Hello, Cupcake! Blog Hop

Hello and Welcome to my little stop on the "Hello, Cupcake!" Blog Hop. If you came from Liz's Blog you are on the right path! If you just happened to pop in and see what I had for today and you want to play along in the hop just start back at Janis' Blog! Many of the blogs are offering some yummy Blog Candy (including mine) so make sure you are commenting along the way!

For today's project I wanted to make a Cupcake Birthday Card. I'm not much of a baker and my cakes and cupcakes tend to come from a box... but they are still YUMMY! Here's a look at my card:


I used my Gypsy to weld two of the cupcakes from the Create a Critter Cricut cartridge together. I set the height at 5" so it would be easy to make the other cuts just using my Cricut. I used a double sided pink cardstock so the inside of my card would be cute too! Then I used just my Cricut and cut the black base layer, purple wrapper, silver glitter cherry and pink glitter frosting all at 5".


Because the purple cardstock wasn't blingy at all, I decided to grab my Pop Rocks Glimmer Mist to add some shimmer. It really added just the right amount of sparkle to my card. I also added some Christmas Red Stickles to the fruit of my Cherry cut. I just love the way it turned out!


To finish off my adorable little cupcake I added some Googly Eyes! I think they add just the right amount of whimsy! I hope you enjoyed my card... Now before you hop along to Laura's Blog I wanted to offer you the chance to win some Blog Candy!!!! Just make sure you are following my blog and that you leave me a way to contact you if you are the winner! What am I giving away.....


This fabulous Punny-licious Stamp Set from My Pink Stamper!!! Thanks so much to Robyn for sponsoring my blog!!! I will leave comments open until Monday at midnight and announce the winner sometime on Tuesday! Ok, now leave your comment and check out the fantastic project on Laura's Blog!

Cricut Circle February Challenge: Banners!

Banners are hot, hot, HOT in the papercrafting world so this month's Cricut Circle Challenge was to create a banner! I've been wanting to make one for a while now and this gave me the perfect excuse. Is it my little girl's 5th birthday on Sunday so I wanted to make her a gift that we could not only display at her party but also hang in her room.


I used the Country Life Cricut Cartridge to cut all of my banner shapes at 10". Then I used Nursery Rhymes to cut the letters in her name at 4" (I think). Then I used Once Upon a Princess to make Princess Penny and a sort of Ariel (hey, she needed to be pink). I used my brand new Peachy Keen Stamps "Wide Eyed Kids" for the faces, aren't they ADORABLE? I just want to make a TON of dolls now! Finally the birthday girl and I went through my mounds of stickers and embellishments to pick out stuff to represent her favorite things: Ballet, Princesses, Hello Kitty, Littlest Pet Shop and Dress Up. I'm really happy with the results and she is too! Here's close-ups of all of the letters to see what we did:

Cricut Circle Weekly Challenge #21: Animal Magnetism Challenge!

So the challenge for this weeks Cricut Circle said, "This week in we have been paying tribute to the critters in our lives and now we want you to do the same! For this challenge your project must include something related to an animal. You can create your project for or about an animal, include an animal cut, use animal print, etc. Project must also contain at least 2 Cricut image cuts to qualify."


I created this fun card for my brother and sister-in-law doe their wedding showers. He loves penguins so I used the Jolly Holiday cartridge and cut the penguin with umbrella two times, flipping one of them. Then I cut away one umbrella so they could share :) The background I Glimmer Misted and them used a piece of packaging from a new cartridge and embossed it with my Snowflakes Cuttlebug folder. I hand cut the hills from some glitter paper and added some Snow Tex to the umbrella for snow. Then I attached the clear sheet with brads and glued everything else down!


I'm just so happy with how this card turned out!

Cricut Circle February Everyday Cricut Challenge

This month's magazine challenge for the Circut Circle is to use at least three cuts from the new, exclusive Cricut Circle Cartridge, Cricut Everyday in a project to define yourself at Meet-Ups, Crops or other events. I decided that I would make a little sign that I could hang in my scraproom or take places with me.


My nickname at work is actually Cricut Girl because I'm the go-to gal for any questions regarding the machine or cartridges. I might even take it to hang on my locker there.... but it's so stinking cute, I may have to enjoy it at home for a while!


I used one of the layers from the "Cricut Imagine" logo to get just the word "Cricut". I set my dial to 1 1/2" and turned on the Real Dial Size function. Then I cut "girl" at 1" from the All Mixed Up cartridge at 1".


The Bug Head is a cut from the cartridge and the background is actually the Cricut Cake logo! I just didn't cut the last layer with the words on it. I have a feeling I will be using this cut a LOT! Then I added a little bling with my i-rock and attached the ribbon so I could hang it up. A fun and easy project!

Castle Queens Layout

I just love being a part of the amazing Scrapbooking community. I have met some really wonderful people both at crops and on-line and the support and encouragement is incredible! When I heard my friend Pinky was going to be taking over the website Tally Scrapper I gave some thought to joining up. Then when she announced Tally Survivor I decided to join up and play along. Basically every week they present a challenge and you make a layout to fit those requirements. I thought that it sounded like a lot of fun and would help me to experiment with my art in a new way. I don't normally create one page layouts but I think I will do an album of my layouts for this challenge!


This is what I came up with to fill this week's requirements which are:
Must have WHITE SPACE or NEGATIVE SPACE
Must have at least one Photo with MORE than one person in it.
Must have Tan/Brown AND Blue!
Must have at least 2 staples and a piece of recycled scrapbook packaging.

I used a sheet of Glossy Cardstock for my background. Then I took some Tattered Angels Glimmer Glam in Tide Pool and kind of just dripped it all over my paper. It's funny, I was going to just brush it in "waves" randomly on my paper and then before I could even start it went, "drip, drip, drop" and I said "COOL!" and kept dripping it all over my page. Then I grabbed my Puerto Rico and Sapphire Glimmer Mists and spritzed them on my background. I sped up the dry time a bit by using my heat gun carefully. I didn't want to blow the drops around... just dry them quicker. Once it was dry I grabbed the packaging from my Tim Holtz Tiny Attacher and trimmed it a bit. I was going to mat my photo on it but decided that the flourish looked like waves so I just offset it a bit. I decided to use my brand new D'Stress Tool by Imaginisce to distress my photo and the packaging piece. Then I used my Tiny Attacher to add the staples to my photo and fill that requirement. I love the way that it just added a little something to it! After adhering the photo and packaging to my layout with my Pink ATG gun I cut my title. I used some Kraft Cardstock and cut it using the "Skinny" font feature on the Ashlyn's Alphabet Cricut Cartridge. Next I added my ribbon to to bottom with some Scor Tape. The ribbon and the flower both came from my Precocious Paper March Sampler Kit. After adding a tiny bit of journaling (hey, I've gotta remember where we were) I used my I-Rock tool to add some bling to the flourish.

I'm so proud of this layout! I didn't start with a sketch like I normally would. I just sat down with my stuff and started playing.... I can't wait to see what our next challenge entails!!! Don't forget to come check out Tally Scrapper sometime soon!

A Wedding and A Winner

I am so happy to share that my brother's wedding was BEAUTIFUL! My oldest daughter was a flawless flower girl who distributed her petals like a pro! Yes, I colored out the faces of the ring bearers, out of respect for their privacy.


My youngest also behaved beautifully. No flowers actually made it out of her basket but when the ceremony was over she picked up every single petal and added it to her basket. It was adorable!!!


I'm looking forward to scrapping the photos from the wedding. I'm making them a scrapbook for their gift and I'm so excited to be doing it!!! I sure hope they LOVE it! I will share the pages as I complete them.

Here's a look at the handsome groom with his beautiful bride:


I took this during the ceremony and uploaded it to Facebook before they even finished the vows, LOL! Isn't technology amazing? I'll post some better pics eventually....

Anyway, I'm sure you're here for another reason... like maybe to find out the lucky winner of the Cricut Magazine Premier Issue....

Well, as usual I enlisted the help of the Random.org Random Number Generator and it came up with....



And that means that our winner is:


Congrats, Mary!!!! I will be e-mailing you for your shipping info shortly! Watch your inbox!

Thanks to all of you who commented! I will be posting more blog candy soon. I have SO much fun stuff to giveaway... and when I hit 500 Followers it will be a HUGE prize... I promise you that! I already have the prize secured. I will be in a really fun blog hop this weekend and will be giving away a My Pink Stamper Stamp Set so don't forget to check back here often!

Please Help Baby Aiden

Tanya from Scrappin KY Momma needs help from all of us crafters. She knows this little boy and his family and would like to send him cards. Here's his story...

Aidan is a sweet lil 2 year old who was recently diagnosed with T Cell Leukemia. On Wednesday, he had a port installed in his chest, spinal tap, bone marrow, and chemo in his spine. He did GREAT! This lil guy is such a trooper. His parents have accepted that their BABY has Leukemia.. NOT the easiest thing to accept, but their faith in God and their support system have kept them going. T-Cell Leukemia has a high cure rate although chemo will be continued for quite a while. Lil Aidan LOVES mail, like any 2 year old does. So....


Let's get our crafting supplies out and send this lil guy some LOVE!!! Pass this on to all your crafty friends. I think we can all take a couple minutes and make something special for him that will bring LOTS of smiles and he can look at over and over. We all know how laughing and smiling can be good for the soul. Let's give him this much for him to enjoy while he's battling this horrible disease. I have no doubt in my mind that God can perform a miracle in this beautiful child. Please keep him and his family in your prayers.

You can mail your cards to:
AIDAN
c/o Tanya Stilwell
P.O. Box 143
Cecilia, KY 42724

Thanks to Sarah at Pink Cricut and Zeni and Scrappy Zeni for posting this!!!

I will be back in a bit to post the winner of my blog candy....

Precious Baby Boy

This month for my Precocious Paper Design Team assignment Tessa sent me the fabulous March Sampler called "A Walk in the Woods. This set is a gorgeous combination of teal, green and brown and is so beautiful! Besides the gorgeous handmade flowers she also send co-ordination ribbon, leaves and pins in the kit. Well, I sat down with the set of flowers and rummaged through my stash of papers and created.....


A baby boy page? Yep, I have two little girls but my bestie has an adorable baby boy, Tylen, so I grabbed a stack of photos from when he was just one day old and started getting scrappy. I used one of my all time favorite paper lines, SEI's Chick A Doo. I just bought another pack of this paper last week because I love it so much! I actually used this line when Ty was born to create a mini album for his baby pics. You can see the posts about it HERE, HERE and HERE! I just love adding flowers to my layouts, even when they are about baby boy's and the Precocious Paper ones are my favorite!!! Hope you will give them a try sometime!

BLOG CANDY ALERT: So I have a TON of goodies from CHA and I'm itching to give some of them away! How about the premier issue of the Cricut Magazine?


All you need to do is become a follower and leave a comment on this post and you could win! My brother is getting married tomorrow and both of my girls are going to be flower girls so I will announce the winner on Monday! Make sure you leave me a way to contact you...

Hot Air Balloon Card

It's Tutorial Tuesday on the Cutters Creek Design Team Blog! Yes, I realize it's Thursday but a mouse invasion in my scraproom put a damper on my mojo (not to mention my DESK). Thankfully, I believe the problem has been resolved! This month we are focusing on Stickles! Stickles are a great way to add a little bling to any project!


I got this really cool sheet of images on a transparency from the Prickly Pear booth at CHA and couldn't wait to play with them! So I grabbed my Stickles and started coloring with them on the back of the image. I used Christmas Red, Silver, Turquoise and Diamond to color my balloon. Just remember, there is a lot of dry time here so I recommend letting it dry overnight.


This is actually the second day. I added the Red, Turquoise and Silver first and let them dry. In the morning I colored in the rest of the balloon with the Diamond Stickles and let it sit all day. Well, last night when I went to finish my project I guess I had made my layer a little too thick and it was still wet! So I moved on and made the background for my card.


I'm including two photos of the background I created because it was really hard to get a good photo. I used my Glimmer Mist and Glimmer Glam to create the sky.


I first sprayed a light turquoise for the background. Then I added the Glam in a few random spots with a paint brush. It acts as a resist when I spray the 2nd color, a little darker turquoise over the top and gives a really cool effect! I'm thinking I'm going to create a water themed page next with this same technique... Then I had cut the clouds from white cardstock and glued them down.


When my image was finally dry I added some foam squares to the back of the transparency under the colored part of my image. I really wanted the balloon to float off the page.


And here's the finished card! I added a little red foil paper from my scrap drawer and stamped the phrase "Ain't Life Swell" from my Pink By Design Country Life stamp set. I also used my Pink ATG to assemble the rest of my card.

Now on with some business... make sure you head on over to the Cutters Creek Design Team Blog and leave a comment on my post over THERE and you might just win some Blog Candy! I appreciate any comments you leave here as well!

I Like You More than Puppies....

So Kim and I are back from CHA and sort of back to normal now... it's hard to believe how being gone for a week can throw you off so much!It was so amazing to see all of the new products! I'm so happy that Kim decided to add The Greeting Farm stamps to the Cutters Creek store. They are made from high quality, deep-etched, red rubber for wonderful impression every time! They are also mounted on gray cling cushion. All you have to do is trim and use with acrylic blocks. I have two cards that I created with these images. I used some of my favorite Echo Park Paper scraps (and one piece of patterned cardstock from my stash) on both of these cards.


The first card I used the Cheeky Shooter stamp from The Greeting Farm! When we saw the Cheeky Cherry Collection we were both super excited! These stamps are great to color and they stamp beautifully! I hope you guys love these images as much as I do! I used my Flesh Toned (E000, E00, E11 and R20) Copics for her skin and my Bic Mark-It's and Tombow Markers for the rest.


Then I accented the gun, star on the boots, studs on the belt and her eyelids with my Sakura Gelly Roll Stardust Pure Glitter Pen. After she was all beautifully colored just the way I wanted I grabbed my oval cutter... and realized that I need to get a set of the Spellbinder Ovals, LOL! So I inked up the edges of my oval with a little Tim Holtz Distress Ink in Walnut Stain to disguise the imperfections... The outer oval I actually just colored with the same marker I used on the cowgirl hat.


Then I used some Pop Up Glue Dots to lift my ovals off the card. The only other addition I made was a piece of brown felt ric rac adhered with some Scor Tape. Oh, and I should mention I used my Pink ATG to adhere everything else on both of my cards! I am sooooo happy that I broke down and bought one. I have loved using it!

The second card uses the Because Of You sentiment set from The Greeting Farm. When I saw the "I like you more than puppies" phrase on there I BEGGED Kim to add this set to the store! The other phrases on this set are: Today is Brighter because of You, It Doesn't Get Much Better than This, Everyone Needs a Friend Like You, You're the Rainbow After the Storm, Life Would be Boring without You, and You Twinkle More than Stars. What a great multi-purpose set!

And at only $14.99 - what a STEAL! I'm sounding like a serious commercial right now, LOL! But I'm super excited about this set. The little girl I used is from the "Roll Call" set which isn't currently in the store BUT I'm sure if you ask nice, Kim could look into getting it. The set comes with 8 of the characters plus a set of phrases and retails for $48.00. I used my Flesh Toned (E00, E11 and R20) Copics for her skin and my Bic Mark-It's for the rest.


I added the Sakura Gelly Roll Stardust Pure Glitter Pen to her shoes, shirt and bows and a little for eyeshadow. Then I added one of the Color Me Crazy flowers with a corduroy yellow brad for the center.

I hope you enjoyed both cards I have to share today!!!

Cutters Creek Shopping List
Cheeky Shooter stamp from The Greeting Farm
Because Of You sentiment set from The Greeting Farm
Echo Park Paper
Copic Markers: E000, E00, E11 and R20
Sakura Gelly Roll Stardust Pure Glitter Pen
Spellbinder Ovals
Tim Holtz Distress Ink in Walnut Stain
Scor Tape
Pink ATG
Color Me Crazy

So You Think You Can Dance???

So one of the MOST amazing parts of the Provo Craft Cricut Gala was the evening's entertainment! I'm a HUGE fan of So You Think You Can Dance and I was rooting for Twitch and Joshua all during Season 4. Joshua was the winner that season and here is a video that I shot at the Gala!



Joshua really is an amazing dancer and I feel soooooo blessed to have not only got to see him dance in such an intimate setting but I also got to MEET him and the other dancers. I have to get the pics from my friend Betsy because I only had my iPhone and sadly it has no flash so the nice dark Conga Room wasn't idea for photos....

We have a Winner!!!!

The stars were aligned today for one super lucky commenter....

But first I have another fun CHA photo to share!


We were lucky enough to have dinner with Kim's Notions rep, Kelly (who is so super sweet by the way) and Cricut came with. We ate a The Farm Beverly Hills and the food was yummy! I had a Blueberry Pomegranate Martini and a BBQ Bacon Cheeseburger.


Ok, TWO photos! I thought this one just needed to be shared. Cricut really enjoyed my drink too :)

I'm really looking forward to hitting my craft room this afternoon. I have so many fun new things to play with including some SUPER cute The Greetings Farm stamps... WAIT till you see them!

What? Oh, you want to know WHO my winner is??? Well, I guess I can let you know... after I first tell you that I hope you will share my blog with your friends! I got confirmation that I will have an AMAZING giveaway when I hit 500 followers!!! For a hint as to what it *might* be you can check out my list of blinkies on the right side of my blog....

On to the winner!!!! Once again, I turned to Random.org to choose for me and it picked:



And the 31th comment was left by none other than....


Yes, Pinky, I shut the front door!!!! Guess Random.org is loving you today!!!! In case you haven't checked out her amazing blog it's called Much Ado About Nothing and I highly recommend you check it out! Thanks so much to each and everyone of my followers and to everyone who commented! I really appreciate you all, and don't forget to spread the word... the 500 Follower giveaway is NOT to be missed!

Pinkie Pie's CHA Adventures

So I'm sitting in the airport on Friday with my friend Betsy and I feel something in my coat pocket.... I reach in and pull out Pinkie Pie! My daughter's happy meal toy from the day before got left in my coat pocket somehow. So of course I decided to take photos of Pinkie Pie having some fun at CHA! I will be doing a mini album about her adventures but I thought I'd share a few of the fun photos.


Pinkie Pie and the CHA show logo. We accidentally got up a little too early on Saturday but had a great photo op for this pic!


Pinkie Pie made all kinds of friends at the show, including her new BFF, Cricut. Cricut told Pinkie Pie the secret of whether Cricut is a boy or a girl but Pinkie Pie isn't sharing with me :(


In case you were wondering Pinkie Pie and I also managed to score an invite to the Super Secret Cricut Gala and these FABULOUS people were part of the evening's entertainment. I'm a HUGE fan of So You Think You Can Dance and this is Joshua (in blue - Season 4's winner), Twitch (center) and Comfort. It was incredible to see them dance LIVE and to meet them all!!! I got sweaty hugs from all of them and I was in heaven!!! Gotta give a shout out to my fabulous friends Sarah over at the Pink Cricut blog and Emma at the My Creative Time blog for their assistance! If you haven't checked out their blogs, you must, they are fabulous! And both of these super talented ladies have amazing stamps sets that are awesome!


This photo was taken during the Tattered Angles 201 workshop that we attended. It was an AMAZING class taught buy Wendy Senger, the CREATOR of Glimmer Mist! I actually attended both the 101 and 201 classed but Pinkie Pie slept through 101... I guess the Gala was too much excitement for that little pony.


Everyone who gets to go to an event like this where Tim Holtz happens to be has to get a "Tim Picture". So of course Pinkie Pie needed her Tim Picture too! Tim thought the idea was hilarious and very graciously agreed to do a comical photo with Pinkie Pie and me! Glad such a talented man has a great sense of humor too!


The Fiskateers had a great booth at CHA and they decorated it different every day. Here is lead Fiskateer Angela posing with a Pinkie Pie martini! If your not a Fiskateer yet, head on over to the Fiskateer site to sign up... and let them know that Mandie and Pinkie Pie sent you!


Paper dresses were a HOT item at the show but the DCWV booth had an AMAZING set up, complete with a runway! Pinkie Pie needed to strut her stuff on the catwalk too. You can see her next to the peacock dress if you look carefully....


We found this adorable pair of Smooch covered shoes in the ClearSnap booth and of course Pinkie Pie HAD to have her photo taken with them! Aren't these shoes adorable? If they were just a little bit bigger.....


For those of you that don't know, I live in the Chicago area and of course Tuesday there was that huge Blizzard that dumped almost 2 feet of snow where I live and left drifts up to 6 feet tall ALL over the place! So we had to spend an extra day in LA.... while our friends and family were digging out of the snow, we were digging our toes into the sand! Here we are playing at Manhattan Beach....


As fun as our adventure was we had to come back to reality... here's Pinkie Pie looking out of the window at the snow covered Midwest. She really tried hard to get me to stay in LA but I really missed my hubby and the kids :) So we are home safe and sound!

I will post pics of the album as it is created :) Watch my blog for more pics of the CHA show and the Gala too!