News Paper Gift bags

I've been on a big recycling kick lately and am constantly on the search for was to upcycle as many items as I can. Thanks to Pinterest I have found lots of great ideas. Including this tutorial from How About Orange. I need to work on making these a bit bigger, but was impressed with how they turned out.

I used jewelry hemp and a plastic straw for the handles because that's what I had on hand. I like the added touch. The hardest part of this project was picking pictures and pretty things on the news paper that would look good on the bag. Now that I have a Cricut I can add fun embellishments to my gift bags!!

Christmas Crafts and Gifts

Happy Holidays!!! Grab a mug of cocoa and relax as you check out what this elf has been busy creating this month. In an effort to save money this year I have decided to make several of my own gifts. My friend Jen and I also had our annual Christmas craft day and made Count Down to Santa Calenders.

When A Cherry on Top did their October crop, they had a class to make a Christmas Countdown Clipboard.  This is what we used as inspiration for our projects. I wanted mine to be classic and fun and she did her's more vintage in style. Although it took all day Im very impressed with the results. We made these the week before thanks giving.

This one is mine.

This one is Jen's

On Sunday we got together again to work on some gifts. We both made chocolate covered marshmallow cocoa dippers. I also made some chocolate covered spoon dippers to go with some awesome mugs that I will show you in a bit.

Here are the Marshmallow dippers. The candy cane ones are my favorite.

I used sixlets, sprinkles, mini marshmallows and chips to decorate the spoons. Some I used the Andes mint baking chips for.

My favorite item that I crafted are the mustache mugs. I wish the was an original idea, but I saw them on Pinterest first and decided I just had to make them. Don't mind the terrible picture of me showing of the mugs.

 Here are all 6 mugs with a package of 4 dippers (2 of each) and a package of cocoa. The mugs have a mustache on both sides.

 My boyfriend gets his sister Christmas socks every year. So this is her mug. Don't you just love those cute ginger bread men bags!

I still have a lot of baking to do. In fact I should be doing that instead of blogging :) I have cookies and fudge left to do. I did manage to make these amazing Oreo truffles yesturday.  I started to run out of white chocolate so the last ones look more like dirty snowballs.

My final project are these adoreable cloth blocks for baby. I made some for T and some for the secret santa in my mommy group. I found the fabric at Joanns in a cute little bundle for $6.99. Im terrible at mesuring so they are more rectangle in shape but still fun. T tested them out for me.

Well I have more mugs and cookies waiting to be finished. Have a Merry Christmas!!

Easter

This layout I used Sketchy Thursday 10-20 sketch. Im excited that I actually got a layout done in time to submitt for a challange. I'm usually a week behind. Easter was Baby T's first major holiday. Being a first time mom I was so excited to dress him up, I had no idea he would be less than impressed. This is the first time that I used solid white card stock as the background. I really like how it turned out and will be using this technique again.

The journaling forms an x in around the pictures. My friend Jen was sweet and crafted me the basket using her Cricut.

This is one of my favorite layouts so far.

An afternoon of Scrapping

I feel pretty accomplished after this afternoons scrapping session with my friend Jen. We each got 3 layouts done. Not to bad considering we had a 7 month old baby and a cat to entertain the whole time. I'm starting to love scrapping challenges and following scrapping blogs. My pages are so much better now that I have some inspiration. I still need to do some journaling on the the 3rd layout so I will post that later.
More of my beautiful baby boy:

 These Pictures are from he newborn photo shoot. I used the journaling to make note of the special items in the pictures. Such as the hat that I knitted while I was still pregnant and the plaid outfit that was his dad's when he was a baby. This layout is based on Let's Scrap 10.12.11 sketch.

My next layout is also from Lets Scrap, 4.6.11 sketch. Jen also used this sketch today, great minds think a like. These photos are from birth to 1 month old. Its fun to look back and see how much my peanut has grown since then.

Hopefully my photography skills will get better so I have nicer pictures of my pages. Thanks for taking a look.

Meeting the family

This page captures a special moment of visiting family members. I used the sketch 6/16 from Sketchy Thursday . Like most sketches I do I added my own twist.

1st day home

Slow and steady is the pace for working on all of these baby pages. This layout is based on Sketches in Thyme 9/15 layout. This page has two parts, the car ride home from the hospital and our first moments at home. I also submitted this page in ScrapFit Challange #53 which is to have journaling boarder your photos.

4 Generations

The main inspiration for this page is the four generation picture. I used the9/29 Sketchy Thursday Layout. I love being able to use bright colors and patterns. I also had a lot of fun using the chip board embellishments for the first time. All the retro toys were perfect for this page.

For the colorful squares around the pictures I layered strips of patterend paper.

1st Bath

I wanted to have this layout done in time to submit for a challenge but a certain baby I know slowed me down. Lets Scrap had a challenge using circles. I thought that would be perfect for a bath page.

The sticker pack I used to embellish had these cute bubbles and cotton swabs. All in all Im really happy with the way this layout looks.

Thanks for taking a look.

Challange Inspired

Yesterday was a productive scrapping day thanks to my friend Jen and The movie "The Lion King" (my 6 month old DS loved it). My first layout is just 1 page. I love the color and pattern combos. I did this one for Sketchy Thursday 9.15/ Scrap Fit's F is for Friendship challenge #52. The pictures are of my son and our cat. They have been pals from the very start.

This is my first time using buttons. I really like the way add to the circle patterned paper. With the buttons I also entered this into Weekend Warm-up #14.

My second layout is based on Lets Scrap 3-30-11. I liked this layout because I was able to use most of the pictures from my baby shower. The giraffe and the title I recycled from decorations from the shower.

These brads add a lil spunk to a full page without crowding the pictures.

Thanks for checking out my latest pages.

Baby Tag Blankets

In a mommy group I belong to somebody kept bringing up how much their baby loved the taggie blanket. After a little research I found out how easy they are to make and decided this would make a great gift for a baby shower. Chica and Jo have a very easy to follow set of directions.

Here is the first one I made. I used 1 1/2 inch blue ribbon, 1/2 inch peach ribbon, and blue and white rick rack. The front is flannel ducky pattern the back is soild blue cotton material.

I thought this one might be to busy so the second one i only used the 2 blue ribbons on each side and alternated the rick rack. I was out of blue material so I used the flannel fro front and back.

Love at First Sight

This is my favorite layout  I've done so far. The embellishments where left over from my baby shower. I have so many emotions about that day its hard to pick the right ones to journal about. The title was made using a cricket. I have entered this in the Scrapfit workout #51 Salt & Pepper.

1st Contest Entry

This is my first page created for contest entry. It is based off of 9.8 sketch challange from Sketchy Thursday. The paper strips and ribbion are from gift bags I received from my baby shower.