Jungle photo frame

Good Morning!

While looking through the November issue of Cricut magazine, I saw a Animal frame by Kristen Spencer that I had to scraplift! Most of you know by now that I'm going to become a Grandma in January. They wanted to do the Nursery in Pooh, so I've made them several things. However, now my son's girlfriend has decided she also wants to do a Jungle theme... so when I seen the Animal Frame I was inspired to make one.

Thanks for looking!

My Memories free quick pages

Good Morning!

My Memories sent me a link for some freebies for you! They are .png and .jpg files, so you can use them in any software program, not just My Memories software. I've never used any other digital software program, so I really can't compare them for you, but I really do like this software!! V3 just came out, I downloaded it last night, and it's awesome. Every 14 days My Memories offers new freebies, so while these files only last 14 days, new ones will be available at the same link.

http://www.mymemories.com/store/share_the_memories_kit_1

http://www.mymemories.com/store/share_the_memories_kit_2

http://www.mymemories.com/store/share_the_memories_kit_3

I will post here when the new ones come out. Remember, use this promotion code STMMMS58718 to get $10.00 of the cost of My Memories Suite v3 AND $10.00 to spend on digital papers and embellishments from their store. That's a $20.00 value. Just go here to purchase the software, copy and paste STMMMS58718 into the promotion code area.

Another Easel birthday card

Good Morning,

A family friend is having a birthday next week and I needed to make her a card. Since she's a Nun, I wanted to do something with the cross from the Easter cartridge. I didn't make the standard 4.25 x 11 card stock, I used 5 x 12 instead. For the front layers, I used 4.75 x 5.75 for the patterned paper and just a hair bigger for the solid layer. On the bottom piece I used 2.75 x 4.75 for the patterned paper and again just a hair(1/8) bigger for the solid paper. The cross was cut at 5.5.

Since I was using K&Company's double sided paper, I took the top layer of the cross and flipped it on my G, along with the happy birthday (from an MS cart). That way I could layout everything except my card base and cross base on one sheet of paper and just do one cutting. So tell me, is that just being creative, or was it just plain lazy on my part?? I can't decide. :)

My Memories software tutorials and New Pages

Good Morning!

I've been playing with the My Memories software, and I'm really loving this! Today I have more pages that I've created for my sister's 50th birthday. {{Just for giggles, I'm the youngest one in these photos. You can click on the photo to make them bigger. That is my sister Deb, riding with her hubby right after she got her motorcycle license a few years ago. I don't know when it happened, but looking at these old photos, we really got old! LOL}}

All of these pages were made with either freebies or with a $5.00 coupon I've received from the My memories face book page. All I've spend was $0.77 to create all of these pages!!

I also have some tutorials from My Memories!

*Using outside content in your My Memories Suite software* from Lisa Jurrens on Vimeo.

Or if you prefer, here is also a .pdf version Here


Discount information: Remember, use this promotion code STMMMS58718 to get $10.00 of the cost of My Memories Suite v2 AND $10.00 to spend on digital papers and embellishments from their store. That's a $20.00 value. Just go here to purchase the software, copy and paste STMMMS58718 into the promotion code area.

Thanks for looking, have a great day!

I am thankful...

Good Morning!

This week on SweetSassyDiva 's design team we were asked to do a "Thankful for" post. There are so many things I'm thankful for, but I don't have pictures of all of them! So for this post, the first thing I thought of was this picture I had taken of the sunset. My DH, Mom, Dad, Aunt and her BFF and myself took our boat out on the lake to watch the fireworks. Nothing compares to watching the fireworks on the water! That we watched the sun setting while doing a little fishing and whole lot of laughing made it that much better! I'm also Thankful to BobbiJo for bringing me along to CHA this year, where I received the Fancy Frames cartridge! Now, on to my project...

I started with Fancy Frames, cut @ 5.75 and tweeked in DS to fit my picture. I added some pearls and a lot of yellow and orange stickles.

The swirls were cut in Home Decor @ 1.25 with some bling added to them.

Simple pleasures was cut from Country Life @ 2.

I cut the borders from George @ 1. I used my cricut markers and country life for the words @ .50.

The paper is from DCWV Tradewinds pack.

It's a simple project, but I wanted to make sure the photo stood out. I love how it turned out!

Thanks for looking!

A Baby Wreath

Good Morning!

Today is my day to post at The Bugbytes! Thanks again to Pam for inviting me to be part of your awesome design team!!

I'm having a baby shower for my youngest Son and his other half. (I think they may be joined at the hips LOL) Diaper cakes are so popular, I wanted to do something different. I searched the web and found several sites where they are selling baby wreaths, so I set out to make my own.

I started out with a wreath form, size 2 diapers (I only needed 16 for each wreath) and rubber bands.

I opened up each diaper and put it around the wreath. I then took a rubber band and put it around the end of the diaper to hold it in place. (At the end I pulled the ends of the diapers open a bit more) Continue all the way around the wreath, the last diaper is a tight squeeze, but it helps to hold everything in place.

Now comes the fun part... unless you have cats! I named my blog 3 Cats and a Bug because I can never do anything crafty (or anything in general!) without at least one of the cats "helping" me, although in this case it was 2 of them! They LOVE curling ribbon!!! Anyway, at this point I decided what I wanted on my wreath. For my first wreath, it was a learning experience. I wasn't sure how to attach things to the wreath and not ruin the diapers, so I wrapped some ribbon around the wreath and attached things with glue dots.

NOT the way to do it, but like I said, it was a learning experience. :) The best way to do it is to use the rubber bands and slip the baby items inside the rubber bands. Then you tie the curling ribbon on top of the rubber bands to hide them. For two of the wreaths (I made 3 of them) I used bows to top off the wreath.

For the third one I used a frog rattle between two diapers and attached it that way. To change things up a little bit, I tied some regular ribbon (cats don't like that as much!)in a few spots instead of curling ribbon. (Sassy is pictured below, picking out her favorite ribbon. LOL I ended up replacing 2 of the ribbons because they "tag teamed" me and got to the wreath before I could get there!)

I'm hosting two showers next month, so for the third wreath I put it in my Mom's craft fair and it sold within 2 hours. I was beyond pleased by that!! Nothing says "you did a great job" as well as selling something you've made. LOL I will admit, blog comments rank up there just as high, but they just don't give you craft money. :)

Thanks for looking and have a great day!!

Craft Fair Christmas Cards

Good Morning!

This week at SweetSassyDiva's the Design Team is working on Christmas Cards!
This year when I was getting ready to make my Christmas cards for the craft fair I decided to do something different! The last few years the things that sold the most were the simple cards. While the easel cards that I had given away had gotten great comments, they didn’t sell at all. So I decided to do everything rather simple this year. I also decided to cut out my paper first and figure out what to put on it later. :)

I didn’t use all the papers, but there’s always next year! I used last years DCWV Christmas stacks. I also cut out the 2 pages of borders and cut them down to size.

I love the child building the snowman cut from A Child’s Year! I lost count, but I cut out roughly 75 of them at 3.5. I used glitter paper and Coredinations Gem paper for the top pieces....

For the bottom pieces I cut out red, blue, purple and green.

While watching Monday night football, I put them all together. (This whole project took me several days!)

I also cut out the snowflake from Sophie, the cricut circle cartridge, at 3.5 in white and blue.

Normally I use my Pink ATG to put everything together, but I was running low on tape, so I decided to try my Tombo glue. I used the wide end and spread it on the outside of the paper to attach it to the card base. It worked great, even doing 6 cards at a time!

I also spent two days cut out cards from different colored paper and then scoring and folding them. I filled a 8 x13 plastic container plus some. Another half day to cut out the Christmas paper, roughly 120 card fronts. Two days of cutting shapes, one evening of gluing them together in front of the tv and another full morning of glueing card fronts to the bases. I spent another day and a half of putting everything together! I’m tired of looking at Christmas cards for right now, but I haven’t even started on my own personal Christmas cards yet! Lol

Thanks for looking!

My Memories Software review AND Give Away!!

Good Morning!

I received an e-mail last week from My Memories asking me if I would like to receive, review and give away a copy of their digital scrapbooking software. I wrote Liz back saying I was try it out this weekend.

Honestly I wasn’t too sure what I would think of it. I’ve never been a digital scrapbooker, always preferring a hands on approach to it. While I have the software to make computer generated cards, I don’t do that either, I prefer to make them from scratch.

I sat down tonight and picked out some pictures to make a book for my sister’s 50th birthday next month. I opened up My Memories software, but didn’t bother to read the “how to/help” files. I’m totally lazy that way! LOL As of the typing of this, I have 7 digital pages done already. The software comes with some paper designs and embellishments and I’ve downloaded about 15 free files from the website. I’m amazed how easy it was to just jump in without reading anything (there are videos on the website if you’re not as lazy as I am) and able to turn out 7 pages in less than 1.5 hours. I am totally sold on the software!! I love that I can do it all digital OR I can print out the pages with or without anything and add my own to it if I want. Another great feature is you can print your pages, make an album to print, save as a jpeg, make a calendar, a card, put everything you make onto a cd to send to people, upload it to facebook, make a dvd and even add sounds to your pages.

The BEST part of all this is I get to use random.org and GIVE AWAY a free software to one lucky person!!! All you have to do is go to My Memories store and look around. Come back here and leave a comment telling me what your favorite digital paper is. On Thursday, November 10th I will use random.org to pick a lucky person.

Discount information: In addition to my giving one away, anyone (you, your family or friends) can use this promotion code STMMMS58718 to get $10.00 of the cost of My Memories Suite v2 AND $10.00 to spend on digital papers and embellishments from their store. That's a $20.00 value. Just go here to purchase the software, copy and paste STMMMS58718 into the promotion code area.

Good Luck!!!