Exciting News!

Now that the announcement has been posted, I can share that I've been selected, along with a ton of other talented ladies, to be a guest designer over at pinkcricut.com!

I'm a huge fan of Sarah's, and of her design team (Erin Lee Creative is one of the first cricut blogs I ever followed!) so I can't tell you how excited I am to work with them. I'm not sure yet when my day to be featured is, but I will let you, faithful two readers, know when it is!

Want to see the card that landed me the spot? :)It really is one of my favorite cards I've ever made. When I cut that tiny cupcake out and put it together, I may have actually squealed from delight. It's SO cute!

Recipe:

Bird from Create A Critter, 3 inches
Cupcake-Sweet Treats, 1 inch
heart and scalloped heart-welded and cut from gypsy
Face Stamp-Peachy Keen Medium Critter Faces
White gel pen
Diamond Glaze (makes the eyes glossy)
Patterned Paper- We R Memory Keepers Holly Jolly collection
heart brads-LSS
"Eat Cake" stamp-Studio G
Black ink- Tim Holtz distress ink in black soot
Red ink- Studio G
Pink Ink (around the edges of scalloped heart)-Stampin up Pink Passion
Ribbon-4 for $1 bin at Michael's
Blush-People Blush! I wanted him to have pink cheeks, but I don't own chalks..and since I'm on a spending freeze I had to make do. My own blush on a Qtip was the perfect touch and free to boot ;)

I hope you like my card and I cannot WAIT to see what this group comes up with in the next few weeks!

I'm also entering this card in the Getting Cricky with K Andrew Challenge to use a bird in a card!

Card Cupids Challenge!

This weeks challenge over at Card Cupids is Cards with more than one fold.
I made a Z-fold card and used the digi stamp from Sweet and Sassy Stamps called "Cocoa's Latte". Isn't it adorable?! The winner of the challenge will get three free Digis!

You have until Sunday to enter, and I hope you do!

I'm in love with a mini

album! I made my first mini album this past week, and I had so much fun that I've already made a second one. I love doing these!

Much like my regular scrapbooks, my minis are super simple and leave lots of room for pictures. The precious baby mini has almost no embellishments, because I don't really have any unisex ones (I'm not sure who that one is for yet). I may add some things later to make it more boy themed for my new nephew or my new GREAT nephew!

The Evalyn album is for some friends who are due to have their first baby later this month. I thought that it would be a sweet thing for them to fill with pictures and mail to an out of town family member or something :)
The little plaque on the front cover is to write in Evalyn's birthdate. The inside cover has a tag that pulls out of a pocket, and that can be written on or a photo attached to it. Each of the pages has a simple little embellishment, but mostly I just left lots of room for pictures and writing about how adorable Evie is!

So those are my very first minis. I'm already stalking ebay to purchase more chipboard books to cover and create more minis for all of the preggos in my life.

Love Layout

I made this layout this past weekend for a few of our engagement pictures (which I finally printed out through Snapfish-4 years later!)
This is the first layout that I've completed in 8 years! Obviously, I'm pretty proud of myself :)

The background paper and red paper are from a set that a coworker gave me for Christmas
The "LOVE" was cut from Elegant cakes and welded with the Gypsy and inked with Making Memories Sepia ink, and studio G red ink
The design on the corner is cut from Elegant Cakes, and also inked
The paper flowers are from Hero Arts
The brads are from a LSS
The flat back pearls are from my stash

When I originally designed the layout I was going to cut backgrounds for the photos from the Gypsy Wanderings cartridge, but when I got them on there it just felt too busy. My style for scrapbooking has always been pretty plain and basic, though, so I think this fits right in with the rest of my incomplete scrapbook!

I just ordered 100 more photos from snapfish, so I'm hoping to really get going on my scrapbook! I forgot how much fun it was.

Snaps for Provocraft

I just wanted to share a recent experience I had with Provocraft because I was really impressed with their customer service. They say that if someone has a positive experience they'll tell one person, but if they have a negative experience they'll tell ten people...so I'm trying to do the opposite by telling lots of of a positive experience :)

I got my Gypsy a few weeks ago and waited a few days to make sure I liked it before linking my cartridges. When I finally started linking them, there was one the Gypsy couldn't recognize, Create a Critter. I tried turning backwards, resetting the Gyspy, waiting a day, nothing worked. When I looked up on a few forums I saw that this was kind of common and many people complained about the long wait times with PC customer service, so I was dreading calling.

I called on Monday 1/3 and was on hold for only 15 minutes. I spoke with Christy who was so nice and apologetic that I ended up with a defective cartridge, and she said they'd send me a new one. When I hung up with her I had an email in my inbox asking about the call, and I received my new cartridge on Saturday 1/8.

Anyways, I was (am) super impressed with how they handled my issue, especially since I had such a negative attitude when I went into the process.

Card Cupids Challenge!

This weeks challenge over at Card Cupids is almost as easy as last weeks was! All that is required is that you use your favorite embellishment. Mine is glitter glue, and it's probably hard to tell from my photo, but the entire spaceship is glittered all to death. I just love glitter glue! (as a bonus, I'm allowed to send it to the hospital because the glitter can't fall off of the card.)

The stamp is from Fresh Brewed Designs, who is generously sponsoring our challenge this week with three free digi images to the winner!

Again, I made this card Valentines day colors so that I can use it in my big batch of Valentines Cards for the two hospitals Card Cupids is sponsoring. Don't forget that Card Cupids has a big prize for the Valentine's Day Challenge and you have until Feb. 4th to submit your cards. The Prize includes Pearl Pens, a My Pink Stamper DVD and more and is worth over $100!

I've posted a few Vday cards in my last post if you're in need of a little inspiration and I look forward to seeing what you come up with!

Some Valentines Cards

I'm almost halfway to my goal of 25 Valentines cards for Card Cupids, so I thought I would share a few that I've made in the last couple of days.
The cupcake shaped card is my favorite yet, I just love it! Hopefully these inspire you to create some Valentines cards of your own!

Maybe if I say it outloud...

I'll actually stick with it. I'm going on a shopping fast! I'm not sure for how long, maybe April because if I'm going to do this, I need to make it worth it. I've just been shopping at craft stores WAY too much! Since Monday alone I've been to Michaels three times, Joann's once, a local scrapbook store that was going out of business (and had huge discounts!) and shopped online. All of this:plus more that I can't remember (and that's when you know you have a problem, when you buy so much stuff in a week that you don't remember what it all was!) has joined my stash just this week. I need to start focusing on using up what I have and stop buying stuff that I don't need!
So that's my story. Wish me luck!

Anything Goes Challenge

This week over at Card Cupids we're having an "Anything Goes" challenge, sponsored by Whimsy Stamps!
I chose this adorable dog holding a sign and made a 4X4 card (my first!). Of course I had to make this a brown dog because he's goofy looking and reminds me of Bill, my Chocolate Lab. Plus, he's chomping on that sign, which is totally something Bill would do! :)

If you've never joined us at Card Cupids for a Challenge, this is the one to join! It's super easy and the winner gets a $15 gift certificate to Whimsy Stamps!

Recipe:
Red Cardstock-Stampin' Up Really Red
Pattern Cardstock-DCVW stack
Red and clear Glitter Glue-Studio G (dollar spot at Michael's)
Ribbon-Target dollar spot
Rub on-Stampin' Up
Markers-Crayola Super Tips :)

oh, and I've decided to make all my challenge cards this month Valentine themed, so I can reach my goal of 25 Valentine cards to send to Card Cupids by February 4th!

My Pink Stamper Challenge/Design Team Submission

Yesterday Robyn over at Mypinkstamper.com announced that she had two spots left on her design team, and issued a challenge to use her favorite colors, Green Pink and Brown and a favorite cartridge of your choice. I was so excited to see that because Robyn is the one that got me into Cricut machines, and I would love to work with her. Of course, the more I see entries popping up in my google reader from blogs I admire and subscribe to, the more nervous I get, but I had to try! :)

This card will serve two purposes, as I will be sending it to Card Cupids as part of my valentines package (which is appropriate as My Pink Stamper is one of the Card Cupid sponsors for the Valentines challenge!). It's my goal to make 25 cards for Valentines day for Card Cupids!

Recipe:
Tree and Hearts-Simply Charmed (my favorite Cartridge!)
Green and light pink cardstock-Recollections
Dark Pink and brown textured cardstock-Stampin' Up
Ribbon-Michaels 4/$1 bin
Stamp- Hampton Art Joyous Holidays
Ink-Stampin' Up Passion Rose
Glitter Glue-Studio G
Marvey Gel Excel Gel Pen
Crayola Super tips (light pink dots and stitching)

Also, this was the first thing I've cut with my Gypsy and I love it! I hid the contour in the tree, sized the hearts, laid them out on the mat, then went into my craft room, stuck the paper to mat and cut it. Crafting doesn't get easier than that!

Merry Christmas to me!

This is what my sweet husband got me for Christmas! I finally got it today and I can't wait to play with it!
So many exclamations marks in one short post!!!

This is one of the craft things I kept telling myself I didn't need...just like the Cricut and the Martha Stewart Scoreboard...and then I get anyways. Hopefully I'll end up loving it as much as I do my other "do not need" items on my desk!

Bake Sale!

I mentioned in my last post that I organized a Bake Sale earlier this month at my work to help raise money for our Christmas family (and we raised quite a bit!! YAY!). I wanted to share the bake sale signs that I made using my Cricut because, well, I'm pretty sure they were the cutest Bake Sale signs EVER. By the time I finished them it was something like 11:30pm, so my picture is a little dark, sorry!

The font is from the Elegant Cakes cartridge (and it's not even the prettiest font on there!), the cup of cocoa is from the Holiday Cakes cartridge and the happy cupcake is from Simply Charmed.
And here are the goodies I made and packaged up. I'd never made either Rice Krispie Treats or Peanut Butter Blossoms before, but both turned out really well and sold quickly.

Peppermint Nutella blossoms

A while back I asked my imaginary friends on a message board what to make for a bake sale, and Sarah said I needed to make peanut butter blossoms. I used her recipe and whipped up a batch. They seemed to be a pretty big hit and I've made them three times since then (and the bakesale was only a few weeks ago!)
Well, I bought a two pack of nutella at Costco a few weeks ago, and with DH trying to lose 10 lbs, it was not a good combo. One of them had to go. So I decided to try to substitute Nutella in the Peanut butter blossom recipe. Nutella is softer than pb, so I added at 1/8 cup of cocoa powder for good measure, and omitted the vanilla.
They spread out a lot more than traditional pb blossoms, but with a candy cane kiss on top and their chocolately goodness: omg om nom nom. I'm sure I'm not the first person to think of this, so I'll check the interwebs and see if I can find a recipe that holds it's traditional blossom shape a little better before I make these again.

Nutella Blossoms

2 cups Bisquick
3.4 cup Nutella
1.8 cup cocoa powder
1 can sweetened condensed milk
white sugar
kisses of your choice

mix ingredients, roll into balls and roll balls in white sugar. Bake for 10 minutes at 350. Remove from oven, let sit for 1 minute, then press unwrapped kisses into top of cookies. Remove from cookie sheet and cool.
Makes 4 dozen

Tomorrow these will be off to a friend who asked me to make her Christmas cookies. How could I say no? :)

11th hour Christmas Cards

I didn't think I had Christmas Cards in me this year, but at the last second (meaning this morning before I left for work and tonight when I got home) I pumped out these:

yeah, so I've only made 6. And so they're going to be reciprocal cards (I'm sending them to people who've already sent us cards!) and so, they may not be there by Christmas. BUT I made them, and they're done and they'll be in the mail tomorrow!
This is one of my favorite designs from when I was making cards earlier this year, most of which I sent to Card Cupids, so I decided to re-create it. The lovely wreath is cut from the Holiday Cakes cartridge, and to save time I skipped cutting the berries and used glitter glue instead.

And, it's only 7:40 right now, so I have a few hours to make more. So I may even get to making reciprocal cards from last year, when I didn't send out cards at all.

I feel so alive! (not really.)

Hobby Hopping Contest

My friend Christy over at Hobby Hopping is having a pretty awesome blog contest! If she gets to 50 followers by Christmas, she'll draw a name and give the winner their choice of 5 Copics, 10 Spicas, a Glitter Ritz/Peel Off starter kit, a set of hand-made cards, or a big box of candy.
Any of those would be amazing to win! She's only 14 followers away, so, go, follow and if you haven't seen her blog yet, you're in for a treat!