have barely been able to meet my bills each month.  Now, with this new bill every month, my bills officially exceed my income by about $300.00. 

SO, does anyone have any great advice - loan consolidation is not being offered in the recession, so that's out!  If anyone has been through it, I would LOVE to hear your suggestions.  At this point, I basically need a miracle.  Anyone have one of those lying around??  LOL.  Ugh...

Happy Halloween, everyone!

Here is a little pumpkin that my boyfriend and I drew faces on, lol.  It was too small to carve, so I just got out the sharpie and away we went!  Sorry the pictures are from the side, but the reflection from the flash was awful, unless I changed the angle of the lens.  Oh well, you get the idea!

I hope everyone has fun trick or treating, if you are taking the kids, and take some time to watch part of one of the Halloween movies on AMC today!  Have fun and be safe!